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Tamerlane

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Posts posted by Tamerlane

  1.  

     

     

    The problem is that the loot from combat related solutions almost always give better loot than any other. People will always want to just fight for the chance of getting some nice drops.

     

    Which is a problem how?

     

    It punishes more intelligent solutions to quests by not giving the player nice items, so players won't tend to want to go for the non-combative option. 

     

     

    - Secondly, because the sort of player who enjoys finding nonviolent solutions to problems will usually not get into fights that often, so he won't need combat gear and consumables that much.

     

    You have to be careful not to pigeonhole. The sort of player who enjoys finding nonviolent solutions to some problems and violent solutions to other problems shouldn't end up crappy at both for having the audacity of mixing up their approach based on the situation.

     

    Because they have a specific stated goal of trying not to incentivise one way over another. Think Alpha Protocol's "different, not better", albeit likely to a less extreme degree.

     

    Which... basically means malolis probably shouldn't worry about that, I guess?

    I remember AP; everybody maxed sneak and kept shooting people from the shadows.

     

    I don't think I ever maxed out sneak in Alpha Protocol. Regardless, I was referring to how it handled overall style and choice, not specific builds (which were undoubtedly unbalanced as hell - hello, chain shot).

  2. Pretty common for modern RPGs. We're talking about very math-y systems with a ton of variables, so it really shouldn't surprise anyone. Dragon Age had it, Neverwinter Nights 2 had it, Dungeons of Dredmor had it, New Vegas had it (and Josh Sawyer made his own personal, unofficial balance mod)... I don't think The Witcher ever had any balance changes in its patches, though The Witcher 2 did have its equivalent to jsawyer.esp. It's never as drastic as Blizzard's "nerf the popular thing into submission" style, so there's no real harm to it.

  3.  

    A question for anyone reading the thread: if you saw a list of stats presented like this:
     
    Might
    Constitution
    Dexterity
    Perception
    Intellect
    Resolve
     
    or
     
    Power
    Constitution
    Dexterity
    Perception
    Intellect
    Resolve
     
    What would you assume the stat that affects damage would be? Based on that answer, if you discovered that stat affected all damage and healing, including damage and healing from sources like guns and wands and bows and fireball spells, how would you feel about it?

     

    Operating with the understanding that you're trying to make all attributes valuable for all classes, I would assume:

     

     
    Power/Might: Damage
    Constitution: Health, stamina, maybe carrying capacity?
    Dexterity: Attack speed
    Perception: Accuracy
    Intellect: Critical damage
    Resolve: I would have no natural guess for this, but duration and AoE seems cool, I guess
     
    Don't think anything would ever be simultaneously perfect for Mah Immersion and actually being fun, but... eh, whatever.
  4. If the inventory impact of Strength was applied to in-combat factors, I suspect it would be more tactically relevant. Since weapon sets/quick items are the only items usable in combat, what if Strength determined how many weapon sets and quick items you could have? For instance, the burly fighter could have four different sets of weapons ready for use and 10 different potions hanging from his belt, while the wimpy wizard could hardly lift his single grimoire and carry a single potion on his belt.

    Isn't... isn't that how it works presently?

  5. It does seem odd to me, splitting health and stamina into two different stats like this, and I do like the notion of tying strength to attack rate more than health total. Maybe it'll work out best when we actually get the chance to play it, but for now, merely looking at it and hearing about it, I can't shake the notion that it's... off somehow.

    • Like 1
  6. Very neat. I'm curious about one thing, though.

     

    While we obviously know only a limited amount about the classes and have no real experience, the information revealed so far makes "high intellect, high resolve" (high intellect to reinforce their role as damage dealers, high resolve to improve the duration of their status effect-y stuff) seem like the basic, archetypical, ur-rogue build. Intellect and resolve also feed into willpower (the new name for psyche, I guess), which I believe is naturally the weakest defence on the rogue. Is this intentional design that we can expect to see with other classes, or did it arise organically as something you won't specifically attempt to recreate? Or is my assessment of rogues and stats misinformed in the first place?

    • Like 1
  7.  

    1: Professional doesn't equal famous person. Professional literally means "person that is paid to do things". And yes, you should have professionals working for you, because what are you, some sort of scab?

    Fair enough but I was just pointing out that other than the narrator I doubt there was any "professional" VA in BG for example.  Half of Bethesda's voice work is even now Dudes from Accounting.

     

    Well, we saw how well that worked for the ending slides of NWN2 (though to be fair, Brian Mitsoda sounded a lot less out of place in VTMB).

  8. 1: Professional doesn't equal famous person. Professional literally means "person that is paid to do things". And yes, you should have professionals working for you, because what are you, some sort of scab?

     

    2: Trying to organize a bunch of random nerds from around the world would be a nightmarish prospect, and you would have to pay someone to waste their time herding all those cats. All those terrible, stupid cats with no actual obligations to the project and with no real organization or direction and oh god no no no no no no no

     

    3: No no no no no no no no no no no no

     

    4:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ

  9. On the madness side of things, it would be nice if maybe there could be some depictions of characters with mental health issues that;

     

    a) Didn't automatically make them violent towards everyone around them.

     

    2) Didn't have the "good" quest ending where you euthanize a person with mental health issues.

     

    Honestly, I get so sick of the way mental health is written and it seems particularly bad within video games. It's one of those topics where the "research" (such as it is) is for writers to look up other writers inaccurate bollocks and then regurgitate that.

     

    Even if you don't find tarring people with mental health problems with a horrible and inaccurate brush incredibly offensive, at least try and strive beyond what is currently there for the purposes of good writing.

    Yeah, even setting aside the pervasive ugliness of the "violent madman" archetype, it's just so god damn lazy. It's right up there with "They were mind controlled the whole time!" (looking at you, Bioware and Blizzard) and "Eh, orcs are just evil, I guess?" in terms of zero-****ing-effort writing.

     

    Why is this villain doing what they're doing? Is he trying to assassinate the queen so that he can get someone more easily manipulated on the throne? Is she trying to open up that portal to hell to retrieve the soul of a loved one? Are they forcing their prisoners into barbaric fights to to the death in an effort to impress their even crueler masters?

     

    Nah bro, they just crazy. Don't worry about it. There was probably some tentacle-faced monster involved at some point. Those are popular, right?

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