Sabotin

No, no, I didn't mean weapon speed. When I said attack speed I meant the attacks/round statistic. I believe someone said that PE won't have rounds, so I tried to use a more neutral expression. What bothers me about it is the same thing as you. That you start at 1/round and can end up at 5+, with combat at the start seeming frustrating (with the fill-in animation looking like misses) and at the end looking just silly with the overly sped up animations.

I'd rather that attack speed remain fairly constant, more so than in the IE games.

I'm not sure it'd be too visible on such a small character, especially after applying armor. We can already expect some re-proportioning in the interest of visibility. I'm still all for it though.

Well considering the currently planned system it would seem appropriate for those statuses to just move the hit/glance/miss ratios upward. Which could be achieved by simply making it add a defense bonus/accuracy penalty. Further defined by the level of concealment. With blindness for example making you do damage only on "a natural 20" so to speak, rest being a few glances and lots of misses.

Why not simply have all those glancing blows converted fully to stamina damage? Effort of dodging and parrying and all that. A swarm of enemies will still eventually wear down even the most heavily armored fighters, and the lightly armored will still have some leeway for hit and run tactics etc. Then you can add a bunch of feats that manipulate this, so you can have some swashbuckler types around that last more than a minute. And maybe make shields reduce the stamina damage a bit, too, so that tank types will be interested in them more. Also when you have a fight with the pirate boss, he's a boss 'cause he's better at fighting than you, not because he has triple health to account for glancing blows killing him too fast.

Slightly off-topic: From where does the idea that PE will have Celtic inspiration stem? For the design of druids I'd start from their source of power. This soul thing PE has going seems to be an opportunity: Druids believe that all life is connected, part of a greater whole, including themselves. Those deemed of strong soul are trained since childhood to see and feel all living things in such light. Druids' powers work by reaching into these living vessels (plants/animals/anything alive and soulless) with their souls and manipulate their very being. As they advance in experience they learn more ways of affecting life, eventually being able to connect to the non-living nature (for example weather, the ground, etc.), as it is still an inexorable part of the whole. Druids mostly work through proxies (as opposed to rangers?), be it seeing through an eagle's eyes or entangling an enemy in barbed vines. Mechanically I think it would be interesting if druids would "plant" themselves and then have an area around them they could affect (maybe growing larger with levels), only being able to reach out of this with a "possessed" animal (companion?) or something. He would use heavy personal defensive spells and act as a (terrain) controller. The spells would require no verbal or somatic components, making movement/speech impairing stuff non-effective. This may be over-complicating, but it would be interesting if the spell effects would be slightly different during day and night, reinforcing a bit the natural connection flavor. Animal summoning sounds like a staple thing for druids, but I'm not sure how to connect it to all this. Conjuring stuff out of thin air doesn't really sound well suited for nature magic. Perhaps it takes some time for the animal(s) to arrive from off-screen? As their coming of age ceremony they select an animal companion and permanently imbue them with a fragment of their soul. This gives the animal increased vitality and intelligence and binding its life to the druids. While they are together they are both strengthened by the synergy of their bond. For this process both participants have to be willing. The companion druids have should probably be some stronger version of a normal animal, and conveniently have a sizable life span. The bond would confer some bonuses to both while they are close to each other (within the druids active area?). Using them as a range extension would be neat (and offer some decision making - choosing between synergy bonuses and increased range), but wizards already have that with their familiars, so I'm not sure if it'd be appropriate. Shape-change - I never liked it. I'm not sure how deeply entrenched this is in the image of a druid, so I guess it has to be there in some form. The thing that bothers me the most mechanically is the absorption of gear into the animal form. I guess it's there for practical reasons; dropping all your gear every time you change forms would indeed be tedious. Another thing is that usually a shape-changed form just turns the druid into a sort of gimped fighter. Some form of animal/plant/natural force possession would fit more into how I envision a druid. The societal role of druids would probably be as ecologists or local shamans. The farmers would go to to the local druid before doing some sort of landscape changing for example and he would divine the longer term effects of it. He could also teach a tribe how to survive in an area, or provide help through natural disasters etc. Panoramix would fit, too . I wouldn't want to inherently impart some sort of goal to druids. Some personal struggle could be from the fact that manipulating nature is in itself unnatural and so druids would be inclined to do as little as possible? For example some ancient arch druid would be protecting a forest as though he didn't exist. The forest "just happens" to thrive even with all the incursions of civilization. This whole "balance" thing could just be left open-ended, with each druid having their own views stemming from their connection with nature. You could have some "invisible" druids, avengers of nature, mediators, urban druids or just some that enjoy running with wolves.

I know it's a fantasy setting, but you can't just "giant-" everything, biology doesn't work that way. On the other hand, having totally alien species around is kinda off-putting to me as most of the time I see them as just some random creature put there for the sake of originality, even if they are deeply connected with the setting. Maybe if such creatures were in some remote untouched area or magically sealed in some cave etc.

Come on, this resolution discussion seems so nitpicky. Isn't it only a question of UI scaling? On to mechanics: From the descriptions of the skill thingies it seems like positioning will be fairly important, with people blocking each other etc. I kinda like that the rogue ability is something you set up, not just trigger. It's probably the same thing gameplay wise, but it "feels" more tactical . Though on the other hand perhaps it's just a "buff". In general it smells like reinvention of some DA:O systems? Those so called "implements", am I correct to assume that these are sorta like the staffs in the aforementioned game? You know, small ranged damage so mages are not just idling between spells? And these are usable by all/more classes, but when in a wizard's hands it does a small AoE cause of the skill? The slashing/piercing/blunt seems reasonable. Except one thing - so the best way to assassinate a heavily armored general is to sneak behind him and ... hit him on the head with a giant hammer ? Though I guess it's possible that rogues will get some extra armor piercing (threshold ignoring or whatchamacallit) from somewhere, making blunts unneeded and piercing optimal for heavy and slashing for medium/light armored. Anyway, good update, I really like having small tastes of systems.

Well the standard would be various chants that give various buffs. I think it'd be interesting to expand on that a bit. Maybe make the song start out weak and then get progressively stronger and stronger as the chanter continues. I think it'd be a nice power-up for defensive play, which is kinda sub-optimal everywhere. Or maybe some very strong spells that have an extreme cast time. Think true name reciting in NWN2. Perhaps another idea would be to have some customizing mechanic, where you "compose" pieces (buffs) into a chant. And maybe learn additional pieces from other people or even as you progress through the game. I think a debuff orientation would be more realistic, the aoe debuffs will probably be more in the paladins' domain, with their auras and stuff.

Yeah, but those would be overridden in a person with a high charisma. It might not be a good idea to say something observant or intelligent, so picking options that would lose brownie points with someone would be indicative of low charisma*. Conversely if the [iNT] or [WIS] answer is the "right" one that just means that it's a charismatic character who is also smart/wise. A high charisma character would know not to use the options for which he doesn't have the requirements and therefore the [CHA] response would be the only option. I guess the effectiveness can be limited by the other stats as you say, but as I sad the [CHA] answer is still the best possible for that character. What I'm trying to say is that you cannot role-play a character whose mental stats are not an approximation of the players without metagaming. * assuming it's not working like in PS:T where a stat check answer was always better than a standard one.

I think one problem is that we've practically seen everything already. That's why horror movies are going into extremes with visual gore etc. I believe that that's part of making horror, too, as well as jump scares etc. It's not everything, obviously, but it has a part. As a culture I think we have fear for a very negative trait, so we do not like to show it and eventually have a certain resistance to it. So to illicit some reaction some jolts are needed, else we'll say it's boring, despite the atmosphere. The goal of horror would in my mind be to strip a person of their "mental defenses" and access their subconscious, therefore intensifying their feelings while playing/watching, providing better immersion and an experience. I really think that if something is scary or not largely depends on the mindset of the player at the time. And it will obviously differ from person to person. I prefer my scary stuff in writing and in sound for example. That aside I think that some horror has to be a part of a complete rpg experience, so some is definitely welcome. I don't think it would work as a main theme in such an expansive game though. I think we're bound to get a couple of scary dungeons if nothing else and some serial murder mystery is popular to have .

Speech as a skill is the thing that I think produces the most quasi-/metagaming. Attribute/ability score checks tend to not produce the same problem since you can often be more egalitarian about what attributes are checked and how often. With a Speech skill (or equivalent), its whole raison d'être is to gain advantage in conversation. That's not true even for stats like Charisma or Intelligence in D&D. But then isn't that just switching speech skill to charisma stat, with the same effect? If I have a character that has a high charisma, then I would assume that he knows what to say in what situation, therefore picking the [CHA] option would always net the best results possible for that character, regardless of whether it's being intimidating, diplomatic, submissive or whatever else you can think of.

I think that's a chain (or very fine scail) shirt beneath the striped leather?

Ha, I didn't even see that ridge on his/her head. But I do see the fish motif. The first picture has somewhat pudgy/swollen/roundish (not sure how to describe it) features on the face and I think the colorings are meant to look somewhat like those on fish, not a disease. From what I can tell from those two pictures they seem ok to me, though I hope the fishy elements will remain subdued or at least consistent (not one aumaua having a "fish mustache" another shark teeth and a third suckers on the hands etc.)

Put running in the game, as in PS:T. Then make it usable mostly for backtracking/fast transition/fleeing, by making it punishing to blindly run into the unknown: ambushes, traps you detect too late, reduced stamina, w/e. You can even make something simple like click to move, double-click to run.

If I understood correctly, that should be achievable by turning up the difficulty (or that extra hard mode or what it is). As far as randomness goes, I'd prefer if it was severely limited. A little on loot (items of lesser value) and a little on encounters (the open ended types, if any) maybe, just so things aren't 100% the same. The role of randomness in repeat playthroughs is in my opinion only there to keep the exploration factor, but that most likely wouldn't apply to a game like PE (please no Modron Cubes...).

Hello, I'd like to talk a bit about the flow of combat or more specifically combat speed. I believe this is intricately tied to the mechanics, so it's probably better discussed now than later. I think that extremes are unfeasible: If combat is too fast, I foresee two outcomes. Either it will become very twitchy (fast reactions and command giving; think competitive strategies) or it will require pausing the game very often. While this is basically the essence of real-time with pause I believe it can detract from game play as well as aesthetics if it's TOO often. As a practical example of a game in which combat was not cohesive with the rest of gameplay (perhaps due to my expectations) I would give DA2 in which I often got that "adrenaline-y" feeling while killing stuff, then just running forward to the next encounter, like I was doing in Torchlight. Or if you want to try and recreate the "too much pausing" feeling, play an IE game at higher FPS (AI updates/s). On the other hand if it's too slow, combat can seem stretched and frustrating (unintentionally so). I don't really have any game with this at the top of my head, but let's say IWD2 at the lower levels. You know, when you have little to no special attacks/spells and just have to whack some orcs over the head (or rather whack the air around them) for what seems to be an eternity. I personally didn't find it too engaging to just set it on attack and wait until something dies... What are the tools to balance this? The first would be time units. In IE games we have so-called personal rounds, which are to my understanding closed time intervals in which the character can act between movements. These define the maximum possible actions of a character over a certain period of time. Time is neatly stored in small packets, the length of which can then be manipulated to achieve the desired effect. There were conflicts when the rules would require more than physically possible to show, but I think with a new ruleset that can be avoided. Something more specific would be attack rolls (rules?). 10 attacks per round with a 5% chance to connect with each would be just annoying to me. Conversely making every attack connect is much simpler, but may have other drawbacks (lessened "realism", the loss of a layer of gameplay,...) Hand in hand with this I would put damage done and enemy HP. Perhaps it's a matter of personal taste, but it throws off my suspension of disbelief, when the PC is a high dmg/low hp thing and the enemies low dmg/high hp punching bags. I believe the same rules should apply to everything within a world, not have them separate for the player. However, yes, it's pretty obvious that these can be easily manipulated for different combat speeds. Not so direct - combat actions available to the player. There is probably no one on this board that would say that too many options is a bad thing (me included). Yet I also believe this is a non-trivial question. The more optimal players will use everything at their disposal. The more direct players will not. This can prove to be a divide in player experiences (resulting in complaining and "you're not playing it right" retorts) and while I don't think that the game has to be "accessible" (as it is often presented), I believe it should offer some uniformity (at least in the broad sense). Now games have always had a few ways of handling this, the foremost being (companion) AI. Besides difficulty, AI can also influence the flow of combat for the player, how often pausing is needed and how often some repetitive orders need to be issued. I consider AI to be a cover for the people that want to be less involved, or just be there to lessen the load of the more involved ones, providing a closer experience. Even better programmable AI - I thoroughly enjoyed the "Tactics" in the DA line. However there is in my opinion a big issue with companions doing stuff automatically in a game such as PE (or IE engine) and that is the usage of finite resources (assuming you can't rest every 10 feet). In these games the player cannot just look at each encounter individually, but must take in consideration a whole series of them and perhaps even have some extra resources "just in case". This simply cannot be done effectively artificially. I believe the number of classes we have can be exploited to some extent here, transferring some micromanagement around or at least limiting it. Some classes can be perhaps intentionally more involved for advanced players, however I suspect that wouldn't be met with much enthusiasm (dividing players). Action duration. A balanced and diverse approach would work well here I guess, with some things taking longer than others to accomplish. I can't really say what would be ideal as this would require specific times and information. I see this as a big and important part though, affecting a lot of strategic aspects. The only thing I would add is that I would like to see consistency throughout the adventure - not 5 times faster swinging at high levels. That's about it from me, post your thoughts .

Actually since this is a computer game, mechanics can be complicated a bit. However I think this would be more of a micromanagement issue. It's more suitable for a game with a single protagonist. On the other hand I think a part of this is still sound. There has not been much visual representation of evasion and such in statistics based RPGs. It would be nice if, speaking in dnd terms, a character that made his reflex saving throw would duck and cover or something. And in case of having evasion (where the entire damage is negated upon a successful reflex saving throw) the character could roll/move to the nearest free "square". Expanding on that you could add another tidbit of strategy by making this "evasion" unavailable if there is not enough room around. Making positioning (and terrain) more important. And about the spells missing. It could be an interesting idea if *certain* spells behaved like that. In PS:T you have for example the "Ice Dagger" spell, which, upon not connecting, would travel further until it hit something, like a wall, and remain there as a mine of sorts.

It wasn't supposed to be an example of a good inventory, just how you could open multiple ones at once... I actually think BG did it ok in general. You basically had some quick-slots for weapon/ammo/misc and the rest "in the bag" so to speak. Perhaps the number of these slots could be variable for different classes (not just weapon wise) or depending on gear (armors, belts?). And then for expert mode you could make the main inventory inaccessible during combat or something. It could be a thing when you have to decide whether you want to carry an extra blade or a potion. I'm pretty much against any kind of inventory tetris; I rather err on the side of practicality than suspension of disbelief when concerning item sizes. And if the game follows the IE footsteps, I think the weight limit will be hit much faster than the size one. The thing with the same size inventory, though, is the small items: keys, scrolls, potions, etc., which can quickly fill and clutter it. Some further compartmentalization might be in order to eliminate some of these (key rings, scroll/file cases and so on). I do not particularly like "list" kind of inventories, though I guess it's the better option when you have to lug a metric ton of crap around. Still I hope that can be avoided. I would really love to see good item icons though, where you could differentiate them with a glance. And maybe based on the concept art pictured in the detailed description ? IWD2 had some pretty good ones as I recall. DA2 was the most horrible thing I ever saw in this regard. I guess different people prefer levels of item ordering and item overview, so some good balance between the two will have to be found.

Well I guess it should not be too hard to show time remaining when you mouse over a buff icon or something? I think the Drakensang games did something like this. I also dislike to buff a hundred buffs, but I think I wouldn't just want to remove them, maybe just order the stacking a bit, so that you're using the strongest version instead of all of them? For me it's part of the fun to know what protections an enemy has and how to remove them instead of just whacking away and conversely what kind of protections I need for a certain battle.

Where's the "Japanese gore film" option? The game is supposed to be rated M I believe? By default I think gore shouldn't be avoided, but shouldn't be encouraged either. I would use it sparingly, to make it more impactful when it is used and to avoid making it trivial (and the game becoming cartoony). Maybe some high level spells can rip enemies apart for example, or being hit by a cannon could leave a hole . The goriest effects however I think are achieved with added dialogue, detailing the looks and adding smells, sounds and the feeling of a scene. PS:T did this rather nicely, on a few occasions making my stomach feel uneasy, even when the visual part was non-existent.

How about something like in the original dungeon siege (disregarding the tetris) - each character had their own inventory, but you were able to open them all at once if you wanted. It was pretty neat in that regard: I think it also lends itself well to widescreen.

I do not like quest markers either. Just make sure the journals are informative and that's it. I especially hate quest markers that pretty much reveal more info that you're supposed to know. It happened that in some game or other I got a quest and had no idea where to go (yes, I was paying attention), with the quest marker pointing the way instead. I'd really like that avoided. And honestly I think in an non-continuous world they're not really needed.

Something like in KOTOR2 would fit I think, and you can skip it, too. I prefer a prologue tutorial you can skip as opposed to the first level being an extended tutorial. Another thing related to it: please please have all available mechanics info reachable at any time, written ingame or in the manual. I absolutely despise loading tips related to gameplay.

I really enjoyed finding the unique spells in PS:T. I hope to see something similar again. The method of gaining them and the spells themselves were usually connected by flavor, too. I guess wizards will have some staple spells as a base. Perhaps after completing certain parts of the journey (quests, regions,...) the wizard would be able to research new spells to the same theme. For example after completing a swamp region he could research an "entangle type" spell that is swamp based, or summon a "shambling mound thing". After witnessing the royal guard sacrifice themselves in order for their king to escape he could research the "Iron Body" spell. And so on. I think this would fit nicely with the concept of magic and souls being tied together and each individual having their own grimoire that only they can understand.