Sensuki

NP buddy, cheers for your input in the other thread.

If you read back further in the thread. You will see that it is exactly the same as the Intellect attribute that is in the game now. Josh Sawyer then asked if there was an attribute called "Might" or "Power" in the game, what would they think that attribute does - for me it would be damage. I didn't say placeholders. I said they don't really mean anything. It is no worse than the current attribute system mentioned previously in the thread by Josh Sawyer (the lead designer on PE) and I am just following in his footsteps, but giving *slightly* more appropriate names to attributes. I also agreed (previously in this forum, this thread, on RPGCodex and Something Awful) that I don't mind Intellect governing all damage either, but I would also not mind "Might" because you can also get the same suspension of disbelief with a tooltip as you say if it does not mean physical might. I am not really interested in this conversation however as this revolves around how simulationist the combat stats are relative to their attribute name. If the Lead Designer doesn't really care about that, then I'm not going to bother either.

Depends on the input library they use. I'm not sure if Raw Input works on OSX or Linux, OSX has the worst mouse performance out of any OS. Games that offer the option usually include a software cursor option as well. Some guy was able to do a Hardware Cursor for 0 A.D. in Linux and OSX http://lazybottom.snowglo.be/hardware-cursors-in-0-a-d-for-linux-and-osx/

That is just one of my takes on balancing the combat stats across the attributes. It is a gamist system and the names mean nothing. It is designed with all but one of the current restraints of the attribute system, I took the liberty of making the secondary defenses compete against the other combat stats. That is not what I would want as an attribute system and I agree that Endurance and Vitality are superfluous and one stat would be better. However I think you are perhaps misunderstanding some of the mechanics. That design is actually more balanced than the current system. I also like three mental and three physical combat stats but it is hard to do in the current design without being really unintuitive and that is why people are complaining about Intellect governing damage. Also for anyone else interested, check this thread out: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64891-attribute-questionnaire/

In my current attribute theory, I am having trouble making an attribute system following all of Josh's design points - particularly with the removal of defenses from the equation when weighing combat stats against one another. I think this really puts strains on a six attribute system in regards to PE's system design. I think in order for the attribute system to be considered "very good" rather than just "okay" one or more of these constraints needs to be removed. The flexibility of the number of attributes is one possible solution to that problem. I think 5, 6, or 7 attributes would be a good number because those numbers are in correlation to the primary combat stats of the game. I do not think it is the main problem though. Damage, Accuracy, The Health System (Stamina and Health) and the four defenses gives us 7 or 8 combat stats in total. The removal of Deflection or the compounding of two of these attributes together (such as the Health system being an attribute in itself) or "fortitude combined with Health" can compress it to six. I was one of the people who complained about the prospect of a three or four attribute system when the first details about the attributes were revealed. I do not however require six attributes, it's just that three or four remind me too much of games I don't like such as Dragon Age, MMOs and ARPGs and I think that a good system can be done with more attributes than that. The other restraints on the system are making it difficult however. I think this is the primary issue with the current system. Deflection is not being governed by attributes - something I am okay with, but I think spreading Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower across two attributes each makes it very difficult to make a balanced attribute system with the remaining combat stats without doing some really weird things. The Perception attribute governing critical damage seems like it's scraping the barrel. In Eternity, criticals are only gained when a character has an accuracy that is equal to a target's defense. This makes scoring criticals reliant on accuracy. Accuracy is governed by another attribute. I believe this makes perception an inferior attribute for many classes. Accuracy is clearly the more valuable attribute as an increase in accuracy likely adds more of a reliable damage (DPS) increase - converting more misses to grazes, grazes to hits and hits to criticals. Critical Damage also likely implies that it also effects durations of critical hits on non-damage spells ... well Resolve already gives a steady increase to durations of those spells, and Intellect gives more flat damage. All three of these make an increase in critical damage an inferior choice to almost all builds because the chance of getting a critical is random, whereas all other attributes give a reliable increase in efficacy - as they add something on grazes, hits and criticals, whereas critical damage only adds something of value when a critical is scored. Perception increases Reflex defense, although so does Dexterity (which governs accuracy). The other issue created by the separation of defenses from other combat stats is the Strength attribute. In the current design the Strength attribute governs Fortitude defense (one of two ways to bump it), inventory size and Player Health. Compared to the other attributes (all of them), this attribute is focused on long-term resource management. Since in the current design, stamina and health gain are separated over two attributes, and Health is the long-term resource - Strength effectively governs the length of a character's (and thus to some degree - party's) adventuring day. The more health a character has, theoretically, the more encounters they will be able to face over the course of an adventuring day. This does effect a character's efficacy in an encounter, but likely not in an immediate encounter (as in an encounter where all characters are at full strength), but consecutive encounters after that. Attributes governing inventory slots is an interesting take on the fact that in the IE games, Strength governed the types of items characters could carry. I think it is fair that this is going to be something that is kept, and this is not a problematic 'combat stat' on it's own, though when coupled with Health and a secondary defense such as Fortitude, it is a problem. I believe this will create "annoyance" as players will be forced to put points into this attribute, even if they don't really want to and that takes away some of the 'player choice' from attribute design and will possibly be frustrating for the player. On harder difficulties, players who do not put at least X points into this attribute will be abusing rest locations and returning to the Stronghold after very few encounters to heal up / swap items around. This reminds me of the Crafting skill design and that is something that I think the majority of players do not want. It is going to be hard to avoid situations like this without weighing defenses against the likes of accuracy and damage, so I think this is the main idea that should be dropped from the attribute system. I am not sure about this one. I really like the idea of just having one attribute for Health and I like the Stamina and Health system when the progression of them is unified, it is an intuitive system and it is easy to make a Health character. One issue I do have with this though is as I recall that pretty much all of the characters I made in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale always had 18 CON. There was simply no reason not to have 18 CON. In a point buy system with limited points however I think this issue largely dissipates, particularly if putting heaps of points into the Health/Stamina attribute(s) doesn't give a HUGE advantage, but rather a moderate one - such as 3HP per point in a 10 pt system or something. Separating the two adds some more interesting dynamics to the health system but makes it a bit more unintuitive. It also makes it harder to make a 'hardy' character, doing so would cost a lot of attribute points and leave your character wanting in other areas. I don't really like the concept of "Tank" characters that do nothing but tank, but this would likely create some of those scenarios I guess. This also kind of leads into "how many attribute points should you get" I guess. It also makes it easier to make a bad character. I also think one of the primary reasons Health and Stamina were split is because there was a lack of combat stats to use due to defenses not being weighed against other things for the purposes of attribute balance. So I'm undecided on this one. I think I'd prefer a one Health attribute system, but two would be fine if the overall scaling of the attribute system wasn't enourmous. For instance in the IE games it was possible to get +4 to hit from 18 points in the attribute that governed your To Hit (STR or DEX usually), in PE that would be +20 Accuracy essentially. If the bonuses gained for the purposes of Health and Stamina were also reasonable - the ability to survive a few more hits in an encounter etc, but nothing HUGE. I don't mind this. I do think that in combination of a lot of the other things constraining attributes, removing this also makes it a bit harder to balance. I think it is fair to weight deflection against other combat stats as Accuracy, Damage, Health and Deflection are probably the four main ones in the game. Although this has never been a feature of D&D, I think adding it in would solve some of the design problems. I think Action Speed would be a good combat stat to have in Eternity. My definition of Action Speed here governs the speed of ALL actions in combat - Attacks, "Cast Time" of spells and abilities, Item use and the 'downtime' between such actions. It could simply govern the downtime between actions alone, or just the speed of the actions themselves - or all of them. All are possible, within reasonable limits. It would be cool if you could create a character who was "Fast" and who act faster in armor than a character who did not invest in the attribute that governed it. This is another one that I do like the idea of, but I think it is creating some issues. The current strength attribute is problematic and I think matching it with Stamina would be a little bit better - or just having it talent based or something. I am indifferent to it's inclusion.

PE's current attribute design appears to be a bit bogged down by player expectations and nostalgia and the current design has combat stats spread across attributes very thinly due to the removal of defenses from the equation. This questionnaire will ask some very important questions about what you as a player want to see in Eternity's attribute system and will allow you to give your perspective on some of the nostalgic points of the IE games attributes. This is not a poll as the player's opinion is more important than their vote and it will give the designers a chance to read through what you have to say and perhaps get some ideas or better understand what things are or are not important to the majority. For the record here are some of the main design goals No dump stats Dumping a stat is harmful to every build Every attribute must be useful for every character (class) Attributes must be reasonably balanced It should be hard to make a bad character No Attribute shall govern multiple defenses QUESTIONNAIRE Q1: The current hypothesis is that PE must have SIX (6) attributes because the IE games (and D&D) had six attributes. Does nostalgia require that this be so ? Would you be upset if it was 5 or 7 ? Q2: Do you think that defenses should be weighed against other prominent combat stats such as Accuracy and Damage ? (as in, should you have to choose between putting points into damage or accuracy instead of into deflection or willpower) Q3: Should Health and Stamina be spread across two attributes or would you prefer that they be married in advancement under one attribute ? Q4: What do you think about Deflection be attribute independent ? Q5: Should Action Speed be influenced by attributes? Q6: Should inventory size be handled by attributes like it was in the IE games. If so, how do you see this being handled ?

No thanks. It is pointless. I am not really interested in player expectations as TBH most players have garbage expectations and desires. I would rather focus on the design goals themselves. No dump stats Dumping a stat is harmful to every build Every attribute must be useful for every character (class) Attributes must be reasonably balanced It should be hard to make a bad character No Attribute shall govern multiple defenses The only other thing to consider about attributes other than combat stats is dialogue and scripted interaction attribute checks. I'm thinking of creating a new thread as I do not like the direction this one has taken. This was the last setup I was working on. I do not believe it is possible to have a very good attribute system if the three secondary defenses are given to all six attributes as is like spreading butter across too much bread. Might - Damage, Healing, Stamina Regen Perception - Accuracy, Criticals Endurance - Stamina, Inventory Size Vitality - Fortitude, Health, Effect Reduction Dexterity - Reflex, Action Speed Resolve - Willpower, Durations/AoE Size

Talking about PE attributes without mention of combat stats is pretty much a waste of time. I see lots of posts about fluff, which is the stuff that doesn't matter.

That must have taken a while. Since everyone (including yourself) knows that the PE pack will be a full screen menu what you have actually done is this Which is essentially exactly the same UI style you proposed before. I would not have decorative elements on the UI like that as they create too much dead space, those skeletal pillars and woodwork on the edges is pointless, though it looks well drawn. The icons are smaller than 32x32 (I think), you could eliminate many of the pixels in the top bar to make them bigger. The adra orb clock is a cool idea. The three buttons under it I assume are select all, formations, and guard? I don't think any UI designer would have clickable buttons that small on the UI. I don't see anything for Animal Companion or Monk/Cipher resources. Swap weapon button will probably be individual weapon icons because players will be able to buy more weapon slots with talents, so I wouldn't be surprised if they are represented as individual buttons. Quick item icons menu is too big, I would assume it will only be three slots (like the IE games). And yeah the left side is just dead space as the pack menu will be a fullscreen UI. So yeah not really a "Sensuki-style" UI besides taking up the full width of the screen. Better functionality could be provided with the full space, but I guess you were nearly able to grasp the concept.

I took part in the Wasteland 2 beta and one of the first things I noticed was their issues with mouse lag. So I submitted a suggestion that they implement Raw Mouse Input as the default method of getting the mouse data for the game. I assume that the engine programmers for the game already know how to do this, but if not - here are two very important links. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms645590(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee418864(v=vs.85).aspx This also makes it easier for Windows 8.1 users as currently there is a huge bug with the Windows 8.1 mouse where people get awful polling rates and terrible mouse lag on any non-optimized games. Microsoft have only fixed certain FPS games and the rest require a registry hack. I had to do this for Wasteland 2 originally: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2908279

Josh doesn't want deflection governed by an attribute.

Yeah maybe, although nostalgia requires that we have six. You can't have Reflex and Deflection on the same attribute that is imba.

After thinking a bit longer - Vigor needs a little something else to make it a bit more effective. I'll have a bit more of a brainstorm. First thing to mind is a small reduction to Health damage. If Attributes use a 10 point scale then 0.5-1% per point?, if a 20 point scale then 0.25-0.5% per point? Don't worry about the Toughness health reduction talent I put under the Constitution description, maybe incorporate that into Vigor. Vigor - Fortitude defense, small reduction to Health damage, reduced hostile effect duration. Resolve is looking a bit sad now maybe.

Here's my suggestion. I think the all attributes attribute to Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower spreads the other effects of combat stats around attributes a bit too thinly. I think Damage, Accuracy and Health/Stamina are equally as important (if not more important) than defenses. Here I propose a system where Damage, Accuracy, Health/Stamina and Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower are considered semi-equal for this proposed system. The defenses have been placed with higher efficacy secondary combat stats. Attribute #1 (Might?) - Damage, Healing Attribute #2 (Perception?) - Accuracy, criticals Attribute #3 (Constitution?) - Health/Stamina, inventory size Attribute #4 (Vigor?) - Fortitude, hostile effect reduction Attribute #6 (Dexterity) - Reflex, Action Speed Attribute #7 (Resolve) - Willpower, Durations, AoE Size Might increases damage and healing - healing could mean Stamina Regeneration and adding the same amount of "damage" to Healing Spells, so any class with a flat heal also benefits. Stamina regeneration in combat only occurs from ability/spell use for all classes other than Fighters who naturally regen stamina in combat. Fighters in PE don't really need damage, but if the increase in Stamina Regen is good, then this would be valuable for them. Perception increases accuracy and does something to augment criticals, this might be increasing the critical damage or making criticals easier to get - but it should not have as huge of an impact as it would in PE's current system as it is the secondary effect of the attribute. Constitution increases Health and Stamina, which are gained at the same rate. I think it's better to keep Health and Stamina married because it is a more intuitive system. I think the Health & Stamina ratio is a more interesting mechanic, and perhaps the game could include a "Toughness" talent that reduces the Health Damage taken by 5% or something - giving a small taste of Barbarian toughness, but they could also take it to be even tougher. Also handles the inventory size thing. Vigor is the best name I could come up with for this one, but is essentially the character's resistance to ailments and such. It increases their Fortitude defense, and reduces the duration of hostile effects. This could be a percentile reduction. I think this would make for an awesome attribute with Fortitude and effect reduction, as Fortitude on it's own is boring. If this became an attribute you could bump the durations of all effects a bit to compensate. Dexterity increases Reflex defense and Action Speed - this includes all actions such as attack speed, cast time, item/consumable use and reloading and has a percentile reduction on the "downtime" between actions. Max speed increase could be like 30-50%, making max Dex characters still perform actions faster than an unarmored character with no dex increase. This would have to be kept finely granular as to not be overpowered, but I think it is a better representation of the Dexterity attribute this way. Resolve is essentially exactly the same as Josh Sawyer proposed, except the effects on Durations and AoE size are not as wide as previous, because it is the secondary combat stat to improving the Willpower defense. I think that's a pretty good system tbh, gives every class a reason to take every attribute and is even more intuitive than the current one, but if you'd prefer that all attributes add to defenses then that's fair enough. I just think that Damage, Accuracy and Health are equally or more important and when the defenses are taken out of the mix it makes it hard to make six equal attributes. edit: This reduction of F/R/W to one attribute each means that they can be better balanced with the class deflection score. Problem with dropping the "Intellect" name is it probably fúcks up currently written dialogue and scripted interactions, so that may be an issue? I don't know.

Usually might or power, IMO. To be honest - Attribute names don't really matter. In a gamist system you could call stuff "Valor", "Rigor", "The Serpent's Poise", it doesn't really matter. It may even be better if PE de-couples itself from D&D attributes. I'll brainstorm some things, and post later.

I only have an issue with Strength and maybe Perception (since in order to actually crit you have to outclass the enemy by having a higher accuracy than their defense) - useful on classes that can attack many types of defenses, not as good on the others unless you pump dex as well. Might have a think about them over the holiday break and post something.

I thought you meant current UI as in the UI from Art Update 54. We haven't seen an update from Obsidian yet. We know it's no longer like Karkarov's, but we don't know if it's in the style of my OP either. Maybe not, but in every thread I have seen where I have posted and you have posted, you are questioning my statements - "where did you get this information?" "If there is no actual quote then it is no evidence". In that particular one, there was a quote and you missed it. Some of the things you are correct about such as if I make an assumption (which I usually state is an assumption) that turns out to be wrong, but as far as actual information that the devs post elsewhere goes, there's not many more reliable/up to date sources on the forum.

No it doesn't lol. You've consistently ignored anything to do with pause and ignored the statement about the weight of individual actions in turn-based combat. If you're going to go for a Real-time versus turn-based argument - try saying that (this is a bad comparison) Air Hockey requires more skill than chess - not going to happen. Real-time PC games are not Air Hockey and Turn-based games are not chess, but the point still stands. And that is something that makes it easier. I think that there would be a statistical relation to the people who like turn-based games with preference for harder difficulties, and a statistical relation to preference for RTwP games and easier difficulties. Note the key word - statistical relation, as you state down the bottom you prefer hard as well, so that doesn't include you. But from the posts on here, the kickstarter comment, smudboy's stupid youtube arguments a lot of the people who hate turn-based are 'storyfags' who don't care about combat. That is still more than what you can do in turn-based - nothing. Yes this is one of the things that I think makes RTwP fun. Not necessarily harder, just requires more inputs per minute. Chess is also a simple game, yet it is possibly the most skill-based board game in the world. No it isn't always more complicated. It depends on the systems. Turn-based systems and RTwP systems rely on the underlying character and combat systems for their depth. There are not too many RTwP games that have heaps of options for all characters. The best examples are probably 7.62 High Caliber and XCOM Apocalypse I guess. I do like Baldur's Gate 2 though. They also have all the time in the world to think when the game is paused. I have seen MANY requests on here, Something Awful and RPGCodex for heaps of auto-pause triggers - and Party AI scripts to reduce the amount of inputs required in a short amount of time by the player. You and I may enjoy micromanagement, but not everyone does. In turn-based these people have to manage every unit's move, but in RTwP they can be heavily automated. I don't see any turn-based fans in this thread complaining about PE with RTwP, only RTwP fans complaining about turn-based combat. I don't get how you think I am part of the turn-based master race - I like RTwP, I am not saying one is better than the other - you are saying RTwP is better than turn-based and takes more skill. I disagree. I think that it is easier to do a good turn-based system than a RTwP one. It's a garbage game compared to the old XCOMs - and the number one reason why I posted that picture Though Dark Souls is a good console game, but it's an action game. I wouldn't bother posting about it any further. I hate console games. I hate what they have done to gaming.

Also Do classes still get a static bonus to other defenses, or are they now completely reliant on attributes ? E: And because Health and "Carry slot" are kind of long term situations, there is a risk of this attribute becoming ... not really a dump stat, but a stat that you may not want to increase very highly. Inventory slots does limit tactical options in the field and Health does increase your longevity over an adventuring day, so it seems that it might be a good stat to chuck a few points into - but if there are too many rest locations, or the player has the ability to leave an area without consequence and return to the Stronghold to rest, I don't see too many people having max strength. Perception is another one that seems a bit situational, on classes that aren't really focused on dealing damage, it doesn't really make too much sense to put any points into perception - rather just put those in Dexterity instead as you are getting accuracy (thus more consistent damage) and Reflex. Are attributes on a 100 point scale ? That may not be an issue though.

I believe the desired icon size is 32x32, though I think they will be rendering them at 48x48 or something. I would assume that the Monk and Cipher resources would be represented as a bar the same as the Health and Stamina bars, it seems like the most space-optimal solution. Making use of a trivial amount of horizontal space (if vertical). Horizontal bars would obviously take up a bit more room IMO I think your portrait size might actually be a bit too fat for the portraits that Kaz will be drawing - they will be roughly the same ratio as the IWD ones. If you are going to take a stab - here are some things to take into consideration: There is probably a guard interface, similar to the IE games. The game will probably have a similar style "clock" select all button needs to be on the UI at all times Formation technically only needs to be there when multiple party members are selected There will probably be three quick item slots There will be something representing weapons. It *may* be a swap weapon button, but because you can buy extra weapon slots as a talent, it might need to be a 'box' for each - only visible when a particular character is selected, whereas multiple party members only needs an attack icon There might be a skill use button. I would recommend perhaps a minimum of 10 quick ability/spell buttons And perhaps an ability/spell icon There's probably more to take into consideration - but there are a few anyway.

One thing I've noticed that I'm not too surprised about is that no attribute affects Action/Attack speed. This is not surprising since in D&D - no attributes affect attack speed. What we do know is that armor affecs (ie. wearing it slows) attack speed, and so does the type of steel your weapon is made from (Ymyran is lighter/faster). Will there be any other ways to permanently increase attack speed through character building (such as talents, skills etc) or will it be largely equipment and ability based?

Try and think of it as knowing where to aim rather than how hard, I guess. My point is that it is a better abstraction of reality than using Strength is when it takes into account everything rather than just melee and thrown weapons.

No, he's the Executive Producer. I believe he handles the budgeting and staffing aspect. I'm not sure what staffing structure they have for Wasteland 2 but for Torment they have a Project Director - Kevin Saunders who is an ex-Obsidian employee. It is clear from the beta that the WL2 development structure hasn't been completely optimal.

That is not my quote. If you were intending to quote something I said, do a better job of it next time. My discussion is about turn-based vs Real-time WITH PAUSE. Not about real-time. Are you saying that a pause is any different from the magical time stop that you describe? Every farking thread you misread what I say. Go level up in reading comprehension skills. Oh really? Because there's plenty of turn-based games that have good combat systems. To be honest you should go and find some real-time only RPGs to use examples with. If you can find some. Some turn-based games don't use action points. If you read my posts, you'd see I already demonstrated that. Also exact words I used in a post in the Kickstarter comments. You mustn't like turn-based.

That's about all I have to say to that comment.