IndiraLightfoot

Yea, that abbreviation comes across as a Russian fighter jet, and I didn't say the fit was template-tight, hehe! But Might, I can see that being used for healing as well, and Intelligence used for extending a barbarian's Cleave, sure. It's not too far out.

Who am I?

I like this! And why not a Pronunciation Bee as well? Vailian words: Pronounce Biaceppe! "Biceps" *DHEARNTH!!!* Pronounce Parchozzi! "Parched uzi" *DHEARNTH!!!* Pronounce Gualfi! "Good Alfy" *DHEARNTH!!!* Pronounce Pallegina! "Pallid genes" *DHEARNTH!!!* We're sorry. You mispronounced them all. Thank you for playing. Next contestant!

Sorry for the mess above. Apparently, I exceeded the number of quoutes allowed, so I had to rip up the quotes and remove some of our good forumites' questions, so it looks a bit messy and confusing. At least I tried. I should have split the posts up.

More info gleaned from Josh's replies in the New Year thread: Yes. Interrupt and Concentration are opposed. Outright stunlocking would be pretty darn hard. The attacks that have high rates of fire (like wands and spell missiles) will likely have low base Interrupt values, so even someone with a high Perception wouldn't be likely to call a hit reaction often unless the target had a miserable Resolve. At worst it would be no worse than the original BG/IWD, where pretty much every hit called a reaction. In practice, it should never be that bad because you're making an actual check separately from being hit and if we make a "lone tank boss", that boss will likely have a gnarly Resolve specifically to avoid that situation. As a designer, why would I want to? If someone wants to play a traditional wizard, they'll bump Int and have big AoEs and long effect durations, which is cool and beneficial. If someone wants to make a muscle wizard, they can bump Might. If they don't like the idea of having a high Might wizard, there are five other stats for them to bump for their benefit. Tuning is easier when there are fewer/less diverse input sources. If Might is the attribute that affects damage for everyone, it's much easier for me to calculate how that feeds into the system than if every arbitrary type of attack/damage has its own attribute that affects it. On the bright (much brighter, IMO) side, if you do bump your Int or Resolve, you're still getting a very real benefit out of doing so. A spellcaster with a high Int has impressively large AoEs -- heck, even a barbarian's Carnage is impressively large with a high Int -- so you will wind up affecting more people and probably doing more net damage (or granting more people bonuses for longer) overall. That is a matter of tuning and overall impact. Just saying "Might affects damage" seems pretty compelling, but if I say, "Each point of Might adds 0.5% to Damage" that might be less valuable to players than each point of Constitution adding +10% to your Stamina and Health -- it doesn't/it won't, but that's just to illustrate the point. Everyone wants to do or heal more damage if they can, but everyone also wants to score more hits than misses, wants to be able to take hits, wants to interrupt enemy attacks, wants their effects to be big and have long durations, and wants to be able to resist being interrupted. I'm not under any illusions that this will be perfectly, objectively balanced system, but I believe people will be able to make a lot of different and interesting builds by emphasizing different aspects of their characters. He will also be good at walking on suspended ropes and moving large rocks. Wizard with high Intellect and Perception: "Hey look, I have huuge fireballs (sadly I need a few of them to kill a rat), but I *am* able to interrupt the rat's attack pretty often!" Please look at the character sheet in this update. The listed character has a 13 Might, granting +26% to Damage. Let's assume you're Pro Mighty and have an 18 Might. That's +36%. Or you're an Ordinary Joe with a 10 Might, which is +20%. Let's say a normal Fireball does 5-30 damage. Pro Mighty does 6.8-40.8. Ordinary Joe does 6-36. Ordinary Joe does not need multiple fireballs to kill a rat because his average damage is 21 vs. 23.8. Of course, these aren't the final values for the attribute modifiers, but proportion of advantage is important. Resolve is used in situations where the character's intensity, presence, or believability are the deciding factors. E.g., mental intimidation, inspirational leadership, a well-acted lie. Intellect is used for convincing people through logic, either persuasion or obfuscation. You could use Intellect to make a compelling case for something or you could use it to present a plausible (but made-up) scenario to explain yourself out of trouble. Strength is used for outright physical bullying and intimidation. E.g. picking people up, smashing things, imposing yourself, etc. Wizard with high Might (Strength) and Dexterity: His fireballs will disintegrate enemies as they deal exceptional damage and are very accurate.

The character sheet looks sensational! I love the new attribute system Cool-looking reputation system, especially that "oddity" label The ruins are stunning The banshee creatures are right up my alley One caveat: "Pallegina", a bit too corny name for my taste. Sounds like a salty cracker.

Here's what Josh just wrote on Concentration:

Lephys: You're one patient punsmith! Stun: Give differing opinions a bit of slack, coz clearly, like Hiro, you have plenty of playtime under your belt, it should be well enough in order to appreciate other ways of playing the same games as you have done aplenty. Somehow, this comparison is pretty cool and valid. May I propose that PE will be gourmet food in a Michelin Guide five star restaurant, and that ARPGs are like fast food, and that Stun's playthroughs of the IE games seem to have been slow food? This is all in good order, but I think it was a bit too much due too lucky rolls (which is an intrinsic part of RPGs, sure, in one degree or another) Cue music: "What does the fox say?" "RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG, RNG" Personally, I think it's too much RNG.

Might covers damage and healing. Constitution - stamina and health Dexterity- accuracy Perception - penetration and interrupt Intelligence - area of effect and duration Resolve - concentration This is a pretty neat system, and not too far off the great one Aluminiumtrioxid summed up earlier on. I think this attribute system should work just fine, don't you?

Might covers damage and healing. Constitution - stamina and health Dexterity- accuracy Perception - penetration and interrupt Intelligence - area of effect and duration Resolve - concentration This is a pretty neat system, and not too far off the great one Aluminiumtrioxid summed up earlier on. I think this attribute system should work just fine, don't you? EDIT: I'll start a new thread for discussion on these confirmed attributes.

Most of the challenges I listed are logically obviated on successive playthroughs. If those elements were really as important to your enjoyment as you say they are, and so many of them manifest due to a lack of foreknowledge/familiarity, that doesn't add up. If literally "half the fun" of playing a bad build is discovering it's bad halfway through the game and you've played the game over and over and over, how does that circumstance (the discovery) even arise for you? As for attributes and bad builds, let me put it this way: in D&D 3rd Ed., let's say Str, Dex, and Con are the only three stats in the game. You make a fighter and you can have an 18 in one, 16 in another, and a 10 in the last. The things that fighter is good at will shift significantly based on how you place those stats -- but the character is still clearly a fighter. You may be able to make a convincing case that one build is markedly better than another, but they'll all give you different strengths and weaknesses. Now figure out a way to do the same thing for Int, Wis, and Cha in the core rules and that's essentially what we're trying to do for PoE. "No bad builds" is not the same as "all builds are equal" and "all builds are functionally the same". It means that if you distribute your points in different ways across our attributes for a character of any class, the strengths and weaknesses of the character will shift in interesting ways and still be viable. If you dump Resolve for your fighter, you will suffer. If you boost Resolve for your fighter, you will benefit. Some classes in D&D already do this better than others. Monks and paladins have a more difficult allocation of stats to consider than fighters. If you want to shift the difficulty of combat, we have a level of difficulty slider. The attribute system is not meant to be a covert way of haphazardly achieving difficulty. As for buffing, we're not eliminating buffing, but we are eliminating pre-combat spell buffing. Buffs in PoE have an opportunity cost because they're combat only spells. They're good and they're powerful, but when you cast them, you're choosing between buffing or engaging in offense or taking some other action against hostile enemies that are engaging the party. As others have already posted, aside from hard counters (which often require metagaming or prescience), most pre-buffs are rote actions. There's nothing strategic about it other than asking the question, "How many resources would I like to expend now to increase the power of my party members?" That is a choice, but it's not much of one. Josh, what can I say! At least in theory, Pillars of Eternity is shaping up to be one heck of a CRPG. My scale of anticipation just went through the roof.

EI style RPG? Come again? You must be an octogenarian.

Isn't that kinda an exaggeration? Aside from PS:T, the IE games were all combat primary, with story being secondary. You do not enrich the experience of such games by eliminating major parts of the primary. As for during-combat skills... why replace anything? a good game should have lots of All Three. 1)pre-combat planning; 2) buffing during combat 3) post combat replenishment. I just meant "faster", as in "rid of a tedious drag", not necessarily "faster" as in "fast-paced" or "hurried", even though this thread is, amongst other things, about having the time to play big CRPGs, so well, yeah, faster in that way too wouldn't do too much harm, I reckon. Buffing is still in, but it happens during the encounters in a more intuitive way. And indeed, preparation in a CRPG will always be a part of it, but more in the sense of rolling up an interesting and responsive party and be clever and alert when you stumble into various game settings/contexts. As for combat being the primary part of all IE-games except PST, I'm not so sure. I'd like to think it's the whole thing rolled up into one, and that you can dissect it that way.

Not a bore-snore, at all. Just a faster BG2, with all the story and the vibrant greatness intact, assuming it had been replaced by something requiring skill during the encounter.

Exactly!

PIP-Clownboy: No, it doesn't. You're absolutely right. And indeed it did suck big time! Stun: Sorry. I know you for some reason love pre-buffing, but in a CRPG, it usually has been a pain in the ass. Nonek: I agree that pre-buffing could be done cleverly in advance, by taking clues from the environment and the story, but was it ever fun? Fatback: Was it really granting any gameplay depth? Or just a tedious chore of lighting up your party like a grove of X-mas trees? And all too often, you got surprised, especially by humanoid casters, and then you realized you had prepped wrong. So after death of party, or even before that, you did Ye Olde Ho Hum Reloade, and encounter solved. I'm so very glad Josh & Co have rethought this and come up with something new and fresh.

No need to be scared, I just expressed my opinion, which came across as a bit more loot-scroungy and hardcore than I intended. If they manage to get to the balance of BG 1 (the original, not the EE, and not those kill/loot the Drizzt exploit), I'm more than happy.

Boox: What a brilliant suggestion! Me like!!

PrimaJunta: Some of those achievements didn't even unlock, so that right there is an über-grinder. I thought I was bad, but I feel like Baby in a corner right now.

However, us PnP D&D fanatics had a huge advantage over those who found the computer game BG for the first time. Most of the stuff was like second nature, and then the manual became just a nice hors d'oeuvre or a collectible. Well, otherwise, I do agree. Read the manual, folks. It's not an obsolete practice.

There were a few magical weapons in inns, but where did you get the money to buy them? Personally, I just wandered off exploration and eventually got my ass handed to me by a bunch of Ankhegs by a farm in my first playthrough (this was before the Sword Coast xp). Even if we don't agree on things, we seem to have played the same games here, and for hundreds and hundreds of hours as well. So, I'm pretty sure you know that if you reverse my list, you get an item overflow in the system that makes PE very item dependent, and the abundance of gold would be absurd. I like your teasing, but you seem far too experienced for not being more nuanced. You ought to be sitting lots of wisdom about the finer flaws and the more glaring faults of CRPGs, so let's up the ante, shall we?

Wow! This discussion just gets better and better! Thank you, guys! And the icing of the cake this day: I just giggled into oblivion over this one! I read it all and found Josh's replies very well informed, and I'm very much on the same pages as him. I also seemed to like every post PrimeJunta made after Josh's replies, along with those of Lephys, so I have not very much to add. TRoar: That is a great proposition, and I really do hope that Obsidian implements stuff like that when the dire risks of petrification, aging or what not is on the horizon. Hiro: Hehe, you are making interesting counter arguments, but they seem mostly to be that, cuss-countering. Surely, you must see something good in the problems Josh have identified and are about to rectify or remove?

Like Rjshae said. Original BG1 was almost like this, and I was ridiculously happy and proud when I finally got my magical weapon. Especially if the came from IE games. Sarex: Are you referring to us who were playing IE-games like crazy back in the day? If so, I suspect many of us would be frustrated, rather pretty grateful and excited. Hiro: Did you really play the original BG1? Because the points in your first posts basically chop off BG and other IE games at the ankles, and then you end this post by saying what I said: That BG1 got it right, but then you go and say that BG2 and IWD1 also got it right. You can't have the cake and eat it. Now, what's it gonna be? This is like my anti-list of how to do loot. Less armour and weapons? And trash loot needs to be able to do something. The helmets in IWD2 at the start of the game did nothing. There was no point having them. Just have gold sitting on the ground instead because all we're going to do is sell it to a merchant. At least the trash helmets in the BG games did something. Magical Jewellery and special items shouldn't be so rare that there's only a couple in the game. I finished IWD2 recently and half my characters had blank slots because there wasn't enough rings, necklaces or anything special in the game. No loot bags? They've been pretty much a staple of the IE games with IWD1 and BG2. They're a must have. Also, if you're going to have an adventurers hall where we can make out own characters, then a party of mages should be able to have access to scrolls. This is where the IWD games fall down when making parties of a particular class. While it's fun to take a party of mages through the game, it's also frustrating when usually only one scroll exists for each spell. If you're not going to reward players with loot, then you've taken a fundamental positive experience out of the game which is the game reward system. I sincerely doubt you want the anti-version of my list. That's Diablo 3, a fun ARPG, but not at all what I want to see in Pillars of Eternity. Obviously, with a system like what I'm proposing, there won't be lots of junk loot (unlike yours), as that entails a system overflowing with items. Every item in my system counts, and merchants wouldn't sell very much at all, and only a few things at the time, and these change over time, a bit like an unmodded FNV, actually. And loots bags just felt too arcade-gamey for me, I want real bodies, corpses, cadavers - Hey! I like playing a necromancer every once in a while. What can I say? That's true and I never played BG1 in the original engine, only BGtutu. Now that I think about it, it's surprising how well the weapon choices worked even though the weapon proficiencies were different in the two engines. It made a few weapon choices suboptimal in TuTu but didn't really break things. I suppose it's because there weren't too many critters that were immune to too many weapons - that probably makes things easier to balance. You are absolutely right on all accounts here, and as for the solution of the last question, it could be scripted a bit, like some have suggested before, a bit like smart drops. Azmodan: I'm fine with using different materials for weapons instead of +1, +2, +3, +4, etc. But they way it works in Elder Scrolls games, pretty much sucks. It's so predictable and boring, and also a system that levels up with you. It's not much more fun, than monsters levelling up with you, and that's Skyrim yet again. Jobby: Yep, I hate when stores do that. And I do agree that whatever the stores sell should be useful and pretty scarce as well.

Recall that in MotB you started out at an already high level so the economy was different. The merchants were selling gear that the average Joe couldn't possibly afford, so the economy was completely and utterly unrealistic for a medieval setting. You got it! That market was just for show at the very beginning, and they sold insane über-crazy-great stuff. And ordinary barrels on the street in Mulsantir could contain fantastic items and hoards of gold worthy of a dragon. I won't spoil anything, but under an ordinary dirt mound by some wall, you had a magic item worthy of gods. Weirdly enough, all this solved the loot problem, as it simply was of no importance any more. And for those that crafted their weapons in MotB, they wrecked their entire game experience, just like you do in Skyrim.

Then you have crazy people like me that try to be IR (in character) when playing CRPGs. So my latest playthrough (not yet finished) of FNV I play an evil loner who shoots anything that moves and loot their corpses. Consequently, I've killed a number of merchants, and lovely enough, it was all allowed! Thank you, Obsidian!