PrimeJunta

And that's a bad idea, because...?

Wait, Stun. Surely you're not saying that playing a game with console cheats is more fun because more freedom? The only part of the paragraph you're quoting that is my opinion is that in my opinion DnD style games would be less fun if all your spells return automatically after every fight. Are you disagreeing with that? If not, then what is the issue? Clearly unlimited resting turns per-rest spells into per-encounter spells, unless you, the player, for whatever reason decide not to make use of the possibility. I'm all for self-imposed challenges (win the game solo... and naked!) but that's a whole different discussion.

That's kind of his prerogative as the designer, you know. We the players can actually only guess -- i.e., try to divine the designer's intent, and then decide whether a given (winning) strategy goes against that intent or not. Most of the time it's fairly clear, such as when two mechanics clearly collide with one neutralizing the other, such as with per-day casting and unlimited resting. At other times it's a lot fuzzier. But the designer always knows because only he knows his intent.

Again, subjective preference. I did not enjoy those save-or-die effects. They were basically a speed bump. You got hit once, then you figured out/looked up what the counter was, and proceeded, effectively ignoring them. Or, alternatively, when combined with unlimited save-load, they became an easy way to cheese through the game. They were a boring, un-fun mechanic. Good riddance. You disagree? Awesome. That's your prerogative. It'd be boring if everybody agreed about everything all the time. That you don't like Josh's winning personality is neither here nor there. As to the "freedom" argument... that, pardon my French, Stun, is totally bogus. Every RPG is freedom within constraints. You get complete freedom -- or as good as -- by opening the console and hammering in cheat codes. The game is nowhere near as fun that way as when you're working within its constraints. "Bang you're dead!" is extra-freedom, but it is not fun. The main job of a systems designer is to figure out how to limit the player's freedom for maximum fun. Is unlimited spellcasting fun? No: so you add a limiting mechanic, like having to memorize and rest. What if the rest mechanic allows you to completely defeat that mechanic? Then you might as well not have put in the limitation to start with, and made spells automatically re-memorize after every combat. Would that have been fun? I don't think so.

Randomness can be an element in excitement, for sure. Games of chance can be fun; games of chance that combine randomness with strategy can be especially fun.

This is not my experience. I've run a Numenera PnP campaign for most of the year, and while some of the mechanics stink to high heaven (<- won't go into it here), I like the basic resolution mechanic. It's stripped-to-the-bone simple, while allowing enough randomness, situational modifiers, and variation to let you do just about anything with it. The combat variant is based on a to-hit roll and flat damage soaked by armor, modified by tactical/strategic resources the player chooses to spend. It's transparent, simple, and enjoyable, and encourages you to do stuff rather than just standard-attack all the time. Put another way, if the excitement in a combat system comes from the RNG, then the combat system needs some work. IMO as always. That said, it would be even more enjoyable with grazes and crits, and with more computational resources than mental arithmetic I would modify the armor mechanic too so there's a little more to it than flat subtraction. But the basic idea is both sound and enjoyable IMO.

I like both Namutree's and Sarex's answers. The trouble is that 'fun' is subjective. Clearly some people like farming, for example, whereas others feel that it cheapens the game. I do not believe in design by committee. While we absolutely should voice our preferences, it's ultimately they designer's job to decide what goes in and what stays out. I.e., it is up to the designer to use his judgment to decide what he thinks his users are likely to consider 'fun' or not. Sometimes there will be bad calls, with something fun removed intentionally, just like sometimes there will be design lacunae that remove fun or put in un-fun by mistake. That's just the way things work.

That doesn't really answer the question, Stun. It just states your personal preferences. Again: what criteria should designers use when deciding which degenerate strategies to stamp out and which to leave in? If they decide to leave a degenerate strategy in, does that make it not-degenerate by definition?

Nope, no chanter. I don't recall exactly which priest spells I used in the combat with the not-shambling-mounds, but they were nothing too unusual. Suppress Affliction I think, probably that badass boost to all defenses, mmmmaybe Pillar of Faith. Perhaps the code treats Piglet the same way as a chanter's summons, though, so it could still be the same bug manifesting.

If damage was a function of base damage and accuracy with a to-hit roll, there would still be a random element. Your skill (specifically, attack vs defense) would just matter more. I don't really see the point of having randomized weapon damage on top of that. Edit: that said, this figures roughly around the 11,334 spot on my current prioritized list of Things That Need Fixing. I.e. not particularly worth discussing. Therefore, consider my proposal withdrawn.

Great. The main thing is it's being worked on. If clumps and spell effects are making things more difficult, why not do something to those features as well? Clumps aren't good in any case, and while spell effects are obviously a crucial part of the experience, perhaps they don't need to be that dramatic -- at least other than the momentaneous ones.

@leninghola Bringing realism into the argument where damage is represented by hit points that get restored with a good night's sleep is a bit of a nonstarter IMO.

I guess I just don't understand humans very well. Curious creatures.

Consider Soul Ignition in the first BB. That let you cheese through the entire beta because you could fire it off at insane range, it did not trigger aggro, and it made absurd amounts of damage. Using it that way was a classic degenerate strategy: it posed no challenge, was repetitive, and was boring, and was clearly not what the designers intended the spell to do. Should the devs just have left it as it is, because we players are of course free not to do that? I don't think so. And I'm quite sure neither do you. So where then do you draw the line? What kind of degenerate strategies should the devs try to prevent, and what should they allow? Who makes the call and with what criteria? I think they should do their damnedest to stamp them all out. That they most likely will never be able to catch them all does not change the importance of the objective. Not trying leaves a Swiss cheese of a system that's no fun at all.

They seem to be trying; there are already lots of different outcomes for many of the quests even in the BB. There's no way they're going to account for every possible motivation (class-based or otherwise) everywhere, but the more, the better. I won't get into an argument about this either, but I do disagree with both of you in re the applicability of 'degenerate strategy' in this case.

But why do we need two random numbers that go into it? We already have Accuracy. Why not just make that + weapon base damage the sole determinant of how much damage gets done? If you want it more fine-grained, it could easily be a line that goes from 0 to double base damage instead of in discrete steps. (Edit: I agree btw that it would be boring if combat action outcomes were completely deterministic.)

@Hiro: No, I wouldn't, because it does not arise from systemic features. It is not a strategy. This is different from the example you quoted, which does arise directly from systemic features (kill XP in this case). I would consider it a design lacuna, though: they put in a class with a role of 'protector of nature' and failed to script in outcomes that would support this role. There should have been another possibility open to a druid in the scripted interaction, e.g. "summon a spirit of nature to watch over the egg and hide it from others who would want to steal it." There, closure, and an alternative ending.

Why d'you think?

Ooh, may I? It's not poorly defined. It means "any strategy which exploits a design flaw in the mechanics to gain an advantage." The only point of contention is whether something constitutes a design flaw, and since we have the designers here to answer that, there should be zero contention about the term. It's frequently abused, for sure, but so then which term isn't? Again, completely wrong. Degenerate strategy is one of the very, very few terms in games that are almost not subjective at all. See the definition above. Subjectivity does come into the equation because some people appear to enjoy degenerate strategies. They want mechanics that are breakable and exploitable so they can score easy wins, even if the way to score them is boring, mechanical, or repetitive. The designer, parbleu! How did he intend the crafting system to be used? Are you using it against his intent and thereby making the rest of the game easier than he intended? If yes, then it's degenerate. If not, then it's not. Wait, are you actually saying that 'bad design' -- or, basically, 'design' itself -- is a useless or inane phrase? That's weird. Every game, from Rock-Paper-Scissors to the most sweeping of cRPG's is a designed artifact. They did not just miraculously appear. Somebody decided what the rules are, what's in the game, and what's not. Every single of those decisions was a design decision, and the way they fit together is a design. Sometimes those designs evolved over time and we don't know who the original designer was, but they're still designs. Some of those designs are really good (e.g. chess), and some are really bad (e.g. every piece of shovelware anyone only downloads by mistake and immediately forgets about). Of course it won't, if all you do is slap on the label. It can be, however, a useful diagnosis. Slapping on a label "Diabetes" won't help anything, unless you've first ascertained that the patient does, in fact, suffer from a syndrome that matches the diagnostic definition of "diabetes." Same with degenerate strategy. Who does it insult? The player clever enough to find the flaw in the mechanics, or the designer who made the mistakes that left the hole in? Surely not the player? No, we don't. 'Degenerate strategy' is not the same thing as 'bad design.' Not all bad design leads to degenerate strategies. Some games are boring without having degenerate strategies. That's bad design too. --- Absolutely not. It is an extremely useful concept, and the term describes it well. If you're not interested in discussing it, then by all means don't, of course.

Which is one argument for eliminating the randomness from damage altogether. Make it a flat number, with only Accuracy with miss/graze/hit/crit adjusting damage. It would be a good deal more transparent.

FWIW when we're in beta (or the testing leading up to it), we usually iterate every day, sometimes more frequently. The faster we can make the turnaround on reported issues, the happier and more productive our testers get. Admittedly our betas are never remotely this broad in scope. Once a week still sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Not enough. I need to see at a glance what's going on. Same applies in general to the mouseover-based combat info. It is there, yes, but it's murky and clunky to access.

I've quite grown to like the ability list as well, mechanical problems aside. As to the DnD stats, I never liked Charisma. It's way too one-dimensional. Picture an intimidating person. Now, picture a charming person. Then, picture a persuasive person. Then, a consummate liar. Then, a natural leader -- someone who gains and retains loyalty. At least I get rather fundamentally different types of persons in ecah case. The consummate liar or the charmer would likely not be very intimidating, the intimidating one would probably not be particularly charming, and so on. It never made sense to me that one stat governed all these, and more. I much prefer P:E's approach of breaking these up between different abilities.

Yeh, I'm not thrilled about voice acting either. For one thing it's usually really bad. Even in games where it's better than average. Try playing one of the Mass Effects some time, and close your eyes during a dialog. A few exceptions aside, they sound wooden, exactly like a highly professional but bored actor reading lines into a mike in a studio. Actors are only human; they get bored too, and when they do, you hear it. Having only very partial voice can actually be better, because there are fewer lines to read. As much as I detest most of the writing in BG2 and especially Minsc, I gotta hand it to whoever voiced him -- he sounds lively and funny. Even more so with Planescape: Torment, and I do not want to imagine how dull and droning those voices had gotten if they had had to read every line of their dialog. So yeah, partial voice FTW. More is not always better.

Funnily enough, there's plenty of precedent for going into battle naked, and not just among 'primitive tribes.'