anubite

What you speak of should be possible. Here's your hypothetical barbarian under my blueprint for Obsidian (though they're welcome to create their own stat system, I would hope they can allow a character like this to exist), Oglaf. Oglaf the Terrible 22 strength 6 dex 9 agility 14 constitution 6 intelligence 8 wisdom Oglaf at character generation gave up all his base points in dex and intelligence to max out his strength. With leftover points, he got constitution, agility and wisdom up. If wisdom, agility, con, int, and dex aren't useful to a warrior though, you've simplified the equation. It's too hard for Oglaf to grow as a character or a role. It's best if ALL attributes effect his ability to smash things. Because Oglaf is dumb, he has low crit chance. Because he's slow, he has low evasion chance and will be stuck using a melee weapon. Because he has low dex, he has poor accuracy with his main weapon. Beacause he has low wisdom, he doesn't have much mana. But because of his ridiculous strength, when he does hit things, they get horribly mangled, maybe stunned for a while so he can still swing his weapon around foolishly, missing most of the time, but making a huge dent when he does hit. Because of his strength he can also wear the heaviest armor. Growing Oglaf from this level 1 power house could have you focus on intelligence (Oglaf now knows where to hit things for massive damage, so his critical strike rate with his club is much better, meaning, he hits even harder now), you could focus on agility and use that large strength to use slings at range, if you find your party lacking a ranged damage dealer (or maybe you don't want to raise his con anymore). If you raise his dex, he'll stop missing and provide more regular damage. If you raise his wisdom, he can use more abilities more often, supporting the team or enhancing how he does damage, or making his damage have special effects on hit. We should want players to play the min/max game, but we don't want them feeling like they've already found some optimal build the first time they've played the game. There should be large drawbacks to completely focusing on strength, but maybe the positives outweigh them in a specific team composition. And maybe we should allow "pure max" builds to grow in interesting ways, providing opportunities for players to diversify their characters. Suppose they put a "legendary sling" into the game that hurls boulders at foes? But it needs 22 strength to wield. If you find it, will you put the necessary points into agility and dexterity to use it? What if you find a staff with the blood magic stat on it, will you give Oglaf a bunch of intelligence and have him acquire some spells? (maybe barbarians can learn barbarian "wild magic" through their class? Or maybe there are tomes/rings you can equip which give you basic spell abilities even as a non-caster) If Oglaf is complete when he has max strength and that's all he needs, I think the game is too simple. That's the most basic thing I can say.

Having too many combat-based attributes can be detrimental to itemization. I would just ask that all attributes serve a purpose for all classes. This can be easily accomplished. Intelligence should raise accuracy or critical strike rating with weapons. Strength is useful if a caster wants to wear plate armor without any penalty. et cetera And what builds the main attributes cannot allow, feats adjust. ie - you want rogue builds to do heavy melee physical damage while still being predispositioned to light/medium armor: Have two feats. Feat one makes dex or agility raise your physical damage like strength. The second feat could just /give/ you enough of strength's equipment compensation benefit that you don't need any strength to use medium armor. Also, it's very important to consider itemization when considering stat systems for a game. If you allow for low-level legendary items, you can allow even more complex builds to take palce. ie - You want spellcasters to be able to scale their spell damage with strength or constitution - instead of making a feat, have a low level "legendary" item that can be acquired via vendor, random drop or quest reward. This legendary item (mask/staff/fetish, what have you) has "Blood Magic" as a stat on it - "Blood Magic" either causes you to cast spells using life instead of mana (maybe making skills cost more as a downside) or it causes their damage to scale off "Strength" instead of "Intelligence". Having diverse itemization can supplant a diverse stat system, which may be difficult to balance or convey properly to players. Asking players to weigh their "weak" "legendary" items against more powerful "generic" items is another form of balance. Min/maxing should exist in an RPG, what you want to discourage is game-breaking min/maxing and min/maxing that results in a constraining of character builds. A good example of this is DA2. Due to its systems, Warriors in DA2 have about two possible build paths instead of what could have easily been at least five or six. You're forced to max str/con and minimize all other attributes, in order to create a viable warrior character. Wasting too many attribute points in dex/wil/magic etc. results in a warrior who cannot do anything. Stat/feat systems in RPGs exist to give concrete definition and context to roles. They should not restrict possible roles within the scope of the game, ideally. In DA2, you can't really be a "paladin" - because raising your magic skill and using plate is impossible as a mage and stupid as a warrior. Such a role should exist by the context of the game and its story, but cannot due to restrictive prohibitive design. Stat systems should endeavor to provide as close to as many "infinite" character roles as possible. The moment you're preventing players from making certain combinations, the system is failing. If certain combinations are too powerful, find ways to break up that power while still allowing such a role to be viable.

Well, the system could be feat based entirely. Use a skill point to raise your diplomacy score. Every class gets the same max number of skill points (maybe you can buy a few in exchange for attribute points or something). Alternatively, they could use the VTM system - every skill is in essence an attribute.

Well, there are lots of ways to do the combat attributes. I, of course, want all the combat-attributes to contribute to every class in the game in some meaningful manner. I think we have to give up realism to some extent, if our stat system is going to be basic. If we constrain combat attributes to five or six, and we have more than five or six weapon types or damage types, already we're going to have trouble expressing something in a realistic manner. I'm a martial artist, though I'm not trained in any traditional weapons. I don't know how "my" intelligence, dexterity or agility factor into my ability to fight. I do know that I've practied a long time - so I think martial arts are more about practice than anything. Martial arts about training to hone your reactions, so they are sharp and precise. So I suppose finesse and practice is more important than anything, but it's reasonable to say that I needed intelligence to get where I am, I also need some amount of strength to make my attacks count, to there might be a minimum requirement to become a master at some martial skill, but to say that increasing one's strength by 2 makes damage 2 more is not the case in real life. I don't think we necessarily want to try and emulate real life when designing these game systems, but to try and express the abstract notion of intelligence and how it creates effective and interesting combat classes. If we make all attributes useful to all classes, then we invite... well, my first guess would be n! ways to make a character (where n is the number of core combat attributes). You can focus evenly on all attributes, you can focus on only two, four, or maybe just one. Making such decisions at character generation as interesting and seemingly viable as possible, is good design, because it invites imagination. It allows players to express a role they want to play (ie The barbarian whose strength is unmatched, but is in all other ways feeble). If I were to design an RPG (well, actually, I might as well admit I'm programming my own small RPG at the moment, it's using this stat system right now): Strength = +%Melee damage, +Maximum weight (your equipment load cannot exceed this weight) Agility = +%Damage with ranged weapons, +evasion, +accuracy (evasion is % increase, accuracy is flat) -- gear in my game gives a flat evasion "rating" that checks against accuracy, so if you take lots of agility but use armor that doesn't give any evasion rating, agility only increases your accuracy Constitution = Maximum life Intelligence = +%Spell damage, +Critical strike chance (+ flat %) Wisdom = Maximum mana The reasoning behind my attributes is that I could create a Ranger with high agility and then let the Ranger wear plate armor by spending the remainder of points in strength. This ranger would have low maximum life and mana, but would shrug off physical damage well and do accurate physical damage, but not crit very often. I could create a warrior with balanced distribution of all stats, he would be good with critical strikes, life, mana, and weapons of all kinds, and could switch between using a bow and using a melee weapon with equal efficiency and could wear medium armor. He may have trouble against opponents that are heavily focused in physical or spell damage. I could create a mage with high agiliity and wisdom, casting tons of bow-based spells that perhaps scale off increased spell damage (I suppose I might change the term to 'magical damage' I dunno). Obsidian will no doubt create their own system, but I've considered alternative systems to my system and I just don't think it's any fun to ask a player this: If you are playing a warrior please only put points in constitution and strength. Towards the end of the game you may put a few points in dexterity or willpower if you want to hit more accurately or have more energy/mana. If you are playing a rogue please only put points in dexterity/agility. Towards the end of the game you may put points in strength or consitution. If you are playing a wizard please only put points in intelligence and willpower. You may put points in constitution at the end of the game if you want. Because that sort of begs the question: Why even have an attribute system? Why not have classes get stats given to them per level without our consent? It's not like anyone is going to sanely distribute points in attributes that serve a significantly lesser purpose than a class's core attributes. Secondarily, it encourages min/max play. An "ideal" RPG in my mind, at least on the number-game side, has a "min/max" route for each class - I mean, it exists, it's not like we want players to find out how to min/max our game, but there must always be a way to maximize your gains and minimize your losses. The ideal RPG though, obfuscates how one achieves this. Because this is the heart of the RPG in my mind, a statistical crunch to find the most optimal set-up. The more mechanics and freedoms players have, the harder finding this ideal threshold is. The harder it is, the more exciting it is to experiment, to let yourself loose. To not think too hard about what you're doing. You're having fun at character creation just making something that comes to you. Then you see how it works out in-game and determine how actually effectve it is. You make adjustments as the character levels up to accomodate for strengths and weaknesses. I would call this "play". In the "un-ideal RPG" you go onto the character generation screen and frown because there are only one or two options; you've done them before or you've already analyzed the numbers in your mind and know what's optimal. You execute a build anyone could have come up with and then you beat the game just like everybody else. It isn't like you even made a choice, because the answer was so strikingly easy. There was no "play" - maybe there was a game to it, maybe it's still a good game in some capacity, but the "play" was completely absent from it. To make a brief analogy, I felt this way all last year while I was playing League of Legends. As you might know, itemization in that game is rather poor - there is generally an "optimal build strategy" for each hero in the game. It may or may not be a fun game, but there's no play for me - I can't deviate from any build to see how it works because I'll be called a troll or accused of throwing the game. Math is at work for their justification, that my ideas are not as effective as the standardly accepted build, even if my nonstandard build might have some context effectiveness. The phrase "gameplay" contains the word "play" but I don't think many people analyze the difference between "game" and "play". Games are structured. Play is not. I think good games offer both kinds of umm... "order". A good RPG lets me take a rogue archetype and let it cast spells - this creates an interesting dynamic. Can a rogue-mage get into a better position and be more effective than a pure mage? Maybe you want to build a templar character - plate with spells - I'm sure everyone at some point wants to do this kind of build, but a bad stat system can't support it, because it says, "Magic is strong and is balanced by low defenses." A good system says, "Magic is strong when invested in. Armor is strong when invested in. If you invest in both, you will have strong magic and strong armor. But, your opponent may be strong in physical damage and critical hits - what if critical hits are very effective against armor? What if you need good evasion to defend against critical hits? But you cannot have good evasion, armor and magic, but maybe you can have "pretty good" of all three?" It's basically a linear system of equations, where you're trying to balance the strength of each variable so they all cancel out. Very simple linear systems are easy to maximize, while complex ones could be computationally impossible. With regards to non-combat attributes, adding more variables to a system of equations makes it naturally more complex, harder to maximize ones gains. Tying them to core attributes does make itemization easier to manage and players grasp the game quicker, but neither may be what we need or desire. In my game, attributes provide flat gains, while feats and armor provide percentage based gains, rarely flat gains (thus, your attributes significantly determine how your items effect you, but do not rule out the possibility of using unusual items). I guess it's inevitable that when designing a system, we imagine how items will factor into the equation. Will there be any items that alter aptitutde at non-combat roles? Will there be a lockpick of +2? Or will we only need the same lockpick all game long...? How can we make non-combat stats or items interesting...? These are all design decisions that should be considered in use with the entire non-combat system.

I've never personally liked the intelligence = skillpoints design, mainly because... well, even people who aren't "intelligent" can have a wide array of skills and be experts in various fields. I guess "intelligence" is a very hard "stat" to reason. I think most games treat intelligence as "academic smarts", I mean, a 6 intelligence character shouldn't even be capable of abstract thought, let alone properly wielding a mace without kill himself. Likewise, it introduces a balance issue, because if you want to have a character that can max out a particular non-combat skill quickly, he needs to be naturally intelligent. And if you're going to make intelligence a stat only useful for spellcasters and not fighters of any sort, then it basically makes it so intelligence is "worthless" and non-combat skills are "weak" for non-casters and abundant and strong for casters. This is naturally a "binary" system that's hard to balance - everyone is going to build spell casters that dump at least half their points in intelligence without thinking. I'd like to ask the players of PE to think about their stats when they distribute them. Do they want a smart spellcaster, or a strong spellcaster? There should be an obvious upside and downside to either idea and I think either idea should have the potential at least, to work. The same goes for an intelligent fighter vs a dumb one. It's why I tied +accuracy to my intelligence stat in my first post, so that there is sufficient reason to get intelligence as a fighter. Of course, I don't know what Obsidian will do, but I don't like pinning all of your non-combat focus on one core stat (intelligence), that's what I'm trying to avoid, because this creates a min/max imbalance. Similarly, strength/agility/con/wisdom would also be useful for casters and non-casters (providing some spells can crit in PE). Granted, I don't want to go into the discussion of how combat stats should work, but if we're going to use combat-stats to help determine the effectiveness of non-combat abilities, we should make it so that we aren't forcing players to min/max their attributes. Attributes should serve as a means to help you find your role, not confine what roles are possible and viable. If you're strong, Metalwork should come naturally. Sure, Metalworkers probably aren't Oafs, but I think that's what the stat system is trying to represent. We separate strength, constitution, dex, agility, wisdom and charisma apart from general intelligence because we want to create a system which is capable of rendering diverse individuals. People can be very bad at 'traditional' academics, do poorly in IQ tests, et cetera, and they can still be more than adequate at working with their hands, crafting things out of leather and steel. They might also be very aware and sense the world around them. They might even be good with first aid or pick pocketing. Even the most base of a character one can roleplay - an animal - is intelligent in some capacity and is very skillful in what it does. Otherwise, it would be dead or not exist or something. Stat systems aim to describe how this intelligence expresses itself and they aim to do it in a balanced way. If we let the general stat "intelligence" govern maximum skillpoints, it basically means the "Wizard" archetype can be a master first-aid-sneaker-pickpocket-orator while the mighty warrior can shave potatos. I think people are a little more diverse, even if the Wizard is so smart he can expain why e^(pi*i) = -1. If combat-attributes are going to effect non-combat skills in any capacity, combat attributes shouldn't determine how many skills you can have or the rate at which you master skills. They should just determine the maximum aptitude for skills or their success/fail rate. No? Maybe there's another system that could work, but I want to advise Obsidian to make character generation systems that let us create a diverse number of viable characters and not feel like we're "shoe-horned" into a role we don't want to play. If combat attributes don't play a role in advancing non-combat skills, then I think we've helped make the system more accommodating, if more complex than perhaps is desired.

I'm curious. What does everyone expect of non-combat roles? Will they be purely skill-based, or will we have statistics to raise/determine our ability with certain skills? Will they overlap with combat skills? Let's say PE uses 5 main attirbutes for combat: STR - +dmg with melee weps, increase maximum equipment weight AGI - +dmg with ranged weps, +evasion CON - max life, stamina regen rate INT - +dmg with spells, +accuracy with weapons WIS - +max mana Lets say these are all the planned non-combat abilities for PE Sense traps / Awareness Disarm Traps Lockpicking Pickpocket Persuader/Intimidator Sneak/Stealth Alchemy Metalsmithing Leatherworking Research - required to utilize certain books in the game to acquire skills or knowledge, allows you to decipher ancient texts/languages in dungeons, or something Haggling Instruction - able to teach things you know to your companions or NPCs Seduction - differs from persuader/intimidator in that you can be a very ugly but persuasive person (Hitler) Cooking First Aid Should these things scale off your primary stats? I can think of one good reason for this - simplcity. It would be easier to balance a game where there are five core stats and they determine everything. It's also easier for people to pick up and it gives all stats meaning even if you're not particuarly interested in them for class X. However, I can't help but think it's too simple. The problem with a system like this I think, is skills like intelligence and agility (or dex, whatever the final system will be) end up being necessarily to advance/take-up 80% of the skills available. To me, it seems like these skills either need to be independent and be purely feat-based (you have level 5 feat of first aid, which maybe only requires an intelligence of 8 or 10 at most to take, so long as you character level is 15 or something [where first aid 5 is max rank and level 15 is close to max level]) or they need to scale off a second set of tertiary attributes: Charisma Appearance Dexterity Academics Kinesthetics These five attribtues govern nothing about your combat-related abilities and are raised independently (but perhaps they should sometimes interact with the core attributes; ie, when you level up, maybe you can choose between having one extra core attribute point or one extra non-combat attribute point; or maybe you can sacrifice certain combat stats at character generation for more non-combat skills). The idea behind this would be that there would be some overlap. If you get a high Kinesthetics attribute, you can become adept at Metalworking, First Aid, Sneak, and Awareness. If you get a high Academics attribute, you could become adept at Metalsmithing, Alchemy, Research, and Instruction. A single non-combat attribute might also have second-tier effects, ie, if you have a very high Academics score, you can't become a master at pickpocketing, but maybe you can read a book about pickpocketing you find in a store somewhere, and acquire a low level skill for it. Maybe a dextrous person can still become very good a cooking, but not reach master level. Having a mix of mediocre dex/academics might combine to allow you to master cooking, while dex/charisma do not. What are everyone's thoughts on these ideas?

I must be misunderstanding you, are you saying that you don't think that Obsidian would want to or need to generate revenue through sales of PE? If you are I completely disagree with you, the profit from sales does go into keeping a company stable but any company would also want to make money from the years spent on the game, they would want to improve there quality of life and become individually wealthier. Like almost everyone who works aspires to become. I can guarantee you if PE sells badly, which I believe is almost impossible, Obsidian won't make another one. And frankly you can't blame because where is the financial incentive for there years of hard work on the project? Finally pirating is a negative influence on the sales and development on PC gaming, it is a scourge and we should be opposed to it under any circumstances What I said is perfectly clear. If Obsidian makes no profit, it's not really a bad thing, well, it is - companies that get their products funded for them SHOULD be making profit but it's not like the Obsidian is going to fall off a cliff if that were to happen. I just described to you the result of such a scenario in plain English. I am not actually suggesting Obsidian throw away any potential profit, but that with Kickstarter, their concerns for solvency and success should be abated. If they manage the 4 million well and can get at least as many people to buy the game on Steam as those who kickstarted it, they made a profit of 4 million dollars and funded a portion of the company for a reasonable amount of time for "nothing". Not many businesses get such opportunities. Companies should make profit, at least under a capitalistic system where you believe capitalism to be a positive sum game. In such a system, profits mean that capitalism is working, the economy is growing, and things are improving. We like things that improve and grow because that perpetuates capitalism and human society, furthering all of our ends. But there are more theories on how economies should work, than that. Obsidian making a small amount of profit is not necessarily a bad thing at all. If Obsidian can stay solvent, I think that's all they care about? Unless the executives behind Obsidian want to make bigger games, hire more people, or raise their own salaries. I get the impression they just like doing the work they do, getting a decent salary doing the wonderful jobs they have, under such "harmonious" circumstances, piracy should be of minor note anyway, because the game is supported and letting more users gain access to PE, even if it's via some illegitimate route, could be of great boon to Obsidian. Consider all the young teenagers without credit cards that might be future RPG addicts in their twenties or thirties. I'm sure a large amount of pirates are minors without the ears of their parents, I'm also sure a large amount of pirates are not native English speakers, who live in countries with low incomes. In ten years, such incomes could rise dramatically and we might see Obsidian's products financially backed by such 'veteran' consumers of Obsidian's games. Tim Schafer has admitted to being a pirate and even did so during his kickstarter campaign. Thus, I don't view piracy as necessarily a negative. Even if you believe in zero sum economics, piracy is still growing your business.... provided it doesn't get out of control. And since you cannot possibly control piracy (as I think many people have stated), why resist it? Why even care about it? I think piracy is an issue of finesse vs strength. Strong people want to clap their hands around things and not let them go, but people with finesse understand that true control requires patience and calm analysis. People with finesse try to manipulate events, not control them. Hell, even Obsidian's games talk about this sort of thing. The discussion of piracy is completely moot. Even companies like Ubisoft, who go on DRM rampages, should just be ignored. If you like their products even after suffering through the hassle of getting one to work, support them. If you don't like their games, stop supporting them. Of course, I can understand passion. But there is a time and a place for it. Piracy serves an economic purpose, it's just a part of the system. It's not a new thing at all.

Well, I'm taking the stance that we state everything that's good design, even if we know from Obsidian's past they don't make such mistakes, pointing out such elementary flaws in other games helps to illuminate what is good design and how such design can be made better.

That's a good point. I'm not against scripted sequences, or enemies that just appear - but it cannot be a frequent thing. And I do agree that encounters SHOULD offer you opportunities to deal with them in a sensibly strategic manner. This means that for the most part, if you're fighting enemies, those enemies should have existed when the game loaded the area. It can not be the case sometimes, where it makes sense and provides an interesting situation you need to deal with, but enemies that don't exist until you open a closet is bad overall design. I recently finished DA:O. The amount of rooms that have multiple entrances can be counted on one hand. That said, the times the DA designers gave you multiple entry-ways to the same room... it really made the encounter really interesting. I'll have to post some level layouts to show my point, but by giving me multiple access points to the same room, I was able to take apart a difficult encounter on a high difficulty, that I wasn't able to do simply waltzing in through the front door.

It's not an RPG in any "classically accepted" sense, but I would put it in the category of turn-based RPGs. 1. You build a party of mercenaries, determining their statistics - specializations and skills. They play very specific roles in a team - doctor, sharpshooter, support fire, rambo, stealthy backstabber, heavy weapons, anti-vehicle, et cetera; many of them have distinct personalities and positive/negative traits 2. You engage in conversations with NPCs and solve problems for them, liberating towns and exploring a large open-ended map. 3. There is a story told, a big bad villainess you slay. 4. There are "choices and consequences" to a large degree - you can choose to kill this dictator by freeing all the mines and the towns, which can be risky since you will engage in tons of combat and possibly lose comrades as a result. You have to make choices about what characters will defend/train what locations. You also need to decide how you're going to kill the dictator and how you will approach conquering territory. This is very open-ended, sandboxy story telling, sort of similar to Fallout 1, where you have an obvious story objective "get the water chip". That said, it's clearly not similar to DA:O or something one can say unconditionally is a RPG, but I think JA2 fits nicely into a hybrid RPG/TBS category and has elements to it that make its gameplay engaging and thoughtful. I can agree with your point that making a game "too tactical" may make it too much like a "game" instead of an exercise of "playing a role" - but that's more or less a design decision, I wouldn't say either approach is bad. And I also agree there is an art to making a game, you cannot afford to say, "let's have deep gameplay, deep story, deep characters, deep art, et cetera" - because there is finite resources and you need to maximally distribute such resources to create a desirable product. I just think BioWare and other developers are wasting too many resources, or at least, they are squandering the resources they do put, into the gameplay. They approach the game from too simplistic a view and do not generate enough content or depth to create an engaging experience anymore. For instance, Skyrim's talent system - as a whole - is not a bad approach to an RPG, it's just, they are balanced poorly, aren't meaningful enough, and fail to really specialize a character, or cause a player to make decisions. Skyrim's talent system could have been executed much better with some of the design ethics... well, I don't want to get into my personal idea of good design, but, I think the developers did not pay enough attention to balancing Skyrim's talents, making them fun or engaging enough and they were satisfied with their combat mechanics because they feel that's not what makes their game engaging. Which is somewhat true, Morrowind can't be heralded for its combat system - but it's fixable. And it should be fixed. And there are many ways they could go about it, but they choose not to and I don't know where these design resources are going exactly. To make the big world even bigger? To make the voice acting cast spend an extra few hours on dialog? At what point do these elements, which purely exist as marketing spiel (Skyrim is 1000 times larger than New York City! Is I'm sure something they'd like to say as PR), get more development dollars when the gameplay - the real reason to sit down and play this game after you've climbed every mountaintop? And at what point, can money be spent on aspects that are necessary for marketing and appeal, but still generate a good game? I see the current trends of AAA developers as toxic. I can't say that all of their allocations are wrong - because we need to make some sacrifices to sell a product to the masses - but there are ways that exist to make a turn-based RPG engaging and deep, while still being simple and intuitive. People are reluctant to spend $15 to see a movie these days. Do they really want to spend 4x that to get an interactive movie? I think the consumers of video games want to be engaged. The removal of turn-based mechanics is the result of simplifying the genre. And as they continue to simplify games, I think they will hit a wall. How many times will people pay $25 for a collection of linear zombie dramas? Not that I don't think TWD is a bad zombie series, but I suspect there is a strong saturation point for a game like this, and if games like Skyrim or just RPGs in general, become too story-oriented, and they don't offer enough depth, the industry will hit a glass ceiling. rant rant rant, as someone who programs, I can tell you that making a game necessarily complex is not difficult if you have a crafty team of programmers; object oriented programming lends itself to easily creating and recycling content for game systems, it's the strength of a computer RPG - you don't need to physically make everything by hand, a computer can generate depth for you

Haven't played Eschalon. And sorry, I forgot about Avernum. I've one in the series and I blanked it out of my mind, couldn't get past the first level it was so boring While this is obviously a troll, I guess I should ask anyway -- so you think Skyrim, DA2, et cetera are fun? Why do you think so? Do you believe turn based "traditional" RPG combat mechanics are boring? I'd really like to hear arguments as to why. I honestly don't understand it.

Note my use of quotes around "traditional" in my original post. It's kind of hard to have any kind tradition when the medium of video games, let alone RPGs, isn't even half a century. Jagged Alliance 2 is indeed a perfect example of a RPG game with good tactical combat. It's a poster child of "what could 'easily' be done". Granted, JA2's battles can stretch on for hours, but, that's kind of the point you can't design a fast paced cRPG with tactical/strategical combat. This is in my mind, why any attempt to casualify or consoleify the cRPG will always result in a bad cRPG or an ARPG. cRPGs lend themselves to slow combat, with semi or psuedo turn-based mechancis. Strategic/tactical games require a little thought in the same way you can't ask a chess/go player to make moves every 2 seconds, they need at least 30 seconds per move, and if we want to make games a 5th as deep, we need to give players more than half a second to do something; we can't make a button-masher cRPG. The fact AAA developers (they are AAA developres because they command power, influence and money) find turn-based cRPG-like mechanics as "non-mainstream" or not viable for mass appeal is a huge misconception. Pokemon is the most obvious case and it has not had much iteration or improvement since the second generation of games. As for Alan's point that perhaps I am more interested in game mechanics - I think that's a false dichotomy. Skyrim, Dragon Age Origins, Fable 3 - please, name any cRPG or ARPG that has come out this generation and I can guarantee you it would have been more fun regardless of its terrible or amazing story, had the developers... well, I don't want to say that turn-based cRPG mechanics are the "only way" to do things - but that, there is a general dumbing down of the RPG genre, from several stigmas, as I mention in the first post - and the justification for such dumbing down is completely inane. These RPGs would have been better with depth, even if you know your audience will not fully appreciate that depth. Pokemon has several dozen internal, invisible mechanics most children never grasp but they still play the game and have fun. Those 'invisible mechanics' such as damage, IVs, EVs, breeding, et cetera that make the game deeper effect its consumers on an unconscious level. Fable 3 and Skyrim literally offer you no challenge in combat and the way character advancement or monster scaling work in both games - it's just a mess. For all the money poured into those games - they aren't fun. Dragon Age Origins has a more redeemable story, but playing it at times feels like a chore. A greater care to game mechanics should be paramount, even if you're intending to sell your game to a bunch of people who actually should be reading fantasy novels. ARPGs, known as "button mashing click fests" where you "click things to death" - can even be done in a way which creates depth. This http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree is just an extension of what anyone who's play D2 or WOW knows about - passive skills arranged in an undirected graph. Although we can't expect all players to appreciate such complexity, I think giving players deep choice allows for longevity and enduring association with a product. Although I doubt we can expect all companies to make massive 1350 point passive skill trees, nor should they do so, but my point is - POE does things with its design that I wish other indie developers were doing. You know, trying new things, not simply pandering to nostalgia, but also respecting what made "the old greats" good - understanding why they're good and why they appeal.

Well, I do admit that inherent complexity does not directly result in a more complex game, and that balance and viability of strategy are greater factors -- but the point of my combinatronics is just to show the POTENTIAL complexity of a game. Its actual complexity is much more difficult, perhaps impossible to quantify, as it's a matter of opinion. And I don't necessarily prefer combat mehcanics over story, my main point is that most AAA are focusing on anything BUT the mechanics I briefly describe.

There aren't that many major RPG developers around anymore. Off the top of my head... BioWare wants to make story-driven games. Bethesda wants to make sandbox games. Lionhead Studios wants to make action games. Blizzard wants to make money above all else. Obsidian puts a large emphasis on story and sandbox elements (exploration, dialogue trees, narrative, characters). Yet none of these developers seem to acknowledge anymore, the "fun" of an RPG. I've gotten this impression that western RPG developers have arrived at some of the following conclusions: -Nobody actually likes cRPG-based combat, where dice rolls and statistics determine a fight. -There is no way to make cRPG-based combat exciting and enticing. That once numbers and percentages appear on the screen you "lose" the "casual"* audience. -cRPGs are "old" "traditional" "out-dated" ways of making an RPG. The natural evolution of RPG mechanics is the Action-RPG, or basically, an action game with a minor character advancement gimmick. -RPGs are only successful when they emulate WOW because skinner boxes are what customers crave -Since RPGs "require" large budgets, they need to have mass appeal to succeed financially -Since RPGs "require" large budgets, they cannot appear to be "nerdy". D&D and its players are stereotyped as losers, the further an RPG tries to present itself as anything but D&D, the better. Only niche titles can appeal to Pen and Paper role-players or "traditional" mechanics. In essence, no developer wants to touch the "traditional" idea of a RPG. And this is nowhere else truer than in game mechanics. Arcanum was the last "AAA" cRPG. Why is this? Why did Arcanum only sell 200,000 copies? Why did the industry abandon this genre? Did it see the writing on the wall? Why haven't "indie" developers attempted to create an isometric RPG? Why do they create puzzle/platformer games? Shouldn't an isometric RPG, or a basic RPG, be something which can be financially plausible and viable for a small developer? I'd like to answer some of these questions, but they seem to pale in comparison to the larger one. Why do most developers think RPG mechanics aren't fun? That they can't be made fun? I get the impression that most developers feel combat is a "chore" or an "obstacle" to put in player's way. In some ways, this feels true. In KOTOR2, sometimes it feels like you're killing enemies just so you can reach that integral NPC you want to have an interesting chat with. Certainly, OE is great at making interesting characters to interact with. Does anyone else get these impressions? I mean, Pokemon has been wildly successful and easy for children as young as five to pick up and play. It sells millions of copies all the time. And although some people would be reluctant to call it a RPG, I'm not. It has all the mechanics, and to be perfectly honest as someone who still plays it infrequently today, it's a fun game. -Play as a blank slate protagonist whom can act rather freely in a large game world, said game world is often has non-linear segments, where you can tackle areas of the game with some selective freedom. -Said protagonist gathers six "party members" to do battle with out of hundreds. Said party members all play particular roles in a party, from damage, to support, to healing, to tanking. -Said game is pretty deep, with completely obfuscated mathematical mechanics (how much damage will your attack do? It's hard to say!). Game can be understood by children with limited vocabularies and can be played even at a semi-competitive level with a fair degree of strategy and tactical maneuvering. -Said game also lets you play in a very broad manner. All poison team? All tank team? A team full of blue pokemon? A team full of "cool" pokemon? Stupid pokemon? Cute? There's a lot of player-identity and it's been studied that children who play pokemon and discuss it with their peers use pokemon as a means of asserting and defining their identity, much like a role-player might define their identity by creating an interesting alter-ego to play as. So what's my point? Not that RPGs should be like pokemon, but that RPGs can be fun. They can be simple. And they can be complex. You think pokemon isn't complex? Let's do some math. Oh god. You can have 6 of 649 pokemon. Each pokemon can have only 4 moves on it at one time. Every pokemon in the game as at least 8-10 moves besides Ditto and Wobeffet. Every pokemon has at least two passive abilities in the game (with few exceptions and some have 3 too). Every pokemon has six stats it can be specialized in, though most people focus on only two at the same time. Basically, the pokemon "Drapion" can be a tank or a fast sweeper type. Depending if he's trained in HP/DEF or ATK/SPEED. 649 choose 6 * 8 choose 4 * 6 choose 2 * 2 choose 1 2.1295551e+17 possible party combinations, which is a pretty low amount especially if we compare the game to a 19x19 game of Go. Go is 9.775197e+152 more complex than Pokemon, so I would argue pokemon is a rather simple game - but that's a part of its charm. And yes, I know, this kind of analysis is kind of silly - we can make a game that is arbitrarily more complex than go, but that doesn't make it a good game or a well designed one. But the point is, that I'm making, is that there are numerous ways to play Pokemon and that it is a bit more complex than some people might give it credit. It is a roleplaying game with fun game mechanics (or at least, I find them fun). I think a number like this suggests that it is not hard to create a complex roleplaying game that is simple in nature, when it is designed and balanced well. You needn't even put MATH on the screen (insane, I know), if we must pander to this idea that the general Western consumer wants nothing to do with math and/or spreadsheets. Am I alone in these thoughts? Am I looking at any of this wrong? My main point is - developers think RPG combat does not appeal to mainstream audiences, yet this is inherently wrong, because Pokemon is wildly popular and utilizes almost exclusively, a "traditional" roleplaying model. *I think the debate between casual and hardcore is nebulous. What makes a hardcore gamer hardcore? There seems to be no definition here, as some people go to such hyperbole that you aren't hardcore until you can attest you were the first person to play a hypothetical video game on a turing machine.

It is - I mean, barring the end-game areas of Denerim. The Dwarf City has only "unique" areas to it plus the deep roads. Denerim has the square, the pearl and then you have the same "back alley" zone repeated around 5 times.

DA:O has a lot of hubs Denerim Ogrimm-err-Orzimmar Radcliffe Campfire Mage Tower/Docks Dalish Camp DA:O simply has a Dalish Camp and Kirkwall, there aren't any 'civil' areas to explore besides those two. Large city-esque locations are expensive to render in games. Baldur's Gate/2 perhaps has spoiled us, it's comparatively easy to render large cities with isometric design. I do like the style DA:O/Kirkwall approach cities though. Generally speaking, you have X unique locations within a city and travel to them via a map. It's cheap and efficient, than rendering a whole bunch of useless space. Ideally though, Denerim/Kirkwall should have had at least 50% more locations to go to, considering how most of the city locations reused textures/zones anyway. This is especially true of Kirkwall - DA2 should have been more about Kirkwall, and I think that's a good design for a game, but instead, it was mostly about caves and blood mage warehouses. Skyrim for me was a massive letdown, because Obsidian had several huge city spaces to explore (and Skyrim had like two to three hovels per city district of only four major cities). I guess I find exploring cities to be much more interesting than caves or forests or beaches - but perhaps that is because cities are easier to make interesting, because you generally find civil enemies in cities you can discuss things with before you murder them.

There is no concern of luck. If you steam roll 10+ fights in a row, luck simply cannot be a factor. That's not the issue at hand, the issue is whether such a system should be done, how the monsters should be scaled (and I do not mean like Skyrim, I know a flat level scaling system for monsters is dumb, I specifically mention giving monsters new abilities, specific resistances/traits, or AI to enhance their strength). Creating a heuristic to track player progress accurately could easily be done with low error and it would be trivial to "reverse" the changes done by an AI director if you are suddenly losing. I can see an argument of, "If a player has found a winning strategy. Let them win." But I am specifically worried more about the case where my Minsc at the beginning of ToB could demolish entire groups of enemies on his own. Detecting that kind of thing would be a little harder and I guess if people think, "If you can demolish the game, you should be able to." Is a fine way of thinking, I can't really disagree, though making the game slightly harder when you start demolishing it, I don't think would prevent anyone from having fun. Also, this suggestion of mine was specifically geared towards the end game.

Well, I admit the "AI director" in L4D probably isn't the best example, because in practice, you're right - all the "AI director" does is spawn zombies of count Y in position Z based on how well a group of players is doing. What I mean perhaps more specifically is: If you are, for let's say 5-15 fights, being scored by some heuristic a "10" or "you're steamrolling the game" - and if you're on a harder difficulty, it adds a few elements of "the next difficulty up" to your game? Perhaps some players wouldn't like it, but, I guess I'm not sure what to suggest. Maybe this is a problem that will solve itself and it's probably too early in development to consider, but I think such a mechanism could be programmed, where it would be able to determine where a good threshold of difficulty is for your experience, by dynamically adjusting it based on consistent fight perfromance (luck shouldn't be a factor after 10 or so battles).

Well, profit is useful for growing a company and becoming self-sustaining and solvent and such, but even if a kickstarter game generates no profit, it should be fine for the company really, it just means they can't catch a break and need to immediately do some fund-raising via kickstarter for their second game to stay out of bankruptcy. In theory, all development costs should be covered by kickstarter funding. Granted, this obviously isn't probably the practical case, but debts incurred while using kickstarter funds should be relatively small, or I'd say the company failed to estimate its operating costs when they did their first fundraiser, which isn't a fault of the system.

You are completely misunderstanding. If something SOLD 3 million copies. And piracy rate is 95%. Then that MUST mean the game was consumed by 60 million people. Because 0.05 * 60 = 3. The rate of piracy is 95% so if all we know are sales, then we must divide, not multiply. 3/0.05 Only 5 percent purchased the game, the other 95% pirated. 60 dwarfs 3 as it should 3 = total sold X = total consumed 0.95 = rate of piracy 0.05 = percent of people who bought units X*0.05 = 3 X=3/0.05 furthermore e^(pi*i) = -1

Given Kotaku's latest article on the game, I highly doubt it. Have they yet to justify why I can't play as a Qunari, an Elf, or a Dwarf? Why am I stuck playing Human again? Do they think this is really such a wise decision? They seem proud of the fact you have no choice in the matter of something significant like this. If DA:O did even the smallest bit right, it was the Origins. To see them continue to ignore ideas like these just reeks of a lack of learning from mistakes. I have yet to even read a piece on BioWare admitting where they messed up on that game. Can't they acknowledge it? Can't they show us they're willing to learn from their mistakes? What's with all this stupid pride? It isn't going to sell your game, to be stubborn and not promise to the consumers changes. To ask us to offer suggestions in 140 characters, as if that could fix anything significant. People appreciated the ME3 DLC, even if it was hamfisted and failed to address any of the major problems. Taking small steps is probably all BioWare needs to do to win back fan support, and yet... I am not even seeing that much. I guess they still think we are the vocal minority. When DA3 fails to sell, I guess you guys will have to resort to saying "piracy" killed Dragon Age, then?

I'm sorry you don't pay attention to the news but Ubisoft said this twice. Here's how it went down: Ubisoft claims its PC anti-piracy measures were a success (this was back in March or April, I forget). Despite this, PC gamer reports 90% sale reduction in Ubisoft PC sales. Ubisoft CEO claims PC piracy rate is between 92 and 95 percent in August (numerous sources on this, go google this). He is making a general blanket statement, "Piracy is 92-95%." He says that according to their data, 92-95% is accurate. http://torrentfreak....not-pay-120822/ Then he backs down after this statement and says Ubisoft will dismantle its anti-piracy measures. http://www.rockpaper...racy-interview/ THEN he recently re-states this, but specifies Ubisoft under his statement, annulling his August statement that applied to the entire PC market. I can't find an article with this, but it was relatively recently. The point is, such numbers are outrageous and ridiculous. What he said was 93-95%. Whether he meant it truly is another matter, but he is a CEO, this man is smart enough to speak to the media in a deliberate way. Skyrim sold more than 3 million digital copies on the PC. If that is the case, then at least 60 million people actually played it on the PC. Which would be insane and outlandish. Under such numbers, Diablo 3 would have sold 200 million copies by now, were it not for those pesky pirates! Of course the statement is wrong, that's the point. Maybe it's hyperbole, but the point is, most suits are out of touch with reality here. They use piracy as an excuse to instate draconian DRM and stupid business practices of fear and conspiracy. If Ubisoft's games have a piracy rate as much as 90%, it is because of their DRM that it is so. One of their AC games required you to always be online to play it. Guess how many people liked that idea? I'm sure nobody at all. The second major point is - that without explicit math - anyone can claim whatever they want in terms of piracy. Seeing 100k people on a public tracker for your game doesn't actually mean much of anything. You can't quantify how many of those people are actually people and not bots. You cannot qualify how many of those people did or did not buy your game. You most assuredly cannot make the statement that even 10% of those people would have bought the game could they not pirate it. All studies point to the fact that pirates are the largest consumers of media AND the biggest spenders. Many pirates use torrents as a means to demo content. Companies are using erroneous statistics to come to ridiculous numbers to create propaganda. They are not doing scholarly, unbiased analysis correlating spending behavior with piracy, but reacting. Even CD Projectk, the guys behind GOG, had a lot of hugely negative, destructive initial responses to piracy regarding their Witcher games.

I was going to suggest to you that you try KOTOR2 with the restoration patch, if you liked KOTOR1, though... well, it doesn't have all that much replay value. The main issue being the first zone. I mean, you get right into the action in KOTOR2, there isn't that much of a tutorial, but Peragus Mining Facility is like a psuedo-horror level with no replay value and it moves very slowly, making for an awful barrier of entry for replay. But then again, Peragus is about as bad as Irenicus' laboratory so maybe that's just the general design flaw in most RPGs - the first zone is always a chore to slog through. DA2 is surprisingly easy for replay. You can skip through most of the dialogue you've already heard and you're always fighting things, at least. Though, this is more to its detriment after about five minutes, when you've exhausted the game's entire depth with about three or four encounters, two of which being straight-up ambushes. Not that I'm advocating for games putting you constantly in the thick of combat or action. That can be mind-numbing and exhausting. Vary activity for players to do, but... don't make us passive. That's the main thing. If you're not being challenged, if there's no thinking in involved, if you're passive... then that area of the game has a large issue.

Certainly, but we aren't using the IE engine to make PE. So... they have to program these things in intentionally. They won't just be there for them to utilize. Sight radius, movement speed, level layout all need to be consciously chosen to create the best tactical experience possible. I would argue MOST of DA:O/DA2's tactical issues can be attributed to its camera system - accomodate the console version, BioWare's camera system encourages playing the game in first-person. In DA2, they completely removed the ability to get an isometric view. This grossly hurts accurate positioning. I do agree there is a time and place for ambushes, but, if you are ambushed constantly - you have no tactics. I mean, there are things you can do in the midst of an ambush to save your hide, but I would argue such maneuvers are not tactics. Tactics are about careful though and planning, if you're reacting like you got sucker-punched in the chin, that's all you're doing to save your skin. Perhaps there are mechanics that can be added to make dealing with ambushes more tactical, but tactical games are not known for their speed. Tactical games are about planning, positioning, execution, timing, et cetera - they aren't about thinking on the seat of your pants. That kind of thing should be thrown in every once in a while so that pacing is less "methodical" or "boring". In the real world, I'd say an ambush is the antithesis of tactics - if you get caught in an ambush in real life, you're ****ed. You have no recourse. Bang bang bang you're dead. Most strategists plan around anticipating or avoiding opportunities for ambush. This applies the same to games I think, though I suppose you could make a game about properly dealing with ambushes in a tactical manner... it does seem contradictory to think of them that way. I trust Obsidian to do their best, but the purpose of the threads I make, although some of my points may seem like common sense, we simply cannot take them for granted. Obsidian cannot mess up this game. I'm not doubting Obsidian's understanding of how and why the IE games work(ed), but I don't see the harm in pointing it out here. These are kind of subtle points I'm making, you wouldn't notice these things on your first time playing DA:O I think. Or at least, I didn't until I started analyzing the game more seriously on my second run. One of the most notable things I think, is enemy movement speed. It's way too fast. Monsters close in so quickly you don't have a lot of time to react to the non-ambush encounters, where enemies aggro a short distance away. You have enough time for cone of cold on the group of melee enemies, and that's about it. Cone of cold (and other fast immobilization spells) buy you a lot of time to set up, to the point where such spells are basically "required" to handle most encounters on nightmare (to the point where I no longer play on that difficulty). You'll notice that aside for some, most monsters in BG are pretty darn slow to react and slow to move. Though, they are no less deadly, distances and movement speed are pretty sweet and give you just enough time to land spells that require a small amount of channeling to complete, or they give you just enough time to re-arrange your party's positioning. And yes I agree that the threat/aggro system in DA:O is pretty awful. It's very, very weird. If you have a group of 4 warriors, it seems as though they all pile up on the warrior using berserker rage instead of actually attacking the tanks I build and use all the +threat persistent on-hit abilities. And if you try to run away, they never break aggro. You simply cannot lose them until you exit the instance. I can understand why they chose it - for some degree of "realness" - but it just hurts the game too much.

I think balancing an RPG for the end game can be pretty difficult because you have to account a lot of theoretical party complexity. On one hand, you don't want encounters to be too hard, you want the pacing to match the development of the player's party. On the other hand, players can be very good at exploiting mechanics. Although SoA doesn't have this as much, Throne of Baal has many, many moments where my group could just right click entire enemy groups to death without breaking a sweat, seldom having to actually use any of my upper tier abilities to clear most enemies. And really, despite its rough spots, I was able to clear Watcher's Keep before clearing the Underdark in my second playthrough (granted, I chose to skip fighting the final boss, knew I stood no chance) ... and that place is pretty freakin' ridiculous. Even some of the fiercest challenges can be beaten with the right party makeup and tenacity. I know Obsidian has talked about its current stance on difficulty, adding a few modes to enhance difficulty, and to tailor enhanced levels of difficulty by adding diversity and size to monster packs instead of just buffing damage and health. But I was wondering, perhaps, if there should, or could be a rudimentary little check after a certain point, to see how "easy" the last fight was. On higher difficulty levels, I was thinking, what if there were something like L4D's ai director? Towards the end game, this director would kick in after checking to see whether you're right-clicking things to death or not. If you are, it would further add to enemy diversity and perhaps unlock certain abilities for monsters, to further enhance difficulty? And if you start wiping a lot afterwards, it would turn back the difficulty to normal. Just an idea anyway. Not saying it should be all game long, or exist on the easier difficulties. Just that, in spite of a developer's best intentions, a game may still be "too easy" for some players, given the right items and party make-up.