SunBroSolaire

Thanks for sharing the Torment info, that's pretty damn cool. Good to see you guys supporting the Kickstarter community, intelligent RPGs, and good people and artists. Keep it up! Kickstarter is bigger than Project: Eternity, and it's great to see the leaders of this new business model helping each other out. I honestly believe you guys are doing something more important than just making an awesome video game. The Kickstarter model could fundamentally change the way we look at games, entertainment, and fan support. Keep making us backers proud

Makes me want to see what Obsidian is doing with P:E's dialogue. I have really high hopes given Alpha Protocol and New Vegas, but it looks like they'll have some healthy competition this time.

Painted avatars for me. I think that's more in keeping with the spirit of the game - painted backdrops, text-based dialogue. The characters being 3D is kind of a necessary concession so armor and weapons can be represented, but I think they should stick to the painterly aesthetic as much as possible.

Just finished another run through of New Vegas, and now picking The Witcher 2 back up. Gotta say, I don't like the combat at all. It feels really sticky and clumsy. The story seems pretty dry so far, but I appreciate that they put a lot of work into making everything realistic and detailed. I'm fighting the Kayran now, which is extremely frustrating. I can consistently get to the point where the bridge crushes the thing, but then when I try to run up the ramp and finish the fight, I ALWAYS get swatted back or crushed to death by it's tentacles. Is there a trick to this? I've died like five times just running up the ramp, and I'm getting dangerously close to rage quitting. I want to soldier on, because it seems like the game is really going to start getting cool once I get out of Flotsam.

Ah. Yeah, true enough.

Alpha Protocol had poor story? euuhkay. What about New Vegas? KOTOR 2? Mask of The Betrayer? Obsids are kind of known for their stories. I can't agree with your claim that Deus Ex had especially good balance. Swimming, anyone? Dragon's Tooth? It's true that the original Deus Ex could have done a lot better with acknowledging player choice. Invisible War, though, did a great job with this.

Well, look at New Vegas. That's a sim shooter with stealth. Granted the stealth and shooting aren't good, but the same could be said of the first two DX games. I'd say the main strength of those games was the non-linearity in the level design and story, which F:NV nailed and DX:HR totally dropped the ball on. Alpha Protocol is a goddamn paragon of non-linear storytelling and the shooting and stealth really aren't that bad. For a Deus Ex sequel, I would much prefer a deeply non-linear game with meaningful choice & consequence, great writing, and solid character progression mechanics, over Human Revolution's polished but mostly linear cover-based shooter with shallow and broken RPG systems. I think Obsidian could definitely deliver. If not OEI, I'd like to see Arkane take the franchise over. It's all a pipe dream though, the series is doomed to a future of console shooters with minimal RPG influences.

I'm not seeing many publishers willing to sign PC only for a South Park-sized project, tbh, though the PC market is a lot healthier and getting a lot of attention, and I can see Obsidian getting the chance to do more stuff that previously might not have been as financially viable. True, but stranger things have happened But on a more serious note. I'm thinking (okay throwing a wild guess) that this new project is Deus Ex: Human Defiance. Some finnish site is reporting that both the internal teams at Eidos Montreal are working on something else, so who would Square-Enix turn to make a sequel(?) to their hit game... Would also make some sense why team was buying blueprints I'm still hoping for an original project, but of all licenses, that would be ideal. You couldn't find a better match. Doubt it though.

In that RPS interview, didn't Feargus talk about setting the game in LA? Seriously doubt we'll see another game in the Mojave any time soon. New Vegas 2 = another Obsidian Fallout. Don't have much hope for Fallout 4. I expect it to be better than Skyrim, and probably an improvement on Fallout 3, but let's be honest: the writing will suck, the character progression will suck, the quest design will suck, the combat will suck, and the balance will most definitely suck. My only hope is that after F4, BethSoft will let Obsidian take another crack at it.

Yeah, that video was pretty damn impressive. I didn't even back Wasteland 2, not having played or really even heard much about the original. After seeing that, and the follow up about dialogue, it's easily one of the games I'm most excited for in 2013. I understand where people are coming from saying that inXile should wait to release W2, but seriously this is a way better pitch even before seeing the actual pitch video. They have a solid team with Kevin Saunders and Colin McComb plus Mark Morgan and artists who worked on P:T. The Numenera setting is fresh and looks pretty fantastic, and it seems like a good fit for a weird story heavy game. The game is supposed to be light on combat, heavy on philosophy, with game mechanics that reinforce the central themes. Any one of those three points would be enough to win my support. All together, it's a no brainer. Now tack on the fact that they are drawing their inspiration from Planescape: Torment and Mask of The Betrayer, and the apparent quality of Wasteland 2 so far, I think that's a pretty darn exciting project. PLUS the fact that if inXile can get Tides funded, they'll have a oldschool hardcore RPG pipeline set to deliver one of these games about once a year. Asking them to wait for W2 is just... Why? They obviously aren't taking the money and running. Worst case scenario we fund a bad game, and that's the same risk with any Kickstarter. At least this one has some concrete indicators that it will rule.

I actually like limited gold. Especially because the game has unlimited inventory space, I think it's important that the designers have some tools to control the economy. Here is what I would like to see from the game economy: I would like to see restocking work something like Fallout: New Vegas. All items in stores are limited and can be bought out, and you can also 'sell out' the shopkeeper (yes limited gold). After a day or two, the merchants have money again and restock items. Using a system like this prevents the player from becoming ridiculously wealthy very fast. Market flooding should make vendor trash worthless eventually. They did this in Icewind Dale at least, can't remember if it was the case in the other IE games. Basically, every time you sell a specific item to a merchant, the sell value is decreased a little. This gives diminishing returns on farming. It's still possible to farm item drops if you really need the money, but it's a discouraged, especially brainless farming where you just collect the same item over and over again. All store items should be available to steal from chests in the store. It shouldn't necessarily be possible to do so without getting caught, but the option should be there to kill the shopkeeper and take that magical sword / enchanted plate mail / whatever. They should bring back the traveling merchants from New Vegas. It was cool to pass caravans on your between towns. Reputation should affect prices. I'm not sure if this was the case in NV, but I feel like it might have been. Anyway, midieval shops should not be like Walmart where everyone pays the same regardless of nationality, race, sex, or class. If you're a friend of the village, you should pay a little less; if you've been murdering the village's cows, you should pay more. If your PC is from Dyrwood, he should pay less in Dyrwood and maybe more in the coastal region. Fallout: New Vegas did a pretty good job with keeping the game economy meaningful throughout the whole game. I would like to see a system like that in P:E. Except if there are different currencies, actually let me use them

That satyr girl art is fantastic. Internet high five to the artist.

Thanks Josh and George! I like the Orlan design. It's not too "creaturey". Is this a new companion, then? I'm interested in you guys' take on the pantheon. Seems reminiscent of Greek myth, but I get the sense that the gods aren't quite as powerful. Or maybe the fact that people are using magic in this world just levels the playing field a bit? Can't wait to hear more.

"Talking and writhing part"

Yes, but... they're all still based on DT, but then they're all different on top of that. It would be one thing to have different effectiveness bonuses for each, like: Slashing inflicts bleed damage-over-time versus the correct type of armor, Piercing deals 300% (instead of 150%) critical damage versus the correct type of armor, Crushing temporarily reduces DT by 1 per hit versus the correct type of armor. That's 3 different things that are fine. What wouldn't make much sense is if I said: Slashing inflicts bleed damage as long as DT is under 10, Piercing deals 300% critical damage as long as DT is between 10 and 20, Crushing temporarily reduces DT by 1 per hit as long as DT is between 20 and 30. In the first example, you can have 3 different types of weapons all have the same base damage, and you're STILL going to wind up with different final damage (based on 3 completely different bonus effect calculations). In the 2nd example, DT does TWO things, so you have to adjust base damage relative to DT values of armor for a comparable level, AND adjust DT for each range of armor to make sure that your damage-type effectiveness is balanced right in the end. In other words, in the original system, you have DT versus damage PLUS 3 different relationships with DT (slashing doing nothing, piercing negating it, and crushing negating it in a different way) to account for, JUST to achieve the balance you're looking for (you can't make slashing do 50 damage to make up for the fact that it can't get around DT, and you can't make DT too high on heavy armor because it would too quickly make both slashing and piercing useless.) You're doing MULTIPLE calculations just to make slashing better against one armor type, because that armor type is really just a grouping of a bunch of calculations. Well, it does depend on imlpementation. The problem I see with your first example (and the 50% penalty system Josh talked about in the OP), is that it makes for a very straightforward matching game. Light Armor? Better use the highest damage slasher that I have. Heavy Armor? Highest damage crusher. So maybe you have to think about which weapons to put in your pack, but the choice of which weapon to use on an enemy is transparent and fairly stiffly enforced. The old system, particularly with the adjustments Hormalakh suggested, makes determining the optimal weapon more of a interesting problem. Because instead of every stabby weapon getting the same bonus, every weapon has to be evaluated individually. Overall, you'll have a similar efficacy graph, but produced by mechanics instead of a hard division of weapon classes. It would also allow for more interesting weapon builds, like halberds that have good slashing and good piercing but can only be used two-handed, dull great swords that have no piercing but decent slashing and crushing, etc... Weapons can be more interesting than just one of three types + damage modifier.

That's one of the things that makes the system attractive though. It isn't, in the words of Penny Arcade, an Arrow Comparison Engine. If you have one variable that you're comparing, that's not really fun or interesting.

But that isn't the way it works in the spreadsheet. Slashing weapons are superior up to 10 DT, and after that remain a pretty competitive option if two-handed. If anything, I think piercing needs a wider band, since it's usually only the optimal choice if dual-wielded. I don't think that armor should have straight bonuses, beyond maybe a max of +5 DT for high quality leather/mail/scale etc... In order to keep slashing and piercing relevant. light armor already has the advantage of faster attack rate, so I think it's safe to assume that we'll see light armor into late game. If leather armor +5 has 40 DT, first, that doesn't make much sense, and second, slashing will be seriously underpowered against high level enemies.

I like this idea a lot. Giving each weapon type their own stat could reinforce the unique feel of each type. With good names, I think it would be pretty clear what was going on, e.g., DT- = penetration, MDTDT = blunt force. For example: Mace: Damage: 12 - 18 Penetration: 0 Blunt Force: 40% Long Sword: Damage: 15 - 21 Penetration: 5 Blunt Force: 20% Pike: Damage: 8 - 12 Penetration: 15 Blunt Force: 10% Looks like a lot of fun to compare these, rather than just saying, "I need a crushing weapon now, which one has the most damage?". Plus I like the idea that weapons could be on the border between slashing/crushing (flail) or piercing/slashing (katana, halberd), or piercing/crushing (warhammer, maul). There's a gradient of weapon types instead of three distinct classes.

The piercing weapons tripped me up, too. Comparing his example here with this one made things a little clearer to me: Basically the same thing, but with better sample size so the graph is clearer. The way I interpret it is this: Blunt weapons are always going to to some damage, because armor doesn't totally protect you from shock damage. That's where you get the MDTDT; even if your weapon can't pierce the armor, it will do a good bit of damage just from impact. Blunt weapons really shine because they're designed to hit with maximum force on a wide target area. The advantage of piercing weapons is that they can actually pass through armor (IE, DT-). When they can't pass through armor anymore, they become inferior to crushing AND slashing because you're hitting with less force, in a very specific area. It's a really nice system, I'm sad I only really appreciate it now that it's gone I can kind of understand where Josh is coming from saying that this is unintuitive, but I don't know that intuitiveness should necessarily be the most important factor. It's a cool system, it makes sense, and it serves it's purpose of giving each weapon their time to shine. I really like the nuance in that graph. I hope whatever they end up doing, that they can preserve the different 'flavor' of each weapon type.

Nice work! I think you're right that this could be the Orlan. We know they're suppose to have big ears and be furry. The Aumua didn't have ears or side burns like that. Gotta say, I thoroughly support the way both these races look like Primates. From the desciption of Orlans I was afraid of something like the Elin from Tera I've loved all the art concepts so far. The screenshot looks excellent, too.

Well, we're going to try this system out, but I do admit that I'm not 100% sold on it. I was really having a lot of trouble working out the wide variation in values in the original system (I made a post with the spreadsheet on the previous page) after adjusting formulae and values for weeks. If we do "go back" to the original system, it will need to include some remedies for communicating relative damage in the interface. At the high end of the DT spectrum, the decrease in damage is 90% over initial values for fast Slash/Pierce weapons, the worst of those (the fast Pierce, e.g. Stiletto) being less than 1/6th the value of the ideal weapon: the two-handed Crush (e.g. Maul). Thanks for the response. One more question I have is whether you plan on displaying DT in the combat log? It seems like that would help make it clear to players why their stiletto isn't getting through the 35DT mail + Ring of Damage Threshold. Just something like "player hit goblin for 5 points of damage, DT negated 40 damage" would make it clear that the stiletto is a bad choice.

50% seems like a really harsh penalty. I would assume crushing weapons aren't getting the -50% applied against light/medium armor, which would mean carrying a slashing weapon would be a huge liability. If one third of the time it does moderately higher damage than piercing/crushing, but two thirds of the time does 50% less damage + potentially misses DT altogether, you're going to end up with a weapon that is basically useless. I can't imagine any reason to use anything but clubs and mauls in this scenario. On the other hand, if crushing and piercing weapons ARE penalized against lighter armor, you have basically a game of rocks-paper-scissors. I don't see what the problem was with the original system. Maybe you wouldn't immediately know what the optimal weapon would be in any given situation, but you could make a pretty good guess, and observing the combat log would basically seal it. I don't think it's intuitive at all for some weapons to just not work against some armor. In the old system, it sounded like you would be able to get by with a suboptimal weapon. In this system you HAVE to match up the damage type and armor type. Josh and Tim obviously know better than me, since they've been playing with the system; this is just how it appears to me.

excellent! I voted for youtube videos. I doubt I would catch live streams, and I'm not sure if Twitch lets you rewatch streams later? If it does, streaming would be fine. Have fun, Chris!

I wouldn't mind this, as long as there isn't the risk of missing out on super rare valuable loot. If there was that risk, I think I would just try to avoid using any of the overkill abilities. This would especially be negative on bosses, since they tend to drop the best loot. If I have to be careful not to break their gear, it kind of changes the whole encounter. Burning up wolves and missing that wolf pelt is not such a big deal, losing the Sword of Magical Asskicking because I used a good spell in a boss fight is lame. Overall, I wouldn't want them to do this if it takes much development time to balance/animate/implement, and I wouldn't want them to do it unless it was very well balanced and implemented. I'm totally fine with the old "search ash pile" if they want to include special death animations without getting into loot destruction mechanics.

I never played the game, but I thought there were only three romanceable companions in ME : a man and woman who were heterosexual, and an alien who was omni-sexual in almost every way, so two romance options by gender of the main character. And if anything, Obsidian is guiltier than Bioware on that topic if only for the inclusion of Scarlett as a romance option in Alpha Protocol : she panders to a lot of wish-fulfillment fantasy with her fiery red-head who's also an intrepid reporter status, and the main mechanic of her romance is gift-giving, a mechanic which was disqualified when Dragon Age went too far with it! I sometimes feel like Bioware's love of romance is really, really overblown by everyone. You're right in the case of ME1, but all of the recurring companions were romances in 2 & 3. Obviously Gaider isn't the main shot caller over there, but what he's preaching against is exactly what he's been doing for the past three Bioware games, at least (disregarding ToR). As for Alpha Protocol / Obsidian, I think there are a few points in their favor. 1) that's one game, not a recurring and escalating trend like with Bioware, 2) you could fail the sweet talk and not get sex, instead of Bioware's ([flirty/nice/not-evil dialogue choice]*10 = sex) formula, 3) the girls' character arcs didn't end after sex, 4) it was seduction, not romance, which fit nicely with the games theme and mechanics, and 5) the writing was solid. I think you're absolutely right that Bioware's implementation of romance is overblown. The problem is that a lot of that is positive overblowing, and it seems to be pushing Bioware to keep upping the romance content at the expense of other content. At this point I would honestly prefer them to just make a romance game and do it right, instead of making mediocre ARPGs with romance sidequests.