Infinitron

FO2 supporting many ways to play through the game doesn't have anything do with SPECIAL. It's content - it would exist even with a completely different system.

I cant recall a single instance of that happening ToB (high level campaign) but its been a long time since I played it. By the time you have a high AC you generally also had an equivalent weapon to overcome enemy high AC. Can you give me an example of your experience with a flurry of misses at high level? High level gameplay has its own problems. Yes, the situation I describe is more common at lower and mid-levels (which is the experience PE is aiming to replicate) before THAC0 has inflated past AC. In any case, it's just an extreme example that demonstrates the disadvantages of a system where missing is very common.

My thoughts about the reduction of missing: It prevents the (dare I say it) degenerate situation where two extremely high AC characters are fruitlessly whacking at one another until one of them finally gets the lucky critical hit and manages to damage the other. With no missing, those two characters are both taking damage, every second, every moment. That means that one of them has to break the tie, and fast, because he's losing precious health which, let me remind you, cannot be healed. It leads to players using more aggressive tactics, rather than waiting for the lucky die roll to save them.

On the contrary, the imbalanced games that you venerate have less room for replayability. What happens in games with "correct" or "incorrect" character builds is that after a few restarts, everybody learns The One True Character Build for their class and they stick to that. There's no room for any variations. How is that good for replayability? Yes, the first time you played Fallout it was hard. Then you read a FAQ, learned how to create a munchkin diplomat-sniper character and every single playthrough since then has been with that character, barring gimmick playthroughs. Yes, the first time you played Baldur's Gate it was hard. Then you read Dan Simpson's FAQ, learned the location of all the tomes, rerolled a million times, and built the ultimate fighter with 18/00 Strength. BORING. I've done it a million times before. I want something different.

I'm just assuming, Keenan said in the gameplay video "the ruleset is Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes with some tweaks" Yeah, I think that's a bit of an understatement. Don't think the original Wasteland was a particularly close adaptation either. Here's some information about that: http://trollbridge.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=msperules&action=display&thread=1829 Anyway, PnP adaptation faithfulness isn't the real issue here. You have fundamental differences with PE's design philosophy. You think "system mastery" - correct character building as a significant challenge factor - is important. Obsidian don't. You think "extreme" save-or-die type spells add tension and a sense of power, and should be part of any RPG. Obsidian don't. If those things are deal-breakers for you, then I would recommend you ask for a refund. From what I've seen, the major Kickstarter projects are fairly generous with refunds as long as you ask nicely.

Chrononaut: I strongly doubt Wasteland 2 is using MSPE as anything more than a source of inspiration. I doubt MSPE's stats are named "C.L.A.S.S.I.C.", for one thing.

Josh Sawyer in September 2012, beginning of the Kickstarter: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/177011/Project_Eternity_What_it_really_means_to_make_the_game_you_want_to_make.php

Obsidian have 18 months to create a cRRPG with two cities and a 15-level megadungeon, and in this thread you have people worrying about the systems and mechanics, as opposed to the content. It's not Josh Sawyer and his ruleset you should be worried about. You should be worried about getting a final product that's buggy and/or incomplete.

Give us a vertical slice video, Obsidian.

Osvir: Good post. The idea of a negative attribute that is temporary and player-controllable to an extent is a good one. It challenges the player to use the item in a different way, as opposed to just dropping a penalty on him.

Related post by Josh Sawyer: http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/3/entry-121-tunin-tips-and-tricks/

Well, the "telling" bit is part of what bothers me, and I could see that being improved, but it's also the fact that weapon switching generally pertains to only the most shallow aspects of tactical combat. "See green-colored baddies? Don't I have a sword of +1 against greenies? Indeed I do!" Does anyone really get any sense of accomplishment from putting that together? Now, if it was a question of "do I equip my spear and hold up in this narrow corridor, or do I stand back from the corridor with a bow and shoot the enemies funneling through?", that's an interesting tactical choice. The notion of switching between functionally equivalent weapons (i.e. two swords or two bows) that happen to have bonuses against orcs and ogres simply isn't interesting in the same way. Tactics should require thinking about how the terrain and other nuances can be utilized, not matching bonuses to enemy types, which is something that any five year old could do. Fair enough. I agree with you that RPGs can do more with this stuff - I used a simplistic example in my original post simply to demonstrate my point about items with penalties.

Is it the "telling" part that bothers you, or is it the switching itself? Because it doesn't have to be so obvious. Like I said, when you have to deal with several enemy types at once, in the same encounter, picking the right weapon and armor can be a dilemma. Certainly, I agree that when you have enemy groups composed exclusively of one type of enemy, that stuff can be kind of boring/meaningless.

That was really a minor thing, though. In BG2, you might want to switch weapons to hit an enemy with gnarly resistances (like golems) but even that usually happened between battles, not in the middle of them, since encounters with golems typically had only golems. It was sometimes useful to switch from ranged weapons to melee weapons as enemies closed in, of course. Icewind Dale's interface was good for that. Other than that, not much weapon switching.

Hmmm, I'm not sure how got to be so annoyed by a "trope" which barely any CRPG has historically required. I don't remember having to switch between weapons dozens of times over the course of a fight in the Infinity Engine games. In any case, Project Eternity is giving every character several item slots that he or she can switch between in the middle of combat, so I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll be expected to use them.

In many CRPGs, you'll occasionally come across items that have negative as well as positive attributes. A reinforced helmet with a penalty to your Listening score. An ugly suit of armor with a penalty to your Charisma score. Stuff like that. Personally, I never use such items. Why? It's not because the penalties are particularly punishing - as you can see, the two examples I brought up both have penalties that are practically meaningless in the context of D&D, for the most part. It's because, fundamentally, I don't have to. The games are easy enough that I don't have to even consider gimping my character in even the slightest manner. Why should I? I'll just keep on using my current equipment until I find something without a negative attribute. The best way I can think of to solve this problem is to implement penalties that are systemic and apply to entire categories of items. D&D actually does this - armors and shields all carry an Armor Check Penalty that can nullify your Dexterity bonus. Players don't avoid using them because they recognize that they're a standard thing that they simply have to live with if they want to use those items. You can of course try to make the positives outweigh the negatives to such a degree that players will be "tempted" to use the item anyway. But that's dangerous, because it can result in overpowered items. Think "Sword of Infinite Fireballs with a -1 to hit". A third idea is to try to make all penalties strictly situational (a -1 vs specific enemies, for instance) and couple them with situational benefits, while encouraging players to carry around a diverse item set with them for various situations. So, for example, you might always want to carry around your sword that's strong against orcs but has a penalty against ogres, just in case you run into any orcs. A problem with that idea is that the penalty becomes effectively meaningless, since you're never actually going to use that sword against ogres. Unless, of course, orcs and ogres often appear together, but then we're back to the original problem - unless the fight is really challenging without a bonus against orcs, most players would just forgo the penalties altogether and stick with a standard all-around sword with no penalties. In summary, items with negative attributes can be a compelling choice in two different gameplay situations that I can discern: 1) As a strategic choice, where an entire category of items comes with inherent positives and negatives, that the player incorporates into his character build. 2) As a tactical choice, where the player needs to switch between different items with different situational positives and negatives over the course of a highly challenging battle. But the battle has to be truly challenging, or the player won't use them! Thoughts?

Fearabbit: Google "Age of Decadence".

I think you've been playing too much Dragon Age. In Baldur's Gate, intelligent enemies suffered morale failure, and in scripted instances, they could even surrender.

Of course there are. What if you're so specialized at doing lots of damage that you fail badly against enemies that are good at dodging? What if you're so specialized at hitting accurately that you fail badly against enemies with a high damage threshold? What if you're so specialized in close range combat that you fail badly at enemies that attack you from long range? The problem is that combat in modern RPGs is so damned easy and simplistic that people have forgotten that things can be more complex than just "I'M AN IDIOT WHO'S GOOD AT FIGHTIN" and "I'm a non-combat geek who gimped his combat skills so he could be good at lockpicking and diplomacy".

Of course you did. You gave up on improving another skill instead of lockpicking, that also has a combat utility. Again, "combat vs non-combat" is not the only character building dilemma an RPG can provide.

You do if you pass a Spellcraft check.

All offensive spells in the Infinity Engine games are "telegraphed attacks".

I don't agree with you that the RPG genre necessarily needs to reject "build optimization" in order to "grow". Roguelikes are an RPG subgenre that is essentially based on trial-and-error build optimization and they've proven to be quite popular.

I would be hesitant to say that. I'm sure if I try to optimize for least value, I can make something bad. Yeah, possibly, I guess. If not bad, then at least not very good. Somebody who will have to run back to the rest spots a lot.

OK, you want the ultimate character skill game? You can play a game where the combat is just a stat check with no player input whatsoever. If your stats are high enough, you automatically win. Does that sound fun to you? RPGs with tactical combat certainly do require player skill. The player skill is in giving the characters the correct high level orders, the character skill is in how well they obey those orders. You'll have bad builds for specific encounters, rather than universally bad builds. "This type of character isn't good against this enemy. So I'd better use somebody else for this fight."