Kaz

I just saw another thread about the pacing of BG1, and thought OP might have been experiencing a similar side effect of high resolution mods.

I haven't played BGEE or other "high resolution" mods, but judging from the screen shots I can tell what they did was essentially zoom the camera out to gain resolution. That's just a trick which doesn't actually increase the fidelity of the image. Anyway the side effect is that your vantage point is further away from the ground plane making the characters appear smaller, which in turn reduces their relative speed on screen. It's the same reason the ground seems to move slower from an airplane. I bet if you installed and played BG1 now at it's native resolution you wouldn't suffer from the sluggish character / vacant map syndrome. Unlike the "zooming out trick", PE's maps / areas are designed from the ground up to support current high resolution standards, meaning we'd get higher image fidelity out of the box without having to zoom out, so the sluggish movement thing shouldn't be an issue here. I think this explains the movement feeling sluggish, but if pacing of quests and game content is an issue that will be something the devs will have to look into. Compare the size of the character relative to the screen size.

Exploring the open wilderness surrounded by the ambient sounds of wildlife, set to the adventurous sound track.. That was one of my favorite moments in Baldur's Gate. It was a unique experience at the time, no other game seemed to capture that spirit of exploration and adventure, and I was bummed BG2 didn't have more of that. Just like how a good painting needs some negative space on the canvas, those vacant areas provided a nice break from the bustling noise of civilization, and gave you a sense of isolation and appreciate the vastness of the world. It wouldn't really feel like exploration if you ran into a scripted event every few steps of the way. That isn't to say it should be devoid of content. You could have content that is more passive, like tracks you can spot on the ground, pick up clues for what you can expect in your next encounter etc. I'd like to see these exploration areas injected between quests with heavy dialog to switch up the pace of the game.

I think one ending for the sake of sanity and consistency of future installments. It's always nice to learn what happened to the key factions / places / individuals based on the choices you made.

@Umberlin I'll get to a response when I get a chance, but in the meantime could you go over my old post and answer some questions I pose? Not trying to corner you or anything, just confused since my idea shouldn't really affect the way you play, yet you seem to be in strong opposition. Thanks

@Dream I've actually asked what his play-style was in regard to this in a post earlier and still waiting a reply. It's interesting how you know the gaming habits of this forum member, where has he stated he reloads for these things?

@Dream Oh you again Welcome back. And how exactly is said player playing the game? Supposedly not reloading - right? And how does locking check results affect play styles like that? *drum roll* They don't.

@Lephys Just to clear things up a bit, this idea simply locks the result of a check. The difficulty levels will be designed by the devs and won't be randomized. (unless of course they choose to do so) Here's an example. After considering your thieving skill including any buffs etc. and the difficulty level of the lock it is determined that you have a 70% chance in succeeding to pick a certain lock. You go ahead and attempt to pick it. The game rolls a number between 0-100 and produces 20. Sad panda face. (You needed to roll 30 or greater to unlock a 70% lock) The game then saves the number you rolled(20) and remembers it for the entire play-through. That's the part what this whole thread is about. So trying the same lock after any amount of reloading will always produce the roll of 20. You could also return to this lock at a later time when your skills have improved or have better gear, and attempt it again. This time let's say because your skills have improved you have a 90% chance to crack it (needs a roll of 10 or greater). Your initial rather sucky roll is now sufficient to open the lock. Hooray~! I'm not entirely sure whether improvement in skill should grant a new roll or not. From a role playing standpoint it seems like it should re-roll once a character attempts the check with his/her new found skills. Those are minor details though.

Dragon rat god confirmed.

Even just some sort of party formations ala Baldur's Gate would be refreshing. I have been playing Civ 5 quite a bit recently and it is really hard on the scroll wheel -- so much so that my finger is starting to get sore. Be careful what you wish for when adding more functionality to the scroll wheel. Party formations are confirmed.

To all P:E forum readers, Let us take this moment to set aside our differences, and bask in the glory of these majestic polygons. Amen.

While we're on the subject, being able to define groups RTS style would be nice. I always used a cloaked scout in front with a thief detecting traps following close behind. Being able to make a custom selection group would be pretty sweet.

@BetrayTheWorld I'm totally open to this being an option you can enable. You may draw any conclusion you wish, but the intent of this thread was to talk about ways to minimize cases where reloading is advantageous to the player, not about governing someone else's play-style or preference. That's a rather silly assumption. The proposed idea does not affect the majority of players who accept the initial check / roll and move on. The only change you'd notice is the fact that results of random checks remain consistent between reloads. Regardless of this being a single player role playing game, or nebulous things like will power, I just see a loophole in a game and throwing out ideas to patch it in a non intrusive way. What is the issue with that? And specifically what is your play-style you insist on protecting and how am I impeding on it? Help me out so I can understand where you're coming from. As BetrayTheWorld pointed out, some people don't have time for multiple play-throughs and would rather experience as much content as they can in the initial run. I think that's totally valid, but if that was your stance it would make more sense to close the loophole and ask for an option to always roll the maximum on checks. (in effect weeding out random chance and treating checks as static thresholds) It would save you the time reloading until you got your desired result. I'll skip the "rather have devs spend time elsewhere" argument as I've stated my opinion on that a few times already. Hint: it doesn't take much. I see this type of argument a lot, and it's rather weak. You're basically at the voting station telling people to stop voting because they disagree with your views. Users here have every right to voice their opinions, it's what this forum is for. Counter arguments are great, suppression of ideas gets us nowhere. Relax, it's not like any of us have a final say on the matter anyway.

If the mini-game was something you could initiate on the side and served a more passive role, such as a card game at the local tavern, I think a lot of people would be more open to the inclusion of such things. It'd only take issue if the mini-game reoccurred even after the learning curved plateaued and kept barring me from additional game content.

There will always be legit scenarios where the reload feature comes in handy. - Technical problems (bugs) - User error (miss-clicked or misunderstood the game mechanics) So any penalties applied to reloading would also harm people caught in the cases listed above. This should be avoided and I think it's more fruitful to talk about how to take away the incentives for reloading instead of making it harder. Listing the common reasons for "save scumming" and addressing them individually is a good start I think. I divided them into three categories. Skill checks Thief skills, writing spells to spell book, or other instances where the player stands to gain from a dice roll, has been covered in this thread. Combat gone awry This is a hard one. I think the major factor prompting reloading was the severe penalty of character death. I think PE is taking steps in the right direction by introducing stamina in addition to health. Poor choices in battle will still result in characters getting knocked out, but because it's not a death there is still plenty of incentive to play through and salvage the situation. Death was a chore not only for the trek back to town for the revive, but for having to find a place to store all the dead character's belongings. Not fun because leaving them on the ground = risk of loosing them permanently, and free inventory space was premium real estate. Unless you have hours upon hours to kill on games any sensible person would reload to avoid this ordeal.. If I didn't have to manage the items of the dead character, I'd be much more inclined to deal with the death and carry on until I could revive them. Dialog (multi-choice riddles etc.) I can't think of a way to avoid the dialog meta game without introducing some weird mechanic that hinders the writers. And frankly, the only time I can recall reloading for dialog is after I miss-clicked, or aggravated a person because I didn't thoroughly read the choice I picked. People who want to exploit this will always do, and I don't see much reason to work around it.

It might be interesting to design cultures and races using a grass roots / bottom up kind of approach, where a collection of details give rise to general trends and traits. Simply ask yourself questions about the type land they inhabit, what their predecessors were like, wars waged in the past and against whom, technology they possess.. just start start dumping out details into a huge list, then sift through them to extract a more general picture of that culture. It might give you a more muddy picture about the race than a top down design approach, but I think it adds interest and enhances believe-ability. So back on topic, I think the Humans, Elves and Dwarfs will stay fairly traditional, and branch out into uncharted territory with the Orlan and Aumauas. I don't mind either approach as long as the details are interesting. Personally, the humanoid races being a distant relative to humans seems interesting. Perhaps elves share a common ancestry with humans, who emerged from a tribe which split off from the populace in ancient times, adapting and evolving to their unique environment. Shifts in landmass could have isolated the race, leading each to develop distinct cultures as well.

I think the passive bonus idea is interesting, although it would punish players who prefer to only take a few companions and force most players to roll with full parties instead. Not saying if that's good or bad, it just means it will make certain play-styles harder.

Only looking at the combat side of the picture, I keep thinking about how interesting it would be if positioning and formations mattered more and how each class could play off this new dimension of combat. Fighter: Beyond being good at CQC, fighters would excel in area denial and zoning. A fighter trained in defensive tactics could essentially exercise limited crowd control through brute force, while fighters focused on offense could break blockades created by enemies. Rogue: Mobility on the field, able to slip past enemy blockades with skills like tumble. Backstabs. Relatively fragile hit and run character. Would require a lot of micro management to make the most out of him. Priest: Haven't really given this one much thought.. I feel not allowing buffs to stack would save us from the buffing ritual before combat, and allow for more strategy since you would have to choose your buffs wisely depending on the situation. DPS potential may not surpass a fighter but should be able to hold their own as defensive lineman when not casting. Warding spells that deny enemy entry would be more valuable if things like character position in combat mattered more. Mage: Obviously the flavor of this class will come from the types of spells included in the game. From what I gather it seems like armor choice will change up how the mage approaches combat. Would be interesting to see spells with potency linked to distance from the target.

I like Delterius's idea of making random outcomes fairly even in value to the player, especially in cases where the player has no say in the matter. I think it's one of the cheapest ways to generate replay value. Now if the player is informed about a high-risk high-return option in advance I think there could be room for some inequality in results. Example: You may take the oil of speed on the desk, or attempt to mix it with a mysterious potion sitting next to it. (The result may be an improved oil of speed, or the potion blowing up in your face dealing acid damage.) A non-risk choice should be present if a lot is at stake. If you guys think reloading behavior compromises this mechanic I suggest you check out this thread (shameless plug) where I basically suggest that information about deliberate choices made by the player be stored independently from save files, thus making results of random events be consistent between reloads for the particular play-through.

^This. The random merchant in dungeons often ruins the feeling of being in a sacred or very remote place.

This gave me an idea about ciphers and undead in general. What if undead in PE always had a traceable figure or force behind their animation? Perhaps the cipher might be able to sense the strings connecting master and servant, and sever the connection entirely, or trace the connection to reveal information about it's master. This could work for summoned creatures as well.

Upvoted for posting one of my favorite videos on youtube.

I like the idea of making quest givers less obvious, but also dislike the idea of having to talk with every single commoner for quests. Another option might be to allow your characters to notice things about their surroundings and communicate things out of the ordinary through some brief text. This could be automatic based on proximity, or discovered manually by the player through an inspection mode or tool. As Osvir pointed out we could take the ol' tool tip scroll that rolls out when we hover over stuff in IE games and beef it up a bit. So for the most part you would see the same old "Noble", or "Local drunkard" type descriptions, but once in a while you would find a person who triggers some text which hovers over them like "You spot a noble standing alone looking rather distressed. He carries a sheathed blade by his side" If an interesting description like that popped up it would be enough intensive a lot of players to go over and talk. You still have to do some hunting, but it's just a matter of hovering over stuff, no dialog initiation required. It's also non-intrusive and lets the player initiate those conversations on their terms. I remember big cities being a pain sometimes because you couldn't get from A to B without a bunch of people walking up to you serving up more quests in yo face.

I dig it. Makes you feel like you're leading the adventure, and not your journal / quest log. As long as quests related to the main plot are made clear, I'd welcome this type of subtle indication of quests.

As a Japanese man, I resonate with option 3.