PrimeJunta

In re tanking and the classes, IMO the fighter needs to be made seriously more interesting. You can build a 90% as effective tank with the barbarian, with the additional bonus of more strategic durability due to the better stam/health damage ratio, better damage output due to Carnage, and the ability to turn into a human fireball with Wild Sprint, Rage, and eventually Defiant Resolve. Unless they do something to seriously expand the fighter's strategic options, I'll pass. That one extra engagement limit and Knockdown are nice but not that nice.

My absolute favorite character to play in all the IE games and their successors is a battlepriest. Pump STR at the expense of CHA, use some of those insanely powerful self-buffs, then cast a medium-duration group buff/debuff (some favorites are Recitation, Prayer, and Battletide from 3e), and wade in, and use healing spells offensively against undead. In fact the cleric/priest is my favorite DnD class by far, because it's the only one with real versatility, especially in 3e. Pick the right domains, and you can be just about anything: you can out-stealth a thief (Knowledge, or perhaps Magic domain gives Knock, you already have Find Traps), out-blast a mage, out-fight a fighter, all the time being the best healer and group buffer in town. It would be just as good if some of that power was dialed down a bit, while keeping the versatility. P:E ATM doesn't really support this kind of thing, which is a shame.

That's exactly the problem with resting in IE games. Why even bother imposing any limitations on spellcasting if all it takes is one keypress to get them back?

Nah, I do disagree. I think you're reading Josh's motivations wrong. I see what he's attempting with each of the mechanics, and in particular the inventory thing isn't about degenerate gameplay at all IMO.

I think the mechanic is OK, and I understand the reasoning. It's about "strategic healing resources" -- how deep can you go before you have to stop to rest/resupply, and with priest/cleric gameplay. In the DnD based games, the limiting factor was your priest's spell selection. You kept going until you ran out of heals. You set aside potions for emergency use in combat, but at least I rarely used them to extend the adventuring day as it were; instead when my priest was out of juice, I rested. This works well enough but it has two problems. One, you pretty much need a priest in every party, or at least a druid; and two, if you only have one, if not all, at least a very large chunk of the priest's spells go towards healing. I.e., your priest becomes a medic--someone you absolutely need, but who doesn't do all that much other than casting heals. The idea with the stam/health+no magic healing mechanic, plus having several classes with per-encounter stamina healing, is that it frees the priest's spells for other uses, and it makes it possible to play even without a priest. If your tank soaks up most of the damage, you can use the barb's Defiant Resolve of the fighter's Second Wind; if you have a pally in the party, you can Lay On Hands. And of course it all recharges after the fight is over, until you run low on health and have to rest. The principle is IMO sound. There would have been other ways to accomplish it, but this works well enough. Priest gameplay still has problems -- it's basically turned the priest from a heal-o-mat to a buff-o-mat, still making for rather monotonous gameplay -- but now there's no fundamental obstacle to giving the priest cool abilities. The stam/health ratio needs tweaking though. 1:4 is too punishing. I'd try 1:8 to see if it's too forgiving.

@Immortalis I did read through it carefully. I did not understand it. I picked up some antipathy towards Josh, but failed to quite understand why. Do you think he's failing in what he's attempting, or that what he's attempting is not worth trying? If the former, then why not specify what you think is working and what not, so maybe he can take notice and make changes, rather than musing about his capabilities or motivations? If it's just what you said later, i.e. that you like the camping but not the stash, then cool. That's a legit opinion and a data point for him. I don't like the inventory either, but I'd like it fixed in the opposite direction -- just give us a self-categorizing unlimited party inventory that we can't access in combat, and a half-dozen quick-item slots that we can, and get rid of the "top of the pack" mechanic. But that's because I dislike inventory management and would like it to be as easy as possible, and I think digging in your pack in mid-fight is cheesy. I don't get a lot of gameplay value from deciding which piece of vendor trash to dump and which to carry.

BTW for those bellyaching about "December or bust" and the consequences thereof for polish, balance etc. -- I'd like to point out that Obsidian does patch games post-release too. Uh, from time to time.

If you don't reward "degenerate" tactics you need to make sure that you appropriately reward "legitimate" tactics. E.g. I saw a thread here somewhere stating that spellcasting is currently weak and not competitive. If true, guess what it can do to how (if at all) people will play wizards. In other words insisting that players play the game the way it's "meant" to be played will do you no good if your perfect design vision is crippled by a buggy or incomplete implementation. Absolutely. You can totally ruin the best design in the world with shoddy execution. Don't forget though that the balancing process hasn't even properly begun yet. I disagree about the spellcasting, by the way -- the only character I made it through the beta with was in fact a wizard, and playing him was, if you pardon the expression, a blast. The power level felt just about right to me, whereas IMO rogues were clearly underpowered and ciphers and chanters overpowered. One clear difference with DnD wizard though is that the point-damage spells did feel less punchy. I mostly used area-effect ones plus self-buffs, and they felt very much in line with the DnD equivalents. (Other than Wall of Fire which was a bit of a "Win!" button ATM.)

I saved the dragon's egg once with BB Fighter. Did it last. The "great success!" message has [Con 20] at the end, which I thought was weird because BB Fighter doesn't have Con 20. (I confess I didn't bother to report it though.)

@Immortalis There's a big range between "borderline unplayable" (Arcanum) and "perfect" when it comes to systems that reward degenerate tactics. I don't fault Josh for attempting to move the slider, even if he's extremely unlikely to hit "perfect." It can be a tangible improvement over DnD without coming close to "perfect." And yes, I do consider many of Josh's changes to be such tangible improvements. If the end result turns out to be "not fun," that's bad obviously. However, I am not at all convinced that the not-funness is caused by the attempt to not reward degenerate tactics. As I've said before, for me the unique appeal of the IE games is in the richness of the palette -- there's such a huge variety of stuff in there that you can play with in so many ways. That has nothing to do with the grinding, rest-spamming, inventory management, or other similar things. This is also why I enjoyed the later games in the series more than the earlier ones, and why BG1 never really appealed to me -- the beginnings of that bounty are there, but compared to the rest, it's fairly thin gruel. Short version: I believe the IE games would have been even more fun with better mechanics, and I do not believe P:E would be better if it replicated their mechanical flaws. If P:E turns out not to be fun, the reasons will be different.

Yeh, I'm not a huge fan of the inventory system either. I don't like inventory that needs to be managed. I'd rather just have an unlimited, auto-sorting inventory, and if it improves gameplay, limitations on accessing it e.g. during combat. Let me manage my weapon sets and quick items, and keep everything else in a spreadsheet. Dragging icons from one box to another is not the reason I play this kind of game. If that makes me a filthy casual, then fine. And yeah, I believe some players are going to be constantly running back and forth between the inn and the dungeon. Most of them will probably give up on the game because that's tedious and boring, unless they were the same people who packratted dungeons in the IE games in which case they'll like it just fine, since their diligence has a commensurate payoff in power. I believe, though, that for a larger group of players the mechanic will work as intended. I rest-spammed shamelessly in all the games that allowed it. I don't rest-spam in the P:E beta, and quite like that part about it (although some stuff could be tweaked; I get fatigued earlier than I think I ought to, and the stam/health ratio is currently too punishing). I don't know BTW if Josh would consider packratting degenerate; rest-spamming certainly is. So in this case at least IMO the resting mechanic is a clear net gain, whereas the inventory is currently about as annoying as it was in the IE games, without the 'simulationist' benefit of (absurdly permissive) encumbrance mechanics.

@Sarex and others -- I don't know about you guys, but I can pretty easily understand the reasons for the other reinventions in P:E. The XP system? Much less work to implement, test, and balance. The resting system? Makes per-rest limitations actually mean something. The per-encounter abilities? Soften the blow of the resting system. The ability scores? Avoid cookie-cutter builds and establish a brand identity that's obviously distinct from DnD (STR-DEX-CON-INT-WIS-CHA would produce misleading expectations). And so on. You may not agree with the reasons, but there are reasons, and the reasons are understandable. The stash? Make packrats' lives easier without completely watering down inventory management (fail IMO, would be better with unlimited inventory -- but I understand the thinking). And so on. As someone who really dislikes many of DnD's mechanics -- I loved the IE games despite the DnD, not because of it -- I also respect Josh's effort at reforming them while keeping the spirit alive immensely. Those mechanics do need fixing, and even when he fails, he tends to fail for understandable reasons. But the decision to redesign the UI I just don't get. I can't think of any good reason they would do that.

I haven't noticed any respawning monsters in the beta. That said, new wildlife wandering in from over the edges of the map would not ruin my day.

I'm a bit puzzled why he didn't just crib the IWD2 UI. It was pretty refined at that point, with most of the kinks worked out. Why reinvent the wheel when there's a perfectly good one there for the taking, especially when you're risking inventing a worse one? If you want to add a floaty option, there's no reason you couldn't just remove the backing from the IWD2 one.

Hey now, I like it that we can't access inventory during combat. There are a quite a few quick item slots for that. (OTOH the personal inventory+stash thing just feels unnecessarily complicated. I like your proposed system better.)

Resounding yes. Pirate pistol for great victory. Edit: Have we finally found the one thing everybody can agree about?

@Cubiq fighters have an engagement limit of 3 in defender mode. They will engage anyone within melee range. A single sword 'n board fighter can control a pretty hefty region of space this way, more if you give him a reach weapon. Two characters side by side, one of whom is a fighter, will form a line. I'm fairly confident it'll be a lot different than the shoulder-to-shoulder-in-a-doorway thing you had in the IE. I'm sorry you're bummed about the game BTW. Betas are not for the faint of heart. From where I'm at this game holds enormous promise, but they do have their work cut out to bring it to fruition. They're also taking on a quite a task: they're inviting comparison with mature, five generations refined games, on their first try. I played BG1 earlier this year, and frankly I didn't think it was all that great. The AI was primitive, the encounters often repetitive (I don't think I ever want to see another kobold again), and there were plenty of ways to cheese it. The engine came a long way from that to BG2 and IWD. If P:E manages to do significantly better than BG1 it will already have done well, even if it doesn't match the dizzying variety of BG2 or the meticulously crafted environmental combat puzzles of IWD. So what I'm saying, I guess, is that mood swings are to be expected and it would be wise to attempt to moderate them as far as possible.

First, to get this out of the way -- yeah it's buggier than I had expected, especially the combat. Second, just to point out a few things that may give cause for cautious optimism: It's relatively stable. At least on my rig, it barely ever crashes or freezes or exhibits other engine-level problems. That's a good sign. It's feature- and content-complete, or close to anyway. All the quests are fully written and playable, the world and its inhabitants look polished and finished, all the classes are in, there's a pretty damn huge bestiary for a very small area, and so on. I don't think Obs actually wants us for bughunting. It's got to be a major hassle to trawl through the forum looking for unreported bugs and then log them in their internal system. Certainly at this stage it's going to be light-years more effective to have a handful of professional in-house testers systematically scouring the thing and reporting bugs directly into their issue tracker, with their standard format. And yeah, Gamescom. That kind of forced the schedule. All we know at this point is what the game looked like about a week before that. We don't know how fast it's progressing, what kinds of things are giving them trouble, and generally how well the ship is sailing. We need another build, probably two for that. If everything is going well, debugging can go extremely quickly. I.e., I'm not writing off a 2014 release yet. If the next build isn't a lot better and doesn't arrive pretty soon now, then I'll start to worry.

I think if it's 2/encounter, that'll limit the effectiveness quite enough.

Okay, I must've missed the "in order to better translate what was happening on screen into feedback for the player," and focused on the "graphical polish." I still think the game's graphics are polished enough. By "feedback" I mean things like -- Character icon border brightening when mousing over the character in the scene, and vice versa Icons representing status effects and the character's current action on the portrait Character's selection circle+portrait border flashing in a different color when something important happens (Monk gains Wound, cipher gains Focus, chanter completes phrase and make an Incantation, character is Interrupted, etc.) Sound effect associated with gaining a Wound, being Interrupted, Interrupting, etc. Character model turning grey when Petrified Some of these are arguably graphical, but not what I usually think of in terms of "graphical polish." "Graphical polish" for me means stuff like more and better animations, more and better textures, more and better visual FX and so on. These are IMO already fine as they are. Sorry about the misunderstanding (if that's what it really was).

it's not a rifle; it's a muzzle-loading primitive firearm. You have to lower them to reload them between shots. That's one animation that's IMO quite crucial.

Re Interrupt, I honestly can't tell how much of a practical difference it makes. I did make a melee interrupt build (max PER, max DEX, fast weapons), and there was a visible difference in the way he hampered his melee opponent; however I felt it was a fairly inefficient way of doing that compared to the other things we have available. A high-Interrupt barb might be interesing though, what with Carnage. We haven't really seen too many spellcaster in the BB, so I don't know how good a high-Interrupt archer would be at ruining their day, either.

I did? I do not recall even thinking that let alone saying it. Are you sure it was me and we were talking about the same thing? Edit: I hazily remember something about fidget animations or more animations in general. Could that have been it? 'Cuz those I still file under "nice to have but not essential."

I did. On the other hand I didn't try a dumb barbarian so I can't tell if there was any difference. Rage certainly lasted long enough to make an impact. Couldn't tell if the Carnage AoE was big or small due to the general impenetrability of the combat.

I've been musing over my experiences with the ranged weapons in the BB. I think they could use some work. I found myself gravitating to the biggest ones available, meaning arbalests, arquebuses, blunderbusses, and pistols. The bows felt anemic in comparison. I think something needs to be done about this. A part of it I think has to do with the general balance issues between fast/light and slow/heavy. The DT system favors heavy weapons, and lots of if not most enemies had moderate to high DT. That pushes me into a situation where I have to pick between a weapon that's great some of the time and ineffective a lot of the time, and one that's OK some of the time and great a lot of the time. I'll pick the latter every time, rather than switch. IMO it would be very important to make fast/light weapons at least OK most of the time. Here's one possible thing that might be worth trying -- Increase the heavy ranged weapon load times even further, and make the punch even harder. Turn firearms and arbalests into "opening move" weapons, powerful enough to take out squishier foes with a single volley, but so slow you'll really not want to be reloading while combat is on. The impact of a volley could be something along the same level as, say, a fireball. (Note: by "volley" I mean all or most of the party firing at once. Obviously having an arquebus fire fireballs would be way OP.) Improve the DT penetration of light ranged weapons somewhat, and improve their base interrupt a lot. They wouldn't become absolutely much more powerful, but they would be more all-around useful rather than useless baggage against armored targets; they would also beef up the currently IMO problematic interrupt/PER mechanic. Assuming I only have room for one ranged weapon per character in my weapon slots, this will force me into a tactical choice: I can either go with a powerful opening punch, potentially taking out the most dangerous enemies before the action even starts, but effectively foregoing use of missile weapons during the rest of the encounter, or I can take something that won't make all that much of an impact in the opening, but I can use tactically over the course of the encounter, to interrupt enemy casters (hence the raised interrupt) and generally direct damage at a chosen target. Thoughts?