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Are you building every skill to have a degradable benefit in combat or something?

I am still banned from SomethingAwful for single line posting so I can't reply to this on there, but I wanted to ask - yes technically the party benefits from all characters taking Stealth, but does the party benefit from all characters taking Lockpick (or Mechanics) - I suppose you could say that you could technically have multiple characters disable traps/open locks at once, but it's not really the same. Give crafting a different bonus or make it not a skill? Crafting as it is seems to have this 'party' element to it where if another character in the party makes up for the pre-reqs of an item recipe that the crafting character does not have (such as a skill or talent), having spare points on crafting could act the same way such as making up the shortfall between the max available crafting points at that character level or applying a direct bonus on top of the character's crafting skill, or giving access to recipes a level above or something. Right now Crafting seems to be [Crafting, Enchanting, Alchemy and Weapon Maintenance]. The other option was that Crafting was not a skill in Baldur's Gate II or Knights of the Old Republic 2 (my two favorite crafting systems), it was just there. You could make Crafting not a skill but the pre-requisites be in the recipes themselves. I suppose you could also give a recipe to a vendor and instead of paying the material cost, just pay a gold cost instead ? (probably not the best system but then again I spent 3 minutes thinking about it). Artifacts of course would be different, and you'd have to find the pieces and pay a gold value. Going by what you've done with Crafting it seems that Herbalism (if that is actually a skill) will probably have a benefit to the duration of consumables or something. This would also have the side effect of being an almost no-brainer pick for melee characters to take as they are going to be hitting and getting hit more often, so extra boosts / stamina regen will be most valuable to them. These people seem like extreme edge cases, and I know you try to please as many people as possible, but I think that ultimately striking a middle ground where the amount of these types of complaints lessen will be difficult. People that don't spend money probably also play on an easier difficulty (such as Easy or normal), just use the items they find in the world, don't use consumables and don't splurge in the optional side benefits. They probably didn't spend any money because they didn't need to. Scrooges by nature. Is there anything in the lore of the game that you can think of that would aid the situation, for instance, what does a wealthy adventurer do with their money in the history of the Dyrwood ? Can Player wealth be tied into Factions somehow ? Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with having a lot of money at the end of the game if you did every side-quest available, looted every container, sold every item you found and were partially conservative in your spending. That is the expected outcome right? I mean sure in games where there are less equipment types and resources are scarce that wouldn't be the case but Project Eternity has a lot of item types and multiple 'tiers' of equipment and crafting - things that are all recipes for wealth. One thing that was mentioned in the Kickstarter campaign was the use of ships, if Big City #2 was going to be Ozia in the Vailian Empire (which it probably isn't, but anyway) you would most likely travel there by ship. IMO that should cost A LOT of money. Ultimately perhaps there are story and lore reasons that you can find that would encourage a player to spend money, but I don't think that Item Durability is the answer as it affects everyone, not just those who don't invest in their Stronghold and the mildness of it's design adds nothing to the gameplay IMO.

I am talking about trash items not masterwork weapons.

Some could also be artifacts (that require crafting) like The Equalizer albeit not as powerful of course. For consumables you might want to take a look at The Witcher games (which I think you've played).

That was a good point that Grunker made on RPGCodex, I thought. Buying items should be expensive IMO, like really expensive. Also selling mundane equipment should have a really small rate of return, such as 1gp or so. Want a suit of plate mail? Pay a FFFFFFFFF load of gold to buy one or get one made, or wait until later in the game when you encounter a foe with some or gain the pre-reqs to craft one yourself.

edit: just read your post - shoulda started a new thread perhaps? What about having crafting not as a skill, kinda like it was in BG2 or KotOR2 ? Keep the item, skill, talent requirements of the recipes, but just have it so that anyone can do the crafting, that way we don't have to have item durability either - it seems to partially serve as a function to make crafting useful. There's probably a way to make crafting and vendors work with that as well (such as just paying a gold value or equivalent instead of ingredients). I'd also like to see BG2/ToB style artifacts in there but YMMV. --------- Answer to your question: I will spend money on anything I need. I was fine with the mix of items found in shops, in the world and through crafting that was present in Baldur's Gate 2. At the start of the game, you went to the Adventurer's Mart and bought stuff you needed to go take on the harder quests for a low level char (like Umar Hills). The Baldur's Gate 1 feel was good too though, where you used mostly items you found in the world and then when you had the money you bought your suit of Full Plate Mail, or your Large Shield +1 or your Short Bow +1. There was significance in that. BG however did not have crafting. The amount of player outputs I can think of are: Buying items, paying for crafting or buying crafting materials, paying for magical service (such as healing, restoration, identify etc etc), Real estate (Such as the stronghold or player house) and Quest inputs such as the $15K gold to pay the Shadow Thieves to take you to Spellhold in BG2. I think one of the reasons the amount of items for sale in IWD was noticeable because a large number of them were in the same place, for instance Conlan's Blacksmith - that was your shop for pretty much half of the game whereas in the BG games there was High Hedge, Beregost Smith, Bentley Mirrorshade and Feldpost's Inn that all had shops with unique magic items before you got to Baldur's Gate which had a few more.

Shadowrun Returns definite bungle. I am gearing myself up for disappointment with that one.

I don't think any of us here expect them to change the mechanics based on a poll. This is just a thread+poll focused on this one point of the update that there appears to be a divide on, rather than doing it in the update thread. They may note or ignore at their leisure. I'm sure they appreciate the feedback even if they disagree with it.

I am not going to make a poll in this thread but the recent update by Tim Cain does raise questions about the intended direction of economy in Project Eternity. There hasn't really been a thread on this before (There's been a couple on specific elements such as economy related to magic or difficulty, or currencies), but not a discussion of the economy in itself. So I am making this thread for us to discuss economy in Project Eternity. To start off the thread properly I'll need to do a fairly good main post so I'll try to cover everything I can think of. I'll try and open the discussion from the perspective of the player's wealth as it is really the only thing that the designers have to be weary of in the game. We know the inputs to player wealth in the game (perhaps not all of them, but enough to talk about) - so I think the discussion should be about the value of those inputs, the outputs of which the player spends their wealth. Inputs to player wealth: Items found Money found Skills (Crafting, Stealing etc) Quest rewards Outputs from player wealth: and as per this post on the Something Awful forums it seems that one of the purposes of it is as a money sink for players who don't necessarily do much with the Stronghold Buying new items Paying for Crafting Paying for magical service (Healing, Restoration, Identification etc) Repairing items (currently) Player House Player Stronghold Quest inputs (eg. Paying the Shadow Thieves for transport to Spellhold in BG2) I don't think this discussion should be particularly about multiple currencies or anything specifically but by all means feel free to talk about them. My input I'll start off by saying I'm not a huge fan of Item Durability proposed in Update 58 and as per this post in the Something Awful forums it seems that one of the purposes of Item durability is as a money sink for the player in case they do not invest in the Stronghold. My suggestion here would be to remove item durability from the game and focus on other outputs from player wealth instead. Is it important that if a player does not invest in the stronghold that there be other money sinks in the game to circumvent the amount of wealth they will still have from doing so? Should the economy be balanced so that if the player wants to invest in the stronghold they might have to sacrifice other outputs? Outputs themselves are also probably affected by skills (such as bartering might reduce the cost of items or increase the cost of sold items etc, we can't be sure until we see the full skill tree). Here are some brief suggestions to get the ball rolling Buying items should be expensive Having a vendor craft items for you should be more expensive than doing it yourself for the convenience it offers Paying for magical service should be expensive There should be hopefully many quest options where you can use player wealth (paying for bribes etc) to garner specific outcomes. "Conscience do cost." Selling items should get you a minimal fraction of the item cost, perhaps influenced by reputation or a skill such as bartering if one exists Keep the money you find or are given in the game down Artifact crafting could have a high money cost like BG2 Limit the junk item sell value to 1gp or currency equivalent in game Expeditions: Conquistador also had a nice price/demand system for their trading that might be worth considering. Personally I don't think the player having excess 100K gold is an issue, but there are definitely ways to bring that number down excluding Stronghold investment. Anyway there's some points to discuss. I'm sure everyone else has heaps of ideas as well. Bring on the micro/macroeconomics enthusiasts etc.

Yeah I know my god, I have unsubscribed myself from their updates.

I have been meaning to do a mechanics breakdown but I just have not had the time. I managed to finish one section - as follows.

Technically they are behind schedule (not necessarily a bad thing, because they've been conservative with their team size) but I would say they are up there.

Good. Because that's the problem I have with it. I think it's dumb that you have to take crafting in order to be good with a whetstone and oilcloth.

But you need to take the crafting skill to know how to use that whetstone

Depends on the implementation. Expeditions: Conquistador had group skills. As I said further down in the post that it might be against the design principles of their current system but if it isn't it then some manner of relation to the person crafting isn't necessarily a bad idea. Tim already stated that you can use talents and skills etc from other party members as well as your own to make recipes so why couldn't you have another party member's crafting score augment your score within limitations (whether it was making a shortfall to the maximum points allowed for that class level or adding a percentage on top). It could be designed correctly given enough thought - obviously my 5 minute ponder is insignificant. It accomplishes the same goal, just not in the weird relation to item degradation, where you to take crafting to know how to use a whetstone.

There might be an arbitrary limit to how many points you can apply to a skill per level like certain versions of D&D though. The OP states the main reasons for it's inclusion - money sink and avoid suboptimal skill assignment shortfall.

The reason is because there are a lot of .. uninformed players who will take crafting in multiple companions because they don't understand or didn't read the mechanics. This is something that really bothers Josh Sawyer as a designer, and the proposed relation of the crafting skill to item degradation rate is one way of making such a choice not a bad one and giving more characters reason to take the skill. Good intention and not a bad way of lessening the impact of suboptimal skill choices, however I think it could be done in a way where Item degradation doesn't have to be a part of the game. I won't cry if it's kept in, but yeah meh not an overall fan of it.

I can see why the rate of Item Degradation is related to the Crafting skill absolutely. But I don't like it. Personally I do not care for that style of compensation for having characters with a few points in Crafting. I think a better way to do Crafting would be to have the crafting score of other characters in the party assist the crafting score of the person doing the crafting - rather than relating to the rate at which weapons degrade, which I don't think has a home in an IE-style game in the first place, but if it was included, I would rather see it related to weapon proficiency (of which there isn't really any in P:E) because a Ranger who is awesome with a bow would know how to re-string it, and a Fighter who is awesome with a sword would know how to keep it in good condition (whetstone, oil cloth application etc). Let's say your companion Aloth has pretty much max crafting skill points (13) when you pick him up, but your PC also has let's go with 7 points in Crafting. I am not sure of the exact relation of crafting skill points to crafting items but I would say that crafting points open up new recipes as well as act as an access level to being able to craft an item. They may also reduce component consumption ? PC's crafting skill of 7 could augment Aloth's crafting skill in a manner of ways that make it so that they were not a waste. One example could be that PC's 7 crafting levels give Aloth access to items above his crafting skill level (say +1 for every 3 companion crafting skill points, with a minimum of +1). Or some other relation that I can't think of at the time. That way the same goal is achieved, the player who makes a bad strategical choice when selecting the Crafting skill in a secondary character directly benefits the party. This may not be feasible though as it probably is at odds with the design of the skill system in general, but it's another thought instead of having Item Durability.

Poll here on Item Durability as there seems to be a fair amount of widespread disdain for it's inclusion http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64050-item-durability/

Across the various forums (Here, RPGCodex, SomethingAwful etc) there seems to be a fair divide about the existence of Item Durability in Project Eternity. Here is a response from J.E. Sawyer to give context. The purposes of it as described in this post seem to be: A money sink in case players don't invest in the Stronghold and to prevent non-optimal placement (or waste) of skill points when investing points into Crafting on two or more characters. Do you think Item Durability has a place in Project Eternity? If you do not 100% agree with the proposed mechanics, what do you suggest that they change?

Hopefuly mostly dependent on difficulty setting, encounter type and playstyle. There's also the slow feature as well. I paused quite a bit in tough encounters in BG2 (such as the fight vs the Mercenaries in the sewers), mostly to cast spells to remove status effects, drink potions etc ASAP in game time.

The Item Degradation/Crafting relation to durability mechanics are going to change the Crafting archetype from the Wizard to the Melee classes. If the party is given more skill points than they *need* to have pretty good specialization in all skills (this may be impossible), then it's going to be a no brainer to dump any extra skill points into Crafting for any martial character to reduce the rate of equipment becoming damaged / cost to repair items. I'm not against Item Durability, but if it's not designed properly it has the potential to be annoying.

I see the Barbarian passive AoE as more like a cleave attack or splash attack that can hit bunched up targets in a small AoE cone or arc. It probably won't be more than 3-4 targets (if even that) because the game is supposed to have a bit more focus on positioning, so you'll likely have to shuffle the Barbarian around a bit

Nice to get an update about Crafting. All sounds pretty good to me. Nice to see food is in the game as well. My questions: Are you planning to include BG2 style crafting of "Artifacts" such as The Equalizer, Halberd +4: Wave, Flail of the Ages etc where you find an item part and then when you find all of them you can make the artifact? This solely depends on the placement of the Forges in the game. I assume you wouldn't get access to a Blacksmith's forge in their shop, you'd be able to pay him to do it for you or pay to use it I assume.