PrimeJunta

Q1: I would not be upset by 5 or 7 attributes. 3 or 9 would get a raised eybrow. Q2: Possibly. It's hard to say for certain without knowing the specifics of how defenses are handled, e.g. the role of Talents and equipment. Q3: Possibly. I'd do it if it helped balance out the attributes based on the design goals listed at top. Q4: It feels a little wrong to me, but depends on how it meshes with the other mechanics (see Q2) Q5: "Affected," yes. "Governed," no. Q6: Yes. If stats affect, say, the Top of the Pack and swappable weapon slots, it would make for interesting character variety -- you could play an Inspector Gadget type who always has the right tool for the job handy (but is weaker in other ways), or a Sword Saint type who only every carries one piece of equipment but learns to use it to perfection. They would play very differently.

@Frenetic Pony, you're joking, I hope?

I wonder how this affects game portability? There are going to be OS X and IIRC Linux versions as well.

Do people really think they will be able to play this game on more than 3-4 year old computers? I really think so. What we've seen of the graphics so far looks high-end for about 2003. I'd guess a high-end computer from around then should be able to run the game just fine. If anyone still has one that is.

Guesses -- 1 is probably doable, if you're thinking of a graphic overlay to the character portrait. If you're thinking of different portraits for different levels of injury à la DOOM, that's just more work but certainly technically doable. If you're thinking of local injuries associated with status effects, that's of course doable too but I kinda doubt we'll see it. 2 is probably not going to be in, as it would make the animation budget go through the roof, and we're talking a small-budget game here. 3 see 2 4 how would you even see these on those little miniature figures? 5 agree; ToEE did coup de grace well, I hope it's done in a similar way here, accounting of course for it not being turn-based (more's the pity). (If you haven't played ToEE, you could execute a coup de grace on a helpless enemy; it was a full-round action, and provoked attacks of opportunity.)

If I mentioned the Great War, and you said "Yah, Hitler was a real b@stard," and I pointed out that "the Great War" means World War I, not World War II, and you rambled on about how that phrase makes you think of World War II, I would get a little irritated too. It sounds like you're proud of your ignorance, which is not a trait I find admirable. Definitions are arbitrary, but some of them have fairly well-established meanings. Sometimes the meaning shifts based on context, but those shifts are well-established too. "The colonial period/era/age" means one thing in the specific context of North American history (the period starting from the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620 to the American Revolution). In the context of American history -- not just North American -- the period starts with Columbus's slaving expedition to Hispaniola in 1492 (or, sometimes, a few decades later, ca 1520, with the collapse of the Meso- and South American empires before the Conquistadores). So your insistence that "the colonial period" is the 1700's is off by about 100 years even in the North American context, and off by 200 years or so in the American context in general. As to the colonization of North America, it was only important on the global scale because of what it led to 300 years later. I.e., it was important in hindsight, in the same sense that the Roman victory over the Etruscans was important. At the time it was a very minor sideshow. The real action was in India, Indonesia (spices) and South America (silver and gold). It's certainly not important in any way if you're not specifically interested in North American history. And, in case you didn't notice, PoE is not a game set in North America. If the context is world history, as it clearly is here since we're discussing level of technology and a broad variety of cultures, it means the period between the European voyages of discovery (Magellan, da Gama, Columbus etc.), and the eclipse of the Spanish and Portuguese empires by the French and British ones. Why "hostile?" Tough one. There's something about insistent provincialism and proud ignorance that rubs me up the wrong way. If someone knowingly uses terms wrong, which just spreads more ignorance. That's why.

@Adhin, the world is bigger than the U S of A. Just so you know.

Age of imperialism. Your understanding of the word 'colonial era' is not in line with the normal usage of the word. Or, put more bluntly, you don't know what the term means. Put even more bluntly, you're wrong.

The colonial era started in the 1500's, following the European voyages of discovery. What you're thinking of is the later part of it, sometimes called the imperial era. The distinction is fuzzy, but the main diff is that in the colonial period, Spain and Portugal dominated, whereas in the imperial one, it was mostly Britain and France. So generally speaking if someone says "colonial period" the default assumption would be that it refers to the first, Spanish-Portuguese part of it.

@Cultist, would you still not sacrifice Int if someone demonstrated mathematically to you that some other combination or base damage bonus, accuracy, crit chance, and attack speed yields greater damage per hit and damage per second in all circumstances? Just asking.

-- deleted, never mind --

Yeah, it's really too bad nobody's made an epic western fantasy swords and sorcery dwarves-and-elves-oh-my role-playing game yet.

Sure, why not? If you're assuming that that's objectively the best build, though, you're probably mistaken.

@Cultist, raw damage output per hit is not the most important stat for a combat class, even if we ignore defensive features like the ability to soak or avoid damage. There are three characteristics that affect damage output in PoE: accuracy, criticals, and base damage. Your maxed-out Intellect won't help much if your character never manages to hit. A crit does double damage, which counts for much more than that against (tough) enemies with a high DT, so a character who has pumped crits might be doing more damage than a character who's dumped it but pumped Intellect. The exact equation will depend on just how much each of the attributes affects each of these aspects, and what kinds of enemies we'll be facing, of course: the crit-maxer will do best against high-DT enemies, the hit-maxer against high-deflection enemies, and the raw-damage-maxer against mobs of squishies. I'm sure they'll be doing that kind of balancing all through the development process. But we already know that it's certainly not going to be as simple as "max out Intellect to be a combat god." I'm kinda surprised you can't do this much arithmetic yourself, actually; it's fairly obvious to me anyway. (Tangent: if you want an example of a "pump INT whatever you do" system, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Skill points are everything, so if you're not maxing out INT you're gimping yourself. Finally got around to playing FO: New Vegas, and while I'm enjoying it a lot -- probably the best sandbox game I've played --, it really could do so much better with better systems and more challenging character development. The same applies to all Fallout games natch, NV isn't even the worst offender.)

Since neither of us knows whether this is the case, I figure it's best we dropped that subject. I think resource cost for resting is a potentially good idea. I don't have anything to add to what I've said about your degenerating stamina idea, though; if anything, I dislike it more now than at the beginning of the discussion. Perhaps that means we're done with the topic, no?

I did not know that attacks or abilities use stamina. Could you provide a reference for this? Yes. And you should only introduce new mechanics for that purpose if they add meaningful dimensions to the gameplay, like the hardcore mode in FO:NV. Yours doesn't. A resource cost for resting would, for example. Why not advocate for that?

Under the current system, you can adjust strategic difficulty simply by tuning the ratio of H/S damage. You can make it as hard as you like, right down to 1:1 (where the distinction between S and H disappears). You can also tune up damage. I.e., you can make the game as hard as you like with the current mechanics. I still see no point in introducing a new one. As stated, it's unnecessary complication.

Actually, you'd only have 40% stamina to spend. Looks like you don't quite understand how Obsidian's mechanics even work.

Osvir, I'm not an idiot. Kindly stop treating me like one. I wasn't talking about a self-imposed system. I was talking about the relative spacing of combat and rest spots in the game. A design decision. Yours, of course. Now, which is harder: your mechanic with health/stamina damage dealt at a ratio of 1:4, or the existing mechanics but with a ratio of 1:2?

As an afterthought, Osvir: the system already does what your more complicated mechanic would, more or less. Suppose Mr. Hero, with 100 Health, 100 Stamina, has gone through a rough day of adventuring that has left him with only 10 Health for the final battle of the day. If damage is dealt at 1:4 (health/stamina), he only has effectively 40 stamina. When he takes the 40th point, his health will hit zero and he's out of the game. Only the curve is different. In your model it slopes down gently; in the current one it stays flat until your health is at 25%, after which it falls steeply. In both cases, a badly beat-up party will be fragile. I.e., your mechanic is almost completely redundant.

The health/stamina system already adds a strategic dimension to adventuring. The mechanic you're proposing does the same thing, except it adds more complication. Difficulty is determined by how hard the combat encounters are, and how frequent resting possibilities are. I.e., I don't see how your added mechanics contribute to the game in any meaningful way. If you want to make it more difficult (in a strategic, resource-management sense), just space out the resting possibilities more. I also think that (1) a "tiredness" mechanic is a poor fit for a game like PoE (unlike, say, FO NV, where it is a pretty good fit, what with the wasteland survival aspect of it all), and (2) if you wanted a "tiredeness" mechanic, there would be better ways of doing it, e.g. requiring periodic food, water, and resting. So: unnecessarily complicated, accomplishes a purpose that the existing mechanics already accomplish, and a poor fit for the game. Bad idea.

Cultist, do you really think Josh & co aren't capable of balancing the attributes in such a way that there are no obvious dump or pump stats? We've been told what affects what, but we don't know how much, nor what the impact is for practical gameplay. That's the crux of it really.

I understand desentization actually works very well with arachnophobia, but a game where you're assaulted by a swarm of giant ones who want to suck you dry is probably not an ideal way to go about it. It'd be interesting if someone made some statistics about what percentage of players are arachnophobic to a degree where it makes it difficult for them to enjoy a game. I've understood that for some the phobia actually enhances the experience, with a similar kick people get out of horror movies. Peter Jackson is arachnophobic, and I'm pretty sure he got a major kick out of making all the spiders for the Hobbit and LotR movies, for example.

@aluminiumtrioxid, that's not what the devs have said:

I don't have strong feelings one way or the other. I'd certainly expect balance mods. Balancing is largely a matter of taste after all.