PrimeJunta

Some of us did. "Reasonable conclusion" is not the same thing as "complete consensus." For example, I don't think I'd be going too much out on a limb if I stated that Planescape: Torment is generally regarded to have some great writing, great setting design, and memorable characters, whereas Icewind Dale is considered to have some of the best combat encounters and most beautiful environmental art among IE games. I do not recall proposing anything in this discussion. If you believe otherwise, hey, that's just your personal experience. Now, this I can agree with. To an extent, anyway: I can think of work which I find to be really good but not immersive. For example, I've gotten a great deal out of James Joyce's Ulysses, despite really struggling to get through it. I could only manage about five pages at a time. Yet it remains one of the most meaningful literary experiences I've had. >> This statement actually greatly proves my point. King is considered the king of horror novels, is widely known, respected, successful and accomplished author. And now you want him to change the way he writes because people find his monsters dopey, dumb, unfrightening and immersion breaking? Why would I want him to change his writing? That would be silly. I'm perfectly happy to enjoy his non-supernatural-monster fiction, and just read other writers for my supernatural-monster fix. So you think the only thing Stephen King has going for him are his supernatural bugaboos? Interesting. I actually hold his writing skills in higher regard than that. And the best way of making a 'good' game is to ignore what everyone else thinks is 'good?' Second: do you seriously believe Stephen King ignores what his readership likes and just pursues his art in some kind of vacuum? For real?

Unfortunately it's not. I always get super immersed in Stephens Kings books but my friend says that he cannot get into them. That does not follow. You can still have a meaningful discussion about what about them you finds immersive, and what about them jolts him out of it. When more people join the discussion, you can eventually arrive at categories like "things many people find break immersion" and "things many people find maintain immersion." Then you can discuss why things are in each category. Each individual's experience is unique, but there are still commonalities – and the artifact being immersed in (or not) will produce those commonalities. I would bet that if you got a hundred people to write down how they experienced The Lord of the Rings and Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, you would get two pretty distinct clusters of experiences. At the end of that exercise, you would have a fairly good collection of identified and, if you like, even quantified factors which contribute to, or detract from immersion – even as every player's/reader's experience is unique. Speaking of Stephen King, his monsters don't work for me. I usually find them ... dopey, I guess. Dumb. Un-frightening. Immersion-breaking. I get much more deeply into those of his stories that don't feature supernatural monsters. Four Seasons and Misery, for example. He writes some mean prose.

You do realize, Sharp_one, that that argument renders all discussion of any form of creativity completely pointless? Substitute "artistic value" or "enjoyability" or "playability" or any other such term for "immersion" and your argument will be just as valid. In other words, if you really believe that, what the hell are you even doing here? Why not just go sit in glorious solitude in your personal box of personal preference. I posit that it isn't purely a matter of personal preferences, only dependent on the receiver. It's a two-way street. The game does make a difference to immersion, enjoyment, gameplay, and what have you, not just the player. There are 'good games' and 'bad games.' There is 'great art' and 'crap art.' Justin Bieber is not the same as Nick Cave. Planescape: Torment is not the same as My Little Pony's Cake Shop. (I just re-read the above paragraph. I can't believe I'm even having to argue something like that. Jeez, some people.)

Direct link to the T:ToN "Crises" document. It really is a fine piece of game design IMO and well worth looking at. It's probably too late in the game for PE to take inspiration from it, but perhaps they've been working along similar lines – there is a lot of cross-fertilizaiton between the teams, right down to shared members.

@Karkarov, they took out the dedicated crafting skill, not crafting itself. The original idea was that the Crafting skill also affected item durability. After the discussion they decided that durability was more of a drag than a gameplay improvement, so they took that out. That left the Crafting skill without sufficient gameplay value, in their assessment, so they took that out as well. The upshot was that crafting is not associated with a dedicated skill, but instead crafting different types of items is connected to different types of other skills with other gameplay uses. So the mechanics are the same and crafting is still in, just not item durability, nor a dedicated skill.

I can think of only one good reason to put unkillable children into the game: because making them killable would be too much of a reputation risk for the company. That kind of thing can spin out of control, and e.g. make it much more difficult for Obsidian to work with publishers – which they need to do. (It would be kind of interesting to see what would happen, though. The discussion over which is more inappropriate, child-killing sprees in Eternity or Grand Jew Wizards and Mr. Slave in South Park: Stick of Truth.) Overall I prefer greater verisimilitude. Category violations damage it. So for example if everything is killable except children, that's jarring and I don't like it. IOW, I would prefer either everything, including children, to be killable, or things to be categorized into non-killable and killable according to some not-completely-arbitrary criterion. Most games of this type flag critters as friendlies or hostiles, and it's simply not possible to attack friendlies; that hasn't bothered me much before. Alternatively you could have a category of "background atmospheric critters" like dogs and cats and bunny rabbits and cows and sheep and cute little birdies, and make those unkillable. That would have the additional advantage of making them cheaper to make, since you wouldn't have to worry about fight or death animations, so you could have more variety for the same price.

As an aside, I really like the way Torment: ToN is approaching this through the notion of "crisis." It's broader than "encounter" but accomplishes similar goals – i.e., allowing many different ways to resolve it, and rewarding each of these resolutions in ways suitable to the resolution. See their latest update for details. (Also, :popcorn:.)

I'm with your definition, Osvir. I also think an "ironman lite" mode is a bit of a waste of resources; I think the people who want to ironman for whatever reason want the full shebang, and the people who don't, won't, odd outliers notwithstanding. Of course, they could just add a "Savegame behavior" configuration panel that lets you tailor savegame settings to your choosing. The only real worry I have about ironman in a game as complex as P:E are serious scripting/programming errors. If the game boxes you into a dead end through no fault of your own, or corrupts your only savegame, or something like that, it's kind of a screaming-fit level bummer. So I would consider a recovery tool acceptable; i.e., that the game did retain savegame history but you could only access it with an external tool similar to a console cheat.

In English, the chess term is "stalemate." :popcorn:

I could actually have voted for everything, because I'm not in love with any genre, time period, or cultural influence in particular. I do care about consistency and coherence though. Whatever the influences, it should hang together. Massive anachronisms or cultural weirdnesses bug me; I wouldn't like to see, say, knights in full Gothic plate wielding katanas, nor samurai with poleaxes for that matter. That wouldn't make sense. However, I'm a bit bored with generic-pseudo-medieval-western-fantasy, generic-samurai-fantasy, generic-kung-fu-fantasy, generic-space-opera etc. I think there's a huge range of underused settings and cultural influences out there, and I think they would make for a refreshing change of pace. Sumer or Babylon, pre-Columbian America, Pharaonic Egypt, pre-dynastic China, Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa... the possibilities are endless. So I omitted the ones closest to these IMO overused ones and voted for the others. I'm also not super-excited about historical RPG's as such; there are too many things to trip over. Like being overly constrained by the historical setting and not daring to do exciting things because they conflict with it, or drifting too far off it so it just looks anachronistic and embarrassing, like you didn't know better. If done well it could rock though. But instinctively I would prefer a fictional setting inspired by real-world history and culture – I'd rather have, say, an ocean setting with islands and war canoes and haka and moai, without stating that it's specifically Fiji and Tahiti and what have you.

The only mods I've genuinely enjoyed are either (a) completely new games built with the toolset of an existing one, such as some Neverwinter Nights mods, or (b) broken but promising games repaired, such as Wesp's Vampire: Bloodlines mod, the Gothic 3 Community Mod, or the KOTOR 2 Restoration Project. I'm kinda hoping (b) won't be needed, and (a) needs access to just about everything. So my vote is all or nothing – anything in between holds little interest to me. I especially don't care about cosmetic mods for clothing and armor and such. When I want to play dress-up with dolls, I invite my niece and her Barbie collection over.

Permanent injuries are not worth the trouble IMO, as very few players would bother continuing after getting a permanent injury serious enough to affect stats. That's reload-tyme. (Or restart-tyme if you're in Trial of Iron.) The "verge of" mechanic would amount to a variant of "hovering at death's door." IOW, I think this would take a significant amount of effort to do, and have very little return in gameplay value.

Eternity: Queklain no Vengeant. (HT: Tales of Game's.)

It doesn't have to be a metagame feature. @rjshae just pointed out one way it could fit just fine in a soul-based game. Other possibilities would include a sudden religious conversion (-> respec to cleric or monk), a supernatural event giving or removing magical powers (->respec to or from wizard) and so on. Personally, it's not something I'd request, but if they do it and integrate it well into the game and its world, I have no objections to it either.

I for one prefer Kaz's art style to Polina's, although I like both a good deal better than most game concept art that's out there.

On-demand, unlimited re-specing is obviously silly and I'm quite sure Ob's not dumb enough to do that. OTOH having a plot point (or some similarly rare occasion) where you're allowed to do this might work just fine.

Check the example again: they would actually have 0 speed, 0 accuracy, and 0 damage when using a sword. It's multiplicative, not additive. In this extremely limited example with only three stats and skills, I'd use power * strike * [unarmed]. If it was a real game I might have some other skill that was more appropriate. It probably isn't. Which is why I use "power" rather than "strength." It's a different abstraction. Further, I would contend that there is no such thing as "strength." It's always contextual. Someone who is good at power lifting may or may not be good at shot putting. Shot putting and power lifting are different skills. Skills may have synergies, of course, so that it's likely that someone who's good at power lifting is better at shot put than someone who's good at chess but not power lifting, assuming neither has specific training in shot put. I was envisioning all checks as stat * skill * tool. It would make no sense to check just "power", without some way you're using it (the skill) and something you're using it with (the tool). There would be a very limited number of stats, a somewhat limited number of skills, and a broad range of tools, ranging from "unarmed" to "epic sword of manly manliness" and "meteor strike".

I'm sure there will be cheat codes for P:E.

Sure, that would work too. Lots of ways to design this type of system without ending up with muscle-bound archmages.

I would simply have it affect the relevant skill. A magic disruptor would a penalty to Hex. A muscle disruptor to Strike. A coordination disruptor to Shoot. If you want to add depth, you could have the field apply separate Power, Speed, and Accuracy penalties to categories like "all attacks based on Hex." So you could have a magic-slowing field, a melee-clumsiness field, a field that robbed the power from projectiles, and so on and so forth. And naturally there's nothing stopping you from doing all the usual stuff like flagging attacks as crushing/slashing/piercing, or elemental/illusion/enchantment, and then applying various circumstantial adjustments to those.

It doesn't. I only considered combat for the purposes of this simple demonstration. It was a long enough post as it is. I would add a few more stats and skills to handle that. I think they ought to be class-agnostic, i.e., equally useful for wizards, defenders, and archers.

Erm, you guys do realize that y'all are speculating wildly? AFAIK we haven't been told anything about the attribute system other than that a design goal is "no dump stats for any class," and "the same stats determine accuracy and damage for all classes." That leaves the field wide open. Personally, I very much doubt the "damage stat" will be called "strength." That would indeed be silly as it would make you picture archmages looking like the Terminator. Since we're speculating, though, here's an example of one solution that fits these design parameters without eliminating class differentiation: Classes: Defender - melee fighter Archer - archer Wizard - wizard Stats: Accuracy Power Speed Skills: Strike - skill in melee Shoot - skill in ranged weapons Hex - skill in magic Attacks: Longsword - strike, (A10, P10, S10) Dagger - strike (A20, P5, S20) Shortbow - shoot (A10, P10, S10) Crossbow - shoot (A5, P20, S5) Fireblast - hex (A10, P10, S10) Force bolt - hex (A15, P5, S15) Skill * Accuracy * Weapon A = chance to hit Skill * Power * Weapon P = damage modifier Skill * Speed * Weapon S = attack frequency All classes get to distribute 30 points between Accuracy, Power, and Speed. Defenders have Strike 20 Shoot 10 Hex 0 Archers have Strike 10 Shoot 20 Hex 0 Wizards have Strike 2 Shoot 2 Hex 26 So, consider a Defender with A10, P10, S10: Longsword: Accuracy, Speed, and Power 10 * 20 * 10 = 2000 Shortbow: Accuracy, Speed, and Power 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 Crossbow: Accuracy and Speed 10 * 10 * 5 = 500, Power 10 * 10 * 20 = 2000 An Archer: Longsword: Accuracy, Speed, and Power all 10 * 10 * 10 = 1000 Shortbow: Accuracy, Speed, and Power all 10 * 20 * 10 = 2000 Crossbow: Accuracy, and Speed 10 * 20 * 5 = 1000, Power 10 * 20 * 20 = 4000 A Wizard: Longsword: Accuracy, Speed, and Power all 10 * 2 * 10 = 200 Crossbow: Accuracy and Speed 10 * 2 * 5 = 100, Power 10 * 2 * 20 = 400 Fireblast: Accuracy, Power, and Speed all 10 * 26 * 10 = 2600 Force Bolt: Accuracy and Speed 10 * 26 * 15 = 3900, Power 10 * 26 * 5 = 1300 Under this system, your "Strike" skill would also reflect your physical training, and your "Hex" skill your mental discipline. So, unless your wizard invested heavily into developing "Strike" or "Shoot," he would be pretty near useless with a sword or bow compared to a defender or archer. Personally I don't have a huge problem with this approach. It's IMO no worse even from a simulationist POV than the traditional d20 STR-EX-CON-INT-WIS-CHA one. A system where a single stat determines, say, both your ability to balance on a tightrope and pick a lock, or lift a big rock over your head and keep someone in a wrestling hold, or avoid catching the plague and swim across a lake isn't exactly realistic either.

FWIW re the actual topic, I'm very much in the "artistic coherence" camp. For example, Oblivion left me pretty much completely cold, whereas I enjoyed The Witcher a great deal. Both had similar levels of photorealism, but The Witcher had a compelling, internally consistent, and coherent artistic quality whereas Oblivion was generic, incoherent, repetitive, and bland. This is one reason I'm such a Planescape: Torment fanboy by the way – few games have such magnificently coherent and consistent artistic qualities, where the visuals, the text, the music, and, um... significant parts of the gameplay reinforce each other and form aspects of the same vision. So speaking for myself only, I don't think photorealism, lack thereof, or the uncanny valley have much do with whether a game snags my imagination or not. It does have an indirect impact, in that pulling off a coherent artistic vision in glorious photorealistic first-person 3D entails a great deal more work and expense than doing the same in sprites, let alone ASCII. And yeah, I am looking forward to The Witcher 3, photorealism and all. My computer is from 2009 and about due for an upgrade, too...

@AGX-17, communication theory makes pretty clear distinctions between symbols and representations (among other things). They're not the same thing, and realism of a representation does make a difference in the way in which it's experienced. The word "Gandalf" is not experienced the same way a painting of Gandalf by John Howe or Sir Ian McKellen playing Gandalf. All three are symbolic representations, but "Gandalf" is purely symbolic whereas the latter two are more and more representational. Now, to your (rhetorical?) question. You can't use NetHack as a communication medium either, but its system of symbols is very much a symbolic language – an @ does not look much like a heroic swordsman, nor a ; like a deadly kraken that can drown you in one hit of a tentacle, but that's what they represent. You may not be able to communicate in NetHack, but NetHack is able to communicate with you, in its symbolic language, and to understand what it's saying, you have to learn that language. Many of BG's symbols are more representational, to be sure, but still abstract enough that it matters, especially compared to games that strive for photorealism, like Skyrim for example. And of course the BG language has plenty of purely symbolic features; hit points and attributes for example. Put another way, the OP's question is entirely legit and did not merit your sarcastic response. Here's a thought: if you find a topic pointless, why not just stay out of it instead of trying to piss on it?

If they're any good, damn straight I'll read them. I loved the ones in Morrowind and Arcanum for example; the BG's and NWN OC's not so much. Not a huge fan of the Sword Coast and related areas; too generic for my blood, so I don't get all that enthused about the lore either.