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jethro

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Everything posted by jethro

  1. jethro
    For Obsidian it had two. 1) money sink 2) incentive for all party members to take crafting skill
  2. jethro
    Engame is not the real world equivalent of old age. You play a specific story that might have a duration from days to years to centuries (if you are immortal). Most RPGs I played would span less than a year. It is not unreasonable to assume that in some of these stories the PC has a chance to accumulate wealth while adventuring and especially after defeating the main antagonist in the end who might have amassed some wealth (but that is game end, not end game). But equally likely is that his main motivation is something else (preventing worlds end, revenge, freeing a loved one, i.e. the main quest) and all his "earnings" are invested into this goal. If you really want to compare it to the real world, in the real world there is always something to buy with your wealth, there is never the situation: "Ok, I have the money, but all I can do with it is swim in it" (the famous Dagobert Duck conundrum ;-)
  3. jethro
    Didn't read the first pages of this thread, so pardon me if my arguments might not be new. But I could imagine that for role playing purposes it would be nice to notice that you are in a frontier town and from the hunch that you might get a good price for your weapons start to sell them. This might still count as immersion but it is different from simply noticing "Oh, cool the prices are different everywhere" (which I find lacking as a reason as well). Also, if money is really scarce (on higher difficulties) it could even make sense to actively research price differences and make a map of what's expensive where. I would say it is a feature with limited value, but also something that wouldn't be difficult to implement. At least as long as you don't make regonal prices dynamic.
  4. jethro
    I don't see where a fixed background can be more flexible. Lets assume we have backgrounds extroverted and introverted. Now the designer writes dialog options for extroverted and introverted characters and the extroverted will only see the extroverted option. Now without backgrounds the designer can likewise add an extroverted and introverted dialog option(*) and show both. For the player this is obviously more flexible, because he has more options. And it wouldn't even be wrong to sometimes choose the introverted option because humans have mood swings and don't act the same every time. Correct me if I'm wrong. (*) I'm assuming that the designer has the same amount of time for the dialogs in both versions, anything else would be an unfair assumption.
  5. jethro
    All the talk got me thinking what weapon degradation system I would like. So ... I would have liked a system where durability randomly goes down and there is *no* way at all to repair it. Making weapons and armour essentially long lasting consumables. Why? 1) It would lead to more weapons get used. Instead of finding a good weapon and doing 1/3 of the adventure with it, selling all the other equally good weapons, you would actually use 2 or 3 of them, adapting to their strenghts and weaknesses. Game Designers could place more loot stuff into the world because more of it would be used. 2) Excellent money sink 3) No management hussle (like repairing whenever in town) except that you might like to always have a spare with you. 4) Different strategies possible: Either always use the best weapon and look for replacements or use weaker weapon on weaker enemies and prolong like of best weapon 5) You could add an effect that when a weapon breaks it often does additional damage due to the splinters hitting the defender. This would diminish the danger to lose a fight just because of a breaking weapon and also create the possibility of an interesting tactic: Collect nearly broken weapons to use them in a difficult fight. Disadvantages: 1) Players with unhealthy weapon fixations ;-) won't like it 2) May lead to frustration with players who just can't see their best weapon slowly moving to obsolence. Won't be popular with players who don't like degradation at all. Probably would have to be turned off for easy or even normal play so that the game retains mass appeal.
  6. jethro
    Well, in that case I wouldn't have been indifferent but against it. What you seem to propose is buffing in sheeps clothing (at least if in the frequency you are implying). And I don't like buffs without a tactical component (I don't consider the decision "if hard fight ahead then buff else no buff" an interesting tactical decision) Yes, how you sell something is very important (we all are subjective animals, objectivity is a myth). The question is, would the relabeling just sell it to us now or really work through 40 hours of play?
  7. jethro
    I just gave my reasoning why I'm not sorry it is gone because there was the accusation no one was bringing reasons or bringing only strawman reasons. I tried to be as accurate as possible in as few words as possible, without inventing circumstances and looking only at worst cases. Without talking about tediousness at all! There were reasons to keep it, reasons to change it and reasons to remove it. It wasn't a clear cut case, but a decision had to be made. Someone made the decision and this thread is now growing endlessly because a few people can't accept that decisions can be made even after some feature was described in an update. And god beware that decisions can be made after hearing us out!! Read your post again, it wasn't much about degradation, it was about the fact that a decision was made, not on a poll (obviously) but on arguments that you don't accept (and possibly hidden facts that only the developers know)
  8. jethro
    I disagree. If someone invests in crafting, they should be rewarded for their effort. Why shouldn't you be able to get something cool from crafting?And it's not supplanting loot, it's supplementing it. You could say, I want to eat the cake and have it too ;-). I want to craft and get something cool out of crafting and still have fun finding loot. What I am against is that crafting can do nearly everything you can find in the wild (as it was done in NWN2 for example). Since you could craft bastard sword+4 flaming as well as long sword+4 flaming it wasn't necessary for the designers to make sure that both weapons were found as loot. It makes it easy to be up-to-date in every item slot you have thereby making progression smooth, predictable and boring. The situation where you have to make do with inferior stuff and make hard decisions about what to use simply never arises. For example you never need to consider switching to a different weapon class because you haven't found a good weapon for your main class yet.
  9. jethro
    A reason I can see to dislike degradation (as it was proposed) is that it doesn't lead to interesting tactical or strategic decisions. You can only save some money in exchange for xp if you give your party a level or two of the craft skill (making it a substitute of the haggle skill). You could save money with delaying repairs on weapons you want to sell shortly IF sale price was independent of degradation. If not, the only way to save money would be to fight with some weapons or armour at durability 0% (which would prolong fights thereby wasting money again on the weapons and armour not at 0%). It would be *very* difficult for this to have a noticable effect on your purse even if money is scarce. Not in any sensible relation to the effort you would have to put into it. Now for all this to work comfortably you would need to have a special (and not usable for anything else) interface where you would see all degraded weapons on your party. Alternatively buttons in the sale-interface, but that would be an additional burden as you would have to flip through every party member for maintenance. Also 25%-degradation-icons for every single weapon and armour piece (alternatively it might be possible to use a single overlay-texture for all pieces). And some programming to make it all work. Now is it worth it? For tactical or strategic decisions alone? I have my doubts. The other two reasons for it are to make the craft skill have a use for everyone and as a money sink. The first reason is ok in my opinion, the second not that compelling. Mathematically the durability effect could be substituted one to one with a lowering of the price items are bought by vendors. I don't mind if degradation is in or not, but I have my doubts whether it could have achieved anything it set out to do, and my greatest doubts were about the necessity as a money sink which was (for me) the most important feature.
  10. jethro
    In IE DnD games there were a lot of different weapons classes but most of them practically identical to play. So they only provided the impression that you had a wealth of different weapons (hey, there's a bastard sword+1, a long sword+1 and a scimitar+1). But the wealth was an illusion. And you had to ignore whole classes of weapons outright because none of your party members was specialized in them. Solutions: a) Lots of weapon classes, but few weapon skills that each allows using more than one class of weapon b) Few weapon classes. Advantage in this case is that the weapons could be very distinct in their play style. This might not be possible with a) because of the substantial effort to design and balance alll the classes. c) Crafting fills the void of missing weapons. I don't like that option since crafting shouldn't supplant the exitement of finding loot. But it could work well for classes of weapons that are of foreign design. You don't expect to find many of them in loot, but the starting town might have a weaponsmith from that country who has a few. He also knows where to find better recipes. d) I also think it could be an interesting mechanic to have one class of weapons where the information text on the skill informs the player that this type of weapon is very seldom. But they are also the best weapons you can find.... One way to do this is to give these weapons a special intrinsic ability (for example vampiric) besides the normal stats. Now a player can decide if he wants to play it safe and take other classes or gamble that he will find one. Obviously this would work better in a random-loot game, though
  11. jethro
    I'm pretty sure that if I had offered the option "I want a good balance", simply everyone would have taken that option, including me. The problem is that the range of playstyles is vast and the chances that you finish the game far above or below some optimal point are quite high. What I wanted to find out is on which side of this optimal point people would prefer to be if they couldn't avoid it. Or if it is unimportant to them (the third option).
  12. jethro
    Really? weapon degradation is new, innovative and different? It's in World of Warcraft (!!!) and hundreds other MMOs, Fallout 3, .... To be fair, the exact way how they put it in is new, but you can say that about the complete rule set of this game. Durability as money sink can be substituted completely by getting less for vendoring your loot, both is a percentage drain on your loot value. But only one needs extra UI space and programming and player time without any real decisions. But the more important point: Why should stronghold be only beautification crap? Only one example: You can put a training academy into your stronghold for 400.000 gold. Since it can be assumed that you will use that facility and its trainers, everyone in your party gains +1 constitution permanently (maybe immediately, maybe a few months later). Next upgrade buys a few famous grandmaster teacher to your academy for 1.2 Mio. gold. This gains you +1 AC for everyone (or bonuses dependend on the specific teachers you hire, if a more fine-tuned approach is needed). +1 AC is a great bonus, but it costs a lot. You can decide if it is worth it or the legendary weapon you can buy for 500.000 gold at your secret society is the better investment.
  13. jethro
    Two remarks on this: 1) The number is even smaller compared to all who will ever play this game, but Obsidian can only ask and see how many answer. And if a third or half of all answers have a problem with it it is at least worth taking a day to think about it. 2) In my recollection Josh said "We put this feature in because of reasons A and B. Do you see better ways to do A ?" (with A being money sink, B being skill usefull for all). I don't know if any of the solutions we came up with were news to them or helped at all, but they found another and probably better solution, because otherwise they would have kept the old solution. Having trust in the developers doesn't mean to think them infallible. It doesn't mean that solutions they come up with are perfect at the first, second or even third iteration. Some game developer told the story of how he had finished developing a game, but it just wasn't fun. He tuned the parameters again and again, overextending funds, getting really frustrated. Before giving up and just shipping the game he made another seemingly inconsequential change and bang, somehow it worked. He didn't really know why exactly, but he found the sweet spot and the game became a huge success. I even heard of aircraft designers having asked pilots about their opinions.
  14. jethro
    I think you misunderstand the options a bit. If there are compelling things to buy for the stronghold in the late game, then there is a use for that money. See option1: "I should always have a use for my money". I don't mind if I run around with 1 Mio. gold if at that time I can buy a meaninful upgrade to my stronghold for 700k and one or more items for 200k-500k each that would enhance me. But if I have 1 Mio. gold and there is nothing sensible (i.e. that would make my situation better in the broadest sense) left to buy then I feel there is too much money in the game. Some like it or don't mind it, but for me money should always be useful and I should always want more, because there still is a carrot (any carrot) before my nose If someone doesn't buy stronghold upgrades and has lots of money left, then yes, thats ok. Also if someone wants to do only the main quests, he has to cope with the fact that he doesn't get as much experience, so he might not be at the highest level. Solution: He should either play at normal or easy difficulty or expect to get into more difficult fights at the end. When I played most IE games, I didn't hold back with my money. But still I had lots of money at the end and nothing to spend it on, just because I did most of the side quests. Also the difficulty of the main quest tanked at the end because I naturally had all the best stuff on me. But thats the thing: At least on higher difficulties the game should expect the player to have done everything to be prepared and not just sailed through on the shortest path
  15. jethro
    I may be wrong, but AFAIK PE has a limited amount of money. You still need sinks to offer something in return for that money. Since the number of monsters is also limited, the degradation through combat would have been limited as well even though it looks like a systemic sink. I don't get what you mean with your last sentence. Loot may be limited, but so is the weaponry/armour you can buy and you can't put more than one item in any slot. As you continue to play your wealth increases (partly from having ever more expensive items on you), your experience increases. How can your chances of victory dwindle?
  16. jethro
    Nice that someone else finds this plot so interesting. There could be so many sides and branches to this quest to impress the local power players. For example: There is no simple counter you can see. Different actions and things you buy or put in your stronghold add to your perceived wealth but you don't know how much. You just might have to check regularily your mail until the invitation to the weekly ball finally arrives There might be a quest where an alternative reward is an old painting you can put on the wall of your stronghold. There is a dealer in antiques who sells lots of old stuff. What will impress the rich, what not, what will even make a negative impression ? Maybe you have some skill that gives you hints. Or there might be someone knowledable who might help you if you do this one thing for him .... If not, use common sense. There is a forger who could make you a forgery of a famous painting. But for that to be accepted as the real deal you might have to start a false rumour as well that that painting was really sold to you or bribe the art expert of that rich circle you want to get into to lie for you. You could get a useless but important sounding title by bribing magistrate and some other officials You could pay a taxidermist to prepare heads of famous monsters you killed to put them on the wall of your stronghold There could be a quest that allows you to to become adopted by a prince Naturally giving lots of cash to churches or the local orphanage will further your cause. Everyone of your party with gold rings in their inventory helps, gold or smaragd amulets only if the party member is a female. Bribing of members of the elusive circle itself or of secretaries of the circle might be a good way, but first you have to find out who you can bribe. This could really be a quest where role play becomes much more important than fighting stuff and helpful stuff can turn up in unexpected quarters
  17. jethro
    Sure, there never will be the case that all players end up with roughly the same money. Giving 10 million gold to that vendor for the uber weapon will make one player poor, the other will sit on 10 million. But most if not all older RPGs erred on the side of too much money I believe. Even on higher difficulties. One of the problems is that the designers have to provide proper incentives for the player to use that money. There was a lot of talk about this in the update thread and a lot of ideas, hopefully some can be incorporated. But AFAIK usually developers have to account for the amount of side-quests you do, ideally you should be able to play the game even if you do 0% of the side-quests. So they find some point between 0 and 100% and design for that. I don't have the slightest idea where they put that point, but I would guess 50% or less seems likely. And it seems that often this sweet spot isn't changed for higher difficulties. Maybe because they think that even there it should be possible to do 0% of the side quests or they forget that money is also influencing difficulty. My opinion is that at least on higher difficulty there dosn't need to be a guarantee to get through with the main quest alone. Nobody expects that Frodo would have succeeded at Mordor without all the experiences he collected inbetween. It should be clear that you have to do side quests, live and learn a lot, to be able to get from dish washer to the guy who stopped Ungtor the World Devourer. So I would propose that on hard and above difficulty the game money and the fights should be balanced for players that do 95% of all quests. This all "as far as I know". If it is balooney it would be nice if some dev corrected this urban legend ;-)
  18. jethro
    You got a point there ;-)
  19. jethro
    My first cRPG was I believe Might & Magic 6 and it had a really effective money sink: You could improve a skill only by visiting a trainer for that specific skill and give him lots of cash, more the higher the skill you wanted. You also needed enough skill points or the right level, can't remember. Part of the fun was also finding the right trainer for the skill you wanted to improve. Now I could imagine that a similar mechanism could work in PE. You would just need a training hall in every major city (and the starting town irrespective of size). That training hall would have experts for every skill possible. Only for the highest skill levels you would have to seek a grand master of that skill (giving nice exploration quests for the end game). Advantages: 1) Very adjustable money sink. 2) No leveling up inside dungeons (more realistic: Why does the mage know new spells in the middle of a dungeon?). Makes leveling up something special for which you have to go to town. 3) Another reason to visit a city once in a while (which also makes triggered events easier to include) 4) Makes it possible to start quests at that point or questify skill upgrades. For example an aspiring master paladin has to do a honourable quest to succeed. A master wizard has to summon an elemental in front of his peers... This is used in some pen&paper RPGs as a money sink as well (midgard for example), by the way.
  20. jethro
    I think most people won't really notice. I expect there will be a button to fix all the stuff in your inventory when you visit the blacksmith. So most people will just hit that button from time to time or when they see one item with the worn graphics. So they never will get into a situation where one of their weapons or shields really is degraded.
  21. jethro
    A peddler of goods in medieval time was called a pawn broker I believe. And you got less gold out of him than from traders in RPGs. So we should lower that ratio anyway to make it more realistic. In more detail: As far as I know a typical buy/sell ratio in IE games was 0.25, i.e. you could sell an item for 25% of the value it was sold for. Now that ratio is or was achievable with used books (only if in mint condition), but I doubt you get nearly as much for arbitrary items from a pawn broker. Ebay is different, auctions for the masses, not available in medieval times. You probably could get better prices if you invested a lot of time in selling the stuff, but you would give up adventuring and take up trading, at least for a time. Not something I imagine my adventure troupe to do. But really, if you want realism and believability, you are at the wrong place in a D&D inspired fantasy RPG.
  22. jethro
    Josh Sawyer said: "I've heard people complain about having too much gold in every game I worked on. Until the end of F:NV when we introduced (entirely optional) GRA unique weapons that cost a fortune. Then people complained that the items cost too much." While I think gold availability is ideally suited to be a difficulty setting, there is the question what people really want. I would suspect that most of us wouldn't complain if they couldn't afford every weapon in a game, but I can't be sure. So here is another poll. If you think that too much money isn't a problem, think about this: If the player gets money too easily he can buy overpowered items in the shops. This means either shops can't have any good items or items found/looted or gotten from quest lose their appeal/value.
  23. jethro
    If 90% of the vocal minority reading this forum were thrashing a feature (which isn't happening in this case though) in all likelihood most of the non-vocal majority not reading the forum would also thrash this feature.
  24. jethro
    I see. You obviously know what the non-vocal majority wants. When did that mind-reading skill become apparent?
  25. jethro
    I think you misuderstand "sink" to being something negative. It isn't. You just need sinks if you have wells of something, otherwise your world will overflow with it. Enemies for example are, among other things, damage sinks, but nobody looks at it that way because your damage well (i.e. your sword) is an infinite source. You just have to balance how much damage you can extract from the well at a time, not the sum. skill points are a good example of the problems you get when you have too many of them. Because if you have too many, your party gets too strong and combat becomes boring. Or it could even be the case that you don't have any sensible skill left that you can put them in, which makes leveling up boring. Fallout 3 is a good example, I was maxed out on any skills I wanted long before I was at maximum level. Not game-breaking, just not ideal. So you want to avoid too much money as well, since that makes money worthless and it also might make you too strong if you can buy high-level items too early.
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