Stun
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By TOB I didn't even bother picking them up anymore..
Throne of Bhaal loot dispensing was a travesty. It was almost as if the devs themselves knew it and wanted to make a comentary about it. In Saradush, in the Sewers, there's a Barrel/trash can containing a +4 greatsword (!). LOL That was their message: +4 swords have become meaningless, so we're going to throw them in the trash in the sewers.
It got even worse when you were going through the slave pens in Sendai's Enclave. You could literally fill up your bag of holding with all the +3 Hammers and Halberds that Sendais slaves dropped. Ridiculous.
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I voted rare, but only because the poll option specifically said "armor and weapons". Had it reflected the actual poll question, I would have voted for the second option (abundant).
The permanently enchanted stuff should be special. They should drop from unique and formidable named foes only, like bosses and their hoards/chests, or enemy parties, or high level assassins who have been hired by powerful people to come and kill you. On the other hand, limited use/magical consumables should be common.... the norm even. There should NOT be a shortage of potions, scrolls, and wands etc. by mid game.
Of course, this game is going to have a crafting mechanic, so I'm not sure how relevant this discusion even is. If it's like most games that have crafting, the rarity or non rarity of magic weapons and armor is up to the player.
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lol
That guy used the most powerful spell in the game.... on a group of Lemures.
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Update 7 is great...sylvius the mad does not have a point here..
He is basically saying Skill, Attribute points and feats should all be lumped...no thanks!
No, he's not saying that. Not exactly, at least.
He's focussing on just lumping the Skills together (combat and non) and arguing that they shouldn't be seperate from one another when it comes time to dole out the level up points for them. That is to say, he prefers a system where, when you level up, you get, say, one point to spend, and you have to decide whether to spend it on combat skill, or a non combat skill. Thus forcing you to think hard and make tough choices with your build.
I see his argument but personally don't agree with it. Both the NWN games, as well as Temple of Elemental Evil seperated the combat and non combat skills and gave you points to spend in both columns at the same time, and it worked fine. Didn't hamper roleplaying any build in the slightest way, and it still managed to eek out a few head scratching "where whould I spend this point?" moments. For me at least.
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I'd love to see how this would have worked in Icewind Dale.
LOL! It would suck monkey balls in Icewind dale, for a slew of obvious reasons, not the least of which being that if you could talk your way out of combat, the game would end up being like 30 minutes long. And there'd only be about 3 non-combat skills to put points in 1) lock picking, 2)trap disarming, 3) talking
This system is reminiscent of a game like Fallout, not a classic Fantasy CRPG and especially not a dungeon crawler.The system would work great in a game like Planescape Torment.
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Bah, I said I was only half serious about that torment comment. Obviously there's various different ways to create a masterpiece.
And yes, I'm totally happy with build/class exclusive quests! I advocate them to every Developer who will listen.
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Just throwing this out there: this'll be a party based game, so if you wanted to, I imagine you could decide to not actually use your non-combat skills ever, if you're trying to roleplay a sword-saint or whatever, and just let one of your other teammates do the talking, lockpicking, potion making etc..
Or at least I hope you can do such a thing.
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Because I've never heard of a tactical, isometric CRPG where you move your characters on the 'battlefield' to chat with an ogre.
I have, sorta. In the Overland map in NWN2 Storm of Zehir, you could bribe hostile humanoid creatures, like orcs, ogres etc. into leaving you alone.
As cool as that sounds, it got really *really* old after a while (and for that matter, so did fighting them lol). I don't know. This is one of those wait-and-see things for me. I'm feeling ambivalent right now.
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Second, not penalising people for avoiding combat is good, but Tim specifically referred to getting XP for quests as opposed to getting XP for killing things. How does that work when challenges are overcome without those challenges being tied to a quest? Is that effort wasted? In some cases, perhaps it should be wasted: grinding low-level monsters probably shouldn't grant XP is there's no reason for killing them. But if I ignore the quests available to me and start stealing from people, does that mean I won't earn XP for that stealing?
That's a good question. I have a gut feeling that Tim simply didn't address how xp will be doled out outside of quests, or if it will be at all. Just watched his video again, nothing he said rules out the notion that you can also get xp for disarming traps or making potions.
He did say one thing, though, which might end up being a decent consolation in the event that performing skills outside of quests doesn't gain you xp: you get loot instead..
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Merin, you are the first person I have ever met on this forum who actually likes 4E D&D. As a grognard I have obviously never touched it, how does it manage skills?
Badly. lol
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I voted yes, but only because there wasn't a: "Yes, and please put in more than one!" option.
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Can you give me an example of, say, how timing the "retrieve the bronse sphere" quest would benefit PS:T. Or how the "Solve the Foundry Murder" quest would benefit from being timed?
They wouldn't. The execution you used as an example earlier, however, I think would have benefited from either timing or just if it noticed that you'd turned around and walked away. After all, you can't tell me that walking away from an execution isn't a clear choice regarding what you want to do about the execution.
LOL sure. I suppose it is. (But if we wanna get picky, lets keep in mind that this particular quest takes place outdoors, where a... well.... a war is going on, it's not inconceivable that your character turns around to, you know, fight back against that Glabrezu that's trying to Eat Annah. or that mage who's firing Chomatic Orbs at you from the roof.)
Regardless, that quest/situation itself could be timed I suppose, and it would fit fine into the game as such. But it would also be completely pointless, since that quest doesn't really require you to do anything but show up to start it and finish it in one go, which most players do, and once you show up your dialogue choices do the rest. Who needs a timer for that?
Do I need to drag out my Thieves' Guild example again? The urgency is that there actually is going to be something bad if you blow off the quest. It doesn't need to come from a timer on the top right telling you you only have ten minutes to save the princess, as long as the princess isn't still in the same situation after you do everything else the game has to offer.
That's not Urgency. That's just plain old consequence. And again, for the umpteeth time, a quest does not have to be timed to contain consequence for inaction. The Witcher 2's Monster contract quests aren't timed. They just simply Fail if you go on to the next chapter before completing them.
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OK, I'm trying (honestly trying) to apply what you're saying to PS:T, but I'm getting nowhere. (Well, there is One situation similar to what you're describing, where you have to decide whether to save the governor of a town or save one of its hermits, or Both. But they're both standing in the same place and it's literally impossible to incorporate a time limit since the entire situation happens in a paused cutscene lol)And the fact of the matter is that with its extremely heavy emphasis on every single quest decision affecting your morality and alignment, a timed quest system would flat out ruin the game.
In fact it could work quite well. Morality should be something of an instinct and work more with your real life morality system and not some words in the character stat screen.
Suppose you come across an unit of knights pillaging a village and killing everyone in it. The peasents beg you to intervine. You must decide fast or there won't be much of a village left. If your (the player not the player character) morality system is truly what you belive it to be you will decide under pressure and with little information what to do in accordance with your OWN morals and not what you belive the game wants you to do.
Being of the lawful good type you jump to help the wretches but while doing so you remember that you heard rumours about this village in that other village and supposedly vile things happen here. Without a limited time span in which to decide you could just do the 5 days journey back to the other village question the **** out the peasentry and learn that the knights are justified to kill those other peasents since they are a bunch of sadisctic child raping cannibalistic demon worshiping necromancer-clowns.
With limited time, being of the lawful good alignment you jump right in to bring justice and peace and universal healthcare to the miserable child raping cannibalistic demon worshiping necromancer-clowns and thus proving once again that good is stupid and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Can you give me an example of, say, how timing the "retrieve the bronse sphere" quest would benefit PS:T. Or how the "Solve the Foundry Murder" quest would benefit from being timed?
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LOL The problem is that Planescape: Torment is nigh-universally praised for its writing and role playing. It's held up as a standard even by Obsidian. Not to use an argument ad populum fallacy here, but that's how it is.
And the fact of the matter is that with its extremely heavy emphasis on every single quest decision affecting your morality and alignment, a timed quest system would flat out ruin the game. Players would be taking undeserved "evil" or "chaotic" hits simply because they got lost in Sigil or whatever and thus took too long to complete some quests, so they'd fail them and then the game would count it as a "you didn't care enough".
If you're spending 3 months resting because you're out seeing the sights instead of doing those quests, I really don't see what the problem is. You've clearly decided they're not important enough for you to deal with, and the game should reflect that. Its your choice to ignore the urgency of those quests, and you only have yourself to blame for that. "Getting lost" in Sigil and failing to find a quest that had a timer of 1 in game week means you were doing something wrong, or not actively trying to finish the quest. Maybe you should have stopped to ask for directions or something.
You still seem to believe Timed Quests need to have some sort of short duration real time clock. They don't. Measuring it in game time actually makes much more sense than using real time.
If we're gonna argue that the only way to fail a timed quest is to miss by 3 in-game months or some other massive number, and that by 'timed" we mean "you have a couple of game weeks to finish them", then the entire notion of such quests being timed is pointless, as there's no Urgency in a quest that gives you 2 weeks to complete, and no real importance to slapping a timer on any quest that allows for such forgiving leaway.
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I think I made a rather good one on the last thread. Planescape Torment didn't have them, therefore they're not needed for a masterpiece.
Planescape Torment also tended not to tell you that your quest needed to be done yesterday or the village would be destroyed.
It did actually. The narrative clearly projected the "Time is of essense" theme in Carceri, in many of it's "bring order" quests. In one of them, You literally walked up to a situation where someone was on the block about to be executed. Yet nothing stopped you from walking away, taking care of some other quests, sleeping for 10 days in the potion shop, then coming back and successfully preventing that execution. You're also not told if the execution actually occured, if you decide to skip it and go face the Diva.
Instead, the choice you got was a moral one, involving whether to let the execution happen, or prevent it.
Which is then a flaw within Planescape: Torment's writing, because it's telling you one thing and not backing it up.
LOL The problem is that Planescape: Torment is nigh-universally praised for its writing and role playing. It's held up as a standard even by Obsidian (check the PE trailer). Not to use an argument ad populum fallacy here, but that's how it is.
And the fact of the matter is that with its extremely heavy emphasis on every single quest decision affecting your morality and alignment, a timed quest system would flat out ruin the game. Players would be taking undeserved "evil" or "chaotic" hits simply because they got lost in Sigil or whatever and thus took too long to complete some quests, so they'd fail them and then the game would count it as a "you didn't care enough".
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I think I made a rather good one on the last thread. Planescape Torment didn't have them, therefore they're not needed for a masterpiece.
Planescape Torment also tended not to tell you that your quest needed to be done yesterday or the village would be destroyed.
It did actually. The narrative clearly projected the "Time is of essense" theme in Carceri (for example), in many of it's "bring order" quests. In one of them, You literally walked up to a situation where someone was on the block about to be executed. Yet nothing stopped you from walking away, taking care of some other quests, sleeping for 10 days in the charms shop, then coming back and successfully preventing that execution. You're also not told if the execution actually occured, if you decide to skip it and go face the Diva.
Instead, the choice you got was a moral one, involving whether to let the execution happen, or prevent it.
Edit: Actually, upon further contemplation, Planescape: torment is a better argument against time-sensitive quests than I first thought. The entire game is based solely on your moral decisions. Morality is actually tracked with a point system, and your alignment is constantly being affected by every single decision you make. How then, can a timed quest system work well in it, when you could find yourself in a situation where you honestly attempt to do a quest, but fail to finish it on time.... would your alignment take a hit as the game interprets the quest failure as: "you didn't care about saving Trist" Or, "you slacked off and Dimtree died as a result, therefore, +3 evil?"?
That would have outright ruined the game.
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Yep, that's a pretty good executive summary of the last 5 pages or so. I approve.
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Time management and moral choices can go hand in hand, they aren't mutually exclusive.
They are, however, unrelated.
Also, if you get sidetracked and missed the deadline, you made the choice to get side tracked that ended in your failure.Or the game forced it, with an encounter/ambush along the way, which you couldn't avoid.
You've still made no successful arguments against timed quests.I think I made a rather good one on the last thread: Planescape Torment didn't have them, therefore they're not needed for a masterpiece.
I'm only half serious about that, btw, as I tend to be when trying to counter someone's meaningless personal opinion.
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One wants to find ways to make an immersive world. I can understand why some would turn to these kind of timed events for that. What you folks fail to understand, is that this is totally unfun for the player. Timed quests are generally unpopular. Mass Effect 3 did it and the first thing most people I know did is look up the proper sequence to complete the quests so that I could get all done with no penalty. At that point, immersion is gone. The game becomes a checklist where you look up an order and starting checking off tasks one at a time.
This is a bad idea.
I disagree, I find timed quests totally fun for the player. ME
Fixed. Speak for yourself.
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As opposed to the risk of failure if you do the quest wrong, or aren't careful during a violent rescue attempt.
Yeah, not a very notable difference in the grand scheme of things. I'll take the latter, as it can at least delve into moral choice-consequence, which I rank a little bit higher than simplistic time management issues.
You mean delve into the moral choice-consequence such as "Do I stop my current quest to go save this elf princess, or leave her and risk her being sold off to slavers"?
Yeah, I can see your point where time doesn't have a moral choice oh wait that's a moral choice right there.
Try again.
No, that's a time management choice. Maybe its your turn to stop splitting hairs.
PS:
Dragging your feet/apathy failure? You mean like.... waiting around too long so you end up failing the quest because of time?
No, I mean getting sidetracked and missing the deadline by 30 seconds. Timers are timers, and that is their nature. If a human is added to allow for "close enough", then you can no longer call it a timed event.
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And here I thought you all weren't in favor of a system so strict as to not allow you to run to the nearest shop/tavern before setting out on the "beat the clock!" quest.Correct. In other words, events are still centered around the player, instead of occuring regardless of the player. So again, what does a timer bring to the equation besides a sense of urgency... which decent writing should already cover?
The risk of failure if you waste too much time instead of dealing with it when you hear about it.
As opposed to the risk of failure if you do the quest wrong, or aren't careful during a violent rescue attempt.
Yeah, not a very notable difference in the grand scheme of things. I'll take the latter, as it can delve into moral choice-consequence, which I rank significantly higher than simplistic time management issues.
How isn't it a moral choice? I can make decisions without having a dialogue box to choose options. Choosing to go shopping for potions and drinking at the pub are both choices you made. That's essentially you choosing "Meh, she can wait."
But whatever, there's a huge difference, from a moral standpoint, between dragging your feet/apathy, and siding with the killers
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Correct. In other words, events are still centered around the player, instead of occuring regardless of the player. So again, what does a timer bring to the equation besides a sense of urgency... which decent writing should already cover?
The risk of failure if you waste too much time instead of dealing with it when you hear about it.
As opposed to the risk of failure if you do the quest wrong, or aren't careful during a violent rescue attempt.
Yeah, not a very notable difference in the grand scheme of things. I'll take the latter, as it can at least delve into moral choice-consequence, which I rank a little bit higher than simplistic time management issues.
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Which brings us right back to what we just got done discussing: the redundancy of the timer. Having something different happen if you don't rescue the princess".... can be done without one.
That's a different something different, though. Choosing to side with bandits versus not getting to the bandits before they do their banditry are unlikely to have the same ramifications.
Again, says who?
So basically the only benefit of a timer is the sense of "urgency" or the illusion that the world moves on without your input, even though that elf maiden actually doesn't get kiddnapped in the first place unless you actually spoke to the king and got the quest, or clicked on the notice board and got the quest, or overheard the town crier and got the quest....There's also no one telling me that the princess is in need of urgent assistance before I talk to the quest-giver. There's no narrative urgency for the game to support.
Correct. In other words, events are still centered around the player, instead of occuring regardless of the player. So again, what does a timer bring to the equation besides a sense of urgency... which decent writing should already cover?
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Which brings us right back to what we just got done discussing: the redundancy of the timer. Having something different happen if you don't rescue the princess".... can be done without one. So basically the only benefit of a timer is the sense of "urgency" or the illusion that the world moves on without your input, even though that elf maiden actually didn't get kiddnapped in the first place unless you actually spoke to the king.
Try and explain how a TIME BASED SUCCESS/FAILURE might work purely through a NARRATIVE style.
Why in the world would I waste my time explaining how a feature I dislike can work?
Rarity of magic items?
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by Stun
IWD2 also had another design issue that I don't want to see: The best magic items were in shops. According to the Devs, this was done intentionally to allow people to specifically choose the ideal items for their builds from a list, instead of creating their builds and then hoping and praying that they'd eventually find the "right" items during their long treks through the countless enemy infested dungeons in the game.
The result, of course, was that 95% of the game went like this: Kill a group of monsters, loot their bodies, find 10 bullets of piercing, let out a sigh. Move on, Kill the next group of enemies, loot their bodies, find 10 +2 arrows, let out a sigh.... lather, rinse, repeat....over and over and over.....