Sammael

"Drama!" was always my favorite. However, today I needed "Please bury this thread." I do feel like there are a few missing, probably the ones which are probably not politically correct anymore Anyway, my mortal shell works as a senior business analyst/product owner in a moderate-sized software company these days. I tried to get as far away from programming as I could while still remaining in the industry.

What can I say? I don't play CRPGs anymore, and so I drifted away... I actually came today to grab the BISIMGs, I... needed them for something.

I used to rule one of the hells, but now I am retired.

Well, after helping run a fansite for IWD2 ( https://web.archive.org/web/20021004135749/http://shadow-network.net/iwd2/ ), following its development quite closely, making suggestions to the devs on a daily basis, and so on, I really should remember it more than I do The few things I do remember well are: The fantastically written and developed intro area of Targos and the nearby goblin caves The fact that the press preview copy had 3D acceleration which the final game didn't The horrible, horrible Ice Temple The Fell Wood - nice concept, but it didn't really work in practice The fantastic icons and how sick Brian Menze was of making icons in the end The Landsknecht controversy (before the game switched to 3e rules) The annoying forced ambushes throughout the game How sad I was to see so much content had to be recycled from the first game The insane ever-shifting release deadline which made the game development a bit... schizophrenic How I got my ass kicked by the twins in the end battle despite having a breeze for 99% of the game (I complained loudly enough that they modified the end battle difficulty slightly for those of us who managed to reach certain levels where scaling didn't work as well) How I really didn't buy the Legion of the Chimaera as the huge threat they were supposed to be... they were hard to see as villains, which I suppose was the goal, but it also made them into less of a threat. I actually wanted to join the Legion, dammit! Look, I even managed to dig up my preview from the Wayback Machine. w00t!

Implementing weapon sheathe/draw animations may be a bit too much, but it would be weird if you clicked to switch the weapon set and then nothing happened for 2 seconds (or whatever). Thinking some more about it... the action economy has not played a part in IE games because they were structured around the underpinning turn system. While it's absolutely necessary in TB games, I am not sure if character action economy is actually all that necessary in RT games, because we are already limited by the player's ability to control a whole party of characters at the same time. Even with the pause, once you unpause the game you can hardly manage 6 characters at the same time, and at least a few of them will default to standard attacks and such. So, while I absolutely adored the JA2 point system, what works great in a TB game doesn't necessarily work great in a RT game. Increasing the recovery for ranged weapons to the point where ranged characters can only fire one round before being forced into melee doesn't sound all that great (particularly due to the AoO system - not sure if this was tweaked in the patch or not, but it was too brutal for my taste in the original release). Reducing recovery options sounds even less great.

I am not totally familiar with the recovery system, but if movement stops/slows recovery, shouldn't switching weapons also have some effect? I.e. switching weapons in the middle of a fight should maybe require some recovery before the new weapon can be used.

Grommy, MC, since I don't care one way or the other about combat XP, I can be easily swayed into either camp with an appropriate bribe. Note to Grommy: soul is not acceptable as a bribe, you're a lawyer so we have you already.

Ah, the infamous Landsknecht incident... as bad as it was, I think it was one of the triggers that pushed IWD2 towards 3E rules, which made it a much better game.

Spell damage in D&D up to 3.x is not tied to attributes. Spell accuracy in D&D up to 2e is not tied at all to attributes, and is partially tied to attributes in 3.x.

Must be for balance reasons, because I refuse to believe they actually enforced something as simulationist as camping supplies while a big chunk of the game system is anti-simulationist.

Re: Main PoE code and Backer Beta, the way this usually works is this: 1. There is a main code branch (AKA trunk) where everyone does the actual programming (or the actual programming happens in separate branches which are then merged into the main branch upon completion). All the bug-fixing happens here. 2. There is a separate code branch ("release candidate", though the name may be a misnomer) used for testing and bug-hunting. This branch is made at regular intervals. 3. There is likely another separate code branch ("backer beta") which was created from one of the "release candidates" (possibly the most stable one in recent history) and then customized by cutting content down to its present size. The way a new BB version can happen is twofold: 1. They can create a patch from the main code branch and apply it to the BB branch. This carries a risk that the main code branch is too divergent from the BB branch and the patch will be a nightmare to apply and merge. 2. They can create a new RC which includes bugfixes from the main branch, then ensure it's stable, and then create a new BB from it. This may be more or less difficult than option (1), depending on the method they applied to cutting content. If content is loosely coupled from code and can be parametrized, then it's not a big deal. If it's not, then the work required to make a new BB is probably too much effort.

Oh, it's getting through, I just disagree that it's a balancing nightmare. Improvements at levels 2+ should most definitively be very significant and have a deeper impact on your character than +x% to Will save and such. I think we're way past the stage from IE games where your level up screen would consist only of your newly gained HPs and the OK button. A single-player RPG shouldn't concern itself so much with balance, it should primarily concern itself with challenge and fun.

Why can't we have meaningful differentiation at level 1 and at level 5? Again, I completely agree that post-level-1 character building should be important. It's just that we disagree on how much level 1 characters should differ.

5e is a lot more like one of the OSR retroclones than 3.x But it does share one thing with Pathfinder - it has no connection whatsoever to 4e. And that's A Good Thing. FWIW, I think Pathfinder is a bloated monstrosity which did nothing to fix 3.x problems, whereas 5e is slightly too "lite" for my taste. But it's a lot easier to add stuff to a "lite" system than it is to remove bloat from a bloated one.

The talent system describes character growth, no? So, for there to be character growth, there has to be a decent baseline which differentiates characters to begin with. Note: I am not advocating the doubling of attribute bonuses as some people are. If anything, I may be asking for a slightly non-linear progression, as well as the penalty system I mentioned which you dismissed. BTW, 4th edition had a very small, closed beta test, coupled with a RPGA playtest which was laughable. It never had anything even approaching the scope of the 5e beta test, which (1) lasted much, much longer (2) had major rule changes and updates to test the feasibility thereof and (3) was open to all who registered on the WotC website. The reception of 4E and 5E is much different as well. I'm waiting on my 5E PHB to arrive, but from the excerpts I've seen I'm far less likely to throw it away in disgust like it did with the 4E version.

While I agree with you on principle (AD&D placed too much importance on starting stats, character progression past level one was not meaningful enough) I have to point out the following: 1. Mechanical stat benefits do not have to be great, but they should matter. If I create a Might 18 Intellect 5 Wizard, I want him to feel (in play) different from a Might 5 Intellect 18 Wizard. As it stands, I don't think there is enough differentiation. 2. Not everyone is a special snowflake. Mathematically speaking, it is exactly the same to have a lower baseline for damage and then grant a bonus from Might 3 to Might 18 as having a higher baseline and have Might < 10 carry a penalty and Might > 10 carry a bonus. But when it comes to immersion, option 1 screams "there are no losers! we're not keeping score! everyone wins just by participating!" whereas option 2 says, "you made sacrifices, now suck it up." 3. A much larger beta playtest (D&D 5th edition) conducted among a very similar demographic (PnP players, many of whom are also CRPG players) has shown that people want attributes to matter more than they did in 3rd and 4th edition. 5th edition has almost reverted back to 2nd edition when it comes to attribute importance with respect to both combat and the skill system. I may not like this (I prefer skill-based systems) and you may not like this but it's what the majority of people from that demographic want. 4. I've experimented a lot with different point-buy systems, both weighed and non-weighed. In the beginning, I had the same opinion as Josh - if the benefit granted by attribute increase/decrease is linear, then there is no reason for weighed point buy. In the end, I changed my mind. Weighed point buy is very important for what is now commonly referred as "bound accuracy" - the range of expected abilities used to balance the game. This particularly impacts the low levels, when attributes should still have a greater impact (IMO) than any skill- or talent- based bonuses. This is the reason why D&D 3.x and Pathfinder had weighed point buy and linear attribute progression afterwards - from 5th level on, it didn't matter as much. 5. While I also agree with both you and Josh that the D&D attribute system is bad, I don't think the current abstract, gamist system of PoE is much better. However, I fully believe that both D&D attributes and PoE attributes can be made better. I just can't offer meaningful feedback without a lot more testing, and I'm not going to do any testing until the major gamebreaking bugs (disappearing items and quests) aren't fixed...

To be clear, I personally don't like the current attribute system, but I don't think it's feasible to change it at this point. The reason why I don't like it is because it was designed from a gamist point of view, whereas I personally prefer systems that are oriented towards simulationist style of play. However, I understand that it makes a lot of sense to adopt the gamist approach to system design in CRPGs (personal preferences aside).

This system is designed in such a way that you completely drop the attributes with zero problems. Sawyer even said that if he wasn't for IE tradition, the game wouldn't have attributes at all. Imagine PoE, but with attributes completely removed. Now tell me, what problems are there? Removing the attributes completely is absolutely not the same as changing the way they work. The way stats currently work is tied to the current design of classes (all stats have a similar effect on all classes); if stats were to have a different effect on different classes (as proposed above), then all the classes would have to be redesigned to take that into account. We could drop all stats, and the game would still work. I'd love to read that quote, BTW, considering that I have yet to play a RPG (computer or tabletop) that does not have some form of attributes. I'm sure there are some Indie systems played by a dozen people that don't have stats, but that's hardly something that should be used in a project like PoE.

I disagree. Balance tweaks can be done at any time, but a change in attribute concept would have such a profound effect on the system that it would have to be redesigned from the ground up.

Actually, attributes are among the least essential aspects of the system and one that's the easiest to change. It's basically a map of attribute values to combat bonuses. Not even programming, just adjusting values in a hashmap. No, they're not. Because changing the meaning of attributes would require the entire system to be rebalanced and that's not something that can be accomplished easily. That has nothing to do with programming, and everything to do with a whole crapload of math that Josh & co had to do when designing the system.

Yup, IDW2 icons, and pretty awesome. They have to be in contrast with the rest of the interface in order to easily recognize them.

No amount of poll votes is going to change one of the most essential aspects of the system at this point.

Blame this on D&D 4E which Josh is a big fan of.

I'm ambivalent on this issue. Good combat can be a reward in and by itself. However, I certainly wouldn't mind getting combat XP (as long as it's not the only way to get XP, and as long as it's not the best way to get XP). I don't feel that not having combat XP reduces the fun of exploration, either, since there should be enough non-XP awards (items, story, cool things to see) that XP is not necessary.

They don't have a choice in the matter. Josh said the game was going to be released in winter of this year because that's when the money runs out. And there we go - as I said, it's not always Josh's call. I hope for Obsidian's sake that they will do all they can to release a polished game, even if it means cutting content in order to ensure other content is complete.