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Ieo

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Everything posted by Ieo

  1. Ieo
    You have to realize that there were never granular weapon/DT/armor calculations in the old IE games, so the vast majority of players (yes, I dare say it) simply wouldn't expect to have to do that extra work on their own in an IE-inspired CRPG. Thing is, there are many aspects of a tabletop experience, including looking up all those tables and whatnot, that simply don't translate to a fluid CRPG experience. And yes, it's good to keep the difficulty levels in mind, because breaking out multiple types of weapon/DT/armor tables for different difficulty levels would be more work (for Obsidian) too. I suspect it'd be easier to adjust the damage values up and and down for easy mode rather than make a "simpler table." @Josh, I'd like to reiterate from earlier in the thread that keeping the original BG-style selection circles would be my preference as well (green for party, red enemy, blue NPC, yellow for some state changes) with potential upgrades. Maybe selection circle thickness could represent relative armor level (I have no idea if that's visually doable). Just please don't make each party member's circle a different color or worse, as in BG:EE, some the same color as others; or moddable would be nice! Edit to add: You don't understand. DA:O is a completely different environment, fully 3D rendered. The IE games including BG:EE have 2D hand-painted final art assets, which means rasterized, which also means that zoom capabilities will always be crippled in terms of usefulness. The only purpose for zoom in an IE-type game with hand-painted backgrounds is for future-proofing when screen sizes and resolutions are so big that characters are .5 cm tall. If you're going to compare mechanical game visuals, do it apples to apples.
  2. Ieo
    What? Did I miss something? I think he's trolling. You can't "follow the Kickstarter" and miss something so obvious, unless, well, you're not bright... (and are illiterate, a feature the mp-ers seem to have in abundance).
  3. Ieo
    http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62924-sawyerism-distilled-an-interview-with-josh-sawyer-at-iron-tower-studio/
  4. Ieo
    That was a while ago, actually. Ahh, those were the times... And hopefully they're all gone. Oh, to add.... I wonder if that means the wizard/caster tier-lockout "cooldowns" that Josh described before are out; those weren't per-encounter but under specific timers, theoretically. I think that could add an interesting tactical layer on top of per-encounter and per-rest if the timers were tweaked, anyway, but making regular spells per-encounter would be a good enough resource shift for the original intention, probably.
  5. Ieo
    That was a while ago, actually. Ahh, those were the times... And hopefully they're all gone.
  6. Ieo
    I suppose that would be a natural balance limiter for players who want more combat-oriented mages. Can't have all the super duper level 9 mage spells and dual-wield axes.
  7. Ieo
    Check the past updates and interviews. NO ALIGNMENT YES FACTION REPUTATION NO PACIFIST PATH (definitely combat-heavier than PS:T, but you can treat a number of encounters nonviolently) LOTS OF REACTIVITY (this kinda goes without saying)
  8. Ieo
    Them's fightin' words! Ah, paladins have an in-combat "rez" so to speak (I know, it's not). Interesting. Chanters already sound more useful than bards. And it sounds like Barbarians have a skill to allow beeline support towards, if necessary, an enemy targeting a weaker party member. I wonder--I'm not in favor of actual aggro/threat mechanics in a game like this, but some ability to interfere with an enemy's current targeting would be interesting, if possible. Mm okay. I just hope whatever quickslot/weapon swap functionality will be kinda forgiving; I certainly wouldn't want to see something along the lines of the extreme DDO scenario, but so long as there aren't any/many instances of outright immunity, sounds good to me. Onward!
  9. Ieo
    There's quite a bit of size and scope difference there. I mean, you're talking tens to hundreds of thousands of people across one agency and at least 3 major defense contractors vs a game studio of a couple of hundred max; most of which are probably split up between different games entirely. I will concede that it may not have been intentional. But, if it was... it was a nasty bit of weaseling. Actually, I've seen broken communications between groups within companies of less than 100 workers and still within the same group in the same physical proximity. My point is merely that the moment design and development is split up among multiple groups, there are multiple points of potential failure, not matter how small. But beyond that, if they go through with it knowing about the inconsistency, that's just crappy design.
  10. Ieo
    Another take on the idea: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60343-cant-lingo-jargon/ Like so. (Cultural regionalisms would be nifty. Probably not too much otherwise may be a barrier for higher adoption.)
  11. Ieo
    This makes me wonder what the "best" female RPG character is from the point of view of actual women gamers. (I'm honestly curious.) Hmm, let's see. For the sake of banters, if I replaced Dak'kon with Jaheira... Jaheira Fall-From-Grace Mazzy Minsc Morte Ahahaha. I can see it now...
  12. Ieo
    I'm assuming he's only playing at off-hours, outside his 12-hour workdays. That's right, don't sacrifice a minute from PE! *whipcrack* HOP TO IT. MORE WRITIN'.
  13. Ieo
    Then you're not talking about an rpg anymore. role playing game. Where you role play a game. The game itself doesn't have to be based on mathematics and dice rolls. Admittedly it's a successful and established way of playing the game. You're there originally to role play - to imagine your that guy/elf/demon/space marine etc... taking on the evil doers etc.. etc.. Mathematics and dice rolls are not everything. Without the story, the immersion... It's just another spreadsheet. (dare I sat football manager?) The idea of never missing to me - takes away a lot of the role play for the examples that I just give. Dice are a method to force creativity and help with balanced decision-making and outcomes and the like for many games. But people who think math/dice are required for "RPG" are very narrow-minded and don't know how big the entire industry/genre/thing really is.* Granted, I've only played three tabletop games: a classic 3ed D&D game (a long, long time ago), Zorceror of Zo, and Annalise. The latter two were far better at supporting player creativity in storytelling and actual role playing, and there were only abstracted numbers involved. *I also have to wonder, with the general popularity of CRPGs, if people are interpreting "role" away from "play in-character" to "play a class." Obviously more mathy in the latter. Anyway, carry on.
  14. Ieo
    SoI think that sometimes developers simply don't take oddball things into account while designing the game. The players may come up with solutions that the developers hadn't thought of. It's not necessarily intentional on their part. I assume quest and mechanic designs come from different teams, which means it's possible there wasn't cross-communication to catch these inconsistencies. (Reminds me a bit of Apollo 13's command module vs. lunar module CO2 scrubber debacle... except game devs then seek ways to rip out legitimate things that would benefit the player for the sake of dramatic storytelling.) Due to the size of such games and the many people involved, these things should be caught with good beta testing. Edit: These things should be caught by QA earlier, but also dev leaders should make the hard decisions to cut content that doesn't work for the stated reasons. "Sunken costs" is a terrible excuse.
  15. Ieo
    Dak'kon Fall-From-Grace Morte Mazzy Minsc ......Okay, I'm just imagining the banters, honestly.
  16. Ieo
    I have no idea how the spirit meter thing worked in MotB since I never played it. Surely there's a better way to implement, though. Creative and simple but not overbearing, I think Obsidian could come up with something nifty. And I wouldn't want the concept to become a main part of the storyline or anything, just something that gives flavor and maybe even illustrate how souls work in the lore.
  17. Ieo
    Just to add a specific comment. I disagree with your #10. The bronze sphere in PS:T was one of the most brilliantly crafted "fedex/fetch" quest (chains) ever.
  18. Ieo
    This would be akin to the Cursed Berserking Sword example though, wouldn't it? Where your character goes on a rampage, attacking other party members. Of course, there may be some "untidy" ways to deal with this scenario. Cast Hold Person, Web, Ray of Enfeeblement, Sleep etc on the party member in question until the rage/curse effect subsides. But if it was particularly disruptive, a player might remove that member from the party until they could find a cure and return to the cursed victim. Otherwise, every encounter would mean having to scatter your other characters around the battlefield to avoid "friendly fire" as it were. That's the kind of game breaker I was trying to avoid. As for souls deciding the effect, that would make perfect sense in P:E based on what they've said so far. They could certainly design a quest around a "soul cursed" weapon, provided the trade-off was meaningful enough to affect the outcome of the quest, rather than be a total disruption the entire way through. Yes, I wasn't thinking further into the outlier effects of such a scenario; cursed items may not necessarily be pinned upon the party, though. Like the minor quest in freeing Captain Brage, a cursed artifact may be the center of a particular plot and in someone else's possession. The thing about the traditional IE (and D&D?) treatment of cursed objects is that Remove Curse and whatnot only serve to sever the tie between the wielder and the object, not the curse and the object; basically, I think it'd be interesting to use souls to give depth to the usual "mere inconvenience."
  19. Ieo
    What about soul? Instead of some discrete spell mechanic like the old cursed stuff in BG and the like, if PE's understanding of the cosmos is going to be built upon the soul, I wonder if a curse mechanic or approach using souls as an underlying foundation would work. The opposite functionality would be a blessing (positive enchantment). For example? A jilted ex-lover feels so strongly and negatively about his ex that he ends up embedding a fragment of his angry soul onto a piece of jewelry and "gifts" it to her. Perhaps anyone who ends up wearing it or even possessing it becomes an attractor for bad luck. (Playing with the RNG?) An Orlan was unjustly and viciously beaten to death by a random thug and ends up cursing the weapon so that the wielder attacks the person he trusts the most with it, even if it takes time to build such a relationship with another person. (Time-lapsed?) As for removal, perhaps the more powerful ones could be related to quests--uncovering the truth behind an injustice, completing someone else's unfinished business, or simply trying to talk to the soul, so on. Since I could see a soul-based mechanic for curses being inverted to blessing, perhaps depending on the conclusion of a quest-related curse item, either the curse is removed or you gain a blessing on the item.
  20. Ieo
    PS:T already handled the NPC->quest->class/etc. fine but that only had THREE classes. Too many classes to keep track of including subsequent training means a lot of running around and busywork, wasted time for players who want to jump into the game proper rather than figure out what foundation to pursue. It's best in PE's case to mirror the other two, BG/IWD, and the player picks initial class. PE's combat will have a higher learning curve than the old IE games, definitely moreso than PS:T that has the setup. There were already some class-specific quests in BG2 related to strongholds, so maybe PE will have that too. I don't think PE should have additional professions on top of the classes unless we're talking about class specialization. In which case I'll just wait to see what Obsidian comes up with since there'd be balance issues with the number of classes we already have.
  21. Ieo
    Too bad. I'm sure you loved Mass Effect 3, because that was the major systemic change they did from ME1-2, where the SP campaign wouldn't get the best ending without it (fixed after the fact). Oh yeah, the much larger SP audience really liked that. You should also play an MMO. Since you don't want PE, you can go away now. And level scaling IS in--with locked zonal encounter scaling and bounded plot level-scaling. All of this stuff should be in the FAQ/sticky/wiki/whatever.
  22. Ieo
    Above and before all that: 0) Obsidian shall seek feedback from fans but will not bend over backwards for the small contingency of hardcores on the forum who throw tantrums.
  23. Ieo
    Out of the many forums I've visited over the years, this has to be the most "unique" post I've ever seen... But besides magic, for which Heresiarch puts forth a very valid argument (if your order isn't okay with fictional game magic, are they okay with fictional game murder?), what about your character supporting followers of other gods in the PE world? There will be factions. There will be multiple religions. There will be cross-purposes and cross-roads among all those factors. And keep in mind that PE, as Obsidian has reiterated, will not have clear concepts of "good" or "evil" alignments. Honestly, I think you'll have a problem with this and this game isn't for you.
  24. Ieo
    It is (correct terminology). Although I don't know if there are different terms between the fully black area and the mere shaded-out "out of sight" portions, but I've always thought everything is fog of war. I'm in favor of limited and more localized use (i.e. not tied to plot content) for any divination because that wouldn't necessarily harm replay value much, especially if there's some dynamism; a divination spell that instantly clears half the map's fog of war and shows everything is a bit overpowered and would depreciate tactical play, IMO (more metagamey?). On the other hand, a stealthy scout, even not a thief/rogue, still has to navigate traps and creatures and the actual landscape--hopefully there will be counter abilities/spells/mechanisms for stealth as well, like BG2's mage AI casting True Sight, although that was so easily avoided as well. But anyway, per your idea of traps/enemies glowing briefly, if that doesn't uncover landscape, I think it'd be an intriguing sort of implementation.
  25. Ieo
    So there's a potential gradient of usage for a "divination" mechanism from localized to global (like quest direction, not in favor for similar reasons to Nonek's). But your example made me think of a localized implementation--what if there's a more general "divination" spell mechanism that covers the old Identify spell along with other smaller things like immediate danger (traps), small area (creatures, perhaps not too specific, more like number or size), or objects (hidden or actual object lore like cursed or magical)? Eh, well...
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