metiman

Very well, MC. You are forgiven. Just don't do it again.

I think I can guess which side you are on. Clearly not the side of righteousness.

What is a shield wall? Some kind of spell or a bunch of real shields?

In general I like the idea of fatigue based magic systems. They have excellent narrative justification and they integrate quite well into other aspects of the game. Fighters and and Rangers and Thieves can also have fatigue pools, although they should probably refill a lot faster during a pause in combat. I mean, how much swinging of a two handed sword can a mortal do in one day? Probably a lot, but there are still (Strength / Endurance based) limits.

Why would that not be the case? Dragon Age seems to be a kind of pivot point around here. If you liked it then you tend to like more modern game mechanics (Yes, I know there are going to be exceptions) and that's basically what the war is about. Traditional vs. Modern game and combat mechanics.

No point at all, Infinitron. It's not part of some vast strategy for galactic domination. I just thought the math of the Great Rift of Eternity was kind of interesting. It goes without saying that I am deeply hurt that you feel it is juvenile. I now may have to the offices of Electronic Arts to feel better about myself again. I do see this as a war and there are factions regardless of how you might want to designate them. How could anyone reading this forum possibly deny that? Whether my designations are 100% accurate is beside the point. There are factions. And this is not really even a forum. It is a battlefield.

I will admit that you are a bit difficult to categorize, but your affection for DA:O I think clearly puts you in the Bioware faction even if you didn't care for DA2. That seems to be a quite common position actually and I think it may have something to do with all of the Biowarians who are helping with this kickstarter. While it is true that Biowarians who dislike the direction that Bioware seems to be headed in post DA:O are more disenfranchised than those who like that direction (I cannot even imagine how bad DA2 must be) it is still a step above the position of the Traditionalist in terms of being accomodated by modern games actually being published. If you liked DA:O then you don't have a major problem with modern game mechanics and that gives you a much wider selection of games to choose from. An Old Biowarian would of course be expected to show up for what could essentially be seen as the real sequel to BG2, but with quality writing.

I never said that everyone would be happy. I don't think the anti-Traditionalist or Biowarian or whatever you want to call it faction would be at all happy with combat mechanics that are uncomfortably close to those of BG2. They will complain about it loudly and frequently. I just dont' think it is important enough to them to withdraw their pledges. I think some may reduce their pledges if the announcment were made that the combat is going to be more or less exactly like the IE games without any nextgen stuff, but not anywhere near the level they would after an announcement that they just don't have the budget to fit in romances. Haha. I'd break out the popcorn for that. The fallout would be fun to watch. I guess I think that an announcement that PE combat will basically equal BG2 would result in a net increase in funding as the Traditionalist faction's donation amounts jumped by orders of magnitude and the Biowarians' donations dropped slightly. I also think that there would be a net increse upon an announcement that at least some romances will be in as the Non-Traditionalists / Biowarians' donations jumped up, perhaps signfiicantly in the hopes of a true dating simulator, while the Traditionalists' donations dropped but only slightly.

Also there's nothing wrong with your mage getting attacked. It's combat. That's the sort of thing that is supposed to happen. I wonder how people would feel if you were also only allowed to attack the enemy with the most hit points and best armor.

I see a lot of people say: NO KILL IT WITH FIRE. Use your brain please? Aggro NEEDS to exist inside the game calculations otherwise kiting strategies are encouraged. Jeez. The IE games didn't have aggro. What I want is for the enemies to actually use their brains. Instead of just being a moron who attacks the least optimal target all the time.

Perhaps you need to start your own faction then. It's strange though. I could have sworn you were on our side.

Hmm Fourth Edition. That's a tough one. You don't like ME or DA. You liked some (unspecified) old RPGs. The problem with 4th Edition, what little I know about it is that it's mechanics are not all that much better than Dragon Age. It is still oriented around action gaming. Keeping the battle moving quickly. And convenience. Maybe you represent another faction, but those sorts of game mechanics are getting a bit close to those of Dragon Age or Obliviion. Very NextGen. All about making things easy. Now, everything I've heard about the 4th edition is based on what I have heard about it on the internet. So it may not be quite as bad as I am thinking. Did you dislike 2nd and 3rd Edition?

No. Until the developers themselves spread such rumors. I wasn't responding to user rumors. I was responding to comments from the CEO and the Lead Designer. But if the developers again imply things which seem to indicate that the combat will be awful then, yes, I would again withdraw my support. Why should I support a game that is not only not the kind of game I want, but isn't even the game they promised? The only reason I was interested in the project in the first place is because of the radical promises that were made about the type of game it was going to be.

DId I mention the story in my rant? I hope not. I suppose the story is the one area where we are all pretty much united. Neither faction wants a bad story. We all want a good compelling story. But for some of us the wrong combat mechanics could ruin the story. I never got to experience the story in Alpha Protocol for instance because I didn't care for the combat mechanics. I could say the same for Dungeon Seige 3. I don't want that to happen to this project.

Well it's actually not a third faction per se. It's the same faction but just with a different estimate of how the project is likely to end up. I suppose you could divide the faction into the Pessimists and the Optimists. At that time I was with the Pessimists due to what both Feargus and Sawyer said about cooldowns. It sounded an awful lot like DA:O style cooldowns were probably in the game. Then Sawyer comes here and posts that that was not what he meant by cooldowns. He was just looking for some mechanic to avoid the tedium of walking back and forth between dungeon and camp. He also seemed to be leaning in favor of a slightly modified Vancian system. Which is too my liking. [edit] There was also the quote from Sawyer that was so important to me I decided to use it as my sig. I think it is by far the most important thing I have heard from Obsidian this whole time. It's another thing that has reassured me. So now I am planning to back the project probably at the preorder $25-$65 level. If we get some more specific promises from Obsidian with respect to the whole insta-rest mechanic Sawyer is thinking about and if it sounds like it will either be optional and fully avoidable or it will not be in at all then I'd start looking at greater than pre-order level tiers. More specifically the $140 - $500 range. I really do want to vote with my dollars very badly and I also want the game to have as much development money as possible if it is going to be what was initially promised. If it isn't going to be what was promised initially then I don't particularly care about the project. But at this point I think the game has an excellent chance of being decent. So I am prepared at least for the preorder level.

Well how about we make a deal? You can have your romances if I can have my BG2 style combat without any NextGen elements. What do you say? I don't think romances are the end of the world or anything. Actually I don't have a problem with romances that are actually part of the plot at all. I liked the whole Deionarra thing in PS:T very much. I just think romances as minigames are wasteful. But if they are optional and don't use up 90% of the game budget to write all that lovey dovey dialogue for them fine.

When an intelligent enemy moves to get around your fighter and squash your mage he will provoke attacks of opportunity in the 3rd edition system. I liked that. It was realistic. But intelligent enemies should still attempt to do so despite the extra damage it causes. Going after a fighter with 300 hp and tough armor makes no sense when there is a mage with only 45 hp nearby. A gelatinous cube otoh, well... Or really anything that doesn't have eyes or some other means of 'visual' identification. In that case it's still not about aggro or even who is causing it the most damage. It's about who is closest and probably who it started attacking first. Intelligence should be modeled in terms of the sort of target selection the monster uses. As far as attempting to block the enemy from getting past your fighter that might be something to roll against. Maybe your fighter will be succesful in preventing it and that's fine.

To be fair you didn't actually say RTwP or RTwaP. You said RT, which is very different. RT combat cannot be truly strategic. RTwaP can be because it isn't all that different from TB. In either case I can take a half hour to consider my next move if I want. While I think TB is inherently a superior system at least in terms of strategy (not always in terms of fun), I don't have a major problem with RTwaP unless it invariably ends up leading to things like cooldowns. I don't think it is mostly. I think it's mostly chaos and people reacting to immediate threats and trying not to get killed. I don't think you really have much time for intellectual pondering in a real fight of any kind. I think it's usually more instinct or muscle memory than tactics. So true RT without pause is the most realistic kind of combat (as is a first person POV). It is not the most strategic however. In fact I think it is difficult to argue that it is strategic at all when you don't even have time to think. Actually I still don't think there can be any debate about that. True RT is not really strategic at all. RTwaP is definitely strategic, but it lacks certain elements that make it somewhat less strategic. Which is I think why some of us at least slightly prefer ToEE combat to BG2 combat. There are a few more elements of strategy involved with TB than RTwP.

Well the tl;dr part at the bottom was intended for you. You should have just skipped to it.

"If I had the money" is not particularly helpful in terms of economic analysis. It's like "if I had a milion dollars..." Well, yeah. But you don't. The real question is about how important a game with traditional IE BG2 style combat is to you? If you only make $100/month and you donate $20 that would impress the hell out of me. I'd be trying to decide between about 25% to 65% of my monthly income if I thought Obsidian were squarely in my corner as far as staying true to IE combat. That is because games like these are not just rare, but virtually non-existent and I want to vote for more of them to be made with whatever amount I can manage to come up with. If Obsidian isn't really planning to make such a game then there's no point in doing that. I'd be voting for the wrong thing.

I took into account the varying economic situations in my post. Donations as a percentage of monthly income are more relevant I think than absolute amounts.

Jesus H Christ. I hate romances. I loather Bioware games. I'm old-skool, just not a head-banging, fundamentalist like you. Well I'm not sure where you fit in. You may just be in between the two factions. Or there may even be a third faction that I haven't been able to describe yet. Haters of DnD, but also of modern games. A faction that is looking for something very original like a fatigue-based magic system (something that I am not strongly against and might not mind). I'd probably have to read your older posts to see where you stand on the important issues. I know there are at least a few people in this category but I don't quite know how to represent it as a faction. They are definitely more on the side of the Traditionalists though. Just because the important thing is not just old combat mechanics vs new combat mechanics, but old combat mechanics vs new-and-horribly-bad combat mechanics. The real importance of the factional disagreement is cooldowns and twitch / popamole or MMO combat styles in general. Some people absolutely love these and would be very disappointed if they are not present in the game. I would definitely categorize such people as the Biowarians or Non-traditionalists. Although I don't think the particular labels are important. Anyway that's where the real rift is. The one that actually matters. The relatively minor disagreement between whether certain people prefer a Mana-based or Fatigue-based or Vancian-based magic system just doesn't seem core to me. I mean, yeah we can argue about it, but is it really make-or-break even for Codexians? I think as long as the combat avoids the newer mechanics like cooldowns and aggro and other such nonsense that's not a huge issue. Insta-Reset between encounters is still being very seriously considered by the devs and this makes me very nervous indeed as it would be an encounter-to-encounter style game without much in the way of attrition mechanics.

Yes it does place you squarely in the Biowarian faction. Your "good enough for me" attitude is another thing that sets you apart from my harder to please faction. What are you planning to pledge and why? Robbing a bank is not a realistic option for any of us. So that's a bit of a red herring. What percentage of your monthly income would you be willing to donate to see this game get made in the way that you want?

Where did I say turn-based? I do think turn-based is superior, but that is clearly not what this project is about. I'd love to see a ToEE sequel-in-spirit in another kickstarter though. All I want is the sort of combat that was present in BG2 (or IWD or PS:T). I don't think that's asking so much considering that is pretty much what Obsidian promised on the kickstarter page. Let me just ask you: Would you withdraw (or not make) your pledge if Obsidian just completely catered to my faction in terms of combat? If they aded in Romances would that appease you? How do you fall in terms of this economic analysis? Would you consider pledging $500 for this game and if not, why not?

There are obviously two factions here. I'm not sure what to call them, but I'll try the Traditionalists (or Conservatives or Codexians) and the New-Is-Better (or Biowarians). Whatever you call them I was thinking that the economics of pledges are different between the two groups. I think the Codexians are a much smaller group. There is a reason why publishers insist so strongly on the newer style game mechanics. They sell more games that way. It is a far more popular style. So I think it's clear that those of us who don't wan't the formula of the IE games to be significantly altered are going to be in the minority. As a minority, the Codexians/Traditionalists have long suffered, waiting and waiting for the kinds of games that we like to be developed by anyone. Before these kickstarter projects I had basically accepted that if I wanted a BG3 so badly I was going to have to make it myself. As a programmer I have seriously considered the idea in fact. So I think it is fair to say that we are far 'hungrier' than the Biowarians who have perhaps only recently been disappointed with the release of DA2, although that is by no means true in every case. In some cases they are quite happy with games like DA2 and Skyrim and even MMOs. In any case they don't yet seem to be at the level where they feel the need to make their own games. Pehaps sex would be a useful analogy. One person has a beautiful girlfriend and is having sex nearly every night. The other person hasn't had sex for a decade. I think it would be fair to say that their attitudes toward the experience are going to be considerably different. If either person were going to pay for sex, assuming equal incomes, I think it is fair to say that the constantly shagging guy is not going to be willing to pay as high a percentage of his income as the other guy. The guy with the hot girlfriend might appreciate a beautiful prostitute just as much as the sex-starved guy but he isn't going to pay for that difference. So I think if you assume equal income the Codexian faction are more likely to consider higher tiers than the Biowarian faction who might see this as just another opportunity for them to get the kind of game that they like but whom have lots of games they like already. This is just one more. For instance imagine the typical Biowarian reaction if every tier under $250 were dumped tomorrow. Most of them aren't going to pay $250 for a game when they have lots of other games that they like already. A population of starving people might be willing to pay almost any amount for a single bag of crisps. $10. $20. Even $100. A fat person with a full pantry will not pay you more than market value. Maybe a few dollars at the most. Another difference seems to be that the old school faction may be less flexible about how much compromise we are willing to accept. Something that may seem like only a small difference to the Biowarian could be a deal breaker for the Codexian. If the formula for P:E departs too much from BG2/PS:T/IWD this project will not be worth a whole lot to the Codexian faction. And an isometric perspective won't be enough to keep us interested. Diablo has an isometric perspective too and you wouldn't catch me playing that. Or contributing $500 toward its development. The mathematics is actually kind of interesting. Let's say that there are 4 times as many Biowarians as Codexians. I doubt there could be much more than that or the forum polls would not be so even or in our favor so often. So that is probably generous. Although it's possible that the younger players, who are obviously far more likely to support a more Biowarian vision, are more active in the kickstarter comments which more resembles a chat room. So if you include the youngest gamers who may not like the forum format it might be more than 4x. But for the moment let's make that assumption. Let's also suppose that the Codexians are potentially prepared to spend, say, 2-4 times more as a percentage of their income on a pledge for their ideal or at least semi-ideal game, which again, for a Codexian, is a true rarity. Let's also suppose that a backer who spends $1000+ is far more likely to be a Codexian. Why would a Biowarian really have that level of passion toward the project? I think the only thing that justifies it is someone who thinks that this is the most amazing development ever and really places a strong emphasis on the difference between modern games and BG2/IWD/PS:T. It seems that the closer Obsidian stays to the old formula of slower, more strategic combat which simply does not exist anymore the more high level backers they are going to get. Albeit at the expense of some of the Biowarians who are really hoping for some kind of cross between BG2 and DA:O. Or even in some cases something vey close to DA:O itself. Don't forget that that game was also promised as a spirtual successor to BG2. There are a much greater number of Biowarians but their pledges are likely to be lower because they are not as hungry. I do think Biowarians will be harder to shake with anything short of committing to a turn based ToEE kind of system, but OTOH there are so many more of them that any effect of dissapointing them may be more keenly felt in terms of drops in pledge amounts, however slight. I was just thinking about this rather interesting situation because I was just eyeing the pledge tiers and thinking how much I'd love to pledge at the $500 tier, more than half my monthly income. I just can't even consider it because I still don't know what direction Obsidian even wants to take the combat. A more next-gen, "evolved", modern sort of system with modern combat dynamics, or something quite close to BG2/IWD/PS:T. I feel like I need some kind of promise in that regard before I can pledge. Certainly at any of the higher tiers that are more an investment than a preorder. Clearly Obsidian has not yet decided on what they consider the ideal combat mechanics to be, at least for this title, but I think it might be worthwhile for everyone, even the Biowarians, if some firm decision on the sort of combat the game is really targeting is reached and announced before October 16th. Without this I might pledge, but I would stay in the $25 - $65 preorder range. The point however is not about my own particular dillemma, but that I am probably not the only Traditionalist who feels this way. Ironically the more traditional this project is the more radical. And the more radical it is the more I am willing to support it in its outrageous stand against what is popular. So when looked at from a factional pov, what might be a good strategy is to give the Traditionalists the combat they know that we want as the core combat mechanic and maybe add-on a more nextgen combat style as an option, all the while making sure that it does not alter the core mode of gameplay even a little. To whatever extent it is possible at least. I don't think the core combat is as make-or-break in terms of pledges for the Biowarians as it is for us. After all, they are here based on the story and setting and whatever else from the IE games. Not the combat. If they really liked those games that much they will like the new game just as well. They just won't like it more, which I don't see as some kind of major tragedy. At the same time I don't think many Codexians/Traditionalists are really going to signficantly drop their pledge amounts if you announce what the Biowarians want more than anything: Romances. Yup. Sorry to use the R word, but as far as I'm concerned they can have their silly romances if it's so important to them. As long as they are 100% optional of course. You could possibly even just have a setting in an .ini file that just shuts them all down or at least tones them down to lower emotional and sexual levels. I know that some Traditionalists may be so enraged that they will drop their pledges entirely, but I think that will only be a very small minority and weighed against the possibly larger pledges from the Bioware camp may be more than worth it monetarily. Of course the cost of this has to be weighed carefully. Even a few quick wham-bam-thank-you-maam encounters may be enough to satisfy them in this regard and that might be worth the extra pledge money. Of course I would never do this if I were Obsidian. It's just pandering for dollars, but dollars is the point of this post. tl;dr version: Biowarians bad. Codexians good. Please don't strain yourself trying to read any more than that.