tajerio

Balance isn't a moot issue in a party-based game at all. If some classes are significantly more powerful than others in the vast majority of situations, that will tend to force the developers to balance the encounters for a party containing the companions with the better classes, which will then itself force me to bring around those characters for the majority of the game, to the detriment of the other companions and the quality of the game generally. Decreasing balance tends to limit variety, in a cRPG. In PnP, not so much, but that's not the concern here.

Obsidian might change some things, but their stance on devising their own mechanical system is not going to change. That's pretty clear. Since Chrononaut has made his displeasure with that equally obvious by this point, what else is there really to say here?

Two best friends, a fighter and a mage surely? You could make things even more interesting by living with a woodland elf foster parent. Who has withheld affection from you throughout your entire childhood, no doubt.

Just remember, you lose a party member and they are gone forever. You will have to replace them with a NPC from the Adventurers Hall and they wont have banter/quests/personality. Holy Smoke Gfted1, you sure know how to make me worried. I could potentially lose someone I would be Romancing !!!! And that would be a crisis of monumental proportions And wouldn't that make the playthrough more memorable and powerful?

I think you are wrong about that, most do it is simply because it's faster and because they get bored of the doing good stuff/want to try the evil playthrough. There is a reason why every game offers a "evil" choice, the only problem is that not every game makes it interesting. He's making a point about behavior considered to be evil in real life, not in games, and suggesting that game designers should offer a similar incentive structure to that of real life in order to provoke people into taking evil options in-game.

Well, over-emphasis is always bad--the question is how much is too much. I still think balance plays a very important role in single-player games. When I'm deciding who to bring around in my party, balancing the classes well means that I don't have to make a choice between greater or lesser combat viability--I make a choice between different kinds of combat viability. Then the question is not, "do these classes, as created by the designer, make it possible for me to have a good combat team," but "do I, as the player, have the skill to create a good combat team from these pieces?" When I'm deciding to replay, if the classes aren't balanced well my replays will be limited, because I don't like to gimp my combat ability right out of the box. Some people, it appears, want to have imbalance and feel that making choices between greater or lesser combat viability for the sake of other, usually peripheral benefits is essential to a cRPG. While that's definitely a legitimate viewpoint, in a game wherein the principal focus is combat (as Josh has said) I think that presenting that sort of imbalance harms the game deeply.

The problem with the D&D system is that balance never seems to have been a concern of the designers. There's maybe a little sweet spot somewhere in the levels 5-7 range where most of the core classes are moderately well balanced with one another, but the rest of the time classes are all over the place. If balance is important to you as a player (which it is to me) or to you as a designer (which it seems to be for Obsidian) then the D&D ruleset is deeply flawed. Not to mention the number of non-intuitive traps in character building, nor the frankly bizarre approach to CR. It's also frankly preposterous to say that D&D is not a "flawed" system, because to say that it is not implies that no other ruleset need ever be designed. If you believe that, that's fine, but it's also delusional. Moreover, all iterations of the D&D ruleset are open to flaw mitigation by the action of the DM, and are indeed designed with that in mind. One of the reasons D&D has never translated peculiarly well to cRPGs is that there isn't a DM there to soften, fudge, and apply the rules creatively in order to produce a better game experience for the players. I also believe that WotC is not interested in licensing rule editions for D&D that are not the current edition, though of course I could be mistaken. And I do think that Josh & co. can design a better ruleset for Project Eternity than that of D&D, because they are designing it expressly for the cRPG they have in mind, instead of trying to shoehorn a generalist ruleset into a specific product.

Hmm, did you play Origins a few times too? Because if you did, I cannot for the life of me understand how you could feel that DA2 was tactically superior. The whole DNA of the combat was less 'think like a general' and more 'fight like a spartan'. Gone was the tactical camera. Friendly fire was off by default, and generally off by choice (the enemy animations were too fast to place the target marker without frustration). The enemies used special attacks a lot less frequently. Terrain did not matter. There were no traps, or bombs. There were no ballistas, barricades, pits, mabari cages, ice patches, oil patches or other great props. That's before we get to enemies spawning in your face and behind your mage who previously was in a 'safe' spot in the back near a dead-end. DA2 did on the other hand introduce reflex based dodging of killer attacks (Rock Wraith) and looooong slug-fest boss fights (I think with only a couple of reloads I literally spent 2 hours on the Arishok - during which I would ordinarily have uninstalled, but instead took the difficulty down to normal because I believed the story would save it). I've actually played DA:O more times than DA2 (7 as opposed to 5). I did always play DA2 with friendly fire on, and there were more than a few traps (though you couldn't set any yourself of course). I honestly enjoyed the "second wave" thing from a tactical challenge perspective, while simultaneously thinking it was incredibly stupid from literally any other perspective. My main problem with DA:O was that while outside factors (like the barricades or what have you) mattered more in the combat, the combat was just much too slow. And in DA2 non-mage characters had a larger number of interesting choices as to which of their abilities I wanted to employ in combat--part of DA:O's problem from a tactical perspective was the extreme limitation of choice for non-mages, until Awakening when BioWare broke their power curve.

Well, in a world with multiple sentient races, you'd think there'd be some supremacists calling for extermination out there. But I suppose that's a step above genocide. Charming, isn't it? In reality, I would expect to have to deal with virulent and violent speciesism in P:E's world, at least in some places.

I'm one of maybe 50 people in the world to play through DA2 five times, and I was able to keep playing it so many times because I really enjoyed the combat and the story. I thought that combat in DA2 was much superior to that of DA:O in pace, and the tactical element was still very much there at Hard difficulty--in fact I thought the combat was tactically superior, thanks to combinations, to that of DA:O, which was often agonizingly slow and lacked variation. Could have done without the waves of reinforcements though. As for the story, I thought it was refreshing to get a story in which the goal isn't "save the world from giant apocalyptic threat, and oh by the way it's all on you." Instead, in DA2 your character gradually gains agency and the scope of your decisions widens, but you're never saving the world. Frankly, you're buggering it. Chapter 2 is definitely the best part of the story, particularly since the qunari are philosophically fascinating enemies. The mage-templar conflict could have been excellent as well, but I don't think BioWare did a great job of presenting both sides with equal moral weight. That said, I am quite biased since I probably liked DA2 more than some of the devs did, but that's what I liked at least.

Lephys, I agree with your points on reaction--my point was just that since it's so contextually dependent, and charisma has generally been a stat for interpersonal interaction, it doesn't make sense for races to have a flat malus or bonus unless there is a single culturally dominant race. Or, as you say, I also think you're right to say that Intelligence, or whatever stat is being used to represent it, is the stat most plausibly adjustable on the basis of fantasy race. But I still think that we know so little about intelligence that, unlike a bonus to strength, we don't really know what else a bonus or malus to intelligence would mean for a race. I would like it if races were differentiated by having the narrative world react differently to each race, possibly giving out a couple of skill bonuses, and maybe some minor +/- with physical stats. That would be quite enough for me.

I imagine you play on Nightmare? Because I find people tend to just assume this, while I have been able to make passes through the game with virtually any permutation of the party. Though I do not play on Nightmare. Yeah, even on Hard the game's still playable pretty much with any party you want. You need a rogue before you need a healer, and most of the time you don't need either.

Roll my eyes, sigh, and play through it until the good part.

I've never had a problem with boni or mali to the physical stats, whether they be STR, CON, DEX, or something else entirely. Because at least for those we have some understanding of what that means genetically. But what do boni or mali to INT, WIS, CHA or any other mental stats mean in terms of the actual genetic makeup of a sentient species? I don't think we know. What innately produces charisma? Or greater insight? Analytical capability? We really have no idea. Take the half-orc example. Does the -2 to charisma mean that he's got genetically less interpersonal magnetism? Or does it really mean that he's viewed in such a way by human-dominated cultures because he's not like them and looks strange? There's nothing concrete that can be tied to the changes to mental stats for any race, unlike those for physical stats.

That would have caused such a ****-storm. Yeah, I know. I have reined in my disappointment.

I am a bit uncomfortable with the fact that the ratio of companion slots to companions is going to be 5:8. I like to be able to have two sets of companions I can take along with absolutely no overlap, because to my mind that does help replayability. However, the thing that's giving me qualms here is not the 8 companions, it's the 6-character party. I would have much preferred 5 or even 4, including the PC.

Obsidian is using a ruleset that its own developers are creating. Not a D&D ruleset. If your hope is that the ruleset "differs occasionally" from past Infinity Engine games, I fear you will be disappointed. Everything we've learned thus far seems to indicate that the ruleset for Project Eternity will have major and frequent differences with the adapted AD&D ruleset of the IE games.

One assumption in the discussion here I can't quite wrap my head around: why is it bad to have companions we dislike? If by dislike people mean, "I didn't like them because they were poorly done," that's totally understandable. But sometimes I'm getting the sense that people mean, "I didn't like them because they had objectionable characters." I tend to dislike a fair number of companions over all the CRPGs I played, but I still enjoy their character presentations. For example, I have always hated Morrigan in DA:O, but I nevertheless liked to bring her around in my party because she made the game more interesting, even though she was simultaneously infuriating. To my mind, having at least one companion that the player dislikes is pretty essential to a game, because it makes for more depth of interaction.

To be honest I don't remember how many they said there were, if it was 6 it is still fine. I was merely using the number from the thread title for the sake of argument. There are 8 fully developed companions, so maybe it's 8 + the PC = 9?

With all due respect, you seem to be working backwards here. I bolded and italicized the notable portion. If we're asking "should there be differences amongst completely different species of humanoid creatures?", why would "Well, there's not really a significant difference between a bunch of humans, in reality, who are all part of the same species" be supporting evidence for the answer of "No"? You know what, let's roll with your example. There aren't any other humanoid "races" in reality. Just us humans. And other animals. Why is it, do you think, that we often look to animals for the fabrication of fantasy meta-human races? And are there not significant differences between animals and humans? A bloodhound can smell out a person trapped under like 50 feet of rubble from about a mile away. Can any human in the world do that? Nope. I guess we're talking past one another here a little bit. I'm not disputing that if there are going to be different playable races, then the races should have differing capabilties to reflect their different genetic makeup. All I'm saying here is that radically different capabilities for different sentient races aren't necessary in the slightest in order for the PC's race to have a tangible effect on gameplay, which was what you appeared to be saying a few posts ago. The rest of what you say there is probably true. While that is indeed wonderfully witty, it's also completely irrelevant to the point at hand. We know that classes are in the game, so whether or not a classless game could provide significant differences in gameplay by pretending as if the character had a dialogue class but not a combat class is an interesting but bootless discussion. We do not, however, know if the devs intend there to be significant distinctions between races in the form of numerical boni and mali. Discussing the implications for differentiated gameplay on the basis of either narrative or mechanical adjustments for each race thus has at least some merit.

And I'm sure if a consensus could be established among the fanbase in favor of more than 8 companions, the devs would strongly consider it at the very least. But there's no way to establish that kind of consensus. And I don't think that "hedging their bets" is the right approach for them to take--that way lies the modern hybrid RPG. I think the right approach towards pleasing the fanbase, which is the one Obsidian have pretty clearly taken, is to make the game the way they want to, following guiding principles for which very real financial support was shown on the part of the fanbase during the Kickstarter.

All we've seen is the outside of an orlan's ears. Not necessarily the best biological predictor of how well an orlan hears, if you want to get extremely picky and simulationist about it. As to your second point, I don't think I missed it at all. There's a very large variety of people right here on Earth, all in the same species. So make of them all a big RPG, and even though nobody's gonna have big genetically-related stat boni or mali, you'll get huge differences in reaction to different kinds of people. Now, if you want to call those differences "mechanical" because they have an effect on the gameplay that is the result of code, that's fine but then this is a semantic argument, not a substantive one. The point stands that there need be no numerical adjustment of any capability that the PC possesses in order for differing choices in PC race to result in different gameplay experiences. I am no opponent of racially- or culturally-based adjustments to skills and attributes. I was merely clarifying what seemed to me to be a misinterpretation on your part.

Those differences may indeed be negligibly small. We don't know enough about the lore of P:E to say. As for the second point, I think what Micamo is saying is not that, "the races should have abilities that affect your dialogue choices but don't appear in other mechanics," but rather that "if you are an orlan, the world should react differently to you than if you are an elf."

It's encouraging to see that the man whose work is the target for the majority of the complaints from the P:E prospective fanbase has it roll off his back like a duck, to quote Sam Goldwyn's malapropism.

Everything a character says is dialogue with something. You know what I mean, dialog as in monotone talking to the PC where you chose from 6 different answers. What I meant doesn't require multiple answers (or any answer at all), it's just a comment that the character (NPC) makes. OK, then I agree largely with your point. I do like a lot of companion-PC dialogue, but I support the extensive use of characterizing speech outside of the "PC walks up and asks for life story" paradigm.