Tamerlane

Our castles-in-the-middle-of-a-lake must kung fu battle to the death.

Dude. Don't fight the made up numbers. FFT taught me that they're the most dangerous thing in the world.

I ****ing love making up numbers!

He was being sarcastic, bro.

I think most people just reloaded anyway rather than **** around with resurrection. And you can toggle permadeath off on all but the highest difficulty, anyway.

Hmm, here's a zinger then: what would happen if the PC has a relationship with one of the companions, then a couple of levels later it is discovered the companion (or the PC) is pregnant? Didn't that happen to Aerie in BG2 at some point? I never romanced her, so I don't know the details. Yes, and it was kind of completely terrible.

I agree. It does sound fun and intuitive. I'm glad we've come to an agreement.

I'd just like to point out that over the last two pages, the complaint has shifted from "Combat is too punitive!" to "There aren't enough consequences for combat!" I love gamers.

Reading's not a problem. It's a very simple system. Health A and Health B. Just because they call one health bar "Stamina" doesn't make it functionally something different. The "Stamina" bar performs the same function as a Health bar, just because there's a backup Health bar doesn't make the first one anything different. At some stage, why even bother having either bar, just remove them both since we're going to remove inconviences. If clicking a rest button is so inconvient that we'll design it out, why not take the next logical step and design out Health entirely, because it's inconvient to have someone fall unconcious. We don't really need to wait and see how this works out, there's really no mystery here. It's a regenerating health bar called "Stamina". And yet, you still aren't reading. Both bars run simultaneously. Both bars take damage simultaneously. You can have full stamina and still be a stubbed toe away from dying.

Well, they have said that it takes a prohibitively long time to swap grimoires...

Where is regenerating health? The stamina bar is now functionally equivalent to health, because damage is subtracted from stamina instead of health until stamina is depeleted. Stamina regenerates after battle. So basically, we now have a regenerating health bar called "Stamina", and a backup health bar. Except that Josh Sawyer explicitly said that that is not how it goes... You can take stamina and health damage simultaneously, you just take more stamina damage.

The point is that you may find the combat approach to be the most enjoyable one. ....just as the stealth junkies play the stealthy way because it's the most enjoyable way for them. ....just as the speech junkies play the speechy way because it's the most enjoyable way for them. If no one finds the combat solution to be the most enjoyable, then the problem is entirely nothing to do with the XP system, but because the combat mechanics turned out to be unfun and should be redesigned. about the first junkie part, that really depends on the game. The rest yeah I agree, but still its not just about fun, say you are playing a Paladin guy, and there is this evil rapist necrophile pedophile dude that eats children for breakfest cannibal too, your character would do anything to kill him, then you go kill him and you get no XP??? RPGS arent just about fun IMO, its about roleplaying a character, its like real life, you might hate to live, but you still go on, or you suicide maybe... WTTFFFF If you have a quest to kill an evil rapist necrophile pedophile cannibal, you will get EXP for killing said person. If there is no quest and you want to do it anyway - well, there's nothing stopping you. Go fill your role. Making EXP quest-based stops you from killing thangs in roughly zero ways.

Bloodlines specifically had the problem of rewarding the completing of quest objectives rather than killing then giving you giant god damn sections where you can do nothing but kill thangs and the next piece of EXP is a giant sewer level and a billion monsters away. That's, uh. That's... one of those things to avoid...

I'm not going to try to convince anyone to reduce his pledge, so keep in mind that I'm not saying that in response to you, but if you truly feel that you won't enjoy the game as much, you have the right to reduce your pledge. However, where the hell did you see that the game would be anti-combat? Really? The way experience is doled out to the player has absolutely nothing to do with how much or little the game is combat oriented. It's simply misguided to equate objective oriented xp with a less combat oriented game. In fact, I think the combat has received the most attention so far and they're creating a game that is clearly intended to combat centered. The story will still be great, I'm sure, but the combat is the focus at this moment. They've already said that you won't be able to complete the game without at least some combat, for instance. This idea of Obsidz downplaying combat is a red herring. If there is to be a total lack of healing and such severe consequences for combat (maiming and perma-death) as was stated by the folks from Obsidian coupled with their other comments regarding the focus of experience leaves one with a clear impression that it is anti-combat oriented. How can anyone see it any other way? ... You remember that BG combat could end with your characters getting gibbed, right? And healing is sort-of in, but the HP bar is split between healable and non-healable HP. EDIT: I mean ****, you're worried about the consequences of combat being too high and discouraging combat, but the least-combat-focused IE game had the fewest consequences to combat...

Permadeath is a toggle for lower difficulty levels.

Exactly what "maimed" does is presently unknown, I think. Assuming you're not playing a perma-death mode, the character will get up once combat ends, but only stamina will regen. Health will require resting to restore.

Players have two hit-point pools: Stamina and HP. Stamina goes down a lot faster, but can also be restored easier. A player at 0 stamina is knocked out. HP doesn't take hits as often, but it can't be restored easily. When it hits 0, a player goes to "maimed" status, and presumably has some long-lasting/hard to remove/permanent status effect or some ****. "Maimed" is replaced with "dead" at the highest difficulty level, and there is a toggle to make it so on all difficulty levels.

You are the hipster. It's all of us. We are the hipster.

Meh. My old friend EA we meet again. To be fair, there is precedent in the IE games... ... but yeah, I'm totally in favour of not allocating resources towards multiplayer. If you try to get reaver drops and templar and fast expand and corsairs and fast forge upgrades all at the same time, you'll get facerolled by a couple hydras, aye?

Hell yeah. It worked in PST. It doesn't work... well, damn near everywhere else. Let death be death.

Everything sounds Real and Good and True. Splitting health in two is good from both a lore and a gameplay point of view. Making EXP quest dependent is an understandably sticky item, but I'm not sure how we're going from "you get the EXP for completing the objective" to... what we're arguing about here. You can still kill thangs and loot their stuff. This great and glorious freedom has not been impeded upon but the Communazi oppressors.

I like it. Plentiful healing spells just made life seem... well, too easy in most fantasy settings. You're supposed to be downtrodden, disease-ridden peasants, but every small-town church has a guy that can cure any affliction. Poisoning a king? Nah bro, he's friends with a cleric that can cast level four spells! Infection? Amputation? What are those?

You missed the point, naturally. Combat skills/attributes/abilities are (also) tied to level up. Don't people hone their combat skills by.. you know, engaging in combat and defeating opponents? So shouldn't you be advocating separating combat and non-combat levels/EXP? Nobody ever learned how to lie to a judge by throwing a fireball...

Thanks, Loranc. Reddit terrifies my reading bone.

Have they stated that non-combat skills will not be related to levelling up? Because THAT would be a wat.png right there.