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anubite

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  1. And here is where I disagree.Not only were casual fans always important but with wide-spreading of freemium models they are actually affecting the bottom line more than ever. Losing them due to behavior of minority of players is slowly becoming unacceptable to the publisher/developer. The best example is the tribunal system in LoL which is most likely the first serious attempt to police a f2p community. I didn't say they were unimportant. I just think it's pointless to try and create an online community for them. They're casual players, they don't have time to invest in discussion on a forum, by definition of being casual. Riot's "attempt to police a f2p community" is just a means of doing business. You ban players, forcing them buy things again. As for what you should do when someone starts making death threats, it depends on the context. If the poster has no history of posting on the forum, then you ban them. They're probably a bot or a troll or whatever. If the person has a history of posting, then it depends upon the severity of the threat. You don't call the police on someone making death threats unless they post personal information about you, or start making serious contact with you outside the public forum. It's important when managing a community to highlight posts like a death threat - to make a thread about it and to say why this person is wrong for threatening someone's life. The thread should provide information on whatever povoked the outburst. Let's say it's a balance patch - let's say there's a particular issue about balance people feel strongly about. Create an outlet for that discussion and try to show players their opinions are considered and matter.
  2. If your players are 'passionate' this way about a game so to threated developer with death then you can only imagine the way they commonly treat each-other.You can leave it to fester but then normal players will be pushed out and the community will start to give you a bad name. And the whole Fish nonsense just proves how immature gaming community really is. Apparently devs and journalists included. There are some "immature" developers (let's stay away from terms like "immature"? It's a loaded word), but they aren't in abundance. If a game you like is being ruined by a balance patch, you're probably frustrated and upset. If death threats come from a particuarly impassioned player... again, notice my word choice. You shouldn't take death threats lightly and you should try to encourage constructive behavior in your community, but you shouldn't overreact. Game forums/communities aren't really for the "casual" player, unless you're offering tech support in them. Casual players aren't invested in your game/product, passionate fans are. Trying to make your forum/community a neat and pristine PR package isn't going to work. Look at how BioWare struggles to control its communities - it's made it so that constructive criticism isn't even attempted. Only extremely impassioned and extremely toll-y people bother to post there anymore. If the forum were more open, I think more civil discussion could have been had. It's too late now though. The point of having a community is for feedback and maintaining a fan base, which hopefully increases revenue. Creating a police state on the net isn't going to do either.
  3. Deckers only seem useless until you get to the mandatory decker segments and you cry because the NPC deckers get wreck'd. I didn't try Adepts, but I do agree that any class that focuses on guns is going to be valuable. I found Mages without a buff focus to have a hard time hitting anything.
  4. I like the idea of buffing sword attacks. Tactics Ogre has this, with the ninja class. You can spend a turn to empower your weapon with silence, poison, immobilize, et cetera. Being able to empower a generic spell onto your weapon would be a neat ability. Don't put any restrictions on it, and you'll see a lot of creative builds arise (Summon minions on attack? Party buff on attack? Maybe a teleport spell on a attack?). Of course, there would be penalties with it, such as reduced damage, chance to proc or something. Being able to use a mage-y stat as a warrior-y stat is one obvious passive skill, "50% of your intelligence is added onto your strength on critical attacks" or something. Of course, who knows how PE will do attributes at this point. I really haven't played a cRPG to properly do weapon summoning. That is, a magic weapon is always inferior to one you buy in a store. Something "gishy" might be a certain anime character's ability ( )... a spell which lets you call forth a specific, historical weapon (a "noble", soulful blade instead of some generic construct of magic). A mechanic idea I had a long time ago, based on this idea, was that once you fought a particular enemy, you could conjure their weapon. Be it a boss or a lowly nobody's blade, you could memorize it and it might have a situational effect you want for later on in the game.
  5. I guess, I've been using the internet too long. Maybe I don't see any of this as a bad thing. If I'm a game developer and I'm getting death threats, it means the game I've made has made some people to become passionate about it. Death threats are serious... but they aren't necessarily something you need to get all solemn about. Two cases have sprung up with teenagers getting 10 year sentences for death threats over internet games (League of Legends and Runescape). I feel like... taking these threats so solemnly is wrong. The internet is a wild entity. But taming it isn't the answer. It has a lot to offer us. I've learned a lot by using it. Asking people to censor themselves, or actually censoring them through more heavy-handed means... it stifles creativity. And more than that - there's something else far worse that it does, but hell if I can explain the feeling I've got. People need to learn to channel their passions into more productive things than death threats and insults. I think we can try to ask people to do that. But I'm hesitant to agree with anything that uses the word like "police". I feel like, the internet is this strange place where we can really come to understand ourselves and the human experience. It's a place where there can be no consequence for our actions. That's a scary thing, but it's also very illuminating. It would be horrible if others do not get to experience this, because others are too frail to endure the slings and arrows of others. Phil Fish is the obvious person to jump to at this time. He's said some horrible things - bullying a Japanese fan. He made some pretty outrageous, pretty degrading and insulting things about an entire culture of game developers, for no real reason. It's fair to say he's a giant hypocrite for throwing a tantrum when he's on the receiving end of such behavior.
  6. All offensive spells in the Infinity Engine games are "telegraphed attacks". Well, they're telegraphed, but you can't exactly avoid them manually most of the time. What I mean by a telegraphed attack is that it's targeting an area, not a person. You also have no idea what's being cast, so it doesn't have the same kind of immediacy.
  7. Well, an item attunement mechanic makes sense with the theme of souls. You could just limit item attunement to only one item. Or, if that doesn't appeal, item attunement could just be 'different'. It depends how they will itemize the game. But, let's say end-game items provide large attribute bonuses. Attuned items do not give any attribute bonuses, but instead provide effects like bonus damage to to a particular enemy type, or enhance a specific class skill, like a summoner might be able to summon stronger allies. Thus, if you want attribute bonuses, you will use end-game gear, otherwise, you might just attune all of your starting gear. Or maybe, you can find a middleground, using mid-tier items and attuning them. The point of balance is how to make a mechanic like this work as a sense of progression. You should probably require a ritual and ingredients to attune yourself to an item. The ritual requires you be able to visit maybe some area early on in the megadungeon? And the ingridients are scattered in conflict locations. Higher-tier items with strong base stats shouldn't be able to be attuned as strongly, either (high-tier items are more noble and have their own "souls" competing with yours?) I wouldn't mind an item attune mechanic if the devs are willing to sit down and make it work, but this obviously isn't a system that will be easy to just throw in without imbalancing the entire progression of items.
  8. No, oRPGs need to worry EVEN MORE about level design. The more **** you ask your artists and designers to craft, the more willing they are to make things either too open, or too closed. Skyrim's "hand-crafted dungeons" are long and tedious, mostly composed of long stretches of hallways, ocassionally featuring a few pointless dead ends where you find a box that contains Skull [2] Bones [1] and Broken Arrow Head [1]. BioWare attempting an open world RPG without crafting good dungeons or interesting areas to explore (Skyrim is the weakest TES game because of its tiny towns and vast expanses of bland, snowy wilderness). Yes, it's great that you can "climb that mountain" but it's all pointless if there's nothing at the top of it. Fallout and Fallout 2 are examples of amazing open world games. But they aren't open because they crafted vast stretches of wilderness. The game is focused, the reources of artists were spent on encounters, not on aimless wilderness. The world was big, but even small actions you made in the game made waves. Reactivity is a big thing that BioWare has failed in DA1 and DA2 - you can side with the werewolves or the elves in DAO, and that's cool and all, but the most that choice opens up is a few alternative world events detailing to werewolf attacks, and whether you have elves or werewolves fighting in the final town. If every "square" of DAO's map were a place you could visit and the choices you made in each area made "waves" to other areas... then they'd have crafted a game of the same caliber as Fallout.
  9. Hm, I guess I'm overestimating the value of skills? I played the game with the unofficial patch though, and what I'm describing reflects on that. I almost never had any time to train skills up, with the constant onslaught of soldiers. Wasting time slowly repairing things and wasting medkits on minor wounds always resulted in me having to start the game over (or at least the map).
  10. Of course you did. You gave up on improving another skill instead of lockpicking, that also has a combat utility. Again, "combat vs non-combat" is not the only character building dilemma an RPG can provide. Okay, so yes, you can't pick up Ambidextrous, or some other skill, as a reslut of picking up lock picking, but if lock picking provides almost or just as the same amount of effective DPS as Ambidextrous, then, you didn't really give anything up, beucase combat vs non-combat is the only choice to make. What else is there? There are no other conflicts in an RPG that fall outside of combat/non-combat skills. In my previous ambling post, I think what I was trying to say - is that in JA2 - non-combat skills are essential to completing the game. If you don't have medics, a stray bullet can actually make you lose your entire team (wounded teammates take bleed damage out of combat if they have open wounds and can die from a shot to the foot or arm). You need repair to maintain your guns or you'll be stranded in the wilderness somewhere without any weapons. You need marksmans or you won't be able to shoot anything. Et cetera. Each role is essential. If lockpicking isn't essential it needs to be a strong skill. If lock picking is a strong non-combat skill that provides proxy combat effectiveness, then it doesn't need to actually perform some direct combat utility. If lockpicking lets you obtain advantageous positions against enemy monster groups in dungeons/areas (you can put your acher in a locked tower for instance) then it's working fine and your rogue doesn't need to be anything more than a walking distraction.
  11. I'm reminded of Jagged Alliance 2 with where the discussion is headed. Non-combat vs combat skills - JA2 has them perfect. Strength - Used for breaking open doors and lockers which contain supplies. Marksmanship - Used for operating guns. Explosives - Used for utilizing explosives and disarming mines. Medical - Used for first aid and surgery. Teacher / Leadership - Used for training miliitia (vital) and enhancing the skills/attributes of other characters. Mechanical - Repairing items and utilizing some special items, like lockpicking (if I remember right). There are also skills you can only pick at character generation that effect the effeciency of various abilities... You can only pick two and you can never get any more than that and each skill has two levels to it, so you can really only have "one" if you want to really specialize. Atheltics (makes you better at moving in combat) Paramedic Hunter (shotgun focus) Marksman (sniper focus) Auto (SMG/machine gun focus) Demolition (explosives) Heavy (more esoteric weaponry) Gunslinger (dual wield and pistol focus) Ambidextrous (dual wield pistols) And so on and so on- The point is that because you can only have so few abilities and because it's rather expensive to improve your mercenaries in JA2, that each one is forced into a distinct role they tend to keep all game long. At best, a character simply gets better at what they originally did best. Still, there is a weight and an impact to how each squad member functions in the game. You might have a character with a stealth focus scouting for up a character who can repair and give medical aid, with a sniper supporting two rambos in the front. The kind of gameplay here is really dynamic and the amount of control you have on strategy is pretty big. Yet, it does all this at the cost of progression for characters. Certainly, you CAN grow your characters, but they'll always be "best" at something no matter what. In the context of Jagged Alliance... this is fine, because you can get as many as thirty two mercenaries and you generally NEED to deploy them over a fairly large map, controlling large distant spaces with no easy way to cover ground. You're managing a rebellion and attacks can hit your cities at any time from anywhere. It's not really the kind of game PE wants to be, so maybe none of this applies, but... I really love JA2's rpg mechanics. They're very strong - you have a strong identity and a role as a mercenary. I don't like how it's hard to change, but... it's very distinct. Your mercenaries do play roles, they aren't jack of all trades and the way you balance each squad matters. There is strategy and tactics involved. If we let characters obtain too much "jack of all trades-y-ness"... we get a game like TES. In TES, historically, a character could become anything at any time. Oblivion and Skyrim are the worst offenders. Every single character made in those games is a mage-warrior-thief hybrid. You can't avoid utilizing the skills of each role. As a result, I find TES games to be impossible to roleplay in. It's literally the worst roleplaying system there is. I don't mind if some skills have overlap, but too much overlap, and you're missing some arcane quintessential thing I know all good RPGs have. If I make a utility-mule rogue who can't do jack in combat, that's my choice! And I find fun in having a weak character sometimes. The problem I guess I'm trying to get at here... is that a rogue that has lockpicking has lockpicking because I invested in it. If lockpicking were free, it wouldn't be a choice. It wouldn't have any weight to it. It would just be, "Rogues can lockpick." Badsh. This is how BioWare handles lock picking in DA2. Lockpicking matters if you have to invest to get it. By giving up combat ability, you obtain lockpicking. If lockpicking affords combat utility as well, then you didn't really give up anything. In effect, you've done what BioWare has done. I think that if lockpicking must give a combat bonus it must be extremely situational. Like, the lockpicking skill improves your lock pick... and lets you deal bonus damage to rats, or something. Or, it lets you stun 'demons' on a critical hit. Some kind of niche situational thing you COULD exploit and make a build around, but likely, won't make any significant difference in terms of combat utility. That would be the ideal version of Sawyer's thinking, because anything less compromises the weight of choice. Do they want us to be able to beat PE with an all comabt group? Do they want us to be able to beat PE with an all non-combat group? Would that be crazy, or what? I mean really... No, not really, it's not crazy at all. Why does the game default to combat? Maybe there is SOME amount of unavoidable combat, but what if... by having the right utility skills, you could avoid certain combat challenges. A rogue would be really pwoerful then, if you could simply SKIP that room that contains 10 waves of rats, or something horrendous and tedious like that. You'd say, "Yes, I'm glad I have a rogue." And it wouldn't be a direct combat feature. If dungeons are designed to reward alternative problem solving, then non-combat skills don't need to give combat bonuses.
  12. After beating Shadowrun Returns, it got me thinking about the importance of mobility in a strategy game. In Shadowrun Returns, you have limited action points per character, especially in the early game. This makes moving very costly. It often doesn't make sense in SRR to move, because the only benefit is increased accuracy for spells and attacks... but this is the same for your enemies as well. Moving in close may let you get a hit off you wouldn't otherwise, but it just means your enemies have greater accuracy and a more chances to hit you, since you wasted action points moving toward them. I recall in BG/Fallout very seldom moving in combat. Once combat started, you tended to have stone feet. You only moved when you had to (or you're a melee character, which means moving in close is a given). There were some enemies, like Ithilids, that forced me to back my melee units away after getting intelligence-drained, but aside from situations where characters need to pull back to get healed... positioning and movement didn't feel incredibly vital. Naturally, movement cannot feel cheap. If movement is cheap, then our actions have less weight. Strategy is supposed to be about making meaningful decisions. The choice to move or not should be hard, but it can't be too hard, or players feel that moving in is too perilous. In order to balance it, I think... PE should have at least a few types of enemies that have these skills: -Heavily telegraphed, highly-damaging attacks. This forces movement. You see an enemy winding up or reeling back for a strong attack, so you make a decision - avoid it - or try to kill that enemy as quickly as possible. Maybe it's also vunlerable while winding up. -Area of effect debuff attacks. You aren't going to let your party sit around in poisonous smog or chilling frost fields or raging infernos. Area of effect spells that linger in condensed areas will force movement a lot of the ime. -Level design which provides cover and relief. Moving should be its own reward - certain parts of dungeons should afford some kind of exhaustible protection. Be it hard angles to break LOS with enemies, or other things like interactable traps to pull, healing fountains to drink from. -GIve players the means to back off and retreat from fights. Tactical retreats should be possible. Don't making standing your ground the only option all the time. -Active/Passive Skills that have bonuses and penalties based on movement. An archer can build up extra damage by standing in the same spot for a while, maybe. A warrior can do more damage by constantly moving. -Make the enemy AI cognizant of its own positioning. AI should attempt to move its units out of hazardous areas on higher difficulties - allowing players to exploit this 'predictability', perhaps. Thoughts?
  13. Having "upgrade-able" weapons like the multi-headed flail in BG2 is fine. People backed PE thinking of stuff like that to begin with. But weapons you can upgrade and new weapons you find should compete. Neither should be definitively better than the other.
  14. I wonder how likely it would be for Berlin to offer some kind of multiplayer? It would be cool if there were a GM mode with up to 4 players as runners. Actually, that sort of would go with "asynchronous play" Nintendo lauds about their Wii U. Maybe Nintendo could give em' a few bux
  15. I think it's important to think about the BG2 expanion that added that keep-dungeon. It was only five levels in total and each level was brutal, especially the last floor, which tried your patience with its ridiculous boss encounters. There were a lot of neat puzzles and most of the early part of the dungeon was completable at the early game. So, I think the very best way to do a 15 level dungeon is to follow what it did right. I'd say, break the dungeon into 4 major slices. floors 1-3 are challenging but do-able for an early-game party floors 4 and 10 are all puzzles that can only be solved by doing the main quest or visiting locations in the world (or maybe you can solve them with "meta-knowledge" from the game); basically, through your adventures you get clues or historical knowledge about the dungoen that lets you solve these floors, which act as a barrier of progression for weak parties floors 5-9 are challenging, but do-able for a mid game party (floor 4 has early game puzzles to solve, floor 10 requires you to do a lot of research and investigation in the world to solve) floors 11-15 are end-game, with floor 15 having some kind of climatic boss or puzzle Trying to make this 15 floor dungeon you do all in one go is a bad idea. People will get burnt out, that is absolutely certain.
  16. I think a good rolepaying game has these qualities: 1. You define your character at character generation. 2. You grow your character through landmark choices during the game. For #1, you NEED to convey to the player a sense of identity. It needs to be very strong, because we want our players to immediately start roleplaying the moment the game begins. A lot of RPGs that have you start out with few skills and identifying characteristics end up making me feel like I'm playing a blank slate that has no history or personality. Even if the choices we make at character generation are token gestures or cosmetic, as long as they feel impactful at the outset, I think the system is successful initially. For #2, you NEED to offer compelling choice. This is what D&D and many other RPGs often lack. If RPG systems in a game present a warrior a binary choice at every level up ("More Damage/str!" or "More health/vit!"), then the game isn't presenting anything for our archetype characters to grow from. Although I can't think of an RPG that does this, I think ideally, we should present players with very difficult chocies. It's one thing to play a dumb brute at the outset, but wouldn't it be interesting if that brute transformed into a scholar at the end of the game's narrative? You'd have a 'character arc'. An 'ideal' RPG should challenge players on the ways they plan, build and roleplay their characters. Path of Exile, for instance (an ARPG), does challenge players with its system. http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree You start as a Marauder, and at first, your choices are very binary: damage or health. But as you progress, 2 choices become 4, 4 become 8, 8 become 16 and so on - eventually, you wonder, "Would a Marauder with daggers work? Would a Marauder that casts spells work?" Path of Exile's system is hardly perfect, but the theme here is what I'm espousing. I agree that players should be able to quickly identify with the character they generate, but they should never feel like they're "forced" to bulid a character a certain way to be viable. The best way to accomplish this is to reward players who attempt creative builds. Make sure there are items or skills in the game that scale or are most effective with unusual attributes for a given class (a wand that requires a fast attacker, or a staff that has lots of critical strike chance). A single strong, role-defining item can be just enough to make certain odd builds viable in the context of the game. The same can happen with a skill. You don't need a prestiege class to make certain "off-attributes" viable for classes. Consider a very powerful magical spell that only works at melee range and can be interrupted by attacks that deal a certain amount of damage - such a spell would require mages to wear plate and get into melee to utilize it most effectively. A skil like that existing is really all it takes to make certain odd builds viable in a strategy game. Shadowrun Returns just game out and my main is classless. I've just been picking up skils and raising attributes that I think go well together. It's interesting so far, the game is actually really good if you play a hybrid class. So long as your points aren't spread too thin, you can still deal effective damage with guns while casting spells and conjuring allies.
  17. It's a shame the ettiquette system is pretty much restricted to Shaman or Shaman-hybrids. They put a lot of work into letting you be able to get access to certai rooms based on that stuff, which is neat. Agility got the short end of the stick. I've only found one story-context prompt for it. Strength, Charisma, and Intelligence are the bulk of them. Haven't encountered one with willpower so far. It's a good game, not but a spectacular one, but it's good. I'm certainly satisfied with what they accomplished in a little over a year. And I can't fault them for stealth. The maps aren't big enough for stealth, nor is a turn-based party stealth game exactly interesting (or easy to design). Has anyone even tried to do a Baldur's Gate stealth run? You can't really, because you need to do it solo or with a whole party of rogues... that's sort of why stealth can't work. You're only as stealthy as your weakest link. I've played around with the editor. It's not as bad as SC2's editor, but it will take me a little time to get the hang of it. It looks very nice, with some decent functionality to it. These are the biggest cons I can come up for it: -Animations and spell effects are weak -Dialogue trees aren't always that impactful or meaningful, but it's much better than a certain game I've thoroughly ranted about, I've encountered a few funny typos too ("Should of" instead of "should have") -The itemization isn't that diverse (actually, I'm still confused what pistol I should be wielding on my main most of the time, the stats don't distinguish them enough for me, besides the obvious damage stat, which feels impactful) -No open world (and the aformentioned "small level" stuff) But each of these cons, aside from the first, I feel like I can just shrug my shoulders and say, "I wasn't sure what I was expecting from this game anyway." It's just a nice game. Not amazing, but I think it's good. I hope it does well, so we can see more of this in the future. The character building is very nice though. I'm a decker/street samurai hybrid, it's great they included a classless starting option. Each of the classes feel compelling too, like there isn't a "best one". I have been toying with doing a Deus Ex campaign for the game, since the assets and RPG systems would be perfect for some kind of tactical Deus Ex spin-off. I think it would be fun. With a few tweaks, the game's engine could also pull off a nice futuristic kind of Jagged Alliance campaign as well.
  18. I want to envision how a system of unified stats would work. If they are going unified, then they're taking this soul **** pretty literally. "" = ditto marks Strength of Soul = raises damage with spells and attacks Swiftness "" = raises attack and cast speed (and movement speed?) Heart "" = raises resistances to physical and magical damage (includes dodge? dunno where the game stands on avoidance) Endurance "" = raises life Empathy "" = raises mana/energy/resources Passion "" = critical strike chance of spells and attacks Acuity "" = accuracy of spells and attacks Let's compare a Wizard to a Rogue, who have the same stats. Let's say they both have: High Strength of Soul, high heart of soul, high empathy of soul, and high swiftness of soul, low everything else The rogue can attack hard, has a high life pool, has a high resource pool, and attacks quickly. He has low chance to hit and crit, low resistances so attacks that hit him hit hard. The mage can hit hard with spells, has a high life pool, has a high resource pool, and casts quickly. He has a low chance to hit and crit with spells, low resistances to attacks hit him hard. Attributes don't define characters then, but rather, the items they wear and the skills they take as a class, must define them. I guess a system like this could work, but I don't think it's an elegant solution to the "dump stat" problem - stats simply need to be viable for all classes. If stats work differently with all classes, then it's just a cluster **** if any of the items add to your attributes, because you have to do a lot of mental calculation every time an item with +2 strength, +2 stamina drops (Oh ****, so that adds 7 life to my warrior and 3 damage to my rogue, but it adds 10 max armor weight and +20 mana to my mage... is that better than a +1 strength, +1 stamina, +1 wisdom ring?). You'll constantly be referring to what does what to each class. The main problem here is that itemization is hard to get right, though they could sidestep the issue by seldom having items raise attributes, which might not be the case. It also doesn't help us in a non-combat sense. How do the attributes effect your ability to persuade and lockpick if they're unified? There will still be dump stats as a result of that, right? If rogues are most adept at lock picking through their classes skills, then players will feel like they're inclined to dump points into that to make a viable rogue, since it would be ineffecient to make a warrior with high lockpick? I dunno, maybe it is fruitless to analysze it and try to poke holes in the idea with more details. We need the full picture to decide much of anything. I'm just making vague guesses, I haven't been following the development of the systems close enough and the information is just too scattered. What I like about how D&D/BG does it, is that attributes represent a physical definition of my character. He/She is strong, wise and stupid. He's good with a mace and healing spells, but doesn't understand magic or how to carry a conversation and persuade others. A soul-based system has the potential of letting players make characters rapidly shift from being physical rogues to magical mages without any attribute adjustment, just some gear and a few spell scrolls. It's like, that character is not immutable, that the choices made at character generation are flimsy and less meaningful. If magic is good at a certain part of the game and not in another, it would be easy to exploit such a system. Or at least, possibly. I'd almost prefer a World of Darkness approach to this - you have a small number of core combat attributes. Strength, agility and stamina, and you have very limited points there. The rest of your points are spent on skills/mental/social aspects of your character. It's more appealing to me than a unified stat system, which possibly dillutes the impact of player choice? It certainly reduces what it means to "define" a character. It's a challenge to come up with a good system, but you simply need to offer players incentives to create unique characters. A mage with max strength should produce a potentially viable character, maybe there's some crazy heavy staff at the end of the game that's amazing - it can't be used by flimsy frail wizards. Maybe there's a talking sword that won't be wielded by some idiotic warrior. That kind of thing, is what I'd really love, I think.
  19. Did you read my post? I didn't even suggest that. Sheesh. All I want is a little more care and attention paid to generic NPCs and what they say.
  20. I think, given the very vague description we have, that the system sucks. If it's class-based, DA2 tried that. If stats don't do the same things for every class, you just have utter confusion and mayhem. It's hard to build interesting items for a game like that. It's hard to decide what items are better for who, everything is obfuscated. It's also not gamey enough. If attributes are unified ("strength" raises magic and physical damage) or class-based, then there are no difficult choices. Does my Warrior get any stats up in magic? Usually strength is a stat you just dump points in, but a good class system would say to the warrior, "If you raise your magic, you can use special magic weapons with supportive effects." Now, you have to choose between strength and magic as a warrior. Unifying something like that... it takes a lot of meaningful choice from the game. I don't like it, it makes certain classes too "jack of all trades"-y. Specializing is what makes RPGs fun. But we don't know the specifics. So, this is all just reactionary. I'd wish they'd show us, at some point, before it's too late to change. They should realize a system like this will require iteration.
  21. The difference is that melee weapons having more reach effects strategy in some capacity, longer reach weapons probably deal only a certain kind of damage or less of it in exchange for wider-area attacks or just longer reach. Bows not glancing as much just seems pointless. It doesn't offer any inherent trade off, just a pure benefit. It's also very intuitive to have a stat for a weapon called "reach" whereas it's not intuitive to have special hit-chance mechanics for bows over other ranged weapons/attacks. If you're playing an RPG, mechanics need to be intuitive enough you can do calculations in your head so you can compare items efficiently. Glancing blows only exist because players whined about too much missing, to begin with. Glancing blow is a compromise, even if it's unrealistic (how do you glancing blow with a two-handed axe? You either cleave somebody's arm in two or you don't).
  22. I think so. i don't really understand how radiant works. Anyone care to explain? I know I could look it up, but I want an intelligent answer, not some random cyber-yokel. Radiant was never actually released. Go look at the 2005 Oblivion demo at E3. It ran on a PC. Radiant AI was pretty cool, but they dropped it because the 360 couldn't handle it (and it was likely way too buggy for Bethesda to maintain for just a PC version). We got a watered down version of it in Skyrim, pretty sure only vestiges of it are in Oblivion.
  23. Oh yeah, the Stalker devs made The Void and Pathologic, right? If I recall correctly. If so, then I can really get behind this game. Those games were brilliant.
  24. I think you make an important point, that it will consume resources to meet my request, but you don't have to write separate lines. You simply need an algorithim to do it for you. Here's how you program it: Every "generic" NPC has a boolean, "bHaveMet". It's set to false when an NPC is first created, you haven't met them. bHaveMet is set to true after you talk to them for the first time. Every time you talk to a "generic" NPC, there's a condition check (if bHaveMet = true). If it's true then the algorithim searches the text that's about to be put out for phrases, "Hi", "How are you" et cetera; it removes these lines, leaving the rest of the output in-tact. This algorithim would be a little challenging to deal with as a writer, because now you can't use certain phrases and greetings in repeatable NPC dialog, but the trade-off would be managable. This seems like a lot of work all for a little rephrasing, but I do think it's paramount to maintain the "believability" of a world. There are /some/ things that can't be helped. Obsidian has to decide those things. But the less things that remind you you're "playing an RPG" the better. Of course, my little algorithim may not be the ideal solution either. If we don't want devs to write a extra lines for generic characters, I'm sure there are other ways to go about this. Obsidian IS creating a whole new world here - perhaps all the cultures in PE don't believe in saying hello Or perhaps they always say a certain phrase when meeting someone, even if they've just recently spoken. Cultures can have oddities like that. My favorite line in Chinese/Japenese is 'hao jiu bu jian / hi sashi buri desu' which is where the English phrase, "Long time, no see" (probably) comes from. It's got a kind of weird vibe to the phrase. It could be, people believe so deeply in the concept of souls, that they believe they have all met one another in the past, and when they meet again, a second could feel like a lifetime or something...? If you get what I'm saying here, there's a lot they could do to make generic NPC dialog really fascinating. I could see a whole culture of people using this phrase all the time, to people they even just saw, as a form of natural greeting. We wouldn't require multiple iterations of speech, in that case.
  25. It's definitely got the hipster artsy vibe working for and against it, but I was greatly intrigued by the android. I'd assume she's the major puzzle the game has to offer - getting her up and running. I'm a little disappointed that you might not be able to get her up and moving about, but, if there are ways to interact with her as you get her working again, I could see this as a decent puzzle/exploration game. It's an odd thing for ex-Stalker devs to be making, but I think I'll take it.
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