PrimeJunta

Fallacy of the excluded middle. There's a big range between "insignificant" and "game-breaking." I believe that it is vitally important that P:E's systems allow accumulated XP to move in this range. Otherwise I would feel robbed of agency. -- The game has a lot of optional content anyway, including most of the Endless Paths. If it can allow that, it can certainly allow variable XP rewards depending on how completionist you were within quests.

I'm sure Obsidian appreciates all your helpful management advice. I still think the project goes first, the beta, second.

It's about as much work as a localization, and they're doing several of those. I wouldn't count it out yet.

@Answermancer: I disagree. I think players who look under every rock and doggedly pursue every lead deserve a bigger reward than players who just beeline for the main objectives (metagaming or not).

Objection, Your Honor! I experience quests every bit as much I experience combat, sometimes more so.

What puzzles me about all this butthurt re the attributes is that by far the most common criticism -- that they don't affect builds enough -- can be changed by adjusting a dozen numbers in a spreadsheet. That's like three minutes of work. I literally can't think of anything in the game that's easier to change. Yet certain people here make it out like the entire game is rotten to the bone. (Of course, the folks who think that wizards have to be intelligent and there can't be a stat that governs physical and magical damage BECAUSE REASONS won't be happy, but all I can say to that is... good.)

Not Feargus. Josh. Feargus gonna fearg. Josh generally means what he says and says what he means.

I don't think so, but then I may be mistaken.

With the inflated XP in the beta it's impossible to say how the system will feel in the real thing, of course, but with that qualifier... I would like the game to have more frequent but smaller XP rewards. For example, consider the Aelys quest. Instead of awarding the XP in large chunks when the quest progresses, break it up so that you gain a small amount of XP when ... You would obviously miss out on some of that XP if you didn't meet the reputation or skill requirements to get the intel, but that's perfectly okay. It would give a smoother sense of progression and strengthen the incentive to poke around discovering stuff about the quest, not just getting big chunks when a part of it actually completes.

This sounds like a case where you'd want to post your dxdiag and game logs. I haven't seen it, so it's at least possible it has to do with your system configuration so the more they know about it the better.

For the sake of your soul, Indira, give up all hope on this. The worst that could happen is that you get a really nice surprise.

@Infinitron muchas grácias. Looking forward to attribute stat effects being bumped in the next build. (Also LOLed at the dig at D&D.)

Hollywood hasn't made movies that would qualify as art in thirty years or so, allowing for the very odd exception. They used to but it somehow faded away by the early 1980's at the latest. The latest movies that touched me at more than a European level weren't European or American at all. This one, for example.

I liked the idea at first blush when thinking about it more, it won't work I'm afraid. Currently you typically get around 4 uses per rest, and 2 uses per encounter. These are small numbers, and they're enormously significant. You can never let them fall to zero without making the build unviable, and, say, doubling the number immediately makes the character way more powerful. So adjusting the number by 1 is a Very Big Deal. Consequently, this would make RES a required pump stat for any class relying on per-rest/per-encounter abilities, especially wizard, priest, and paladin, moderately for fighter, ranger, and rogue, and least of all cipher, chanter, and monk with their unique ways of charging up their abilities. That's... not good IMO. Second, because the range of numbers you're moving in is necessarily small, say between 1 and 8 for per-rest abilities, 1 and 4 for per-encounter ones, the effect would appear in jumps. Some of the values would see a massive leap in character viability, others would see nothing. In particular the fighter, rogue, and ranger which have mostly or exclusively per-encounter abilities would see no difference at all until they hauled up the value by four points or more. So no, I don't think this'll work. You need to bind something that can be adjusted at finer increments. Some possible candidates not currently affected by the ability system are crit chance, recovery speed, movement speed, deflection, and armor penalty on recovery speed.

Would require a whole new inventory system. Probably won't happen. Also encumbrance mechanics are a drag. That would work. Then again, DEX is already extremely attractive b/c of the accuracy bonus. Don't see a need to make it even more so. Negatory. Currently wizards get one new spell per day, and you get 1 talent per three levels. Those numbers can only be changed in full integers, they'd have a huge impact on how powerful a class is, and you couldn't let them to fall to zero without making the build completely unviable. That means that you'd have to space the benefit out very, very widely -- like allow one extra talent for INT 18, or something like that; even so, it would tend to make it the pump stat for many classes. Same if you tied it to uses per rest/per encounter. Getting one more spell/level/rest, or one more talent use/encounter is enormously significant, so much so that "extra knockdown" is a fighter talent in and of itself. Again, you could not let the numbers fall to zero, and having more uses is so immensely attractive that it would again become the obvious pump stat for most if not all classes. Yep, it would fit there too. I put it on INT because RES is already very attractive because Concentration is so important for frontliners, and moving Duration there from INT makes it even more so. Basically, when tweaking those I wanted to get as close as possible to having something that's really attractive for both front-line and second-row characters on each ability. Everybody wants to do more damage and hit more accurately. Everybody wants more health (okay, second-liners perhaps less than front-liners). Everybody wants to do things faster (therefore the addition of Recovery Time). Frontliners want to not be interrupted, and everybody wants their duration-limited abilities to last longer. I think Healing is kind of the odd one out still. You could really put it on whichever ability you think fits best, or perhaps drop it altogether and just not make it possible to pump healing. (I can appreciate why Josh put it on Might though, from a system design point of view -- it's aesthetically pleasing to have the same stat govern the taking and the giving.)

Yep, just like in all the IE games.

You could do that. We all know they won't though. You could also bump the mechanical effects of the attributes, turning it into a significant gameplay element.

I could never bring myself to do the horrid deeds that led to the most super of superweapons in MotB though, even on my psychopath playthrough.

The summons. Take that skeleton summoning Invocation. Then play with the sole objective of hanging around in combat without getting anyone killed. Soon you will have an undead army that'll roflstomp over everything.

Not fair to compare short-duration, limited-use buffs (that Accuracy L1 boost, Arcane Veil) with an unbuffed fighter. Also, I'm reporting how it played. So far I've played at least until the ogre fight with, let's see, a barbarian, monk, paladin, chanter (LOL!), ranger, and muscle wizard. Of these only the chanter felt wildly out of line with the others, and Mr. Muscle did not feel dramatically more powerful than BB Wizard. That said, I'm sure the numbers need adjusting. That's what we're here for.

Yeh, PS:T is the very definition of "more than the sum of its parts." <snobmode> I have long felt that computer games should, and eventually will, evolve into a serious art form. It's the trajectory theater, opera, cinema, and TV all took. They started out as entertainment for the masses, and all the time while remaining just that, also became something bigger than all that. Planescape: Torment remains for me the shining beacon that shows that this can be possible. It wasn't quite there yet, perhaps, but it opened the gate and showed the way. The sad thing is that nobody else yet has managed to walk through that door to what must lie beyond. And as much as I anticipated T:ToN, I'm not sure that a "spiritual successor" is the way to do that. It'll need another unlikely confluence of the right people coming together at the right time, with the means to do what needs doing. </snobmode>

Not without a license, and not (directly) for cRPG's. Pathfinder is based on d20 which uses the Open Gaming License, which explicitly forbids computer games. Obs just announced their licensing agreement about Pathfinder games, but they're going to need new mechanics too. Not sure exactly who has the rights to license d20 for computer games, but it certainly can't be done just because you want to. That said, you can't copyright game mechanics. I.e. you could take the d20 mechanics, remove all references to d20, rename possibly proprietary terms like "saving throw" and "armor class," and Bob's your uncle.

I was expecting the combat at least to be less bugged as well. But that's neither here nor there. The fact is that if they decide to prioritize keeping us (the beta participants) happy, then the rest of the project progress will suffer. I do not want that. I think it's a big mistake to think of a paid beta like buying a product. It's a continuation of the Kickstarter -- a chance to sponsor something you would very much like to see happen, with the added possibility to participate in the process in a small way. We are not customers, yet: we're sponsors. That's different.

Do you use the slo-mo option much?

I'll get the tar. Karkarov, you got the feathers? Indira can bring the rail.