Caerdon

They should put a Markov chain name generator in the game. It's super easy to implement and with a decent base set of names it produces really good, useful names.

That would be because I am only seeing humans living in the town, all the buildings have the same design style, look about the same age, and everything is scaled to be roughly normal versus a human. The one thing that disturbs me about that picture is that supposedly human guard on the bridge. Dude must be packing away those wheaties, he is possibly bigger than the Aumaua party member. Uh... let me get this straight. You're seeing only humans and human scale buildings in the town. And then you're wondering why one of those supposedly humans looks as big as an aumaua and why one of those supposedly human doors looks as big as an aumaua door? And you're still pondering how's that possible, since there can only be humans and human-size doors around, as those are the only things you're seeing...

I relly like the art style in BG1 portraits, but most of them really look rather cartoonish and over-the-top. They might have personality, but I always found it hard to find one that has the right personality for the character I was making. PoE portraits seem to be a bit less formulaic than in other IE games: they cover a wider range of art styles and have rather varied poses, unlike those in BG1 & 2. While this isn't necessarily good or bad in itself, it means that it's easier to make external portraits match those that come with the game. @Tartantyco, stop being an ass. Your opinion isn't any more valuable than anyone else's.

I am unsure that elves and orlan being at the same height as a human (door)knob is by design. I didn't write that. Nevertheless, the door ring appears to be at the upper chest height when compared to the orlan, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Also, I'm not sure why both of you are assuming that's a human door, maybe the miller that built the place was an aumaua. Or maybe there's some other reason for that door to be so large, just like I wrote earlier. It's not like larger-than-usual doors don't exist in our purely human world.

What a lovely attitude. I assume that expressing one's ideas and opinions on a discussion forum is also very bad?

It's not that bodily might represents spiritual might, it's just that they are intrinsically connected. You can still emulate that kind of character pretty well with low CON and DEX. Byt yeah, you can't get over the fact that there's only so much you can do with only six attributes, no matter how you twist them around. On the other hand, with these attributes some interesting character concepts are possible that wouldn't be possible with, say, D&D. I can't really say what bugs me about this, it just seems a little off to insist that the only people with perfect Souls are the physically strong. It just seems to be a little too Nietzschean for my moderate tastes, but i'll leave it there. I understand what you mean. However, physically weak body doesn't necessarily imply that the soul is also weak, it might only limit the soul's ability to project the power it possesses. Healthy body, healthy mind; the body is the temple of the soul; all that, you know? Again, it's unfortunate that six attributes can only portray so much. But how we see them depends greatly on how we look at them. I really don't want to sound condescending here, but if you feel that there's something "off" with the attribute system or the body/soul concept or anything else, try to look at things from other perspectives until you find one that fits the way how you want to see things. It really works quite well.

At least we know there's already a place for personal notes, but yeah, it'd be great if we could add our own map markers as well.

It's not that bodily might represents spiritual might, it's just that they are intrinsically connected. You can still emulate that kind of character pretty well with low CON and DEX. Byt yeah, you can't get over the fact that there's only so much you can do with only six attributes, no matter how you twist them around. On the other hand, with these attributes some interesting character concepts are possible that wouldn't be possible with, say, D&D.

I'm not surprised. Command & Conquer was my favourite game series by far until I was introduced to Baldur's Gate.

I think you guys missed the joke. My fault, probably. EDIT: A pretty bad joke, I have to admit.

I know what we're discussing. You said "randomly generated loot is aRPG territory". I retorted - and included random placement into the discussion from the start. You haven't made a single solid argument how that leads to ARPG territory beyond some vague references to "further implications of such a system". Why not finally show us your hand? You don't get to decide the parameters of my argument. And i, as well as others in this thread, have already explained what those further implications are. Loot hoarding, loot fatigue, leveling-by-loot, etc. Yet you haven't explained why a random loot system would necessarily lead to those things, and I have already explained that it wouldn't. So far you haven't presented any counterarguments, instead you just keep claiming I'm not addressing the issues you are raising, which isn't true. Loot hoarding, loot fatigue and leveling-by-loot are all symptoms of a random loot system done wrong, nothing more.

That's not entirely true. Becoming better at something often requires a mental breakthrough or revelation, and that often happens through reflection. For example, in my martial arts training I've often found that some new technique or skill eludes me the entire training session, but after having a good night's sleep and some time to go through it in my head I can immediately do it the very next day. Furthermore, if that breakthrough happens with some fundamental skill, it can affect everything you do, so that discrete chunk can sometimes be a rather big one. Granted, that can also happen in middle of a sparring session, but that, to me, seems less common.

Counter point: The Aumaua is bent over in this screen shot from running forward, as is the one normal human party member. The only party members standing normally is an Elf, a Orlan, and a Dwarf who have all been shown the be smaller than humans. Everyone in the village is a human so the door will clearly be scaled to human size. In other words the scale is correct, we just have a lot of short party members. Uh... counterpoint to whom? I wasn't making a point, I just put up that picture so that everyone can make up their own mind. And Justinian seems to agree with you. Good observations nonetheless. Personally I think the door's just a bit large even for an aumaua, but I don't have a problem with that. Besides, there could be other reasons for that door to be a large one. Maybe they needed to get some big machinery inside - that wheel is huge.

Thank you for completely missing the point. The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort. Good things regularly require effort. You have discovered reality, congratulations Caerdon! Placing items by hand requires effort. Randomness shouldn't design enemies, especially not in a game like PoE. Well, I'm not wasting any more effort on you, that's for sure.

I know what we're discussing. You said "randomly generated loot is aRPG territory". I retorted - and included random placement into the discussion from the start. You haven't made a single solid argument how that leads to ARPG territory beyond some vague references to "further implications of such a system". Why not finally show us your hand?

Thank you for completely missing the point. The fact is they weren't equipped by hand. Why? Too much effort. It would be great if every single item in the game was placed by hand, even with some serious thought put into the placement and the backstory. And then every item could be given ten different alternate locations and a number of alternative variations. But that's not gonna happen. Too much effort. The fact is that the vast majority of the loot is just standard loot for the enemy type, and the enemies themselves were just copied and pasted all over the place. That's "equipping by hand" for you. A random loot system can take care of all that.

I said loot in BG series was often extremely generic and repetitive, not that it was all badly placed or boring. Yes, at it's best it was very diverse and interesting. Okay, Captain Brage... Was there a specific reason that weapon needed to be specifically a two-handed sword? What if it was a halberd? Or a bastard sword? Both would go well with a captain of the guard. Yet it would keep things more interesting because you didn't know that in advance. And LOL @ "then you didn't want a BG game so why kickstart it". You're not seriously making that argument, are you? We're talking about a minor aspect of a series of great role-playing games. Am I not allowed to criticize anything about those games, or does that mean I'm not a true fan and I should get the hell out of here? Well, I guess we'll just need to agree to disagree, then. I don't find that nearly as much fun. However, a random loot system could accomodate that, too - simply by having a setting that uses a fixed random seed for ever playthrough.

Which is bad how? As I have said, I don't want this to be some loot hoarding, loot fatigue, leveling-through-items game. That's aRPGs, not IE games. Neither do I. That doesn't mean I don't prefer variety and surprises. Killing ten similar enemies to find out they all carry exactly the same stuff is wasted potential. I'm not asking for powerful, valuable loot. I just want some color. How exactly does that work? How does me having a 50 DAM sword instead of a 50 DAM spear improve my replay value? I think you need to define exactly what you mean by "random loot system". Because I don't think that making three unique weapons and then having an encounter with a chance of dropping one of those weapons as a random loot system. I takes a lot of replay value out of the game when you know exactly where to find each specific item in the game. I prefer not knowing in advance that Bassilus has an electric +2 hammer, that there's a Ring of Wizardry hidden in that tree, that pickpocketing this guys is a waste of time but that one has a Ring of Protection +2, that there's no reason to go into that particular cave whatsoever because there's nothing there or that it's better to pick weapon proficiency X instead of Y for class Z because powerful X weapons are available from the beginning. Luckily there are mods for that. They aren't perfect, but they are still better than hand-placed loot. A "random loot system" is a loot system that utilizes randomness in some form. It mixes in randomly generated items with pre-generated items in some ratio and uses random placement and/or placement by hand. Random loot system doesn't imply that all loot must be generated randomly. It doesn't mean there cannot be unique, hand-crafted items. It doesn't mean that item type, power, level, placement etc. can't make any sense or be context-sensitive and suitable in its environment. Above all, the word "random" itself doesn't mean "totally, absolutely fu**ing random with all control and common sense thrown out of the window". Yes, you said that those would not be random(Except placement). That is not having a random loot system. Yes it is. It's a loot system that utilizes randomness. Also, you misunderstood. Randomly generated items can have "reason for their presence which is in character with the local or global narrative". -- Maybe I should add one thing... Do you know what's the one aspect I hate most in games like Borderlands, Torchlight and Diablo? It's the overabundance of loot and how the game forces you to collect it with steep power progression. Also, I'm not an ARPG guy in general, just so you know where I'm coming from. But simply because I hate how random loot generation is used in those games doesn't mean I can't recognize what it can be used for and what it can bring to the table if implemented right.

If you think I only addressed powerful or level-scaled weapons, you didn't read my post very carefully. Yes, "whatever the developers want" can be achieved by manual loot placing. More successfully? Well, that's not so straightforward. It takes a lot of effort, and the amount of effort is directly related to the amount of loot. Loot in the BG series, for example, was often extremely generic and repetitive; it was painfully obvious that it was simply drawn from a standard loot table. So much for "manually placing items" - obviously that was too much effort. Implementing a good random loot system also takes a big amount of effort, but once that's done, the amount of loot is completely irrelevant. More importantly, by placing all the loot manually you lose all the benefits that a random loot system can bring to the table - like a huge increase in replay value. I addressed items with "reason for their presence which is in character with the local or global narrative". That can be done. (Btw, are trying to be as vague as you possibly can?)

You're not making any sense.

A great post, PrimeJunta! Unfortunately Stun will still wonder why you get 1500 XP for entering one cave but not the other, and this thread will go on and on and on.

I'm not avoiding any issue on purpose. If you think I missed some point you were making, please elaborate. It think I addressed the following issues at least: generic items, level scaling, loot hoarding, anonymous statistics-providers, items with a history and items with a reason for being where they are. Perhaps I'm not addressing them as directly as you might want to - or as directly as I perhaps should - but it's all in there. I'm just talking about all this in rather generic level. "Lack of narrative character" could really be interpreted in so many ways that I'm not making a claim on that one.

The problem is that you're associating certain aspects from ARPGs with random loot systems - but those aspects really don't automatically follow from them. That's just the way random loot systems have been conventionally implemented, and more importantly, how they have been conventionally used. Frankly, I've heard a lot of reasons why "random loot is bad", but in almost every case it's simply because people have their own misconceptions about what a random loot system can and cannot do - and what they think it necessarily will do. And honestly, it can do pretty much anything. Detailed background lore is really the only thing that can't be done without unreasonable amount of effort, but even that isn't really a problem - unique, hand-crafted items (with varying amout of built-in random variation) can always be placed alongside with generated loot, and it still can be placed "randomly". Also, I want to make it clear that with "random loot" I'm not just talking about loot generation - loot placement is even more essential. A well-implemented random loot system can ensure that loot is appropriate and makes sense in its context - based on environment, history, geography, culture, faction, race, class, level, quest, whatever. It can ensure that you only get loot suitable for your level or that powerful item are available early on - whatever the developers want. It can ensure that all item categories are well-represented. It can ensure that particular types of magical items are exactly as common or as rare as the developers want. I think the major problem here is the word "random" - people seem to think there can be no control over that randomness, but that's totally incorrect. Also, it's a popular misconception that random loot leads to save-reload cheesing, but this is not true. All random loot can be easily seeded at the very start of the game, so it doesn't matter how many times you reload and try to open that chest again or in which order you visit certain places etc. Like I said above, you're associating ideas with random loot systems that really don't automatically rise from them. If D:OS uses a random loot system to generate endless amounts of green and blue items that don't make sense in the context, that's Larian's problem. It doesn't mean random loot can't be done well, or even that it's particularly difficult to do well. That's simply the way they're doing it - and while I haven't played it, I'm guessing they did it that way because Diablo did it that way (that's what I mean by historical reasons).

That's simply because of historical reasons and because of people thinking like that ("can't have feature X because it's often used in competing genre Y"). A well-implemented loot generation & placement system wouldn't make a proper RPG any more A than it already is.

The D:OS ambient voices are fkn obnoxious to me. I honestly prefer just floating text. The Witcher 2 also had some over the top ambient voices, but TW1 was fine. Can girls become witchers, too?