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Kaz

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Everything posted by Kaz

  1. While I don't exactly get how random number + DC mumbled to skillcheck match works... it still requires to spreadsheet every lock in the game. Which does also... take time. While spreadsheeting might be more efficient for many things, I think for placing containers throughout the game a DC in the crate (or whatever)'s file itself with a default would be far less time consuming and convient for the developers. Yes, this takes time. It's also work that will happen regardless of the suggestions I'm making in this post. Someone still has to go through and make decisions on difficulty for each check. And that data will have to be stored somewhere, with or without my proposed feature. Like I said above, to append a random attribute to a data set is not a big deal. Details like the format of data are trivial to me and I'd rather focus on how to take away the incentive to reload when faced with events based on chance. From a game design stand point, I think it's a good thing to aim to minimize behavior that disrupts flow and immersion. Wouldn't you agree? That is not what I'm suggesting. Please go over my initial post again. My initial idea was talking about pre-designed events that include a random chance like picking locks, pick pocketing, speech based risks you take, etc. I hadn't considered the random elements that go into combat, but I'd agree there's not a whole lot stopping you from reloading if a battle turns bad. There's no way to eliminate save scumming, I'm aware of that, and it's also not my intention. What I'm trying to do here is throw out ideas to help minimize scenarios where players feel the need to reload in the first place. So in the combat example, I'd suggest adding more ways to retreat from battle. Smoke bomb, short term group invisibility, or whatever. Give a chance for players to learn from mistakes, or retreat after a series of horrible dice rolls while remaining in the game and without the need for a reload. Edit: I can also see how the retreat mechanic could be abused to slowly chip away from the opponent's hit points. This needs to be a topic on it's own but as a crude solution "using an escape / retreat skill triggers enemy HP to regenerate" could work. Will give it more thought later.
  2. Taking randomness out of non-combat skill checks is fine, I can roll that way too. But I think leaving a little random influence in there adds excitement. It allows for funky scenarios like a fighter getting extremely lucky in bashing open a locked chest after a failed attempt by your thief. It gives incentive for players to try things, even when the odds are stacked against them. If checks were static, once you knew the threshold for a lock you would never bother with it until you had enough skill points. A little off topic but I've read somewhere that humans draw more pleasure from random rewards compared to predictable ones. I think it explains why people enjoy gambling, or grinding for hours in an MMO for random drops. I'm not suggesting turning PE into a Diablo clone, but it's something to consider. Where you misunderstood me, and I should have made this detail clear, is that even though you're only rolling a random number once at the start of each game, the result for each check will be wildly different. To explain, let's say you could peek at the excel sheet that tracks all of the locks in the game. That file would likely track information like the area the lock is in, difficulty rating, what kind of loot it holds, etc. All I'm suggesting is to add another column to track a unique ID for each lock / skill check. Let's also say the random number generated for a particular play through was 454364. Every time you make a skill check the game takes the game seed and checkID number and manipulates them together to produce a two digit number. At this point the number has no meaning, it's the same thing as rolling a number between 0 and 99. It would then account for skill level, bonus and buffs and if the resulting number is higher than the difficulty rating, yay you succeeded. What's important is that the base number is random, unique for every check, and is consistent between reloads. As for the "wastes dev time" argument, adding another column to a spreadsheet (randomly generated numbers at that) is not labor intensive.. don't know what else I can say about that.
  3. I'll give this is a careful read later, but I like what you're trying to accomplish. Not sure if random generated areas will add or subtract from the overall goal of the project, which is rich story and tactical combat. It may add to the combat side of things but might take away from story. It all comes down to implementation though so I'll reserve specific opinions for later. What I like most here is how you're trying to add value to wilderness type skills. Instead of lights, maybe a ranger could pick up a trail on the ground much like how thieves detect traps in the old IE games. If a ranger notices something a patch of ground or a tree trunk might become highlighted, and could reveal information to the player. These trails would act as a lure and guide you to areas where people would otherwise ignore.
  4. Love it! Forms are solid and it has a nice read overall. Strokes are nice and chunky too! I think I see some painter brushes in there, was it done with painter + photoshop? Congrats on a fantastic piece!
  5. I love the "call out" feature. Always felt awkward pulling one mob at a time when the whole group can clearly see their buddies getting pulled away and slaughtered a few screens away. Maybe you can have reactions be based on intelligence. Some mobs could be so dumb they don't even notice you picking away at their buddies, while cunning packs might circle and surround you off screen and flank you. Or maybe it's a combination, like a pack of low intelligence goblins accompanied by a relatively smart leader who will bark orders to allow the group to attack as a whole, which in turn is something you can exploit by taking out the leader and pick off the dumb followers one by one. Edit: btw the term kiting might be a little misleading. I think "pulling" is the term you were looking for.
  6. I'm all for adding more versatility in scouting. It was such an important feature in the IE games, yet the options for scouting were pretty much limited to stealth and the occasional wizard eye. I think messing with sight distance could be interesting, it's pretty powerful though so needs to be implemented carefully. I was actually planning on making a post on this exact topic, and even made a mock up image to illustrate some ideas. So here's an example how sound ques could be implemented. I should have used an interior setting in the example because it makes no sense to hear something in the open before you can see it. Unless it's a swarm of insects or something.. anyway, it's just another dimension of scouting to explore, and I think it's interesting because it acts as a buffer zone without visually revealing the map. Another big one I wanted to bring up revolved around mages. This all ties in with strategy and preparation, but I think it would be make for a really useful non-combat skill to able to sense other magics in the area. A weak version of the skill would reveal the presence of a being capable of casting magic and maybe a general description like the school of magics available to him. If the player chooses to invest in that skill he might also reveal the level of the spells in addition to it's school. And finally a maxed skill would grant a chance to reveal the specific spells prepared in his/her grimoire.
  7. There's plenty of ways to balance things in an interesting way no? 5+5=10 2+7+1=10 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1=10 If this was damage it would result in very different damage patterns. Maybe some spells buffs work well with one type and not with others. Interesting things can come about even if they all amount to the same value.
  8. @Utukka - I'm totally cool with this being an option you can trigger at the start of the game. @rjshae @mstark I think we're all on the same page here and the only misunderstanding is in the implementation. The random element (the seed) that is involved in the equation is only generated once at the start of a session / play through. No more random numbers are generated after that. From there every time the player triggers a check, the game takes the seed and makes a blind decision whether it succeeded or not. It then considers the variables like difficulty of check, character's skill, gear, buffs, and alters the outcome using multipliers and additions. This means it's possible to bend the odds in your favor through skills and temporary tools like potions of master thieving, but the initial random number is always locked in place no matter how many times you reload or switch items around. This may have been the intent anyway but consumable items like lock picks could serve the function of re-seeding, i.e. reloading in the old sense, while potions that increase the skill of the thief could pad the result determined by the original seed. When allowing consumables I think it's also important the game informs you whether it's even worth dumping more lock picks or not. If your skill level is simply not within the threshold to pick that lock the game should give you some feedback like "Despite your best efforts this lock's mechanism appears to be too complex for you" While if you are within the threshold but was simply unlucky it might tell you "You come close to picking the lock, but suddenly the lock pick breaks in half". I'm not a writer but you get the idea. Also @rjshae - I knew something simple as this would have been thought of already. It was an interesting read, thanks for the link!
  9. Btw, sorry if i sound angry / confrontational, i just want to understand the other side of the argument. Love you guys
  10. This is entirely up to the method of implementation. But yeah that's why I suggested the file which keeps track of these checks be a separate file as there is no need to retroactively write anything to the save file this way. The game could just reference the external file when it encounters a check that's been made already. I didn't want to go in this direction but here goes.. So every time a similar point is made on reloading behavior I often see these kinds of responses. - Don't force your play-style on me - People should have more will power and resist reloading - Including measures against reloading is like hand holding for the weak who can't govern themselves If I made a thread saying, hey I really think the default shortcut for the game menu should be the escape button and not "o", no one would care. But since I often see strong reactions like the above you guys obviously do care, and there's interest in keeping things the way they are. Disregarding playstyles for a minute, one forth of the skills available to the thief class was effectively a dump stat if you played the reload game. I think a lot of people would objectively look at that and say, hey that's a bit broken. What are the arguments in favor of choosing to leave things the way they are? Like I said in a post above somewhere, given the opportunity to build a new game, why would you be against attempts to minimize situations where it's advantageous for the player to reload? Shouldn't we be working towards the opposite?
  11. While we're at it let's ask for a game mode where every check made auto succeeds. There you go, I just saved you a ton of reloads Or are you saying you derive pleasure from the re-loading process itself? But seriously let's look at the attainable rewards / loot that's locked up behind random chance. The reloading play style would unlock almost all of it while the "honorable non reloader" only receives a fraction of it based on the skills s/he picked. From a design standpoint that means you're rewarding reloading behavior while punishing players who try to role-play or just try to stay away from cheese. That feels broken to me, but that's how the games were made and I see no problem with your play style because you were leveraging legit game features. A question for you is - given the opportunity to redefine these things from the ground up, would you choose to implement game mechanics that reward players who reload over and over? And why would a developer choose to do so? If we can I'd prefer to discuss ways to minimizing reloads in stead of focusing on whether reloading itself is right or wrong.
  12. I think I have an idea that could deter players from reloading over and over to get the best results in events based on chance. It's pretty simple, and I wouldn't be surprised if others have suggested this.. Once a player commits to a random event, the game globally stores and locks that variable for that specific play through. For implementation this means assigning a unique ID to every new game you create, and making sure save games that branch from it inherits the same ID. You'll also need a file to store all of the random checks the player makes. With this system if the player fails or succeeds at any check, the event is recorded on a file independent from your save game and associated with the play through. Once you fail or succeed in a pickpocket check, the result will always be the same for that party on that particular check no matter how many times you reload. Now, cheaters will always cheat, and this is by no means a way to secure that data. If someone really wanted to alter that file it would be a fairly easy task. No the point is to make the designer's intention more black and white for the player. It was never intended by the original designers to allow thieves with 15% pickpocket to steal plate mail by reloading a bunch. But because it was possible using only legitimate features like "load game" it allowed for a lot of gray area. This system still leaves room for the player to reload if there's a negative result and avoid the check altogether, but it prevents him from reloading until there's a positive one.
  13. I don't expect every quest designed around this, but an occasional oddball high-risk high-return option? Sure why not.
  14. I agree with your observations. As most of us know, trolls are only a problem if you keep feeding them with attention. You don't win by reacting to them because that's exactly what they want. The ignore list is a handy feature. If you see a post or reply that clearly isn't adding to or moving the topic forward, smile, then recite the words "cool story bro" and move on. It's pretty magical.
  15. I don't like mustaches because it objectifies males. If you must have them, please don't throw them on cooldowns!! I want it to really mean something when I grow a mustache in game and cooldowns simple break my immersion.
  16. I think they are going in this direction like you said. I don't really have a bias either way, but I do think allowing every class to contribute to combat in similar levels is a good thing. It you look at the roster every class seams to have a combativeness side to them. This doesn't mean they suffer in non-combat skills, it just means they are handled separately when balancing. Thanks for participating in the polls guys.
  17. When I think back to the combat in the IE games character placement was pretty important, yet movement felt very nebulous and glitchy at times, especially in tight hallways and small rooms. You'd often see characters try to cram into a spot, fail to do so, and walk back and forth around the battle until they found a spot to squeeze in. This sort of thing was frustrating because every second my fighter is glitching around I'm getting hit by mobs. Another example is blockades. I would often wall off choke points using my fighters to protect my mage, but sometimes enemies would slip though because I misjudged the gap between my fighters. Grrr. I think having info like who can move where should be clearly defined and communicated to the player somehow. This might sound a bit extreme but how about a hex grid overlay on the battlefield which you can toggle with the Alt key while in combat? It would make movement during combat feel less nebulous, and if you wanted to create a blockade the player will have a visual tool to help him execute his tactics in confidence. No more, I'm going to place my fighters here and *hope* these goblins don't run past me. Hex grids.. too much?
  18. Apologies for the binary choice, but I think the question is pretty straightforward. I'm basically asking if you're okay with classes having varying levels of usefulness in combat. To elaborate a bit.. Option 1 Each class contributes to combat in a different way, but if you quantified their combat performance they should all add up be roughly the same. (includes any combat related skills, spells, capabilities the class may have) Non-combat skills should be balanced separately. Option 2 Combat performance and non-combat skills should both be considered simultaneously when balancing the overall value of a class. This means some classes might sacrifice combat performance and focus more on non-combat skills and abilities. Here's the list of classes, for your reference. Fighter Ranger Paladin Rogue Chanter Priest Druid Wizard Monk Barbarian Cipher
  19. This makes no sense whatsoever from a logical standpoint. If your primary means of defense is dodging rather than letting attacks be deflected off your armor, you have far fewer opportunities to attack. If you insist on this particular kind of tradeoff, it'd make more sense that lightly-armored people have a radically increased critical chance (or much higher critical damage), due to them placing their attacks with great precision because they aren't being rattled and half-dazed by enemy blows every couple of seconds. That being said, I generally only enjoy extreme micro in two situations in these types of games: rare Super Mega Colossal Boss fights (not necessarily only against a single big monster, but it should be a big, tough, and unusual fight), or when attrition has turned the battle into a duel between the Last Character Standing on my side and maybe the Last or Last Two on the other side. Sure that makes sense, I'm not completely tied up on the details. For light armor I just asked myself "What kind of bonus would I to consider parting with a heavy suit of armor?" More actions (skills/spells/attacks) seems fair to me. But like I said those are just details that can be worked out, as long as both paths retain their merit. As for microing formations, I think the UI would need to meet the player in the middle here. Creating a linear blockade should only require you to draw a line while having the fighters selected (the same way you draw straight lines in MS paint). Having to worry about formation and positioning for every battle might sound like a chore, but it's something I found myself doing in IE games all the time anyway. (using the crude interface at that) I'm sure most of you remember moving your fighters around to protect the weak mages in the back. I'm not saying every trashmob encounter needs to turn into a starcraft 2 micro fest, and sure you'll get away with A-moving on the enemy most of the time. But what it offers is another way for the devs to ramp up difficulty. For example the lone kobold archer you defeated with ease might be a tougher opponent when mixed with meaty tanks to soak up damage in the front.
  20. Additionally since characters wearing light armor will most likely rely on dodging, they wouldn't make good shields for mages, since a dodged arrow will end up in the mage's face. @Osvir yep, so the concept of tweaking the angle you face shouldn't be too foreign to people who enjoyed the IE games. Although ideally you wouldn't have to micro that kind of detail period.
  21. Like the old games, characters will automatically face their opponent, so that's not an issue. I would hate to micro on that level as well. In this model you're more concerned about who's getting attacked by how many foes. If it's your tank in full plate, he's fine. The nimble thief will also be able to do ok on a 1vs1 situation too (expressed through parry and dodge), but if multiple assailants enter the picture he's in trouble. That just means he was caught out of position, and it shouldn't be too much to handle. It encourages your warriors to fight for better positioning to maintain a safe zone for your squishier characters.
  22. Like a lot of you, I enjoy micro managing my battles to squeeze out the last bit of combat efficiency out of my party. The type of micro work I find fun revolves around placement of my characters, what skills to use, and when. There's been a lot of suggestions for different armor material having varied effectiveness against different damage types. While on paper it sounds really interesting, and I'm not saying it couldn't be implemented, I find it rather tedious and less fun compared to the former type of micro. Here's why. The fast paced nature of RTwP means combat will turn into chaos fairly quickly. I know because I'm playing IWD right now. Even if the devs made the armor types visually distinct, if you are getting swarmed by a bunch of different armor types, character placement and tactics start to have diminishing impact. Another reason is weapon specialization. I don't know how this will be designed in PE, but in the old rule sets the impact of weapon specialization was pretty significant. It was often the case where even if the weapon I'm using wasn't the most effective damage type, I'd use it anyway because the bonus from my weapon proficiency negated the disadvantage, and even worse, choosing the right type (such as maces against skeleton) might yield worse results if I hadn't invested in blunt weapons prior to the encounter. Hope you can see my point here. On one hand the system encouraged switching weapons against different armor, while on the flip side encouraging commitment to one weapon type via weapon specialization system. In the early game, you have very little weapon specialization, and all all weapons were cheap, so you weren't as invested in any particular type. During that phase I actually remember carrying multiple weapon types and switching them accordingly. Which leads into my third issue, inventory. Having varied damage types would naturally encourage me to carry multiple sets of armor into a dungeon, just based on the fact that I don't know what weapon types I'll be encountering. Same for the weapons I'll be packing. The concept of change in and out of armor for each encounter is a bit silly to me as well. Like I said it's interesting and has potential, but I think weapon specialization and inventory will have to be designed around this mechanic for it to be fun. I don't want to whine without proposing something myself, but it ended up being slightly beyond the scope of this armor discussion so I've made a thread over in the mechanics board. Come check it out!
  23. I was thinking about what types of decisions players make when they are micromanaging combat. Specifically what type of micro work is actually fun? This thread was inspired from the armor discussion threads, and like I mention there, the type of micro I enjoy is placement of characters, what skills to use, and when. In this post I'll just touch on positioning and how armor relates. I came up with this in response to the armor questions posed in update#29. Heavy armors protect the wearer from multiple angles Light armor lets the wearer attack without hindrance. Medium armor enjoys the benefits of both, but to a lesser degree. What this means in-game; full plate will allow a fighter to wade into battle without having to worry about his flank. Characters wearing light attire like robes and raw hides will still be able to use shields or parry incoming blows, but only for foes directly in front of them, and will be wide open for attacks from the side. To compensate, light armor should allow for increased numbers of attacks. You can justify the reasoning using variables like DR, AC, chance to dodge, parry etc. but that should be transparent to the player. To further the importance of positioning, I'm also going to throw in the idea to make projectiles like arrows requiring direct line of sight to find it's target, but I'll come back to that later. Here are some visuals to explain how this might work. The funnel of death The "OH ****" formation. It leaves some gaps but it's better than nothing. The blue arcs represent angles that are well protected. In full plate the arc might fully wrap around the character, only leaving a small gap directly in the back. Let's talk about some skills that could be designed around this idea. In the old games the only way for a fighter to save a mage being attacked by a goblin was to slay him as fast as possible. I can see abilities like bash being useful to shove the goblin aside while the fighter steps in to position himself between the enemy and the mage. On the flipside, the enemy might employ blockade formations as seen above to keep you from reaching their mage who is bombarding your party. Arrows were the answer in the old days, but if the projectile mechanic I mentioned earlier is implemented the front line is going to block all of your shots, so you will need a way to disrupt the front line and create an opening to get your shot. A thief skill like tumble might be useful to slip through the blockade and disrupt their defense, or a ballsy thief might go after the mage directly. These are just ideas, but I think it allows for a wide range of tactics because the lay of the land and map design is now a key factor in your decision making. Thanks for reading!
  24. I like these suggestions. Here's what I got after considering them. At base level, you can think of all item types as side-grades instead of upgrades. However each type should retain their own flavor. As an example, raw hide allows for more attacks and plate mail maintains good defense while being surrounded etc.. This ensures plate mail is still superior in protection, but the two options even out when you factor in attack speed and look at overall combat effectiveness. It will be up to the player to decide which items they want to focus on and upgrade vertically. (the +1's in the old sense) All magical items can be upgraded to reach a similar potency by end game. - Keeps all magical items relevant and allows for the dagger wielding Barbarian bundled in magical raw hide to be a viable option in the end game - Makes every item worth developing as players will be able to extend their longevity. Item upgrades are gated (in various ways to make it feel organic) - Cost - Region: Can be explained as lack of material in stock, or the skills of the particular blacksmith/tanner - Enemy; must slay X and retrieve the material from it's corpse - Crafting skill of your characters? (crafting simply becoming a money saver skill is boring, some more thought needed here) An upgraded item will sell for more (Addressing the hoarding problem from my previous post) - Upgrades would feel less of a commitment - Encourages experimentation - If a unique material was used for the creation of an upgrade / enchantment, you should be able to break it down to retrieve it, or do away with unique ingredients and make them common.
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