Sabotin

It was a genuine question. As far as I understood the process of these things the areas are basicaly "screenshots" of what is actually built in 3d, so it seemed that it's extra work to make it 2d after that, especially if they would look exactly the same (due to no paintover). But I guess I'll believe there are such "painting" areas as I'd like to see, it's just that not every random forest patch is like that . I wonder what kind of criteria was used to weigh this. How central to the game the ereas are (main quest temple or something)? How fast the player goes through them (random wilderness area you walk trough as opposed to an intricate dungeon which you explore inch by inch)? Just in general to optimize workload (save on unique assets)? Something else that comes to mind: there's usualy a bunch of texture mods etc. for rpgs, I wonder if someone will make a "paintover mod" for the areas that received less attention :D .

Why not just make the whole game 3d instead of these "hacks" to apply 3d effects to 2d environments? Was it faster/easier? I thought the whole point was to have heavy paintovers so that the backgrounds would look unique and organic, foregoing detail limits of 3d games.

How about some stuff about the setting? Events, organizations, people, etc. Stuff that makes the setting unique, even if just in subtler ways. But no politics! xD

I think multiple instances of a similar effect in spells is a good idea as it enables you to have more options, even within the same play style, without needing more complicated/unique mechanics. When picking spells you have to look at not only the base effect, but also think on its use in different situations. I think a fun spell is one that's useful some times and great other times. Having multi-component spells also allows you to have some effect you really like at multiple spell levels. While it constricts the role of a caster it also allows for a wider range of builds and play styles, without artificialy punishing the player. If someone likes to throw around fireballs and only throw around fireballs why limit them to using 3rd level spells 90% of the tme and waste most of the other spell slots? I'm not saying it's a good idea to only chuck fireballs, but maybe that player made it work by compensating with the rest of the party. It also makes building your caster more enjoyable when you're deciding what kind of effects you want at which levels. I mean you can take lv8 summoning spell and lv9 damage spell or vice versa, with both having some pros and some cons. It's like fine-tuning your playstyle or something. Another aspect of using similar effects is the competition for the slot at various spell levels. When you have 3 spells you want at a certain spell level, but can only cast 2 per encounter anyway. You can delegate, either learning similar spells at other levels or have other party members learn them. Even outside the same class, you can have similar effects, but have people use them differently. Take a wizard's 3rd level fireball, slap some buff on it and you have a lv5 priest spell. Now I like that each class has something "special" only they can do, but I also think it's good if they have abilities that are essentialy cloned, but changed in a way that provides flavor for the skill and options for the class, balancing the level, the effect and the conditions to use, to keep overall class feel separate.

One thing bugging me in the inventory screen: the stash button and the crafting button. Why can't both be icons or both be buttons with text, not one of each! xD

So wizards need something to survive the start of combat; some kind of temporary protection that's good for the start of every combat - a regenerating shield if you will . On a more serious note doesnt every caster have some sort of basic protection spell that would make them last long enough to be threatning? Or is the issue with AI not using them properly? I seem to recall the deal with casters in IE games was that their protections allowed them time to be dangerous. Perhaps at low levels before that it was more about the reliable damage and certain spells costing you the game, but I really can't remember exactly how it looked.

An Idea I've been juggling around my head: Make melee equipped characters/monsters emanate an aura with a heavy slow effect instead of the soft-lock thing that there is now. The area depends on the range of the melee weapon and simulates this threat area existing now. Only affects enemies (relative to the melee equipped person). The slow effect doesn't stack with engagement areas from other characters (i.e. no double strength slow if you have 2 enemies engaging you) Once you're caught you can walk away slowly (obviously only works if you're not being followed by the other character). If you have a skill that disengages you, you can use that and be moved outisde that particular engagement area or made immune to the slow. Every character would also have an options to force disengage (like the attack/cancel/talk to/guard buttons of IE games), which would function similarly as the aformentioned skills either moving you or making you ignore the slow for a second or two, but provoking a disengagement attack. The attack is not provoked if there's multiple characters inside the same engagement area unless the engager has appropriate feats/abilities. The player can't be sure how many caharacters need to be in the engagement area to not provoke a disengagement attack when force disengaging. When you are inside multiple engagement areas you provoke a disengagement attack from all of them. Reach weapons generate a larger engagement area, meaning you can engage people from further away, but also meaning that when fighting a non-reach weapon you can hit them before they get close enough to hit you (due to them being slowed from further away).

Is it correct that DT is applied before DR in the damage formula?

Some issues could be solved by having pathing take engagement into account. Characters would walk at a non-engagement distance from enemies by default, only moving closer when actively told to do so or that being the only way. That could avoid the situations where a pixel is the difference between engaging and not. As far as indicators go maybe they could change the selection circle instead of adding additional stuff on top of it. How about the circles losing their uniform color and start turning when engaged? (visual approximation, sort of) Or they could do something with the clover shaped targeting circles, like having "leafs" only when engaged, and show them turned to the enemy you are engaged with.

I saw that there's % damage resistance now in addition to DT, was that there before? If not that could be the reason for decreased MIG efficacy, as before it served as a form of direct DT penetration, thus increasing damage more than immediately apparent.

Could add something along the line of "if you take more than your max stamina of damage in 1 hit you're chunkified" to higher difficulties? (for example, dnd has this massive damage rule where if you take over 50dmg in a hit you have to save or die, regardless of your current health) How is health tied to stamina actualy (assuming the 1:1 ration they're doing in the future). If my character has 50 hp on 20 stamina, and gets hit for 30 dmg, he's now unconscious with 20hp? Or unconcious with 30 (since he only took 20 to stamina)? My view is that enemy AI should not be able to target downed characters (besides some special cases maybe as others have mentioned, just to spice it up). If you get hit bay aoe or something obviously you take damage, but I think it would look weird to have enemies apparently aware that they're going to die and martyr themselves just to troll the player. If you wanna have being unconscious penalized more (isn't there something that you're dead in 1hit if you fall unconscious and get up after combat?) you could add some dying mechanic. Like slowly losing hp or something (I saw dnd expanded these things a bit through the editions even). Would put more pressure on hp if you're making mistakes and I think the increased health they're doing for longer adventuring days can take some bleeding.

Wounding Shot and Driving Flight could be made into short self buffs pretty easily I guess. You could add some more similar buffs so the ranger can pick how to shoot his arrows/bullets. I'd have them on fairly short durations and unlimited use. The point being that the higher duration from int allows you to spend less time casting and more time shooting. Not sure how ranged weapons work, but it's often said that power>speed, so this might also be some indirect buff? Another idea would be to do something with recovery times. Interpreting a "multishot" as a buff that removes recovery times for shooting allowing you to shoot maybe 3 arrows uninterrupted or to temporarily kite an enemy. Although that would be weird for weapons needing reloading. Animal companions having active stuff sounds like a good idea. Expanding on that they could perhaps make up some combo abilities, where both the ranger and companion use something at the same time and if both hit get some 3rd benefit on top. Or make some conditional abilities, like Stalker's Link. "Can only be used on hobbled targets or targets being attacked by the animal companion" for example if we wanna get extra creative. Not sure if they trade stamina too, but if they do I'd put in some kind of stamina trade/heal ability, as in "Transfer xy stamina from ranger to companion, heal the transferred amount over moderate time" and opposite thing for the pet. Also what happens when the pet goes unconscious, I assume some kind of defensive penalty (stamina/health or whatnot, I remember wizarsds got -con when their familiars died in 3e)? Could have some "revenge" thing that gives the ranger +offense -defense, a-la barb rage. In general I think rangers should have a kind of self-sufficient "vibe". The ranger and the companion alone against the world and all that. Not sure how it is now, but they could make the ranger/pet dynamic flexible in term of roles, as in sometimes the ranger does the damage and the pet enables it and sometimes the pet is the one mauling the target while the ranger supports it. Anyway I'm pretty sure they have a bunch of ideas that didn't make the cut. Maybe they could streamline the direction of the class a bit and take another look.

And you're be wrong in that assumption. Without MIGHT attribute to modify the damage, the giant in your example would be for example wielding a massive club (or anything else really) that would be the factor for it's damage. By doing that, it means anyone wielding that given club, would hit just as hard as a giant, harder if his might is higher. You're also assuming that both player characters and monsters use the same template ("classes") and equipment. Which might not be true. For example in 2e the monsters did a certain about of base damage, with a bonus if they wielded a weapon, not the other way around. This is what I'm thinking is happening here, too. Keep in mind it's still a tailored experience for the player, not meant to be viewed from different angles. The attributes are just the "exposed" 10/11 base average from dnd. It's probably unfortunate that they opted for the dnd like 3-18 distribution, it it deceptive when it's a different beast that it's trying to portray.

Isn't one of the major points of the attribute bonuses that even if you distribute them suboptimally, the character is not gimped, but just plays a little bit differently? Anyway I chose to interpret them as being relative to the character - which they are mechanically. They can mean different things to different classes and races. A giant and a human can both have 5 might, yet the giant will still squish the human. Anyway the d&d stats are not any better, they have all the ambiguity issues that PE ones do, the only difference is that people dropped the questions and just ran with it. Besides I think the descriptions and the displayed bonuses should (I agree they need improvements atm) give you enough of an idea of what a stat does. And I guess there will be a manual. If someone doesn't want to read, this game is not for them anyway, right?

I may be mixing it up with something else, but didn't they say somewhere that it would work in a similar way as IE, but having passive checks on all the time and scouting mode increasing the frequency of the checks?

Maybe they should find a way to spread the damage a bit between characters. How does the AI work, do they ever switch targets or go for the squishies? In another thread there was complaining about 1-2 pt members taking all the damage and the ranged characters being best naked. Seems like it's related. Although it's probably best to make the mechanics robust over bandaging it with other systems.

How about making it so that health defines max stamina out of combat? Visually the red would fill from the top and after combat it would recede/progress up to the green bar's level. I think this would make the concept of health a bit more clear.

How come it's just waiting time added on the end instead of manipulation the animation speed? And what's the deal with twf, it seems it's the same as (1h+nothing) times 2, without the accuracy bonus?

He means it's a beta . I guess it would be more clear if I say that I think tweaking the amounts the attributes give would not solve the issues. It's my belief they need to change what some of them do or how they do it.

From what I can see the defining part of play customization is more or less entirely on class and gear. Attributes provide small bonuses to whatever and talents seem to have the same purpose (which I'm really disappointed about). I don't even think it's so much about the quantitative aspects of the attribute bonuses, but that they don't really seem to have an impact on play style. Looking at this testimony, the character plays exactly the same way, just being a bit better/worse at stuff. Like a high might wizard and a high int wizard, where the int one would focus on debuffs and the might one on damage. Apparently both just pick the inherently better spells?

This may sound a bit silly, but I was thinking that one reason why Might is such a favored stat for damage dealers could be that it's too simple and too direct compared to the others. When looking at what the attributes do, the others have some sort of strings attached, like derivative formulas or limited usability, but Might is just plain "you're better at your job", regardless of anything else. An idea would be to change the damage increase to be some sort of average or minimum damage increase, as in you "roll" higher numbers on your damage rolls. This would reduce burst damage in favor of reliability, acting as an approximation of armor penetration (rolling damage higher than DT negation more often). I'd still keep it relative to the weapon damage, thus still favoring weapons with high damage variance (usually big hitters). I think that would still fit with the rp side of things, generating muscly barbarians and mighty mages (cannon wielding rangers?), with light weapon users getting less out of the attribute (or rather getting more out of dex in terms of dps increase). A negative side could be that this may be somewhat taking away from the distinctiveness of fighters, since they're advertised of being very reliable even in terms of damage, but I think the increases should be small enough to even it out.

Do you think that it's enough if they make those two attributes more compelling? The current situation is also that the system might as well have 3 points possible in a stat instead of 18.

Did you make any comparison between weapons and a dex/mgt build? Maybe the issue is you always have both of these stats maxed on the damage dealers, so the big weapons are better suited?

Maybe they should change it to be some sort of nonlinear progression, too? Some concerns were raised that stats are too often 18s and 3s, because the differences are not really noticeable without a big disparity in a stat? One thing I'm also interested to know: The INT stat increases AoE, but does it do that with the area itself or with the radius?

In addition to the other comments, I'd like if there was some class road map or something shown during the leveling process, where I could see what abilities etc. my character gets at what level.