J.E. Sawyer

The gameplay style is very similar, but it is executed to a level that I honestly don't think any games since Diablo II have touched. It stands out specifically because so many other games have attempted to capture the addictive quality of Diablo II and totally failed. I can't invent a reason for you to play Torchlight, but I'll play a bunch of similar games even if one clearly stands out as the leader in a given field.

Yeah we have it at work and here's the executive summary: it owns. Peace.

Yes, but don't hesitate to freestyle that into related topics. I'm just curious. Yes. Gunplay in F3 is a system comprised of many subsystems that derive sliding scale values that often feed into individual variables. There are many formulae used to arrive at each final value, which together determines how guns work and feel in the game. In the most basic sense, you have the statistics from the weapon itself, the values derived from weapon skill, and the values derived from COND. You also have your stance (standing or crouching), your movement state (stationary, walking, running), your aim state (aimed or unaimed), and your limb statuses. It's a lot of stuff.

One other thing I would like to see folks discuss is how they feel about the spectrum of cond/power on a few weapons vs. a smaller spectrum on more weapons. That is, is it better to have a small number of weapons that scale a lot in power with their condition OR is it better to have a large number of weapons that scale less? Can be specific to F3, but any games or examples will do.

Vosovic blows it again.

Sorry, I should have written that the increase in efficacy is more than double, not the total efficacy. That is, a 15% damage increase to a 35% damage increase (over base) is "only" a 20% jump, but when taken in the context with the other increases actually results in much MOAR DAMAGE. Polished AR shoots 1.9 rounds per second at 23 DAM per round. You fire 20 rounds before reloading (after 10.5 seconds). A reload takes 2.55 seconds, so there will be a reload at 10.5/23.55/36.6/49.65. Four reloads @ 2.55 seconds each is 10.2 seconds of "dead time". Assuming all rounds hit, you will hit with 95 (rounded up) shots doing 23 DAM = 2185 total DAM/36.4 DPS in a minute of sustained fire. High precision AR shoots 2.25 rounds per second at 27 DM. You fire 30 rounds before reloading (after 13.3 seconds). A reload takes 1.95 seconds, so there will be a reload at 13.3/28.55/43.8/59.05. Four reloads @ 1.95 seconds each is 7.8 seconds of "dead time". Assuming all rounds hit, you will hit with 117 (rounded down) shots doing 27 DAM = 3159 total DAM/52.7 DPS in a minute of sustained fire. Practically speaking, that means a 44% increase (between polished and high precision) in total damage before accuracy is taken into consideration. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when multiple statistics are being manipulated concurrently, balancing does become much more challenging and time consuming. I also believe that from a "feel" perspective, it is better to change fewer statistics more dramatically than it is to change many statistics in small increments. It may arguably be more realistic to change many statistics (depending on what you're doing), but often tuning is much more time consuming and, more importantly, the differences do not feel individually as meaningful. Can a player feel the difference between 1.9 rounds per second and 2.25 rounds per second? Maybe (more likely with automatic weapons than semi-auto), but it's relatively slight. If DAM remained fixed, you could increase the rate of fire even more on the upper-end weapons. You'd still likely arrive at a very similar DPS, but the weapon itself would feel like it had changed more (because one palpable aspect, its RoF, has). You could also work it the other way: fix the RoF and increase the DAM more dramatically. Creatures become more likely to drop in fewer shots, making the weapon feel more different than if DPS had been increased by slightly bumping both DAM and RoF. Currently, F3's Repair/COND have an enormous impact on weapon power even though (IMO) the palpable differences are hard to tell except at the extreme ends. I think a big part of that is due to the fact that COND affects so many statistics in such small increments.

Removing the Repair skill's "ceiling" on maximum COND would eliminate a lot of instances (most, I'd say) where people are carrying around spare copies of equipment just to maintain their gear. For example, if you have a Repair skill that limits your hunting rifle to 30% of its maximum COND, you pretty much have to carry other hunting rifles around because you're only dealing with a 30% spread from "as good as it can be" (for you) to totally broken.

You may be doing this intentionally, but this table results in weapon efficacy that increases at a rate that is more than the sum of its individual geometric progressions and features. That is, an 80% COND high precision assault rifle is more than twice as effective as a 40% COND polished assault rifle.

Dwarves also have a Dex bonus; elves do not. Did I just blow your red box Basic Set mind?

There are three categories of s**t now: "s**t", "the s**t", and "the new s**t". Please be more specific.

Very nice atmosphere. I wouldn't really compare it to STALKER, as STALKER was about a second Chernobyl disaster and not a nuclear war, like Metro 2033 (presumably) is. And while Fallout and STALKER are both post-apocalyptic/nuclear disaster, I don't really care if someone else makes a post-apocalyptic game. You'd have to really make a lot of post-apocalyptic games to match the number of fantasy games.

If you include Castlevania games (which certainly have lots of stats/inventory options), those probably still have an edge (at least in 2D). I'd say that, among games that the dev/publisher markets and presents as ARPGs, Demon's Souls easily has the best melee combat.

Torchlight. Gonna own.

No, it's legitimately hard. Say you see some dude you haven't seen before. You have to be extremely conservative about how you approach him. If you just sprint in and start attacking, you're probably going to be caught off-guard by whatever new and crazy attacks he does. Last night I rolled around a corner and saw some dude with a big spear and a shield hanging out at the end of a walkway. I had plenty of time to ponder how to approach him, but instead I just ran up and attacked. He killed me in two hits. These weren't rapid-fire attacks, but attacks with a healthy wind-up that I could have avoided if I had been playing more cautiously. In this way, Demon's Souls is actually pretty similar to Ninja Gaiden. You aren't always awarded for playing defensively, but you are certainly punished for playing recklessly.

I've only played an hour of it, but Demon's Souls has the best action elements of any action RPG I've played. I'm not a huge fan of the camera, some of their controller conventions (what's up with precise aim?), and there's a bit of slop in the responsiveness, but it's a huge step in the right direction, IMO. But yeah, pros only. Babies need not apply.

Even people who actually play games for a living (QA) are not necessarily that good at playing games. It would be nice if ĐA actually turned out to be moderately challenging. With the exception of Demon's Souls, every RPG I've played in the last five years (Obsidian's included) has been depressingly easy.

Anything done in the DA trailer is basically yawnfest on the DMC scale. Dante uses enemies as skateboards, attacks people with an electric guitar that summons bats, and shoots enemies' bullets in mid-air. The only thing that can top DMC nuttiness is Clover-level nuttiness -- e.g. God Hand, Bayonetta.

The potential for (totally valid) litigation is always present; companies do not relinquish their right to enforce IP/trademark rights through inaction. Additionally, yes some firearm manufacturers do at least contact companies to make requests/demands about whether their products can be used, by whom, how they are represented, etc. As for actual suing, I don't think anyone's ever gone to that stage. Developers either acquiesce to the firearm company's demands or drop the name/logos. "Just" not ones by Obsidian? Plenty of companies use generic descriptors for weapons. Especially in the case of pattern firearms, it would be kind of dumb to associate a company name with the model. IW actually paid a licensing fee for some of their weapons in CoD4, but I think that's sort of expected in a highly-militarized game. In order of legal risk from lowest to highest: * Totally fictional weapons that do not look similar to any existing weapons and have fictional names/manufacturers (2nd Amendment Firearms 11.3mm Destructorator) * Real weapons that look very similar to existing weapons and have generic names/no logos (9mm Pistol). * Real weapons that look almost identical to existing weapons and have model names, but no manufacturer names (Hi-Power). * Real weapons that look identical to existing weapons and have model and manufacturer names (Browning Hi-Power).

I never really felt that Archon was truly chess-like, anyway.

Looks cool. Keep up the good work!

Much like the American populace, Russians are now conflating communism with czars.

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I think you can really divide this into two mini-debates (though one is pretty hard to refute, I think): 1) Should a Repair skill be in Fallout games? If so, in what capacity? 2) Is Repair valuable in F3? The second question is kind of obvious: yes, it's extremely valuable. It can be part of "science boy"-oriented builds as easily as it can be part of combat-oriented builds. If you use weapons and armor or at least sell them, Repair is a Good Skill™.

In general, I like systems that are simpler and more coarsely granular ("chunky") than ones that are "fiddly" -- with many fine inputs and outputs into a single system or subsystem. This would include a system like Repair/COND, which is pretty fiddly in F3. If COND affected fewer stats and were "stepped" more coarsely, I think the effects of it would be more apparent to players. In F3, Repair is used for: a) Optimization of weapons and armor (given any level of weapon skill you will never get as much out of a COND-affected weapon with a 50 COND as you would with 100 COND -- firearms being affected more than melee/unarmed). b) Inventory optimization (Repair limits max COND, which promotes carrying duplicate weapons and armor for inevitable repairs). c) Optimization of repairs (Repair affects efficiency of repairs, meaning it takes more items to reach a given COND with a lower skill) d) Optimization of economy (b and c naturally promote this, and higher COND weapons/armor are worth more than lower COND weapons/armor). e) Scripted interactions (e.g. Megaton water leaks) Maintenance is really a secondary concept/task, created mostly by Repair limiting max COND. Because Repair and COND affect so many statistics with such fine granularity, it means that they have a large effect but most of those effects are not perceptible to the player except in extremes. If you take a 10 COND 10mm SMG and compare it to a 100 COND 10mm SMG, it's really obvious what's going on (especially with 100 skill). It has reload jams. Also, the other two stats I was thinking of were actually things affected by Repair: max COND and efficiency of repairs. I think scripted interactions with Repair tend to feel the most rewarding, though they are pretty shallow in terms of gameplay. PRES BUTAN --> ur reward.

I think Repair ties into the economy pretty significantly. It's true that eventually the F3 economy gets blown out, but at least for a while Repair has a big impact on it. Also, COND affects about seven different stats (damage, rate of fire, spread, value, chance of jam, and two others I'm forgetting).