jethro

If people complain that items cost too much then I would say mission accomplished. Because that is the point were money really is valued as a scarce and needed resource. There is nothing wrong with someone not getting everything on a single playthrough. I meant to read everything first before posting my own comment, but this thread is growing so fast ;-). I'll just say my piece (some of which was already said): Money Sinks: * Crafting should cost money, preferably because a blacksmith does the crafting and has to be paid. Or if you really want to keep the crafting skill in the game there should be ingredients that have to be bought. * consumables are fine, just don't add buff potions (similar to buff spells, either they get used never or for every fight, then they are a chore) but resistance potions, healing potions, potions that allow tactical variations * Quests, i.e. bribing, information gathering, getting access to areas Examples: Buying expensive stuff (tapestries,chandeliers,jewelry) for your stronghold to get accepted by a wealthy circle so that you get access to a specific area. This would even give a purpose to the stronghold. You try to bait some bandits with cash you give to a poor urchin and tell him to show off his money a bit. You get the bandits but the urchin vanishes with the money. You later find him in another city where he already spent all that money Such a money sink is even possible on the main quest. To fix the bug that players could already have spent all money available to them on other stuff, add an alternative solution to the quest that pisses off the trader faction (which makes prices for you higher, you practically pay off the debt) The good thing about quests that cost money: a) Players who do many side quests get naturally more money, but they also get most of the money quests to burn away the money. b) Money lost through quests is gone 100% (while vendor stuff can be sold again, so only removes part of the money) * buying books (medieval books were VERY expensive), faction buy-in. By the way: The vendor buy/sell ratio for items is IMHO the easiest point to affect how much money is in the game. The ratio should be really low on higher difficulty settings (so that the money you get for loot is really low compared to what things cost). Most RPGs I have played simply made that ratio too high, I think it was 0.25 in IE games. Make it 0.1 and you should have less problems providing enough money sinks

Sadly this would lead to much armour swapping (it really would need to be a one click solution). And also it would lead to your best armour being often wasted in your inventory because you didn't expect the heavy/end/boss fight just now or forgot to swap. It would be a similar mechanism to buffs, as trivial and boring.

Too bad the degradation topic overshadowed the much more important topic of the overall crafting system. While I like crafting generally, the crafting in nwn2 left me cold. You could craft anything you could also find as loot which made finding items boring. It also made legendary items mundane as you saw the underlying mechanic of the item system too clearly. While the system Tim Cain described in the update sounded very much like the nwn2 system he wasn't really definite on some of the concepts, so I still have hope. Here is what I think crafting should look like: 1) Loot != (aka not equal) crafted items. There should be lots of items only available through loot and lots of items only available through crafting. None of these should be essential to finishing the main quest or killing a specific type of monster (but they could be essential to solving a side quest, there is no rule that all quests should be solvable by anyone). Why? Because obviously crafted items and vendor items can't be consistently better than anything found in loot, otherwise finding stuff will be as exciting as in Diablo 3 (and I'm sure that D3 will be on any curriculum in game design courses for how not to devalue loot). But to be relevant it has to be better at least sometimes. That is a real conundrum if you can craft anything that you can find. Even if you can balance the game so that they are comparable you still make any loot substitutable by crafting and vice versa. "Oh damn, I couldn't find a good sword yet, I have to run around with the vendor sword. What glorious surprise if I find one" is replaced by "Oh nevermind, I plugged all the big holes with crafted items. If I find a cool sword, it will just be marginally better". Sure, it is less random, but also less exciting as you always have good items in any slot. The solution is clearly to separate items for loot and craft. For example: Amulets that boost constitution are only found as crafting recipes (maybe with the exception of a few vendor items of lower quality) while amulets that boost accuracy are only found as loot. You can play the game without the crafted amulets, no question. But if you want to do crafting you get a real bonus for the skill points you put there. And that without invalidating any loot you might find as accuracy amulets are still relevant to your archers. 2) No spreadsheet. Don't make it so regular that wooden plank always gives +1, iron plank +2, smaragd gives fire damage, opal gives cold damage... This is a wonderful system for database programmers (yes, a database should be normalized, a game not), also it is easier to implement no doubt. But a) this is mundane, boring, b) it means that as soon as all your stuff is +1 and better, wooden planks are useless anywhere in the world, especially in the inventory of all the traders and in yours. There should be really cool and mighty items to forge that need a lowly wooden plank

Since the degradation seems not to be something happening every two or three fights for a specific weapon or armour and the effect seems to be quite small, I would guess it is not a mechanic you can exploit tactically in fights.

I don't mind degradation as it seems to be on a leisurely schedule and the effect is relatively mild. I just hope Obsidians artists don't have to paint each of those items twice just to get the worn effect visible. Hopefully this can be done with a texture overlay. Otherwise I would deem it too expensive for so small an effect. I.e.: Degradation brings us: 1) another use for the crafting skills, so that others, i.e. front line fighters, will take it too on a smaller level. Ok. and 2) money sink. But what I don't get here is the mathematics of it: Practically this is just a percentage shaved off the loot money you collect. Because the duration of a fight doesn't grow and the profit would generally grow as fast as the worth of your equipment, a typical fight is always costing you a fixed amount of the money you get out of the fight. So the end result is the same as if you just decreased all loot value by that same percentage. It doesn't solve the problem of the stronghold (someone not taking it has still more money than others) and it doesn't solve the problem of side quests generating money (someone who makes more side quests still has more money by the same percentage). The only problem it seems to help with is that if you avoid combat you get less loot, but also you don't degrade your weapons as much. Since you also get quest rewards that don't have this percentual shave-off and practically are more worth to the player, it really closes the gap between "brutes" and "angels".

Since you accrue a lot of stuff through questing/looting the typical party has all the stuff it needs. And for the price of the best item you can buy 5 items that are just a tiny bit worse. Why do you declare bancruptcy because you only can afford to either A) substitute your sword of uber 6d8 +1d6 cold with a sword of uber 6d8 +1d8 cold or B) your ring of almeighty with a ring of almeighty +1HP ? Many players explore every corner of the game world without being packrats. Frankly I don't care what a packrat can buy by games end. I assume the game will be balanced for normal players who may explore from 33%(?) up to 100% of the game world and those players should not be buried in gold. They should still like to open a gold treasure chest because the gold has value for them. And as soon as they can't buy anything anymore because they bought everything worth buying that feeling is gone. At that moment gold becomes worthless.

I wouldn't mind some high end gear on the market, just so that the gold you earn has value. You have to be able to spend that gold for something. If not, finding gold treasure becomes useless. But that doesn't mean that merchants are packed with high level stuff. A good ratio might be one or two items of highest level for each class (at outrageous prices), the rest for your eight or ten item slots you can only find through questing. Since Brennecke revealed that they won't have those +x modifiers but distinct armor for the power progression and they are limited in the amount of different armor they can produce (by budget and time) I would guess that you likely will get your wish. And that is not a bad thing: A moderate power scale makes you less dependent on whether you completed all side-quests and found the corresponding loot.

There is a difference between "can't buy any highest-level item at end-game" and "can't buy all highest-level items at end-game". I was arguing to prevent the second possibility to occur. Because if you can afford everything, everything becomes cheap (in the sense of "worthless").

There is a small problem here: If you find usefull magical items as loot you have to find enough so that whatever people you have in your party you find stuff for them. If you train your fighter to use halberds it would be frustrating if you didn't occationaly found a good halberd. Finding only gold and no items isn't as fun and makes the end game boring when you have too much gold (i.e. for those players who do *optional* side-quests)

Well, one thing I would like PE to handle correctly is that money is scarce, even at the end. Why should it be possible to buy all the best stuff at games end? A party that does all the quests and sells all booty to merchants should still only be able to buy one or two of lets say 10 highest level items. The rest of their equipment should be from loot and crafting, or merchant-stuff of lower quality. Why? It makes gold coins GOLD coins and not "ridiculous counter of my collecting habit". It makes you happy to find a stash of gold even in the later game and looting and crafting never become just icing on the cake because you can't dress your party solely from merchants. You NEED loot because merchants are only a means to fill a gap in your equipment. Also it adds replayability, "on my next playthrough I really want to try out the gold-plated-latinum staff of wonders instead of the bow of unlimted hurt". How can this be achieved without having items cost quadrillions of gold coins? You have a lot of loot you find and some of it must be of your level. To get some approximate numbers, in a typical quest you would find one or two items fitting to your level. At a specific level you can do lets say 15 quests before gaining a new level, so this means you will get 30 items at a specific level of which your party can use maybe a third, i.e. 10. The rest you sell at a ratio 1:4 (in a typical IE game) of what you have to pay for it. Even ignoring a barter skill and additional gold loot you can afford to buy 5 items of your level with that. Definitely too much. Solution: Merchants don't buy at a ratio 1:4, they buy at 1:10 or even better 1:20. You make money with each piece you sell, but it is small. At 1:20 you could afford exactly one item of your level to buy from a merchant (with my very back-of-an-envelope calculation ;-). And probably another one from the gold loot. Any hole in my logic?

@Lephys: Full ack. The problem with mini-games is (at least in my experience) 9 out of 10 get on your nerves after the first 2 plays, and 1 out of 10 is mildly fun. If it was easy to make interesting mini-games they would be published by the hundreds as separate apps on smart phones (which they are, but again there is a ratio of one good game for a dozen or more miserable ones) I also would add that the majority of PE backers don't like real-time/reaction/fast-click challenges, otherwise we would have wanted an action-RPG. So this mini-game should not consist of clicking at the right moment but should engage your brain. Here some simple ideas: ---- 1. a traditional puzzle. You find small pieces of the recipe/construction plan and have to fill in the puzzle. The more you have of the plan (and it should be hard to find ALL the pieces) the better the change of getting a good item. ---- 2. For every recipe a different heat curve of the furnace has to be followed. The closer the better the chance of an exceptional weapon. You have 8 rounds and in each round you can do one or more of these actions: 1) add some amount of coal (this drops temperature this round, but increases temperature the following rounds. Also if too few coals are left the temperature falls sharply) 2) use the poker (slight temperature increase, more coal gets burned) 3) use the pump (sharp temperature increase, more coal burned). The coal you can have in the fire is finite so you have to put in coal at least twice, temperature increase or decrease is always plus a random factor to make it non-deterministic. If this is too simple, some other actions (dipping the weapon into the water basin for example to cool it, hitting the weapon a few times with the hammer) or another parameter you have to keep in line (the elasticity of the metal) with help of the actions makes it more complex. In a way this is a more complicated version of the really old computer game lunar lander (see wikipedia) where you had to type in the thrust of the rockets to get the landing module to the moon surface without crashing. The player should be encouraged to train with a few simple recipes before trying the important ones so he doesn't need save game reloading to train. ---- 3. You have an above view of the weapon. The weapon is parceled into small squares with a number in each square. That is the thickness of the weapon at that spot (this should initially be a random value). A sword for example would have its highest thickness along the middle and going thinner at the corners. You can hammer on any square which will decrease the thickness but increase it in all 4 (or 8 ) surrounding squares. To prevent a simple algorithm from solving the puzzle this thickness distribution to neighbour squares should probably be a bit random.

Yep, buff spells are boring. So instead of generally helpful buffs each buff spell should only have a very narrow application. * A protection spell against blunt damage, another for piercing damage another for fire damage... No protection spell against any damage. No stoneskin (except if the duration is really short) * An attack buff against elementals, another against orcs... No attack buff against everyone. Why not just limit the duration instead? Because if the duration is short you will be casting it before every fight (if low level enough to not hurt your mana pool) -> boring.

In every AD&D game high level mages were far superior at combat than warriors. Same reason, because it is what the class trains for, getting to know really damaging combat spells. Or did you mean combat only as sword-to-head physical combat? Then yes, a fighter is more capable than a mage at that. Note that Obsidians definition of combat is probably a wide one where anything that hurts or avoids your party being hurt is part of your combat skill set. That doesn't mean that the mage can substitute for the fighter on the frontline. It just means every class has its use in combat and no class needs to sacrifice its worth in combat to also be good at diplomacy or crafting.

While I don't need an iron mode I can somewhat undertstand the need for one. The reason being that you really can't predict your future self or your reactions to circumstances perfectly. Nobody can say of himself "Every decision I did in later years I could have predicted when I was 20 years old". A self inflicted iron man needs exactly that, a 100% prediction what you will do a few weeks from now under very different circumstances and emotional states. Because you make a contract with yourself. Not a difficult contract, there is no downside yet. But when finally your party gets killed contrary to all the care you took then you are a different you and the situation changed and now there is a big downside. You have the power to renegotiate that contract (with yourself) and the only penalty is a loss of trust in your ability to play a self-inflicted iron-man, nothing else. Even someone who expects to hold on to that contract still knows: There will be a backdoor and "every man has his price".

I would postulate that it is nearly impossible to design a magic system for a fantasy CRPG that is logical (ok, we could but then it would be pretty unusable in CRPGs. There is no way you can create something like fireballs but not kill any person immediately by heating up his heart by a few degrees). We already subscribed to the dispension of disbelief, so it doesn't disturb me a bit. Did Obsidian already give a definite statement about how it will work in PE? I thought they just said that they weren't happy with resting as in AD&D and wanted to try something different. How different it eventually will be is still a lot of play testing away. Anyway, while resting is somewhat broken in CRPGs it still is the spell limiting mechanism of choice in most RPGs and CRPGs. While I can think of other mechanisms that should work there is no practical proof. Unlike memorization which is a relict best forgotten and where alternatives (like mana) have a proven track record.

Actually a CRPG working strictly with the movement of time and narrow time constraints would really create a new experience. You would really have to plan your next step, take distances into account, time management would be part of the tactical or even strategic decision. It would change a lot, for example main quest would be more pronounced, the number of side quests would shrink because you would only do the ones that can be done on the side without losing any time. I really would like to play such a game. But in a "normal" CRPG with hundreds of side quests time constraints can get in the way of the player. He isn't any more the one deciding what to do. Consequently this is a touchy subject with many people for or against time contraints and time management. One can argue the good and the bad sides of it, I just don't think it is worth the trouble just to save the Vancian system. You say the mechanic "Vancian" works very well in an RPG. But do modern pen and paper RPGs use the Vancian system? Sure, oldtimer AD&D uses it and it might still be the biggest and best known. But at least the RPG systems I played in the last years (7th sea/Legend of the five Rings, Deadlands/Hell on Earth), and also all the old ones I know or played (Palladium, Midgard, DSA, GURPS) don't use Vancian, all use a mana pool. Is it only luck or the selection of my social group that led me to avoid Vancian in all pen and paper RPGs? Or is Vancian only in a minority of systems and on the way out? When we look at all those pen and paper systems without a memorized spell list, we also see that they always keep mana low so that you can't spam spells, you have to manage your mana pool. A few examples of tactical decisions: You might have the spell to counter a blessing spell of the enemy, but it might cost more mana than the bless. So you have to decide whether to get into a bless/unbless artrition game or bless yourself or cast offensive. You might not counter an impressive guard spell of an enemy mage because that spell cost him most of his mana, so you ignore him and attack other enemies instead. You will have formidable bless or guard spells yourself, but casting them will cost you much of your offensive ability, so you have to guess whether you are safe enough with what your armour gives you or you really need them. Even if my narrow view of the RPG field should be myopic, those non-vancian pen and paper RPGs show at least that mana systems work and work well. PS: Forgot to mention that while all modern RPG system I know don't use memorized spells, they use various methods of replenishing your mana pool, among them resting. So resting itself isn't out, but it is just one of a few possible mechanisms.

Seeing that stuff is the most important thing in the game I'm happy to see that 100% of the production team is tasked with creating, refining and testing this stuff. But well, it is good to know they have the staff to handle the stuff Sorry, couldn't resist ;-)

Ironman mode, pffft. Real men play Mithrilman mode. But I guess that would be exclusive to AD&D, so please include Unobtainiumman mode. Also we absolutely need a 15 level deep dungeon and staffs. You now, real men...

I'm totally against moustaches. They are overpowered, impossible to balance against moles and characters with moustaches need double the amount of food.

Ah, another poll with incomplete options. I vote "No resting at all".

Yes, to hell with the Vancian system. No fight can be tailored to challenge your party fully because the designers must take into account that the party could be low on spells. Nobody learns spells for emergencies (like "remove curse") because in 95% of the fights you don't need it. Instead you sell out to the system and learn 8 magic missiles. Learning the right spells beforehand can only be done if you know who you are fighting. Most of the time you don't know. And even should you know, how often do you really make the effort to tailor your spells when you afterwards have to change it back to your "set for all occasions"? Contrast this to a mana system with slow regeneration in fights: You have all your spells available, even the seldom used. So when that one time comes when you would need the cool "turn stairs to slide" spell, you really have it. Yes, there is the danger that a few spells turn out to be the most effective, but the same happens in the Vancian system. ------------------------ I'm playing NWN2 MotB at the moment and what I really don't like: You can't see any spell effects on enemies. And even the log often doesn't tell you whether an enemy is affected or immune.

Well, then I take back my take back of the "Diablo" comment ;-). I was already wondering. All signs point to there being a level-cap and the continuation of the level-up progress in the expansion. How did IWD do that? Did they implement lots of levels above the first play-through to accomodate HoF mode or did it just get progressively difficult to play?

You got me there ;-) I don't buy that. A quest resolution is preceded with a builtup of tension. Upon solving the quest you get a feeling of accomplishment, so a level-up *ding* at that point is quite appropriate whereas it looks out of place when you just killed a measly goblin somewhere in the middle of a dungeon. You got a point if objectives are tied to quests and quests are so extensive that there are big gaps between those "reward"-points. In that case spreading out these points would be positive. Ah ok, didn't know about the Heart of Fury mode, take back the "Diablo" comment. I'm wondering why someone else created a "New Game+" thread here in the forum when HoF is exactly that ??? No, not stated by Obsidian, just my conjecture. Think about it, if you get twice the xp with a half party you will have a very uneven play. At first you will have it as tough as a normal-xp half party as your level is still similar. Then in the middle game you will have it as easy as a full party because your level will be higher. Then in the last third of the game you hit the level-cap and it will get tough again. So if you are over your head with too small a party on normal xp you will fail in the beginning or in the end of a double-xp game. If someone wants to play a half-party or a party of one I imagine he does so for the challenge. Fiddling with the difficulty setting is a much better way to make that possible than double-xp.

Is a) the reality argument again? No, in reality people don't learn alchemy when they kill an orc. And 30 more xp in the game makes you not fight a little better as you seem to imagine, your fighting changes only when you hit the next level, even in a kill-xp setting. And b) yes, it worked in the Infinity Engine because there were very few stealth or other solutions present. Note that PS:T had mostly objective based xp because there were more diplomatic solutions implemented. Now, it is true that very little kill-xp in a mostly objective-based system won't harm the balancing too much, the question is: Will for example 5 xp for an orc be enough for you when the gap to the next level is 100,000xp? This is not Diablo, there will be no balancing for high-level characters you reload into the game. The less than full party has no problem because it will level at the same speed than a full party (as each character gets the same xp, whether alone or with companions). In a well-balanced game a less than full party will have the same problems with mobs in the early game than in the late game. If someone still hits an unsurmountable obstacle in the main game he might look for side-jobs like side-quests or the mega-dungeon. But there again, whether you get the xp for some objective (like clearing level 2) or for the monsters in level 2 does not really matter.

I don't think these flags are necessary. They would be if you want to give different xp for different solutions, but only then. Normally the solution to a quest is your personal decision. No single solution should be the "right" one. An exception might be to giv more xp for a solution that is very difficult, but apart from that the game shouldn't judge you. That was one of the principles Avellone (I think) mentioned they want to adhere to. You also don't need the flags to implement world reactions. If you kill a member of a faction you can decrement the faction stat immediately. If you negotiate something with him you can increment immediately. There is the case that you got better with them through bargaining and then killing them afterward. But the penalty for killing them should realistically be much higher than the gain of one bargain success. If you make a bussiness deal with a yakuza and then kill one member of his organisation, guess which action he will value more.