Jump to content

Delterius

Members
  • Posts

    308
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Delterius

  1. The way Obsidian is carefully crafting firearms into the setting, I'm sure they'll think about something along those lines.
  2. Family-friendly legislation. The only way I might oppose violence towards children is if violence itself is treated with the respect it deserves. With a capital V. And all the consequences murder should bring to the player's reputation. In a game where I kill someone's grown up child every five minutes? Meh. I'd rather I could try and avoid killing adults at least almost as much as I can avoid killing children. That said, this is one silly pet-peeve to have.
  3. Well, I'd say especially if mechanics are affected because that's the ideal goal. But this doesn't seem like intensive work, so I don't see why not.
  4. If you discount games where there's a feature, sure that feature's dead. And those aren't even every example where top down view was important. I for one, believe that FPSs are a dead genre. Haven't played one in years.
  5. But on it's own, it's not a useful goal. What is it about the game that makes it immersive - people hould ask for that. Well, I myself value atmosphere, consistent rule systems and gameplay/story integration above most everything when it comes to immersion. But not any specific design decision or game mechanic, rather how everything comes together. Holistic design and all that. I do not believe that either the first person or the top down perspective is inherently better than the other, but I can certainly list moments (games) where I liked each one.
  6. with a musket, at anything but extreme close range, he would be just as likely to still hit you even if he was aiming at your mirror image 3 metres to your right Oh, didn't think about a assumption that he's already close. Well, illusions of yourself might still be useful, depending on the situation and especially how it came to be. Maybe Conjuring Mud to jam the wheelock and soak the gunpowder?
  7. Maybe whatever my google-image ripped avatar is casting, seems nasty. But I can always Conjure a musketball and fire it with telekinesis. For irony. Or Illusions because the musket is unlikely to hit already, worse if the person's seeing double. For a good measure, I'll also Conjure alcohol into his bloodstream.
  8. Arguing against a FP perspective is like arguing against a Isometric perspective. Trying to fixate inherent negativity to a idea that is neither good, or bad, out of context. And that's stupid. Neither is more or less immersive as a rule of thumb. In context, however, FP perspective is bad because the games cited as inspiration are all isometric. Again, Will a Fixed viewpoint b- No.
  9. I may be wrong here, but read the last line. The ability to decorate is indeed superfluous and I'm certain that should be no priority in any way. Like ever. But that's not what the OP seems to be suggesting. His suggestion is in the penultimate paraphraph - somethings there sound exactly like a stronghold questline. 'Decoration' in here appears to stand for 'trophies appear and the appearance change overtime'.
  10. Of course you think Mages are worthless at lower level. You're memorizing Magic Missile of all things. Combat-centrism is a issue with recent CRPGs, not the Vancian system. This is shown by your comparison: of course Fireball is going to win against Featherfall, you't not going to fall off a cliff anytime soon and (even if you do), it will be in a cutscene and spellcasting isn't a option. Even then, combat-centric memorization has never been a bad thing in Vancian CRPGs anyway. Wild surges can and do open portals to other dimensions. While it can translocate entire continents that's not something that was implemented in BG2, however it does summon the armies of the abyss and worse. Wild surges also happen whenever the Wild Mage is tempted to spontaneously cast a spell through the Reckless Dwemer. A quick way with terrible possibilities.
  11. Considering the amount of playtesting done on tabletop RPGs, I very much doubt people didn't realize spellcasters grow exponentially in D&D. Mages eventually grow into a 'one-man-army' (relative to lower levelled challenges) overtime because that's how the system works, it just happens that no character is supposed to be a one-man-army against a equal because it just happens that we're speaking about party based here. Maybe it has something to do with all the insanely bad things that arcane spellcasters tend to cause in stories. Power corrupts, and corruption of the powerful is a fearful thing. Is it bad to add a 'evil corruption' innate to magic? No, but that's not always needed. Reminds me of the Wild Mage kit from BG2. Really fun, but also really Vancian.
  12. In the last years, straying from Vancian meant pretty much a horrid cooldown system. Or something else where mages cast constantly, but instead of feeling like masters of a powerful natural force, are more akin to the peashooters from PvZ. Invariably, Mana systems have meant continuous spellcasting in every battle - and balancing principles dictate that magic itself is nerfed so bushwackers may compete. So yes: go Vancian. As for separate schools of magic, I voted yes but that depends on the setting.
  13. Thank you, but I very much enjoy inventory management and strategy. It adds to melee fighters, it adds to crafters and to the entire game. Outright warning the player makes sense sometimes. If you're going up a mountain the presence of trolls is well known, there's no reason why the local populace wouldn't warn you about that. The local merchant would totally scream at you about dem trolls and how much of NEED his overpriced grenade of fire/acid. However, I believe that other, more subtle ways should be there for the more obscure immunities. Next time, try not to exaggerate things a bit. Carrying different weapons isn't a big deal, especially since many weapons can serve multiple functions. I don't even remember needing alignment weapons. In fact, BG included a single sword with plus damage for all alignments except True Neutral.
  14. Better example: DA:O. For a game that prizes itself in its C&C (best quest design its one truly great feature), it botches replayability with third options or stupid dilemmas. For one, due to circumstace in a major quest you're prompted to choose between killing a child or allowing his mother to sacrifice herself to save him. Alas, there's a third option without any bad consequence at all.
  15. Not every powergamer has no sense of roleplaying. But if the game is capable of emulating low stats ('dumb dialogue'), then its ah-ok to me. That'd actually be roleplaying.
  16. Ever seen a hand-cannon or a arquebus? Okay, full late-medieval. Regardless of any pointless parellel one might try to trace to RL history, I'm pretty sure the pre-1400s weren't steampunk.
  17. Oh, people are going to hate whatever's the introduction. The IE games, IWD and BG in particular, caused a lot of character re-rolling. Introduction and all that tutorial **** should be done via choice. E.g. very early on, give the player a choice to go do the noob stuff or skip the crap, preferably via a dialogue option with some NPC. The tutorial itself could be skipped, because it was integrated to non-essential NPCs. What may suck is rerolling 10 times because you can't decide between the right measure of each class your multi/dual abomination needs and watching Irenicus' cutscene 10 times, or really going through Irenicus' dungeon 10 times.
  18. I want the game mechanics to, at the very least, stay true to the IE games. If that's too hardcore (a perception which is, frankly, a bit of a joke), then this project wouldn't have been funded.
  19. The designers of Arcanum regreted putting their effort on flavor like reactive journals about the player's achievements. Yes, time is money. Especially when you design actual content around the romantic subplots. I cannot stress this enough. I had a discussion with a person who praised DA2's love interests because 'it made totally sense for my lesbian character and <straight woman> to be together'.
  20. Darn, I had hoped I accomplished an understanding. That the core concern was enemies having difficulty or ease beyond justification, making the setting appear silly. Are sickly beggars a challenge in Baldur's Gate? Certainly not. Unfortunately, supposed common city guards in Amn are. But that's scaling game design scaling everything. Sure, they probably didn't want you to burn the city because you aren't low level anymore, but that's not reason to make everything in the city a high level opponent. A better option would be to add high level oponents to places of interest (such as important magic shops) and make the player suffer his low reputation (if all he does is pillaging without care and no PR work). So while this shows that scaling game design isn't abolished just by rules-based game design, its also clear that the latter is a good first step to keep writers and encounter designers from causing the former without justification. Let's not assume PE will have a DnD like power curve where high level PC's can mow through hundreds or thousands of low level opponents. Perhaps they will make the power curve a bit more realistic in what a lone warrior can do against many. It will also help make the setting more believable if a single high level PC can't wipe out the entire city guard at will. As said before, DnD is exponential so it only gets crazy in higher levels even though you can argue that things are already fantastical by fifth level. So that might not even be a relevant discussion. But, I don't think that really powerful PCs is that much of a problem. Its when a really powerful PC seems to transcend mortality (in the setting's sense), which isn't the case. In a world people can reach level 20 (as your PC did), then while your PC might be a rare ocurrence, he's hardly unique. There should be forces (not necessarily characters) that surpass you even if by the 'maximum level'. Simply put, if a city or a nation exist in a world where people can reach level 20, then it must have ways to deal with level 20 people, if not level 20 people of their own. This is why I said 'put relevant challenges in interesting places (if you're level 15, you're not going to, say, steal from a shop that sells common swords) and eventually make the PC suffer if he abuses his power too much (but in case you do raise hell in <Nation>, then some powerful group of elite mages or fighters or whatever, even if other adventurers, should be hunting you and making your life difficult - not necessarily kill you, if resting is limited and cities aren't safe for you, you won't be able to advance through the story).
  21. Reasons for the strong opposition? Because that would be like me asking the CoD developers to allow for a skip the shootout section because I don't like it. That's the retarded way to pursue a market.
×
×
  • Create New...