Infinitron

Not me. I'm a Wasteland 2 backer. I am asking For The Community.

Except that Torment backers with a Wasteland 2 add-on or tier got it too.

As you know, backers who pledged for a $165 or higher tier for Project Eternity are to receive a copy of Wasteland 2 when that game is released. Yesterday, all backers of Wasteland 2, and all backers of Torment: Tides of Numenera who pledged for a Wasteland 2 tier or add-on for that game, received a key for the original Wasteland, redeemable on Steam or GOG. Will the Project Eternity backers get that too?

I don't think it's anything as complex as that. Fact is, in a party-based RPG, it's more engaging for the player to be able control all of his characters in combat, as opposed to, say, watching them fight it out automatically (something which usually comes with a host of "dumb AI" issues). And once you've given the player full control over more than one character, you've basically created a small scale "RTS", whether you like it or not. And anything done, deserves to be done well. Well, you're entitled to see it how you will, but to me controlling multiple characters (while more engaging in the sense that it gives the player more to do) is somewhat less immersive and detracts from the experiential element of RPGs. I of course agree that those who enjoy such an approach deserve a strategically interesting system to support their play style, especially in a nostalgic game like PE, but I would be happy that all players aren't forced to grapple with the game in that manner. And I do think this is a case of tabletop RPGs influencing future trends in RPG video games. That's a bit of an odd thing to say though, because in tabletop RPGs, you do control only one character in the party. Your friends control the rest.

It's just a strange lie. Pretty sure Baldur's Gate was the first RPG to have RTS squad management. Darklands had a very similar RTwP system in 1992. 1990! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTraveller_1:_The_Zhodani_Conspiracy

I don't think it's anything as complex as that. Fact is, in a party-based RPG, it's more engaging for the player to be able control all of his characters in combat, as opposed to, say, watching them fight it out automatically (something which usually comes with a host of "dumb AI" issues). And once you've given the player full control over more than one character, you've basically created a small scale "RTS", whether you like it or not. And anything done, deserves to be done well.

Hey, Josh, I have a question. Dave Oshry said: What did he mean by that? What "options"?

Demo: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=8795 Superdemo: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9207

Thanks for the reply. My other question...?

Doesn't this mean it's now much less important to optimize your characters towards scoring critical hits on hard-to-hit boss enemies? Just wear 'em down with grazes instead. On a related note, I don't believe you've ever said whether there's still some minimum damage value that always penetrates the DT, ever since the armor system changed. If there is such a value, does it still differ per weapon, or is it a universal constant?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/645170 Thoughts?

All Project Eternity PCs have "strong souls", I believe. It's why they're able to become adventurers in the first place.

Problem?

Why is this thread in the Project Eternity forum

Depends how define "anything". I do think it's worth trying to talk to NPCs with various classes, because you never know what you may discover. Too bad you can't switch between speakers during the conversation like in Storm of Zehir.

You can still min-max, but it'll be min-maxing to get the best hitter, or best dodger, or best archer, instead of min-maxing to get the best character overall

No, it was reload time. Now do you really want to sell me unavoidable reloads as a feature? Unavoidable even through clever play? What's the challenge in that? I think PE might have similar powers (dire charming) but they'll be much more time limited. So you'll lose control of a party member for a minute instead of for the entire battle and then some. That means it'll no longer be an instant-reload trigger.

Icewind Dale doesn't have kits.

Well, a character's disadvantages can be defined by the enemies opposing him. If a character needs to have certain "advantages" to win a particular fight with ease and he doesn't have those advantages, then that's an implicit disadvantage. Of course not. Because that's more than just balancing - it's oversimplifying.

Of course I can. In a typical RPG, the entire party will be in the same level range at any given moment. Whether one class becomes better at combat twenty hours later is irrelevant to how they're performing right now. Now, I realize that there's a certain long-term satisfaction narrative in "shepherding" a weak low-level mage until he becomes powerful enough to kick ass and outshine the rest of the party, but I'm pointing out that that approach has many disadvantages. "Sufficiently powerful"? In what game, I ask? And I answer - in any game that has been made sufficiently easy such that high level fighters and high level rogues can get by despite being so much weaker than high level mages. Wouldn't you rather play a game where the high level challenges kick everybody's ass, not just the fighter's and the rogue's?

Only if you look across the entire level spectrum, which isn't what I meant. Low level mages = fairly useless, high level fighters and especially rogues = fairly useless. So no, it wasn't. And this is, by the way, why many D&D CRPGs have tended to be a lot easier than they could have been - because they couldn't be designed with the assumption that your party was fully combat-capable at all times, with any party composition and at any level range. The cost of the imbalance that you think was such a great thing was easier games.

Project Eternity isn't doing any of these things, so I don't know what point you're trying to make. Your ideal of an unbalanced system is based on a simplistic combat model, where any given class can only be "good at combat" or "bad at combat" and that is the only meaningful trade-off that exists in the game. You fail to realize that in a sufficiently complex game, different classes can be good at combat in meaningfully different ways. The long range specialist will have a significantly different experience from the melee specialist, the critical hit specialist will have a significantly different experience from the accuracy specialist, the heavily armored guy will have a significantly different experience from the fast, dodgy guy.

This post should be turned into a banner image and be permanently emblazoned at the top of the Game Mechanics forum.

Cloaks, yes. Horses, I doubt it.

Uh, yeah it kinda does. The attribute system you use determines what kind of content makes it into the game. You're looking at things backwards. There's nothing about having choices and consequences, or many different ways to solve quests, that requires a particular RPG system. Whether or not a particular system inspired the designers to add those features isn't important in view of the final product. Systems versus content.