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PrimeJunta

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Everything posted by PrimeJunta

  1. PrimeJunta
    Just a tangential thought. It's kind of a shame that there isn't (apparently) an open-source library of animations you could use. Imagine if P:E contributed all of its human(oid) animations to the library, and the next game that used the library contributed any new animations it did, and so on. That'd free up a big chunk of animation budget for the next game. "Standard" animations like basic attack, run, walk, sneak, crouch etc. aren't so unique and exciting that it would hurt a game's character to have the same ones show up in multiple games. You could always keep the ones done specifically to add character to your game. We already have Unity, an OSS game engine. Why not add stuff like this on top of it?
  2. PrimeJunta
    I am really, really liking the sound of the combat system here. The arithmetic seems simple enough to translate easily to a turn-based PnP game as well, while retaining the essentials of the "feel." If one of those is in the works at one point, I'm buying.
  3. PrimeJunta
    If you just stand still for a bit, you'll regenerate. Luckily I found a potion of restore stamina. Currently imbibing. It also appears to have a mild Confusion effect though.
  4. PrimeJunta
    That's OK, Raszius. I'm done with this topic. You guys wore me out. Now all you have to do is convince JES.
  5. PrimeJunta
    I hope not. That would be a let-down. I'm hoping it'd be more like Quarmall from the Swords tales...
  6. PrimeJunta
    That sounds familiar... #d20
  7. PrimeJunta
    No, no they weren't. And yeah, I loved FO's crazy death animations. Giblets FTW. I have to say I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other; with animations more is better but I won't complain even if there's only one attack animation and only basic falling-over, if it means we get more and different critters and weapons. But if there's animation budget left over after that, then yeah, why not prioritize death animations. They're cool. Also a flexible feature; if you decide to make a new animation for each attack type (strong, fast, defensive etc.), you're pretty much committed to making all of 'em, whereas death animations are kind of like icing on the cake, every one a nice extra bonus. That said, the 4M stretch goal was "make everything better..."
  8. PrimeJunta
    Only one, huh? Then death animations. You have to have some kind of death animation anyway, don't you? Killed critters won't just blink out of existence, I hope. I would hope there are a few more attack animations as well, especially if there are special attack feats to match them so they'll communicate some information apart from just looking cool. A little guy just going <poke> repeatedly isn't all that exciting to look at...
  9. PrimeJunta
    What a strange trip this topic has been. I think I'm about done with it. Now all you guys have to do is convince JE Sawyer. Here's another one of my cat. She finds the whole discussion very bizarre and thinks we'd be better off just waiting for the game to be released and seeing how it turns out. Also, meow, and more toona.
  10. PrimeJunta
    Hur. My most fun DX playthrough was definitely the one where I maxed out my heavy weapons skill. KABOOM!
  11. PrimeJunta
    The nice thing with objective-XP is that it allows quest designers to do just that, with a very precise level of control too.
  12. PrimeJunta
    In case you were wondering, I like objective-XP precisely because it's a great way to encourage players to pursue optional objectives. IOW, have no fear on that score.
  13. PrimeJunta
    I have no desire to stop players from getting an advantage by "doing everything." I'm just changing the definition of "doing everything" from "pick every lock, untrap every trap, kill every monster" to "achieve every objective."
  14. PrimeJunta
    @TRX, you're still not quite getting the problem with perverse incentives and degenerate strategies though. If killing something always nets you XP, and XP are universally desirable, then killing something is universally desirable. It doesn't matter how much you ratchet up the rewards for other skills, since using other skills + killing everything is always better rewarded than using other skills + not killing everything. If you want to avoid that, you end up where that guy who looks like the paladin from BG ends up -- i.e., locking you out of areas after "completing" them, making monsters unkillable, explicitly assigning 0XP to them, or just magically disappearing them when no longer needed. Which is fiddly, complicated, error-prone, needs extra testing, and usually makes no sense for in-game reasons.
  15. PrimeJunta
    Right, thanks for clearing that up. I agree; a well-balanced system should not favor any single approach over others. I was thinking of particular situations, where the most efficient path is determined by whoever designed the problem and its possible solutions. Yep. If combat does end up systemically costlier, then that is poor design. However, I trust that JES wouldn't make such an elementary design mistake; it's not like this is his first game.
  16. PrimeJunta
    So you're not into powergaming after all? That's a bit of a U-turn.
  17. PrimeJunta
    If by "path of least resistance" you mean "most efficient path," then this is not a problem: it is good. It rewards players who are smart or skilled enough to figure out what is the most efficient way to deal with any particular situation. The most efficient way shouldn't be the most obvious way of course -- if the quests end up that way, then that's poor quest design. It's the same principle that rewards the most efficient killers in a game based on kill XP. The only difference is that the game rewards efficiency in quest resolution by any means available, not only killing.
  18. PrimeJunta
    By not going after all the XP that's available in the game.
  19. PrimeJunta
    Real-l-ly? Then why are you intentionally gimping your character by playing in a sub-optimal way? "I guess I'll shiv myself in the kidneys now and go into battle naked LOL" was the way you put it elsewhere, I think. Unless it was Helm, of course; you two are a bit hard to tell apart.
  20. PrimeJunta
    There is a crucial difference between systemic rewards and contingent (explicitly placed) rewards. Please explain, in your own words, what the difference is, and get back to me.
  21. PrimeJunta
    Actually, there is such a thing as a "normal" playstyle: it is the playstyle (or styles) the designer has in mind when designing the game. You could idealize that by considering a super-intelligent Valorian (hard to do, I understand, but you can try). Namely, somebody who retains every bit of information handed to him by the game, and pursues the most efficient (=biggest net reward) strategy in response to it. I.e., someone who responds to the incentives handed by the game perfectly mechanically, like a marionette dancing on strings. In a perfectly-designed game, this idealized Valorian will have a great time, never having to do anything that's repetitive, tedious or boring. No obsessive hunting for traps, locks, or killable monsters; no camping by spawn-o-mats and grinding until level cap; no trekking endlessly back and forth to bring rusty daggers from a faraway dungeon to a shopkeeper, and so on and so forth. Thing is, if you design a game for this idealized Valorian, other less efficient players will usually have a great time too -- the only thing you'll have to take into account is that they may not be quite as efficient and therefore you might have to find ways to tone down the difficulty for them. And if you're able to give players the freedom to do other stuff as well without being penalized (too much) for it, then so much the better.
  22. PrimeJunta
    Tell me, Valorian, do you actually enjoy playing a game like a rat running in a maze, obsessively hunting for locks to pick, traps to disarm, and goblins to kill? I'm just curious.
  23. PrimeJunta
    I've been running D&D campaigns on and off for about 25 years. I stopped awarding kill XP about 15 years ago. So no, that's not the reason. I'm just glad that game devs are finally seeing the light too.
  24. PrimeJunta
    Semantics. The way I've been using it, "kill XP" is a systemic feature: the system automatically rewards you for XP whenever you kill a creature. Objective XP is XP explicitly placed somewhere by the designer. There's no rule that says that designers aren't allowed to award objective XP for killing particular critters. I do not understand what you mean by this.
  25. PrimeJunta
    @Helm: The definition of degenerate strategy is something like "player behavior which is not aligned with the design goals of the game, but which results in an advantage for the player." If the designer has explicitly designated killing a group of monsters as a goal, then killing those monsters is, by definition, not degenerate behavior. That is because objective XP has to be intentionally placed. Systemic rewards, on the other hand, tend to incentivize degenerate behavior, such as hunting for traps only to spring them, locks only to pick them, or monsters only to kill them. Intentional incentive -> desired behavior = good design. Systemic incentive -> unintended incentive -> degenerate behavior = bad. Simple! Of course, if the designer's intention is that the player goes around killing everything, then killing everything is not degenerate behavior, and kill XP is a perfectly good way of incentivizing it. This is the case in Diablo or NetHack, for example. From what I've understood, this is not the P:E team's design intention, though. Therefore, no kill XP.
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