PrimeJunta

(1) Why? What's wrong with increasing combat difficulty only? (2) Can't you think of any ways to increase overall difficulty? I sure can. Off the top of my head, here are a few easy ones you can do simply by tuning numbers, with no added mechanics whatsoever: - (stealth) increase radius of noise circles - (stealth) increase radius of enemy detection circles - (stealth) decrease radius of party detection circles - (stealth) shorten detection lag if present - (stealth) make stealth buffs rarer or more costly - (stealth) raise lockpick check thresholds - (stealth) raise trap disarm thresholds - (stealth) reduce availability of lockpicks - (talk) raise ability check thresholds - (talk) raise faction reputation check thresholds for factions - (talk) raise personal reputation check thresholds for individuals (e.g., something that requires "Merciful 20" on Normal becomes "Merciful 50" - (talk) raise costs associated with talk solutions (e.g., if bribery or payment is involved, raise the price) - (talk) make talk buffs rarer or more costly - (overall) raise buy prices in shops - (overall) lower sell prices in shops - (overall) reduce loot - (overall) reduce XP rewards Srsly, guyz. This isn't rocket science.

I hope there's a time lag associated with detection. I.e., you'd have to stay within someone's detection circle for a moment before detection triggers. This would also make sneak backstabs feasible -- a stealthy character would be able to get close enough to run and stab before detection is tripped.

A fireball that only kills enemies sounds like a divine invocation to me, not an arcane spell.

Engage them with your fighter to get them to stay put, outflank with your rogue, stab stab stab, mop up blood.

I just hope they'll make the sneak animation as cool as Arcanum's. Prowling FTW!

That would irredeemably and tragically diminish your utterly unique uniqueness, BruceVC. That would be too tragic to contemplate.

Why would you want them to make skipping combat hard in Path of the Damned? Why not just have two challenges, regular Path of the Damned, where avoiding tough combat wherever possible is a viable strategy, and Hellbound Fiery Bloodsoaked Path of the Eternally Damned Extra Hardcore Challenge, which you only get by completing Path of the Damned without avoiding any of the combats?

Yes. What's puzzling me about this discussion is that people who apparently enjoy the extra-hard combat challenge of Path of the Damned apparently also want to do everything they can to avoid said challenges, unless provided with extra incentives in the form of loot or XP. Out of curiosity, would an Achievement for fighting ALL the battles -- i.e., never taking the non-combat path where a combat path was on offer -- in Path of the Damned do for a reward? I'd imagine that'd give you some hardcore cred to flaunt, if you're so inclined.

Assuming that non-combat gameplay in an IE style game amounts to "pick the right dialog option to win" reflects a pretty serious lack of imagination IMO. We don't normally interact with the world primarily by throwing fireballs at it. Most of these interactions would be perfectly viable. Some of PoE's antecedents have even done some of them.

The Internet needs more people like you, @milczyciel.

Annd... let the butthurt recommence.

Chalk me up for the "scroll wheel to adjust AoE" idea. Removing or reducing FF around the edges sounds cheesy to me.

I have had to roll back to a previous save because of stuff like that. Sometimes on day-1 purchases I've had to start over after game-breaking bugs were patched :cough: bloodlines :cough: gothic3 :cough:, which is why I -usually- wait a while before playing nowadays.

Funny, I've played lots of RPG's but don't recall ever having used a console command in an actual playthrough.

I'm sure the good folks at the 'dex are crushed by all this disapproval. Crushed!

@Jarmo true. I was thinking of it in context with PoE which apparently caps at level 10.

If someone cares about animations so much that a video like we saw is enough to turn them off the game, PoE is probably not the game for them to start with. Personally I didn't even notice.

Yep, that's a big part of the appeal of soloing. It can get tricky though. It sort of worked in the AD&D IE games because of the ridiculous geometric XP series in level progression, so 6x the XP might only put you, like, two levels ahead. Otherwise with a hard level cap you're going to plateau way before the endgame, which isn't all that much fun.

I recalle JES saying that the game will be balanced for a full party, but there's nothing to stop you from going solo. Presumably it will be a good deal harder. (It bloody well better be.)

I like the reputation system as it's currently been presented. I also think companion relationship systems should have their numbers hidden; they're so closely bound to the narrative that turning them into something gameable ("Influence gain +6") kind of ruins them. I'm also a bit leery about having mechanical benefits to companion relations like in FO:NV or MotB or DA:O, as it pushes players to game the system. I prefer narrative consequences -- quests opening up or closing off, companions leaving or betraying you, or sticking by you even when things look really grim, and so on. Even better if some of these consequences are mutually exclusive; being able to please everyone is one of the most annoying ego-stroking tropes in cRPG's IMO.

So they're that way on purpose. Well that is rather awesome.

Design by majority vote is a horrible idea. Let's discuss all we want and provide input where requested, but not forget that it's ultimately Josh's job to decide what to do with it. We can hate on him all we like once the game is out if we don't like his decisions.

@Hiro of course it'll be possible to create an effective low-INT wizard. I thought that was clear from the start. Who's arguing the contrary? FWIW that's not so different from a low-INT D&D3 Sorcerer, which is a perfectly viable character concept. Except that the spells will actually reflect the character's attributes in a visible way. Which is cool IMO.

That sounds way better than in the IE games or their successors. I like. If the circles are visible, though, I don't think it ought to be too difficult to have them expand or contract based on light levels. That would be a neat addition. Couldn't quite parse how the circle normalization based on averages thing works in practice, but we'll see when we'll see.

Dunno if anything is set in stone, but the main design idea does seem to be to have stats do the same thing for every class. I can see why, but it does make them a little less "relatable." However personally, given a choice between mechanical robustness and relatability, I'll pick better mechanics. I can understand why someone else would see it differently though.