Grand_Commander13

I think it's pretty important for the mathematics of the game to be able to be explained by a Project Eternity wiki and guides, so that people making a character will understand how effective their character will be and in what situation. I find it very annoying where you have to merely guess at what will make your character good, or how much making a certain choice will improve them.

I've seen general agreement that chain was more expensive than plate. There's a reason that Renaissance soldiers would wear breastplates and not chain shirts.

I'm really hoping to avoid tiered versions of armor, at least "this is the actually good version of the armor you started the game with". If we must get better armor later in the game than we started with, then make it because we started with a cheap, poorly made version and ended up with an expensive, masterfully crafted version. You can't do the armor like Fallout where you go from low tech armor to high tech armor unless that's part of the setting. If it was part of the setting though, I would withdraw my objection. Speaking of Fallout's armor system, am I the only one who would usually stick with leather armor in Fallout 2 over metal armor? The DR wasn't as good but the AC was better and it was much lighter. I'd really like it if concerns like weight, cost to repair, fatigue while wearing, etc... all found their way into Project Eternity's armor system.

Plate was cheaper than chain though, so you can't even make chain the poor-man's armor. I don't know how a brigandine or jack would compare to chain for protection, but I do know that they were contemporaries of plate.

I was more wondering why Plate and Chain would be contemporaries at all. I thought that Chain fell out of favor because Plate was better in pretty much every way in a fight. Chain's benefits really only show up in ease of donning and storage, since its lesser weight wasn't distributed as well so it still ended up tiring you out more quickly.

The problem is that there are essentially two possibilities: you can roll higher stats than you can buy in a reasonable amount of time, or you can't.

I really wish rolling for stats would die a horrible, lonely death somewhere. Personally I prefer stats that mostly stay where they start. Though I must confess that the overpoweredness of the Nameless One was pretty darn sweet.

That is exactly why it defeats the purpose. The entire purpose of the dual-health system is so you can have multiple fights per day at full fighting strength.

With eight companions I fully expect the NPCs to be a lot like the NPCs in Torment: very detailed, and several with a unique spin instead of being nothing more than a faithful rendering of their class. They'll be something most people won't want to miss. However, with eight companions to fill five party slots there's not a whole lot of variety in parties you can make. With the Adventurer's Hall, though, you can make anything you want. I don't see how this hurts anyone, especially since the eight companions will likely be designed to give us a very respectable party, with an early rogue if they are the best at lock picking and trap finding.

That would nullify the whole point of the system then. Breaking it up into Stamina and Health is to allow you to come down to "almost defeated" in every battle, and yet still fight several battles each day without the presence of a method of healing your body other than resting. If your maximum Stamina goes down along with your current Health, then you'll fight maybe one third as many battles each day, probably getting us pretty close to the one-and-done adventuring that the system is meant to avoid.

Didn't you know? Baldur's Gate defined "hardcore" and good gaming, and any deviation from it means you have an easier, less fun game.

I never had a problem with Shepard being widely off base, mostly because the whole point of the dialogue wheel is that there's little point in reading it: Shepard is nice, normal, or mean depending on your choices. I always had more of a problem where you were given a choice of dialogue options that led to the exact same thing being said the exact same way. Classic illusion of choice; we really should have seen the Mass Effect 3 ending coming.

No, the Red option will get him to back down peacefully. If you're going to shoot him, the option is in white text on the right and says [shoot him].

Malak, you'll notice I'm looking at you when I say that.

With the example of "Maybe you should reconsider" and "(Persuade) It is in both our best interests that you change your mind" I'd really hope both of those referenced my character's Persuade skill to see whether they worked. If the engine can't handle that then you need to either remove the options that don't work or mark the ones that do, plain and simple. I mean, you either make it glaringly obvious this option will not work in which case you need to write the player character as a buffoon, or you mark it.

I agree that realism and good gameplay must be made to work together, which is why I love the idea of a consumable resource to make up the shortfall in skill. All I'd quibble is making the consumable resource for lockpicking actual lockpicks. It could be an aspect of the character's soul energy that they need to pay to recharge, etc... Just not lockpicks.

If we're going with the anachronism of complicated locks I don't see why we can't go with a possible anachronism of reliable lockpicks. If it's not realistic that a fighter shrug off repeated direct sword hits without harm, then make it so his HP are depleted without saying he was directly hit. If it's not realistic that a rogue break a half a dozen lockpicks when cracking a lock, then make it so it's something other than lockpicks he's depleting.

If it were me, as a player, I'd probably prefer some sort of Guile mechanic where my character managed to beat a lock too strong for him; this would be a depletable resource much like the loss of picks would be, but with more flexibility. After it's spent on a lock the player can refresh Guile however the developer wants them to: with rest, with a trainer's assistance (a money sink), on levelup, or some other way. With lockpicks you're stuck using them as a money sink or crafting picks.

Why? I don't know what the state of lockpicking was like a few hundred years ago, but I know that now there are myriad lockpicks and that picks rarely break.

Oh my, you're a pleasant one. I already told you why gambling is a bad idea. With crafting, all you need to do to make sure it's a gold sink is make the decision for the crafted item to sell for less than the crafting components cost to buy. This is not that hard.

Gambling is a terrible gold sink; people will only do it if it gives them a net gold gain, one reasonable given the time invested. They'll save scum to force it to be a net positive, but if you disable save scumming they will either ignore it (if it's a net negative) or do it (if it's a net positive). Item upkeep is just plain un-fun. Again, why add in extra gold faucets to the game in the first place? Every piece of gold you take away from the player for something not fun is going to annoy the player. The best gold sinks are fun, like upgrades for the house and the stronghold as well as customizing our followers at the adventurer's hall. Crafting also has promise as a fun gold sink.

It's taxable, but only after their expenses have been paid out. Since it will likely cost more than four million dollars to make the game, I doubt they'll pay a dime in taxes on the Kickstarter funds. Here's to hoping the Kickstarter money comes in rather early in Obsidian's fiscal year.

It would be a relatively simple task to, for the earlier levels, have the best items all be in the shop. The middle levels would put you up against more elite foes, so they might start dropping gear along that level, but then it's time to start coveting the enchanted gear; you could spend all manner of money buying the right ingredients for enchantment, and perhaps hiring people to seek it out for you. There's no reason for the best gear to be waiting for you in a chest. If it's so dang useful then someone's going to be carrying it, and getting to them doesn't have to be easy.

Money sinks are painful, but making sure you never even put that extra money faucet in the game is not. Strongly limiting the gear the players can sell is a great idea; not only does it gel with realism and with the way fantasy stories are portrayed (imagine Star Wars if Han and Luke were stockpiling blaster rifles on the Death Star so they could sell them after the battle) but it makes the money a lot easier to manage. Need a weapon? Pick up the one on the guy you just killed. Need money? Complete a quest.

The Kickstarter money is revenue, not income. I don't believe they need to realize it until they've shipped the game, after which it and the money from the sales will be combined together and compared against the cost of making the game. Short version: they don't pay taxes on all of that money, and likely not right away.