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FrostPaw

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Everything posted by FrostPaw

  1. I voted no, while I respect your ability to make great games I'm also aware we haven't actually played anything at all. Currently it is impossible to measure how much will already feature, so it makes it impossible to quantify if these additions would truly matter. If other people want to give you guys more money then I'm fine with that, if you need to delay the game I'm fine with that, but to be brutally honest, I'd need to experience some gameplay for myself, before I could decide if I wanted to give any more money in the future. Now if the issue is you feel that your current funding is running short of your estimation for whatever reason, I'd prefer that was what was said. I would be concerned but I'm also aware plans don't always work out and sometimes **** happens you simply cannot plan for. Right now I literally have zero funds for further investment, Christmas has sucked it all up, perhaps after Christmas that will change. For these reasons, I voted no, if the game can be made to the standard expected, just do that. I'm actually not bothered if we don't have an npc class for every class available, it's more important to me that the characters are characters, not mechanics.
  2. Thank you for the update, however I don't appreciate you using my backer email as a vehicle for advertising other peoples projects. You don't have my contact details to shove other peoples projects in my inbox.
  3. I think the Monk sounds like a class that requires intensive micro to use properly. In a single class game that would be fantastic, in a party class game, I worry I would spend too much time managing his wounds mechanic, instead of managing all the classes in my party. Thanks for the update though.
  4. Thanks for the update, I gotta be honest, when I read you were making a 5-15 minute "slice" of the game for demo purposes, my first thought was can we play it warts 'n all? Then I started thinking about how people would start judging it and criticizing it and then people would start typing out huge feedback/design forum posts on how they would do it better and then I realized, actually no..... never mind. Now I'm depressed at people in general.
  5. Thanks for the update, was a great read! I'm curious though, is the game intended to be viewed at a fixed perspective as with infinity engine games or will the camera orbit? I'm looking at that tower model and noticing all the doors are accessible from "this side" of the model. I was just wondering if that's because this is the only side that will be visible or if this was the more interesting side to show.
  6. There is a simple fix for this.....a Magical Effects slider. Incremental stages x1,2,3,4,5 etc slide it up or down in the game options to decide how many spell effects you want to see on screen at once, priority given to persistent area effect spells or offensive spells directed at the party. For those that want it, you crank that sucker up to 11, for those that don't you drop it down to 1 or 2.
  7. I think you misunderstood what I was saying completely, the issue was I had to lead from the front, not that I wanted to.
  8. Here's the only concern I have with having all your companions chip in for all conversations. You can have a companion that is persuasive, intimidating, diplomatic, seductive etc. The fact you have 6 party members means you could probably have one of every conversation option be it stat or skill related. When you can have all the conversation or skill options, isn't that a little too easy? I mean you now have so many ways to make a conversation work in your favor that you may never be at a disadvantage by lacking diplomacy or charisma or whatever....you'll always be able to do everything providing you choose your party members to compliment each other. I'm not sure that's a positive thing.
  9. One of my pet hates in all the IE games was the need for you/main character to be at the front if you wanted to do the talking. I remember trying to create a mage with a charismatic personality intending to lead, I had npc followers but being a mage meant I was safer not in the front ranks. However whenever I shifted my mage to the middle or back of the group formation, one of my follower companions who was closer to the npc would initiate dialogue, which totally wasted all the effort I put into making my main character charismatic. I could have manually switched between group and character to initiate every conversation but then I still had to deal with "auto conversations" which would initiate when one of my party went near to the npc and again, this was usually not my mage. So instead I would lead with my mage, of course this also meant I often ended up "tanking" since many conversations could end in a fight and whoever I was talking to would pick on whoever was nearest. Since buffing was an ugly mess of casting 10+ buffs just before every conversation, to give my mage a chance of surviving in the tanking aspect, it became very much a "game" within a game, Which was pure frustration since my mage often ended up not needing all those buffs or getting gibbed anyway. I know this game will have formations, all I ask is that there is an option to choose a spokesperson for the group, who defaults to all conversations with outsiders, regardless of who initiates them. This would allow my chosen speaker to take advantage of their communication or personality while maintaining the groups strategic formation. I would assume my party members at the front would step in front of me as soon as it appeared combat was due to take place and take up the formation I have chosen, thus maintaining the formation value. I'm not advocating a lack spontaneous dialogue here, if the story calls for a specific follower to do the talking that's fine, I just don't want "nearest well armored dumbo" to be my parties orator when the charming handsome dude at the back is just trying to keep formation.
  10. Personally, I gave Obsidian money because I believe they know how to make great games, while I admit some of their games have been buggy, I also believe the following. Great buggy games will eventually be just great games. Average bug free games will always be average. This is because if you spend more on QA than design and production, you get better quality but less content. I can put up with the bugs in a game that is truly great, because it is a great game, far longer than I can put up with an average game, because it has no bugs. If you enjoy beta testing unfinished games, I believe you will share this philosophy, because you can see when a game is good even before it is good enough. Now I'm not suggesting massive ugly bugs that lose save games, crash the client at specific intervals or mess up game play are acceptable, I'm just saying minor bugs, even if they are many can be fixed given time. Minor bugs don't stop great games being great, they just stop them being perfect. We gave money to Obsidian because we believed in them, let's not become "meddling" investors that try to change their design or development process ....because we all hear the stories of how publishers come in and make a mess of a developers vision and there is no end of gamers that cite those reasons as why the games were never as good as they could have been. We are now those "publishers" in this scenario.....scary thought huh?
  11. Has anybody played WAR? Warhammer Online the mmo. Please don't tell me all it's flaws, my point is they had "quest area" zones of red tint on the map. It essentially said, go over to this general area and you'll find what you are looking for, but not necessarily in the whole of that red tinted area. So you still had to search around and figure it out. You just knew it was in that area and nowhere else in the world. I actually think that was a triumph of compromise, showing you where to go but leaving you to find out exactly where. The size of the quest area tint was random so sometimes it was quite small but sometimes it was massive and would take you a few minutes to search within it.
  12. I just don't understand this thinking, do you not have free will? Once there is a quest marker are you obligated to go directly to do it? Couldn't you just not? You don't need hand holding but you do need hand shoving to do what you enjoy? If exploration is what you enjoy, quest markers or no, you will explore. If you need an excuse to explore, you don't enjoy it as much as you say. I'm not singling you out here, I've seen this argument many times over many games and every time I ask this question. I'm happy to have a toggle on or off by the way.
  13. Don't forget there are two kinds of "health" the regular health translated into hit points which are not touched until you first run out of stamina. Since stamina replenishes if you step out of combat for a breather you won't constantly need to heal up unless you intentionally stay in combat when it's going badly....or perhaps during a particularly hard fight in which case having a rest after it is probably expected anyway. Also, I thought it was "no healing magic" not "no healing of any kind" So presumably things like first aid, poultices or remedies and potions exist in some form.
  14. I wouldn't underestimate a skilled warrior that has honed his ability over a lifetime of combat with a two handed sword. I've seen some footage of a two handed swordsman, a zweilhander, it's both a reach weapon and a clubbing weapon combining the swing power of a blade with the piercing power of a spear. They often hold above the hilt also, so the length of the sword and it's flexibility is significantly more effective when you shorten the blade. You don't hold it like a long sword when you're in melee combat, you hold it more like a pike you can swing. http://www.landsknecht.com/assets/images/aoc_zweihander.jpg In this example you can see what I'm talking about, if you ignore the primary hilt you actually have a secondary handle further up which is the equivalent of a regular longsword. It leaves no room for a shield because your offhand still holds the primary hilt, so parrying or dodging are your only options but it's certainly not cumbersome in the right hands and with the weight of the weapon it makes any contact more damaging and harder to block. Try parrying a swing from that on a long sword and see how you do!
  15. I think realism matters to the extent that the more realistic a game can be the more intuitive it becomes. In our world, fire burns, if fire is also damaging if you stand in it in the game, that makes sense and draws a connection within the players mind that they understand the world they're in. On the other hand if you stand in fire and turn into a pink pony that craps candy canes it might be hilarious, but what you're teaching the player is they know nothing and cannot relate to what they see, which creates a divide between the character, the world they interact in and the player. An example of realism for me would be having to remove plate or chain armor before diving into the water or you will sink and drown. An example of game sense in this instance would be allowing me to put that armor into my backpack, theoretically I'm still weighted and should sink but the alternative is you have to drop it and come back for it and then you have to worry about items on the ground decaying etc so for me the former is important but the latter makes sense from a gameplay perspective. If a game is going to aim for realism then it should wherever possible to show the player the rules are consistent, as long as that realism doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the game, because ultimately we play games for enjoyment.
  16. Personally getting "lost" when trying to achieve something is not attractive to me, because the assumption is that if you're lost you'll figure it out, but more likely people end up alt tabbing out of the game to find a guide and stop wasting time not doing what they want to be doing. Spending hours in game stuck or alt tabbing out of a game world to me is far more damaging than a way point indicator which saves me having to remember every piece of dialogue or clue my character supposedly knows but I don't. I can choose to get lost and explore randomly whenever I want, if I choose to seek out the objective of a quest I'm quite happy having a marker for that objective on the map or an arrow on the mini map which points the direction I need to go. I'm an adult with free will, I can at any time I choose, move off the indicated path and do whatever I want should I be distracted, the indicator doesn't need to be forcibly removed from my screen to enable that. In an rpg you play a character, and my character is not as dumb as me, without way points I'm not playing my character, I'm dealing with my flaws and projecting them onto my character, which is not what I want. You don't play you, you play someone else, hence "role playing". Have it as an option for those that want to be themselves but lets not seesaw between forcing it on to forcing it off, it proves we learn nothing about choice.
  17. On the subject of Armour, wearing a set type and gaining a benefit from it even if wearing another type might be more protective..... How about a progressive bonus applied to continuing in a certain armor type which is not as protective? Example you begin the game in a leather vest, as you adventure and fight over time you become more comfortable and experienced within that armor type and so your armor synergy goes up, enabling you to benefit more from wearing it. Instead of finding armor that is more protective you find armor that looks different, you would swap out armor based on which look you wanted but it's wearing it and the experience gained while wearing it that contributed to how effective it was. A sort of experience level for armour I suppose. How do you separate plate from leather or chain then? Perhaps the answer is in the speed of stamina reduction, combat in heavier armor will reduce your stamina faster but will negate more of the damage, where as combat in lighter armor will allow you to fight for longer but you will likely sustain more damage as the battle progresses. Your mobility might counter some of this but even the fittest fighter in plate can't last as long as the fittest fighter in leather. So wouldn't that create a sweet spot of middle tier armor? Yes it would, unless you assume each type or class of armor has a cap on how much you can benefit from it. For example while you can get better and more experienced with chain the best most experienced chain wearer can never attain the same level of protection that wearing plate would allow, however swapping to plate would not be better until you first gained experience in wearing and fighting in it. Thus while there is incentive to stick with the armour type you went for at creation, with some perseverance you could switch to a different armor type. So if there is a cap, plate would be the best protection eventually, what you need to look at are reasons why wearing plate might be a bad idea, such as stamina, mobility carry weight, your appearance if you're trying to be diplomatic or seductive, your ability to swim/float, maintenance, climbing etc. Personally, I like armor restrictions, I don't like the idea of everyone in plate, it may be cool to have choices but sometimes it's the restrictions that make your choices matter. Characters are characters to me because of how they own their drawbacks and overcome them in alternate ways.
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