teknoman2

i do not see why having an option to let someone play it with maim and an option that lets you play it with death is a bad thing. if they include options that let you play it like DAO and options that let you play it like dark souls, i think it should satisfy everyone, unless you are the type of person who thinks that if YOU play on hard with expert and trial of iron ON, everyone should play it that way on maimed characters: i can't find the update with the info on it but from what i remember they CANNOT fight anymore even after the battle. they do not die, they get back up with 1 hp, but they count as a dead party member, until you get them to a doctor, healer or whatever to fix them and then they can regain their hp and get back in the fight

For 99% it's the latter. Exactly my point, I question if people REALLY restart an game after spending 50 hours + playing just because they got killed. This would be the ultimate exercise in futility for me Of course that noone was doing that but a sadistic few, and I sure wasn't one of them. Is it late to mention again that we had various other ways to prevent permadeath in the games before this one, so you already had a set of chances in which you could prolong such a "nuisance" that dying surely is? There already was the "equivalent of three lives" all along,cmon. Cause there was healing & resurrection trough spells or items, and unique heavy buffing. So if it wasn't broken,why are they fixing it? (SIGH. No, I mean "broken" as in "non functional" - NOT "flawed,but operational"", and "fixing" as in "repairing" - NOT "starting from scratch") Why did the need to improve turned into a rework that looks like this: We added a new element, Stamina, and we thrown healing and resurrection out. Instakills? Vorpal swords? We consider them a nuisance, screw those. Wait.. with no healing and resurrection, how do we make actual dying situation less of a problem inthere? We'll remove it. And those "punks" that wanna get sadistic, NOT the imaginary 1% that continues the game when one of the companions is dead - but those punks that were perfectly normal with: (Sensuki again - he's better with words than me, ergo the quotes) "I do not mind reloading if a character dies, that has been the acceptable norm for me in games since I started playing RPGs. If a character of yours gets killed, it simply means that you made a mistake and need to play better. One could argue that a lot of the stuff in the BG & IWDs revolved around a bit of a dice roll (such as saves) but most of the time you had to interrupt casters casting save or die spells or prepare the correct protective spells in advance. Some people find this tedious but I just accepted it as the standard, I do not have a problem with it as such.",for those gamers we have a toggle of PC death/game mode that gives 'em their coveted reloads and immersion-friendly deaths, lulz, have fun healing that if you fail at the first go. "It's good that we have options.", Sensuki concludes. Though I generally support his post's view, I must add that we need to ask ourselves how far must it go? My previous, most recent post was a lame joke, but now I am serious. I do not think that developers are doing it right and that they can surely do better. Let me answer the jethro's question: So where do you see your very subjective "hardcore" in this mass of reloaders and raise-deaders? I DO NOT SEE IT. THAT WAS MY JOKE'S POINT. WHAT WAS ONCE NORMAL IS BEING MADE INTO A HARDCORE OVER THE YEARS. I even hate the whole - hard/soft core separations to begin with. But I didn't invented the damn separation, and the "evolution" of cRPGs is adjusting the slider on it not towards hard or soft in particular, but moving it altogether towards BAD. In My H fukin O. this all is nice and good but what do you propose they do? what solution to the death mechanic would seem right to you? finding something flawed is as easy as breathing, considering that there is nothing flawless, finding a solution that will make everyone happy is not, hence the options to adjust "death" to how you want to play i find the fact that characters do not die in the latest games unless the whole party is down a good thing. i can finish the fight and get on with the game, without having to drag the party all the way to the other side of the world to find a priest that can resurect my dead or loading and replaying the entire battle. what i do not like is the complete regeneration of the characters at the end of a fight. the "if he dies he dies and you have to move on" style is something i do not enjoy, but i know that some people do. so it should be an optional feature, but forcing all players to play like that is wrong, unless you make a sadistically hard game like dark souls

it's called evolution of discussion. after a few pages we will move to something else

So, (and this is now considered final,right?) by default the maimed character is ignored, and AoE can suck it. I know he doesn't just get up without suffering penalties,and that regenerating stamina can get him up, no HP regen, and I just wanted to be clear on the fact that, while he's maimed, he is beyond interest of enemies plus cannot be further damaged than that. Thank you. Now I can finally say that I find this very bad as a design - regardless of the fact that I can switch it on/off or just go play in Expert,since I don't like it in "vanilla". If that is what the perpetually discussed "goal" of the devs will look like when the game comes out and one sits to play it on Normal, then I don't like it one single bit. i do not know how exactly it will work on the final game, it's mostly a patchwork guess from the info we have. however in a real battle, you do not waste time finishing off the wounded while the rest are still up and fighting so that is what enemies do. first you disable all opponents and then clean up those who are not dead yet. also we have no info on what happens to downed characters regarding aoe. i suppose that a character that ran out of stamina and is just down (meaning his hp is still>0), will keep getting damage from aoe, but since maiming is like a less permanent death for the non hardcore gamers, i suppose they dont get any damage (they are at 0 hp after all) Hassat i have never played DnD in it's PnP form, just the games based on it. i do not know but im pretty sure the system works fine with real dice, however the games have more rigid rules and most of all are forcefully balanced, making the algorythm that controls rolls to get certain numbers more often. in BG1 for example, my main had a +12 to his roll, meaning he could hit anything with AC-4 by rolling 2. still, he missed a lot, because he was getting gimped by the system, that forced his rolls to be 1, 7 out of 10 attacks. same patern i noticed in IWD, where i played a solo fighter-mage-thief that had AC-18 when i used the shield spell, meaning that most enemies could only hit him with a 20 and guess what: 6/10 enemy attack rolls were 20. the game system, balanced my too strong character, by giving me bad rolls or by giving several critical hits in a row to the enemy. the NWN2 system tends to keep the rolls to a 50% chance most of the time, so even if you buff up it will just roll smaller numbers more often, unlike the real dice that can be anything. and this is why i dislike the DnD system for video games... also the fact that after a certain level, enemies autosave vs any status effect spells unless you are extremelly lucky

if i remember correctly, maiming is similar to death and occurs when you get to 0 hp, but the character does not die, just gets crippled and falls unconscious. however, unlike the trend, he does not come back like nothing happened after the fight, but he must go back to the base and heal over a long period of time before you can use him again (or he may become unusable and in the case of the main character i think it's game over). if chosen from the options and always on in expert, he dies on the spot and there is no resurection. a downed character (maimed or just out of stamina) is ignored by the enemies who leave him there and go for the rest. the downed character cannot get back up during the fight unless revived and when he does he regenerates his stamina but not his hp. maimed can not be revived

Nope, but I have Gothic 2 Gold (unplayed) on GOG and played Gothic 3, and it's combat is atrocious.Also, tell me where Gothic's team is. Right. It's like saying "It works in FPS (and it does) it should go into RPG's!"... apples and oranges. For example, a 3rd person or 1st person camera works in many games, but both are terrible systems to reliably control a group. I can say the same as you about the game I currently play (Mark of the Ninja). Does not mean anything of it AT ALL is suitable for PE. If you leave stuff to chance when controlling one person and it's not hack&slash it usually gets frowned upon. Look at Bloodlines or Deus Ex (though personally I think it works GREAT in DX). But there's a reason criticial chance was added to RPG's, weapon ranges, to hit rolls. a game that does no rely on luck is not inherently boring, as one that does is not inherently frustrating. As far as I know it the system in PE has a x per fight limit to spells. So even without the modification that a save is still negative consequences, it would have dealt with the problem you mentioned. It takes a slot, yes, but if you miss and fail, you can just use it again next time to try, no rest needed.I wonder what a system where spells always have positive effects even if saved would do to magepower. Will they become powerhouses? Or are all spells nerfed into the ground to compensate the fact they always hit? as i said in other occasions, im not against elements of chance in the games, but the DnD system in the IE games had a sort of randomness that bothered me a lot. in arcanum you had a % chance to hit based on the enemy's armor, your skill, line of sight, obstacles, lighting and so on, but by maxing out your skills you could get the chance to 100% under good conditions and even keep it close to 100% in case something was in the way. in fallout it was the same more or less with a cap at 95%. in NWN2 at level 1 the rolls were something like (10+2=12 vs AC 11 hit), at level 5 the rolls were (12+6=18 vs AC 17 hit), at level 10 (10+10=20 vs AC21 miss), at level 20 (9+18=27 vs AC 30 miss)... do you not see a patern on how the unbuffed attacks almost always need a roll of 11+ to hit? that is a permanent 50% chance throughout the entire game. if that is not complete randomness i dont know what is

are they? we only know that armor will protect from spell damage, but what damage will each armor protect from and how is not yet revealed unless i missed something

if the item description specifies that metal armors redirect the electrical current of the spells giving extra lightning protection, it becomes imediatelly intuitive that if you face a guy with metal armor, it would be a waste to use lightning

I don't know... "normalisation" sounds to me like 'as easy as modern games with all their failsafes so you can barely die' As for above post, the amount of skills would also be less with fixed values. Gone chosing a weapon based on 'less damage, more crit' or 'more damage, less crit' since crit's a chance. Skill's would be boring cause +1 is a lot less interesting if you already know your value, rather than if it adds 1 to the 1-20 roll *maybe* allowing you a hit. No, I can't see it working. Not fun anyway. have you played gothic? it has pretty much no aspect of combat left to chance, but it still delivers a chalenging experience with room for smart disposal of enemies. a game that does no rely on luck is not inherently boring, as one that does is not inherently frustrating. the problem with DnD based games is the level range prediction by the developers, they know that at every place you go, you will be X+-1 levels, so they adjust the enemies in a way that you will always have around 50% chance to hit them. so you have to buff up for each encounter to raise your chances, and if you cant spam rest, you will not have buffs for the next. i for example, never used confusion, disintegrate, sleep, death, and other hit or miss debuffs in any DnD based game. why? because the chance of it working was small and if it didnt it was a wasted spell slot, that could hold a more direct damage spell that would have had an effect even if they saved (and 96% of the time they did). however if the system was like PE where "saving" against a stun means that instead of 6s you are stunned for 3s with a very small chance to avoid it completelly, the above spells would have again a reson to be used, because even at half efficiency, they offer something to the fight

that is actually wrong scientifically speaking. the people working on high voltage lines wear chainmails to redirect electricity toward the ground without it going through their bodies. what a metal armor is actually weak against is fire: once heated, metal takes forever to cool without the help of a liquid thus boiling the wearer alive

indeed i could. but that would leave me exposed to other threats. in the kangaxx case you die the first time, then you learn what he does, then you decide on a countermeasure and finaly you play the battle again knowing that at that particular moment you need to do this to avoid his spells. in a random battle against a group of enemies you cant know what the enemy wizard will use, when and on who until he does. at that point you no longer have the ability to counter it and just hope it doesnt work or reload if it does. and next time you will prepare a counter, hoping that the person who can counter becomes the target

i dont say remove rolls and stuff, but if i manage through tactics to get my party of 6 to beat 10 enemy fighters, 5 thieves, 2 priests, 4 rangers and 3 barbarians in a single fight without taking any serious damage, and the last member of the enemies, a mage, casts disintegrate and kills my main character because of a bad roll and so all my tactics go to waste. so it is important for a "tactical" game to not have 1 shot kill skills and spells, otherwise a bad roll can send everything to hell

all that is nice and good, but what do you do if the enemy mage decides out of all these, to target your main character with a spell and your character rolls 1 as saving throw? it is quite easy for one bad dice roll to send to hell your entire strategy that would offer you a flawless victory otherwise

since it's a party based rpg and not dota or lol, it's more important to see how a party works with it's members colaborating than to just see the animation of a power attack or what a fireball looks like

there seems to be some confusion about the nature of save scumming. save scumming is playing in a hardcore mode with a single save file that gets deleted if you die, and making copies of that file so you dont lose it in case of death. saving anytime anywhere and reloading for whatever reason is totaly fine if the game allows it. the thing you can call scumming in this case, is if the game offers a way to resurect a lost party member, but to avoid wasting money or resourses on it, you just reload and replay the battle. if you reload to change a desision you made with something else, means you suck a being a role player, not that you cheated so its fine as well in short, if you cannot stick to your guns while you play and reload to change the past, it's your fault for sucking at role play and not the game's. the devs have no reason to invent save systems that will not allow you to do it

here's a simple experiment for those who want controller support no matter what. get xpadder, set it up and use the controller to play baldur's gate, icewind dale or any other game of this type. after af few minutes, you will put down the controller and pick up the mouse because it will be a pain to play like that

personaly i dont care if they are shown or not. if yes it's fine, if not i can figure it out myself. however an option to show / hide them is a good idea

Speaking of that... I realize that you don't really have any way of knowing, before looting someone, how many of some concealed item they were carrying, but, it would be great to have some kind of consistency in wht the combatant actually HAD and what you find on them. For example, if an enemy goblin drinks 2 healing potions in combat, you probably should be less likely to find healing potions on him (because he used some) than on a different goblin who was killed before he had time to drink any potions. There are other issues floating around this: I hate when enemies have infinite consumables in combat, and I hate it when an enemy drops like 17 usable consumables, but never used a one of them during that 7-minute fight. It just doesn't make any sense, and there are plenty of other methods by which to deliver the loot you intend for the player to have, without nonsensically putting it into an incompetent goblin's pocket. An enemy mage shouldn't run around with 5 fireball scrolls in his pack, then just run around casting acid bolt the whole battle, even while he and all his buddies are slaughtered. But, also, he shouldn't cast fireball 17 times, only to then die and reveal that fireball was nowhere in his spellbook, but you find 17 fireball scrolls on him, etc. Again, yeah, maybe he just had THAT many scrolls, but... at a certain point, that's pretty infeasible. You're not going to have someone with 50-readied full-health restoring potions. That's nonsensical on so many levels. Anywho... I think enemy inventory integrity would be awesome (even if half of it's behind-the-scenes.) i dont know about how many potions or arrows or scrolls or anything else he has, but i can see he has a sword, a shield, an armor and has used a bow for a bit... this means i can take these 4 items off his corpse when i kill him (if i want them), an any loot system that arbitrarily prevents me from doing so by presenting me a bag with something random, should be kept for diablo style games only

And, had it been his mage that miraculously saved the day with a "Hail Mary" spell, he'd likely have been pleased as punch. No because they wouldn't have been saving the day, at the point that happened it was 6 guys versus one mage and I appeared to have the fight in the bag. That out of the way I realize part of that is the D&D mechanics, I am just simply laying out that Baldur's Gate (and other infinity engine games) are not as "tactical" as people seem to remember them being. Most of BG2 tactics specifically just boiled down to "counter the mage". i always said that DnD based games are at least 90% luck.

not every enemy will have an enchanted weapon or armor on him that is worth a small fortune. in BG 1+2, most common enemies had simple weapons and armors that would sell for 1-10g each so it was useless colecting them. even in ToB the bulk of cannon fodder troops had non magical stuff with 0 comercial value. the only non enchanted thing that still had value after a while were non magical plate and full plate armors, but they were heavy and hard to carry around

:trollface on: nooooo i want to kill a rat and have it drop the "sword that can kill even god in one hit". i want to kill a wolf and drop the "armor that nulifies all damage" i want to kill a cat and drop the "M-60 with infinite uranium tiped, HE bullets" :trollface off: seriously now i prefer IE style loot. an enemy has certain equipment and a few consumables, when he dies you can get what he has on him and any consumables he did not use. i understand rats, wolves and such droping nothing, but i dont like killing a guy with a sword, a bow, a shield and a set of full plate mail, and having him drop a... bag of coins and the rest of what he has on him just disapears. it's fine for hack n slash diablo like games, but not for a game that follows the IE style

not to mention that visualy they are still respectable, unlike that time's 3D games

i think she is a fighter.

just think: to make a full 3D enviroment with the detail of the prerendered 2D presented with the first game screenshot, it would take more polygons than what was used for the entire Mass Effect 2

here's what i think about negative speculation. a little faith can be a moral support for the devs i dont expect the game to be the messiah of gaming, but i don't see why we should dig it's grave before we play it either