Hypevosa

hopefully its not even possible. we don't need infinite mobs respawning. If they are there, the respawned versions shouldn't give xp. I've always thought that was a crap mechanic. If you're in one of the layers of the abyss where demons can feasibly "generate" out of nothingness to attack you as there's just too many of them to bother rendering all at once, you should still get exp for killing them if they're actually a challenge befitting your party. Otherwise I just don't support infinispawns of anything... limited summons? sure, but not infinispawn.

at a point you break bank though and the player is left either having insurmountable exp to get to next level, causing a loss of incentive to even do challenging quests, or you need to cap the exp to next level. In BG2 you reach a point where your exp to next level is always the same so that you could keep leveling on a semi regular basis and everything still has some merit since leveling increases health at the least. Scaling exp can be a simple system where every quest/encounter/enemy has a challenge rating associated with it. If you complete something at your challenge rating you get X experience, but the experience scales 20% per level above or below that challenge rating you are, down to 0. does your level 10 fighter stepping on a rat for 5 exp really warrant him going up a level? There are no rats. Only bandits and monsters that lost little of their deadliness regardless of player level. All dungeons should have rats or other native flora that are uninteresting and generally not hazardous in my opinion - it makes for a more immersive environment when I can go "Oh look, things actually LIVE here". And who am I to say you shouldn't be able to interact with them... some people just really, really hate rats...

I think a 3m and a 3.5m goal are needed to really get more pledges in, and at least the 3.5m needs to be something massive.

I've got everything I want in the game but co-op and a means by which I could run P&P games through their engine. Any more just money just makes a bigger/better game to me if it doesn't do one of those 2 things.

But that's what I mean, stepping on that rat has the potential to suddenly give your barbarian more hp, another rage per day, and makes him swing his axe more quickly than before he stepped on it... and that makes me go "wtf mate?" I don't think any amount of rat stomping for a level 10 character should lead to a level up. It's like the "boil an anthill" card in munchkin.

Not entirely unless numbers get a little crazy or do some weird progression with levels. BG2 for example had no scaling experience, and so all the classes had different rates of leveling to try and keep them in line with eachother, once you reached level 10 the exp gain to the next level was forced to be static (250k for fighters) and thus meant all experience for fights past level 10 was about equivalent. It also meant that your progression was forced to a stop at level 20 where fighters no longer gained ability to hit, and enemies AC was almost forced to a stand still. It was just kind of messy how leveling and experience worked in BG 2. does your level 10 fighter stepping on a rat for 5 exp really warrant him going up a level?

Exactly - I'd like to make it so players can ignore doing trivial tasks for their level without being penalized for exp later, and to reward people who manage to accomplish otherwise incredibly difficult feats.

Quick and awesome. :D

I fixed my derp.

A simple question, should experience scale with player level or should experience be static for enemies killed? Example of level scaling experience: At level 1, Billy kills a rat and gains 5 experience. At level 2, Billy kills another rat and only gains 3 experience. At level 5, billy gains no experience for killing rats. At level 10 Billy kills Firkraag, and gains 96,000 experience experience . At level 20 he kills Firkraag again (damned cults, resurrecting evil dragons...) and earns 6,000 exp. I'm a fan of scaling experience myself - I like it because it keeps numbers on the smaller side (no millions and millions of XP to level) and really rewards players when they accomplish more difficult tasks (assuming we can avoid easily cheesed encounters), rather than reinforcing a grinding ethic that having no scaling can lead to where players just plow through all the easy stuff first so they can breeze through things that are actually close to their level of difficulty. Scaling experience also allows players to choose to do difficult tasks but not "lose out" on the experience provided by doing smaller quests or tasks since killing those bandits without having leveled yet will counter any exp lost by not collecting 10 herbs for the merchant and leveling before the fight. Thoughts?

I like how a potentially game ending cycle is "trivial". Unless everyone in your party has AC and HP like a warrior, or you have tons of potions and scrolls lying around for such rainy days, losing a single companion means tons of trouble. How does anonymous redshirts add more to the game than keeping interesting companions around? How does needing to have or find thousands of gold in diamonds trivialize death? Mind you, even raise dead costs 5000 in diamonds, burned as a spell component. The temple in D&D is not going to just throw 5000 in diamonds at you - they will enslave your party for multiple adventures if they do such a thing, or you will face the wrath of one of their deity's agents if you don't repay such mercy. Astral deva's are easily a party leveling force. Forcing the party to decide between stocking up on diamonds for such an emergency or buying better gear with the loot gotten from it sounds like a fine risk/reward mechanic to me.

I don't really care about the experience sharing issue, but reviving dead party members without penalty strikes me as awful game design. Death should have a very real drawback. This is what I have always hated about "raise dead". It utterly trivializes death. You don't have to reload. You don't have to try the (presumably difficult) battle again. All you have to do is cast a quick spell and poof! the dead party member wakes up from their violence induced slumber. Ugh. To me this is the biggest weakness that D&D and fantasy RPGs in general have had. It's just silly. A major goal of the game is to avoid getting killed and yet there is no penalty for getting killed. At least remove like 1/3 of their experience points or something. Wasn't that a standard 2nd Edition D&D thing? To take off some number of XP per resurrection? Now that was a good idea. If you want to raise a party member you should only be able to do it so many times before you are left with a 1st level character who isn't particularly useful to your 16th level party anymore. Losing a party member is already a rather vicious cycle. Party member dies --> Party damage output is decreased --> fights last longer----\/ |---> Party ability to divide damage is decreased ----> all party members on average take more damage ----> Party members are more likely to die (loop) God forbid it was your cleric or whoever will help heal the party after fights. The cost of gold and time to anyone who loses a party member is already immense unless they have a rod of resurrection or some other means of immediately bringing that party member back - if they are going to play on anyways, I don't feel they should be penalized with the dead character also falling behind on exp. D&D doesn't trivialize death unless you have a merciful DM. Technically speaking, any dead body only has 3 days until you can't bring the person back to life since their soul has moved on. If you all are in the middle of the wilderness and the nearest temple where someone would have the level to raise dead (not every town's priest should be able to do this) is a massive trek away, you've essentially lost that party member. In D&D you also have the dying party lose a whole level for dying unless your priest is epic enough to True resurrection instead of raise dead or resurrect on them, and that in itself is a major drawback to death. Death has a chance to be reversible in D&D, it isn't a guaranteed thing unless your DM is being a flimsy noodle. And to put that into better perspective, the cleric casting even just resurrection needs to have 10k in diamonds, true resurrection costs 25k in diamonds. Finding that many valuable diamonds, even if you're buying them? Doesn't just happen. Go look at raise dead, resurrection, and true resurrection for D&D and you'll see that bringing back the dead is not supposed to be as trivial as dragging them to the nearest excuse for a temple...

Multiclassing in 3.5 is supposed to be painful unless your DM is being too easy on you and throws out some of the rules, and forgets to give you encounters that are challenging enough. I'll put it this way, no one ever had more than 2 classes in my campaigns, they knew what they were risking if they diluted themselves too much.

Well here's a proposal - assuming you can revive party members, and since souls are so important, what if a downed member still gained experience since their soul has observed the battle or perhaps inhabited (not possessed) one of the other party members as a means of still experiencing the fight? Not feeling the urge to reload after someone dies because otherwise they'll be back so much exp they'll just get owned faster in later fights would be cool, and we can somewhat justify it in this setting if souls can also experience things without being in their own body.

I loved how everyone who wasn't specialized in dragon age defaulted to rogue... it makes sense though - if you're untrained you'd likely have a small weapon (dagger) and use dirty tactics to fight anyone (kick in the shins, thow dust in eyes, etc).

@Gfted1 - that's a good point. I feel that pickpockets should have multiple ways of failing. Sometimes you simply can't pick the item without being noticed and don't bother (a wiser rogue should get this result), sometimes the person who you picked it from saw you do it which is also a failure. @Neversleep- Yes, I meant believable flow of information to be part of that. For example, in baldur's gate if you killed someone in the street, everyone on the whole map was suddenly and inexplicably hostile towards you as if they all KNEW what had happened. Even if a scream was heard, or the explosion from a fireball, people should have to come and investigate if they want to know what happened, perhaps even ask you if you're there and a high enough charisma check with some luck or the other person being an idiot would result in them believing you, or people could just go about their business like many would. Perhaps a mage could have a spell trigger on their death that let everyone around know who killed them and have the urge to seek vengeance for them (ooooo curses are good stuff) but aside from that, I don't like omniscient AI. Having the ability to sneakily invade a fortress, where using a spell or a bomb that was loud like fireball or something would let people know what was up but otherwise quietly dispatching guards and scouts (before they got back to inform superiors) of what was going on, would be a nice thing.

emotes of sort for interacting with companions. I know there's times I definitely wanted to pat Minsc on the back or the head.

Your rogue sneakily enters an unguarded house in the dead of night, pickpockets a drawer next to a sleeping patron and opens it. Ruffling through all the goodies inside, the person sleeping on the bed awakens and calls out for help. Somehow, despite closed windows and doors, and despite there being no guard on the street for 2 blocks, a guard magically appears at the entrance to confront you. Upon initiating a fight, suddenly 5 more appear. Something I think I'd appreciate in P.E. is, aside from summons or other magical means, I don't feel enemies should spontaneously spawn anywhere. I'd also appreciate it if information traveled in a believable manner - for example, instead of having guards who are super man and can hear a cry for help from miles away and instantly travel at the speed of sound to the location of trouble, have guards who only hear things within earshot. I'd much rather see someone whose house is getting robbed run out the door for dear life yelling for help till they got to the guard station or found some guards to help. Instead of a failed pickpocket resulting in a save and reload, don't ever tell us if it's a success or a failure. Simply have some people be a little more subtle... since you're clearly too much for them, have them simply walk to the nearest guards or guard station and report it. Some will turn to let you know you've been spotted and confront you, return it or pay the consequences (be it them fighting you or friends). Have some illicit all the NPCs in proximity to mob you and your party "Hey, this guy stole my coins!". A little diversity in the reaction to being robbed would be nice.

why not reap thousands from those hoping for it?

I have to agree. If they put co-op as a 3 mill goal and could guarantee it won't negatively affect the game if they get there, they'd see a massive donation influx. Would we reach that 3 million goal? who knows, but just having that co-op option being almost tenable would mean alot more money from new donors, donors upping tiers so they can get multiple copies for friends to play with them and/or just upping tiers to try and get to goal (I know I'd spring from 20 to 140). If I were them I'd put it as the last goal and no new content tiers inbetween, saying that if they get there then money will be used for that, but if they don't, they'll just make more content for the 100k tiers we didn't have inbetween. Those who want it have the chance to get it, those who don't want it will just get to harvest money for new content from the poor saps paying for it if we don't get there, or at least won't be affected negatively by the goal. Everyone wins in one way or another.

I'd like the BG 2 system, along with finding some epic items that are whole already. However, I'd say that any epic item gotten should attract the attention of some powerful people/being who also desires said object. Power and reputation should get you attention, unwanted or otherwise.

Replace the word "chess" in the bolded part with a game of your choice and you'll notice it holds true to every cRPG ever made. You just described what strategy is, and it's not unique to chess. Thank you for making my original point, critical hit/miss is a remnant from PnP and should be forgotten in modern cRPGs. Those memorable moments when you slip and break your neck, or slay that ogre with a sling shot to the eye, they are only memorable because you were in the company of your friends who were enjoying the moment with you. That simply does not translate to single player cRPG where you sit in front of the PC alone, no one is going to enjoy the critical hit/miss with you, which makes it feel very empty and hollow, more of a nuisance really ("I failed AGAIN, how the fu....oh I guess I should reload"). No, it wont. There's nothing heart warming about failing critically when you are playing the game alone, it's just an annoyance. So what you want is a strategy game based on tip toeing around a critical mechanic, which means LESS options (you can't make bold moves if they have chance to fail) and ultimately less strategic gameplay in general. I agree with you that there is still strategy involved in solving the puzzles with critical hit/miss included, it's just not as deep as it could be because you are being forced in to more defensive approach in order to avoid those mishaps which happen not due to your skill, but sheer luck. So yes, playing around criticals is strategy, I'm not denying that. But it's just a very boring and defensive one, which only limits strategic options and doesn't add any. If criticals are evenly metered to both sides, it's hardly tiptoeing when criticals are such a rare event. You can make bold moves, you're just upping your risk - it would hardly be a bold move if you knew you'd win every time you did it now would it? I do admit it limits you if you want to ensure victory 100% of the time, but putting yourself in your party's shoes, would you really choose strategies that had a good chance to get you killed with any regularity when you could instead take almost no risk?

You absolutely should ... in the off-topic forum. Nice try but it's either here... "Discuss ideas that make a great cRPG. What makes for good story-telling? What needs to be translated from paper to GUI? Spoilers are permitted in this forum, please warn the reader in your title however." Or for general discussion: "Talk about your gameplay experiences, hopes & dreams for Project Eternity here. Spoilers are not allowed in this forum; please use one of our spoilers allowed forums below."

I think ingredients should respawn in due time - if the game keeps track of how many days have passed, make it actually take a full year for the ingredients to respawn ya know ;D Seasons would be cool as well.

The only game that ever trained me to constantly hit quick saves was Thief, I'd rather not consider that a necessary player skill if we can avoid it xD