sparklecat
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Everything posted by sparklecat
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I would very much like to have this for the beta. I don't care what it looks like, I just want to learn this combat system starting at level 1 and one character, then slowly adding to both, before I go giving many opinions on how well it works.
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"No Bad Builds" a failure in practice?
sparklecat replied to SergioCQH's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
I find it a little strange, personally, to see so many people judging the attributes purely on combat effectiveness and criticising the system/calling some dump stats as a result. Every character I've made thus far as a potential build for when I get to play the entire game, I've been pushing up perception, resolve, and intellect, because I want the conversation/personal interaction options that'll be available from them. Seems more a difference in priorities and playstyle. -
Please bring back the pencil drawings of items
sparklecat replied to Grotesque's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
Or just to mod in the BG line drawings, if it's not too hard. -
Suggestion: toggle stealth circles on/off
sparklecat replied to siril_dana's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
That was what I wanted to say - I definitely do not want to have the circles off, but I'd very much like them to look nicer. Maybe replace the solid lines with a blurring of the background where they are or something (not the entire circle, just the outer edge)? Like how the cloak of displacement in BG blurs your character, but for a thin line of the environment where the stealth circles are. -
That's not already in? I'd swear I read a developer saying that the slowness of the edge scrolling is a known issue, but if you hold down the mouse wheel and scroll with that, it works properly.
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Combat XP Poll - Let's See What We Think Now
sparklecat replied to SergioCQH's topic in Backer Beta Discussion
I'm not voting because I don't want "combat XP" or "no combat XP." I want "engaging in otherwise pointless combat does not end up being the optimal choice because of how XP is handled, thus avoiding metagaming and out of character behaviour on my part." -
If you say so, buddy.
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David Warner.
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When you turn stealth on, there's a circle around each character of a size determined by their stealth score; higher stealth = smaller radius. That circle shows how close you can get to an enemy with that character without being detected.
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You gain resources from combat, but combat also costs resources. The items that you receive from combat are mostly only for crafting. The item drops are usually not high quality, so that people who dislike combat (which I believe are the target audience of this game) don't whine about being deprived of good loot. If you don't like crafting (a substantial amount of players don't) then combat is completely pointless. Well, unless you enjoy combat in and of itself.
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Yeah, I was saying that it's something I don't want to see wind up in PoE - attaching XP to killing optional critters to the point where it's actually a meaningful gain seems like a good way to make it so it's something you have to do if you want to keep up. If they were to implement kill XP in such a way that it simply became another option - you can do non-essential quests or kill non-essential things while wandering to get you to the level cap faster, or just stay on the critical path for a slower progression - I'd be absolutely fine with that. But I could see how having both available could lead to much faster progression than they want to have or can reasonably balance for.
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That's not true afaik. Staying on the critical path only will still provide you the XP needed to complete the game. XP gained on exploration / non crit path is just extra. You should hit the level cap either way but the latter method may get you there faster. Are you talking about the old IE games? Because I was.
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In old IE games you (((CANT'T))) level up your main skills killing NPCs or via XP. Only in IWD2, and is for the fake D&D3º rules... Go inform yourself. Realy ? I dont remember that i had some kind of special XP´s that were separated from the ordinary XP´s. What nonsense. But i check it out if there were 2 different experience point shemes. one for leveling up and one for the fun.... Kharador means that you couldn't raise your Charisma or any other attribute via levelling in the 2e IE games, which were... some of them but not others.
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It isn't penalising to not give some one xp for something they didn't do. It is however very restrictive to say, "Only quests give xp. I like quest more than combat so no xp for combat." It's penalising the roleplayer to make it mandatory to wander around killing things without an in-game reason if you want your character to be at the expected level for combat encounters later on down the line.
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I think they also need to change the fact that every wilderness creature on the map is automatically hostile; make it dependent on distance or the like. This would also help with the problem.
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Yup. And I'm fine with that. Personally, I see the quest XP we get as simply delayed reward for, among other things, killing those enemies necessary to progress. I agree on quest xp. That is however meaningless as we are not discussing the merits of quest xp. We are talking about why exploring, battles, and general adventuring does not give you any xp unless a npc told you to do it. Kill xp and quest xp are not exclusive. Of course they're not. But if there are enough battles/general adventuring that aren't tied into any quests (and thus are going to have attached XP rewards at some point) that the XP gained from them is meaningful, it winds up penalising anyone who doesn't want to wander around killing things without an in-game reason. My concern is more that they handle very well the cases where someone is generally exploring and effectively stumbles into the middle of a quest; that they don't lose out on XP by doing things in the "wrong" order.
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I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying it hampers your progress further on down the line if you skip XP rich areas where the goal is basically just to slaughter everything in sight. Yes, believe it or not ignoring a huge portion of the game's content does not yield as much xp. So what? Being an adventurer who is a pacifist should be harder since it's kind of a contradiction in concept. It certainly doesn't justify the outright removal of combat making you better at combat. As I have stated before: This is not a bold experiment in rpg game design; this game was pitched as a return to the familiar game-play of the IE games. Making xp exclusive to quests is not only a major detriment to role-play, it is a terrible departure from the tradition this game was meant to emulate. You just said yourself one post back that there's going to be plenty of mandatory killing through following the quest lines. That is hardly the same thing as pacifism. If it's what you want to do, it is perfectly possible to roleplay someone who goes out of their way to kill enemies when the game doesn't force them to without giving XP for it. It is not so simple to roleplay someone who tries for peaceful solutions but fights when required if your character progression requires you to go out of your way to find more things to kill. What is disincentivising killing as a solution is not the lack of XP for doing so; it's the rest mechanics that makes it costly. But it's hard to really evaluate the significance that cost without playing through much more of the game than we can right now. I would be in favour of something like, say, the option to toggle the resting supplies requirement to address this problem.
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I'm really enjoying a PnP game I'm in at present where my character basically leaps at every opportunity to avoid a fight. We're getting a lot of "roleplaying XP" because she'll usually try to negotiate instead if it's feasible. It's nice for that to be a realistic option in any rpg, IMO. Less metagaming helps with immersion for me. Not getting kill xp isn't making combat any more or less needed. There will be many parts of the game where combat is mandatory. If it wasn't it sure wouldn't be much of an IE successor. Yup. And I'm fine with that. Personally, I see the quest XP we get as simply delayed reward for, among other things, killing those enemies necessary to progress.
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I did the drow city without killing everyone. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying it hampers your progress further on down the line if you skip XP rich areas where the goal is basically just to slaughter everything in sight.
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I'm really enjoying a PnP game I'm in at present where my character basically leaps at every opportunity to avoid a fight. We're getting a lot of "roleplaying XP" because she'll usually try to negotiate instead if it's feasible. It's nice for that to be a realistic option in any rpg, IMO. Less metagaming helps with immersion for me.
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The best thing to do with people like him is to ignore them. Notice how almost everyone is doing it. How are you forced? You keep saying that, but that was simply never the case in IE games. By the need to keep up level-wise to progress. Take BGII, for example, and the Underdark: if you're doing the drow city quests there, one route if you're not looking to kill everyone is simply to clear the Kuo-Toa camp (or just to do that from the start and get out of the place as soon as possible), ignoring the Illithid and the Beholders, right? But that is a ton of XP you are missing out on, in a game where your ability to keep on with it requires you to have plenty of said XP if you want to survive. The less killing you want and do, the worse you are at it and the harder and more frustrating combat becomes. That's forcing a very specific playstyle on you, in a way that giving XP only for something you will need to be doing anyway (quests) does not. I agree that the limitations on resting does make it a bit more of a problem, but to some degree it simply affects what you're weighing - is using up more of my resting supplies by getting in a fight with that group of whatevers worth it to me? Overall, not being rewarded by the game, XP-wise, for doing something (killing nonessential enemies) and being penalised by the game for not doing something (killing enemies) are very different things.
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Autopause: Spell Cast on enemy spell cast only
sparklecat posted a question in Backer Beta Bugs and Support
You appear to have forgotten to put in the autopause when your own people have finished casting a spell, rather than simply when an enemy starts to cast something. (This is a bug/oversight, right?) -
Is that not already in the options? No. Rather oddly, you can auto-pause when an enemy finishes casting, but not when one of your players does. Wow, you are completely right. I just saw "spell cast" when going through the list and assumed it meant when you cast without even hovering. That's insane. I'm reporting it as a bug.
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Not to be "that" guy, but a poll with around 100 votes dosnt really mean anything.... I'll be that guy, anonymous self-selecting internet polls are worthless. Your population is so limited (and again, self-selecting) that any attempt to draw the conclusion of such a poll to the larger society would carry a huge margin of error rendering it meaningless. They can be fun, but certainly not definitive. Tbf, in this case we're only interested in the views of a pretty limited population (backers who have played the beta). My issue is more with the point Namutree raised regarding how the self-selection would tend to skew; a poll on the topic put out by Obsidian where they asked all backers with beta access to give their opinion on the matter would be reasonable enough to work from, I believe. Back to the issue at hand, I have less of a problem being railroaded into doing quests in a game where I am required to complete quests to progress and unlock further areas because of the basic structure of the thing. You could level up to some degree by ignoring quests and simply killing things in the IE games, yes, but there was absolutely no way they were not required to reach new areas with more things to kill. I have more of a problem with being essentially forced to jettison any hope of roleplaying someone who's not a mass-murderer if I want a strong character by the end.
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Actually, yes. This is the case.
