Sensuki

Melee and ranged were the same, my melee fighter always had the lowest thac0 in IWD and BG games, but that's because I gave him the thac0 boosting items and not my archer. I don't necessarily think that different mechanics for ranged and melee combat are a bad idea, I am just saying that no matter what we do - we will be getting the already proposed unified attack resolution mechanics.

There are two aspects to being hit in PE. 1. Checking whether the target is hit successfully. 2. Dealing with the cosequences of being hit. Armor in PE affects 2. (unlike D&D armor, which affected 1.), we are talking about 1. in this thread. I have. I don't see the connection, though. Point is that random chance vs 100% chance to hit (or at least different values) diminishes the efficiency of ranged combat. They were the same in the IE games so I expect them to be the same here.

You now no longer take crafting for crafting as a power gamer, you take it for item durability reduction.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64053-economy-in-project-eternity/

What if they hate it? Then Josh Sawyer has another thing to add to his complaint lists that bothers him.

You could also say 30 people, actually no, IndiraLightfoot and Karkarov who together posted maybe 30-40 posts between them over the span of a week, successfully changed the size of the UI. I cared both times.

Regardless, for me it's exactly the same thing and I don't like it at all, evident by posts/ph over various forums haha.

Have you played Expeditions: Conquistador by any chance ?

Obsidian made the UI smaller because 30% of people wanted them to - so they've done it before, why not now ?

Your system seems more obtuse (if I am determining it correctly). Character A takes craft. Character A 'sharpens weapon' Character A gives weapon to character B Even though weapon is sharp, weapon degrades faster for Character B because character B does not have Craft skill Exactly the same as current system, except characters with Craft have to sharpen everyone's weapons to get the bonus. It also makes it uneven for characters who's attacks don't get the bonus - such as Wizards who might have a Staff with a magical auto-attack.

If your system was inverse of the current one then yes they would be, because weapons would be sharp most of the time.

Depends on how they balance encounters. In the current system - damaged weapon puts you behind. Logic implies that encounters be balanced against having a sharp weapon which means even though it has a + next to it instead of a - it's not really a buff, so the same applies, otherwise it's a ridiculously overpowered buff.

Yes there is. In The Witcher you have one character, you use whetstones on that one character's swords. Bull's Strength can be cast one anyone. Sharpening limited to the character with the crafting skill ? only benefits that character. In your version it actually makes more sense to make it so that the Crafter can sharpen anyone's sword in the party rather than just his own, then it makes it only beneficial for one character in the party to have the skill, not everyone. It makes no sense to have someone that can sharpen a sword, give it to someone else and then because that person doesn't have the Crafting skill the edge dulls over time - it is EXACTLY the same as item durability.

Whetstone: Item, plentiful and cheap Bull's Strength: spell, replaceable Item Durability: part of Crafting skill, skill limited permanent resource Not the same.

Mako was fun. Problem wasn't the Mako, it was the planets. I don't know how they were able to come to that conclusion.

I am talking specifically about power-gaming. The Rogue will benefit the most from Stealth because they do the most single target damage. So having a Rogue will max stealth will mean you can sneak up real close to enemies and deal a bucket full of damage in one strike. Rangers are supposed to be next in line regarding single target damage as per D&D4E, so they would be the next most beneficiary. Having it on a monk is useful when you get abilities like "Stunning Fist"/"Quivering Palm" etc.

Why? The game will have a hard in-game distance limit that you can fire from. It is the cleanest solution overall. Unsure whether Crossbows or Bows will have longer ranges than Firearms etc - we'll see.

Sure, but if you are power gaming, leveling up your crafting means that you will not be able to have high points in both stealth and mechanics - so you'll need another party member to compensate probably on the mechanics shortfall. It's definitely not about loss aversion for me, I would rather see a Diablo 2 item durability system than have Crafting and Weapon Maintenance lumped together to give people an excuse to take Crafting on multiple characters, it seems like a clumsy excuse to keep Crafting in the skill pool rather than just keep it as a separate action like BG2 and KotOR2.

That is even worse than item durability IMO. Absolutely not. I am not a fan of the whole "Non-combat skills should have a combat benefit otherwise there is no reason to take them on more than one character / needs to match the usefulness of Stealth" approach I don't think that Weapon maintenance should be linked at all to Crafting, it is completely unnecessary. People who are good with weapons most likely know how to take care of them, not just people with crafting skills. Crafting should just become not a skill, then there wouldn't have to be a silly arbitrary combat-benefit attached to it. I would rather have universal Diablo 2 item durability than Crafting with a combat bonus. It would be easier to make a judgement if we knew more about other skills and the rate at which skill points are gained, but I guess we'll have to wait until that update. If you have to find an excuse for a skill to compete in the skill point economy then it should not compete. Either remove it or split skills into groups or something.

You mustn't have been reading very intently then. Another thing I don't like about Crafting is because of it's relation to Item Durability, Item Durability now becomes the main reason for taking it, not Crafting in itself, because really, it doesn't matter who crafts. Josh Sawyer has said the following two things about skills: You will only be able to max one skill, not two. You will be able to have two high skills. A rogue is probably not going to take Crafting because they will take Stealth and Mechanics A wizard is probably not going to take Crafting because they cast spells, if you build a frontline wizard who uses a melee weapon then yeah maybe you'll take Crafting, but probably not as there will be other skills better for the Wizard. A ranger is probably not going to take Crafting because they are a ranged character, ranged weapons probably still degrade but they most likely wont directly be getting hit very much, their animal companion will be instead. Not 100% sure but a cipher seems like a less likely class to take crafting with as well, unless you build a melee cipher It's going to be melee fighters, barbarians and paladins that put high points in crafting because they are hitting often and getting hit often, so it makes the most strategical and economical sense for those characters to take crafting solely because of item degradation. That to me is a negative side-effect of applying combat bonuses to skills that in my opinion shouldn't have combat bonuses.

I never said I didn't want crafting. I said because of their skill system, I'd prefer to have crafting not as a skill, but rather as an arbitrary action that every player can do, and the pre-requisites be tied to the item recipes. That way everyone wins. What's the point of pointing that out? It's pretty inappopriate to pressure me in that way. Haha, but seriously - I have already stated my reasons for the poll, to take the discussion of Item durability by itself out of the update thread and take it to a central place. It's a public forum and they have stated multiple times that they get insight from forum feedback, heaven forbid people give out constructive criticism once in a while. I don't even really think Item durability in itself is bad, I just really do not like the fact that it is tied to the Crafting skill, or that the crafting skill (or skills in general) must have a combat-related per-character sliding benefit to compensate for the shortfall between other skills and the Stealth skill. I believe there is room for both one-person per party skills and skills that are useful for everyone. That is my opinion, agree or disagree as you like. edit: Sorry I'm also posting about this in multiple forums and threads so I am not sure if I stated all of that in this thread before.

All attacks in Project Eternity compare the attacker's Accuracy value to one of four defenses: Deflection (direct melee and ranged attacks), Fortitude (body system attacks like poison and disease), Reflexes (area of effect damage attacks), and Psyche (mental attacks). A number between 1 and 100 is generated to determine the attack rules. If the Accuracy and target defense are the same value, these are how the results break down: • 01-05 = Miss • 06-50 = Graze • 51-95 = Hit • 96-100 = Critical Hit A Hit is the standard damage and duration effects, a Graze is 50% minimum damage or duration, a Critical Hit is 150% maximum damage or duration, and a Miss has no effect. In a balanced Attack and defense scenario, the majority of attacks wind up being Hits or Grazes. If the Accuracy and defense values are out of balance, the windows for each result shift accordingly, while always allowing for the possibility of a Graze or a Hit at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Accuracy (x) will have separate Melee (y) and Ranged (z) bonuses (likely derived from class abilities, talents, items, buffs and attributes). Melee Accuracy +xy (or +9; where a character with +5 accuracy also has +4 melee accuracy) Ranged Accuracy +xz (or +7; where a character with +5 accuracy also has +2 ranged accuracy) Defenses will be presented in the same way, starting from zero (rather than 10 like D&D, Pathfinder). A separate touch AC isn't used in PE because armor doesn't directly contribute to deflection (though shields do). A character with a Deflection of +9 being attacked by an opponent with +7 melee accuracy is slightly more likely to suffer a graze than a hit.

P:E has tiers of steel: Oromi, Ymyran, Durgan etc, one can assume that the higher tier the steel the less likely it is to break. I just think it's silly to tie the rate of degradation to crafting. As a power gamer, to avoid the nuisance of weapon breaking and to reduce the cost of repair (which seems like it will be particularly important for the higher quality items), it is an absolute no-brainer to take Craft on your primary melee characters. It's kind of like Concentration for spellcasters, why would you not take it ? In a system where non-combat skills are supposed to have a combat benefit to make them of equal use with Stealth (though I don't see why the benefit has to be combat-focused, they are non-combat skills after all), Crafting should probably just become an arbitrary action like BG2/KotOR2 and not a skill.

BG1 had it for non-magic weapons, but since it didn't affect magic weapons it was fine and it fitted with the narrative, it wasn't just thrown in there for some abstract gamist reason.

Looks like part of the skill design is to have a degradable benefit to combat to match the benefit of combat benefit of Stealth. I don't like that design even though it may be 'mathematically sound', these are supposed to be non-combat skills right? Why does it have to be a combat-based side benefit? Sounds like overdesigning to me. If that is the case I'd prefer not to have crafting as a skill.