Jarmo

Don't worry though. I'm confident the firearms are going to blend right in. Late era plate armor as seen in D&D historically coexisted with early firearms. I'm also pretty sure it won't be like Elven made magic Uzi +2 and it won't be shotguns (or at least not pump action versions).

A bit over 4 million dollars.

I suppose not. But what kind of skill difference would succeeding in that require and what constitutes a decently capable? My way of thinking would be that a world champion should be, levelwise, in single digits, real good but not above human standards. A high level adventurers would start breaking those barriers of what's humanly possible. So.. would a 6th level fighter beat 16 of 2nd or 3rd level fighters going 4 at a time? I wouldn't think so, I'd say the fighter would have better odds than the boxer though. Guess the real question is: How many low level opponents should the best swordsman in PE world be able to face (and win instead of dying horribly) at one time. Is the answer 2 and he's overpowered facing 3 at a time? Or will he kill 300 spartans without breaking a sweat. I'm suggesting a real world scenario, where a heavyweight champion meets 5 muggers (no knives of guns) in an alleyway. I'd guess the boxer would have a decent chance of getting away victorious. But I'm not sure, havent tried it, no combat experience. I'm further suggesting the fantasy game champion should have way higher level of capability than the best human in real life.

No. Even realistically you can be a lot better than another human being in whatever you do. If you take up weightlifting, a normal person can double or triple the amount he can lift. Take something like archery, go to range and compare your scores to that of a master archer. Go to the ring with the world heavyweight boxing champion and as someone to estimate how percentage he's better than you. And that's even without anyone clubbing 1700 people to death with cruel pointy things and sucking out their life experience in some magical fashion.

I'll take the opportunity of a new thread to reiterate my willingness to see the above "armor" example in PE. Not as a functional armor that'd give functional plate protection, but as something a spellcasting succubus would wear. "Oh come now, do you really want to hit me with that nasty sword, wouldn't you rather rip this armor off me and spank me with your wet mjölnir?" Because I'd totally fall for it, even if I knew it's a succubus... On a second note, Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword has loads of awesome designs. In timeline slightly later than what PE has, but nothing that'd completely stand out as anachronistic to me. Especially considering how the designs were all over the place in real history. Winged Hussars have been mentioned before, as the most awesomely bad ass dudes of all time, but I'm also a fan of Swedish Cuirassiers. With breastplates, musket pistols and ... hmm.. don't know the name, but with wide brim slightly cowboy style hats. Or Scottish swordsmen with full breastplates, but substituting helmets with their ever fashionable baskers.

Bit hard to speculate now when we don't yet know the play or the class abilities... but lets anyway! First, I'd guess the solo success will rely on gaming the game a bit and knowledge of what's coming up next, ie, you know you'll be ambushed and rushed in the next room, so you set up a humongous fire bomb trap beforehand and lure them in... Mage with fighting skills is definitely one possibility, warm them up with a boom and finish with the sword once the spells are out. Maybe with thievery skills or maybe you'll just need to let half of the available treasure and some missions go. Or maybe a pure mage with boom-boom-boom-invisibility tactics, repeat as much as necessary. Sleep a lot. Cipher or chanter... no idea. Maybe they'd work? IF there are traps and such, a thief could well solo the game, maybe. Talk your way out of trouble, give bribes, give up loot, pass some encounters, use traps and poisons against the mandatory opponents, disappear mid fight and reappear after laying more traps. Guessing a pure fighter class might be the toughest, as just about always.

This led me thinking about the multiple ways to develop a location. Or that's actually one way. Design a location based on who live there and what they need and do. I like locations like that the best, the ones that make logical sense. Location first, challenge and story after it. One way is to design a challenge. So it's a palace ok, but the design starts from thinking about the encounters and advancing the story. This is where you start placing barricades and stuff so players don't wander into things in the wrong order. Some variation yes, but challenge first. Like, we need a big area where the party is ambushed, hmm... lets make a throne room, should work for that. And then some place where they need to cross a bridge, because there's this one encounter that'd really need a bridge. And one more way, which I dislike the most (though it's great in other types of games), is to kind of compose the encounter and location much the way movies are done. So you start with something like: dun-dun-DUN-dun-da-duuuunn- ----- ---- du- DUN-DUN-DOOOOMMM so the whole thing has a kind of a rythm, small encounter - small encounter- big encounter- small - tiny - long encounter- then catch the breath until the finale. That's where you take away about all the choice but give a cinematic experience that just a rollercoaster. I think the last one is where ME2, ME3 and DA2 were going or aiming for.

I do want to see a significant progress. And definitely not the all the numbers are getting bigger progress of many RPG's. But let's say a 1st level fighter. Compared to a standard brigandine wearing brigand. I'd say the fighter shouldn't win that fight, but should win against a rag wearing stick waving looter. Then a 10th level fighter. I'd expect to wipe the floor with the said brigand, not even break a sweat. I'd expect to have a sporting chance against a whole brigand camp! But that wouldn't arise from having as much HP as all the brigands combined, that'd come from hitting fast and killing with every strike, while not getting hit much at all. Kind of be up there in skill with the nameless ronin of Yojimbo.

Yay, cloaks are excellent. I wouldn't mind the game being "overcloaked" at all, no such thing. From non-programmers point of view, it's kind of hard to understand what's so difficult about cloaks and long hair and stuff. But one does begin to get the idea when seeing weapons on back going straight through the cloak, running feet likewise. Or looking at some cloak mods to Oblivion or KotOR, looking good as long as you don't move, but as soon as you do, you'd expect the cloak to not just continue pointing downwards as if it was made of cast iron.

Going on a hunch... I'd say you didn't watch the linked video. Further, yeah, I hope PE is not going to be punishing. Difficult on high difficulty settings yeah, but not punishing.

But what if world full of magic wouldn't mean everybody is a 10th level necromancer? For a hard day of plowing the field, the farmhands with the knack would apply bulls strength lite or very small bears endurance, after a day at work, the wives would cast cure minor wounds to soothe the aching muscles. If the bull gets sick, you'd try to heal it yourself, with spells that do little more than aspirin. A village healer might know more potent stuff, up to antibiotics level. And sure, the richer plantations might even have a couple of golems pulling the plow. Expensive things, requiring much costly maintenance, but giving an advantage nonetheless, not to speak of prestige. There'd be talk of the usage of undead in field work in the neighboring kingdom, might be true. Warriors in a battle, would harden their skins and sharpen their blades with spells. Gaining +1 to AC and damage. Some would pay a mage for magic tattoos further enhancing their battle prowess. Heroic warriors of high esteem would go into fight with flaming swords, shields sparkling with magic defenses.

Ok. It certainly was annoying how every damn dungeon or cave or whatever in Skyrim was just a pipe from A to B. A bit less of that wouldn't hurt. But I do also appreciate the convenience. If there's something to be learned there, is how players (like me) really, really don't like backtracking from a damn dungeon. Just work in something to give me a backdoor away and I'm all happy. The real thing I really dislike though, is fake non-linearity. Just as in the first example of the first post. It's like... you have 3 doors to take, but only 1 is the correct one and you have no way of knowing. Pick number 1 and there's an overpowering monster and you die. Pick 2 and hey, you can't pick it because you dont have the key thing. There's really just one correct path, it just takes backtracking, guesswork and multiple reloads to figure out which it is. It's more a text or point and click adventure game thing than an RPG thing. Don't mind that time to time, but I wouldn't like to see such designs too often, the less the better. True non-linearity is something else though and something I like. It's just it's harder to tell a story if you dont know in which order A, B, C and D are going to come about. ToEE was pretty great in giving a non-linear dungeon. Too bad the dungeons were all pretty silly and didn't make any kind of logical sense.

For my part, the effort is appreciated but I won't be paying as much attention as required to fully appreciate the work done. It is a bit painful how the languages, names and locations are often completely half assed butcheries. Take names off a historic map and change a few letters, names likewise, use a couple of latin words and the fantasy world is all set. So raising the bar is more than welcome, even if it's not taken to Tolkien level of madness. Just having the names and places have a feel to them is good, anything further is even better. Pronunciation. Not too important to me. If there's a reasonably non-crazy way to work in pronunciation guides in game, that'd be great though. And yeah, if something sounds stupid when spoken as in english, then it'd be best to either change that or work it into an in-game joke. But if I say something wrong in my mind when reading game text, and it doesn't matter that I do, it doesn't matter to me that I do.

Partly answered your own question there. PE is about giving players the kind of experience IE games did. Resting is part of that old skool thing they're going for. Not only as a game mechanic mind you. The whole camping for the night, seeing bad dreams or having premonitions. Talking for a while with teammates and getting to know them. DA:Origins was clearly reaching for the same feel, despite going the other way about it and just giving camping lite, only on the world map. And it was kind of a lost opportunity, when we didn't camp in any dungeons, ruins or the.. dwarven underdark... whatever it was called. Would have been great chance to stop and reflect on where you're going and what dangers might lie ahead. Build up the mood.

I generally dislike class-tied equipment, with some exceptions. Maybe something like holy avenger would be an exception, if it was tied to some deity and would be "activated" with a quick prayer. In hands of everybody not belonging to the deity, it'd be an ordinary well made sword. And I do believe there'll be plenty good and evil in PE, not as a stat but still.

Might not break the game system, but I don't really want every acrobat to be extraordinarily clever fellows, or every clever fellow to be a backflip hopping adonis. But there's definitely something to be said for your stat system. It might work just fine.

But for a fighter? INT increases critical hit modifiers? I dunno. I'd have no problem with attack skill being governed by INT+DEX in equal shares. Not as much as in Fallout, where low int character gets almost no skillpoints and thereby can't be too effective fighter. But in principle I agree. No need to make all stats combat stats, equally useful for all classes. No charisma attack or stuff like that.

And what about "make your own adventurers lodge adventurers"? Obviously they won't have plot info or anything like that, but are they completely mute or borrow voices from named NPC's. Talking of combat speak, but why not "look at that fortress" -kind of general banter as well.

Basically I'm happy if the party acknowledges the situation. Something to the tune of: 1.) Because this thing that happened, we're all in it together until this is solved or until we're all dead. 2.) Guess we all agree you (the player) are best suited to keep track of our party finances (... given how you're an int 3 barbarian berserker***) 3.) We'll do the even split of the loot once we're through the whole ordeal. *** ok, the plan fails a bit there but such is life..

I'd be willing to bet against bad odds that pretty much every plot companion will have their own reasons to come along and follow the protagonist. Probably one or several will be pulled by the event witnessed near the start, and the mystery it represents. Others will have different reasons. There might be some that can be classified mercenaries and simply come along for the cash, but I'm not betting on that.

I'd actually be much more open to sharing the loot equally if the companions didn't expect me to feed and cloth and arm them and keep them in potions and supplies from my 1/6th of the loot. If they upgrade their armor and weapons, keep a steady supply of potions and bullets and stuff. Well.. that'd change the ballgame pretty much.

"Didn't you plunge your sword through my skull and kill me the last time we met?"

While I dislike deathspells in general, these ones are super annoying. Point death ray at 10th level character and he dies, point at 11th level character and he doesn't even get a nosebleed! An arbitrary line, crossing it transforms the ray from ultimate destroyer to something less useful than a 1st level magic missile.

Still at M&B Warband: Prophesy of Pendor. Having the biggest kingdom, Empire and Sarleon are down already. Serious trouble keeping the lords happy though and it's just getting worse. I'm only half enjoying it at this point, I just want to actually win the game just once. Waiting and fearing the time when they'll finish and release Bannerlord. Half hoping it'll be what I expect, half hoping it'll suck so I wouldn't lose 1000 hours on it. X____x

Ooh, ooh, forgot to underline. Being effective against nasty pointy arrows was supposedly a very neat thing in the.. .umm .. eastern front, where everybody was into archery in a big way. All armies full of archers and mounted archers. And Woldans second picture somewhat answers Lephys's question. You'll have to stab almost directly down to go between the scales and then twist to do damage, but then there's mail underneath. Most likely padded armor below that. Tough nut to crack. We'll probably wont get to do layered armor in PE? Most likely there'll be ready suits, which works fine enough. But I've always wanted to do that stuff, breastplate with mail shirt underneath. Mail shirt, but do you want padded armor beneath that? Encumbrance vs. protection.