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mstark
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Posts posted by mstark
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I'd like it to have a good balance, based on how much of the content of the game that you complete. I think I like the idea of tying difficulty level to how hard the game is on your purse, I believe the most straight forward implementation of this would be to significantly increase the cost of potions & crafting ingredients to compete with the cost of the best of items. In such a situation, buying 3 potions of healing for 1,000 gold each might be a far better investment than getting that dagger +2 for 3000 gold you've been eyeing up.
The first time I played BG2, I completed maybe 1 or 2 side quest lines before going on the main quest (15-20h~ gameplay), this left me with enough money to pick up maybe a single good item from a shop, buying enough potions to get through the fights I was wildly under-prepared for became the main expenditure.
The second time I played it, I combed through every single quest available before progressing (80h~ gameplay). Naturally, it left me able to pick up pretty much anything and everything from shops. Usually, the items I'd found during the quests would be far better than anything I could buy (I've got no problem with that), so, in the end, the money just piled up. This was on normal difficulty, mind you.
I think we can pretty much assume that most of the regulars on this forum belong to the category of players who will fine-comb the game for all there is to experience, and as such, our first experience with the game might match my second play through of BG2, which almost inevitably will leave us wanting. We'll never have that "I barely made it through" feeling. If designed correctly, maybe the higher difficulties will deliver an experience closer to my first play through for us completionists.
All this said, unbalance is not a bad thing in a single player game. It's part of what made BG2 interesting for so many years, everyone's experience when playing it would vary wildly due to large differences in how classes play and handle different situations. It wasn't until many years after the game's release, with players having completed the game over and over, that character builds and party compositions that'd steamroll all the content in ways unintended started surfacing. Morrowind had a similar life cycle thanks to being wildly unbalanced, it became a challenge to complete the game in the most effective and unintended (by the developers) way possible. Just think about it, what are some of the most memorable & long lived games in recent history? Chances are they had an endless array of different, non-obvious ways of abusing, breaking, and generally having fun in the game world. I'm not saying a game should be intentionally designed to include this, but obsessing over too much balance has taken the fun out of many a game.
I will personally play Project Eternity to experience the story line(s). As long as combat, economy and character progression is functional at its core, I couldn't care less if my purse contents and party characters end up being differently useful during my play through.
Also, if something is clearly broken, there's such a thing as a patch.
(oops, that derailed a bit from the topic, but then, an aspect such as economy shouldn't be discussed in isolation)-
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And this has EVERYTHING to do with power progression.
How come BG1 didn't have that problem with stores? Becasue it didnt' have a vast gulf in pwoer between items, and starting items were still usefull. In other words, you dont' start with a pointy stickand work your way to the uber-super-extra sword of badastititude +200.
You start with a good, usefull weapon and MAYBE get a better one.
This. I am hoping overall power progression in the game is fairly flat, maybe not quite as flat as in BG1 (though I wouldn't mind), but also not as extreme as in BG2 to ToB.
In a system with fairly flat power progression, durability could maybe become enjoyable. Rather than struggling to attain more and more powerful items, we'd be struggling to maintain the few scraps we can manage to collect. That still doesn't get away from the fact that durability is simply "another click" to take care of in town, and if you accidentally forget it before entering a dungeon you might be screwed.
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You'll be happy to know that Justin Bell, Lead Audio Designer, us well aware of thisThe only thing "high quality" I would like about the sound of Project Eternity is... dynamics. I hope the game sounds and music is not dynamically over-compressed. Loudness war is bad.
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61851-the-importance-of-sound-for-atmosphere/page-2
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I agree with nearly every single creative example for what could be alternative ways of giving purpose to money throughout the later stages of the game. In general, I think money should be made rather scarce, unless the player spends a goodly amount of time doing alternative quest lines.
I just want to add that if the game will take after BG2, which has been widely agreed that it should, it's open world nature will result in big differences in how much money and loot players end up with before embarking on the main quest line. It's simply part of what having a semi-open world means, if I want to spend all that time helping people, scouring caves, and slaying dragons I should end up notably richer than someone who does not. My two playthroughs of BG2 varied widely due to this fact, and I found both times enjoyable in different ways.
The developers will have full control of the money available in game, and full control of how much questing any player will have to do before being able to progress through the story line. In for example BG2, each separate map location was worth maybe 10,000 gold (wild estimate). If you are a completionist, you'd end up with maybe 100k before chasing after Imoen. Enough money to make more mundane things, like potion and spell management, an easy task, and after having spent roughly 80 gameplay hours doing nearly all the content, why shouldn't it be? The money still had some value though, thanks to rare shop items costing 25k or more, that was pretty much the only thing that added any value to your gold though. There are MANY examples in this thread that could add further value. It wasn't until ToB that money became entirely pointless, I ended up with over a million in the end, after having purchased every possible item, but due to the money having had a rather tangible value through most of the play through it felt quite good to have more than enough for once.
The above is just an example, maybe the intention of Project Eternity is for you to never be able to amass any sizable amount of wealth, but the same theory still applies even if the numbers are smaller and items more mundane. Think BG1 compared to BG2.
If the intention is to make even basic equipment hard to come by, maybe adding durability is actually a meaningful thing, where buying a sword costs 100 gold and maintaining it will require most of the money earned through the rest of the game. The entire focus of the economy would be to maintain that which you already have, rather than collecting money to attain new things. That still doesn't get rid of the fact that durability is a tedious mechanic that encourages backtracking.
If you estimate that durability would cost an average party 1000gold during the first 5 hours of gameplay, why not replace it by adding an "entry fee" of 1000gold to an alternative quest line? With a compelling reason to pay up. Or make a very light and strong rope available in a shop for 1000gold, and in the next area create a chasm that just so happens to remind you that if you had that rope, maybe you could descend it.
Whatever the solution, I don't think the issue of controlling the economy is as large as it's being made out to be. If we want a relatively open world feeling, Baldur's Gate-esque game, your wealth will be relative to how much time you actually spend on exploration. With or without money sinks, people will end up with varying amounts of money, unless sinks are designed to even out player economy so that regardless of what you do throughout the game you end up with the same amount of money at the end. That, I believe, would be even worse than ending up either rich or poor.
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I, too, am in between option 2 and 3. I would only be for a durability system if it's truly meaningful, or, as Ieo put it, "a legitimate resource management tool". I've never seen durability of items implemented in any game in a way that wasn't annoying. It's only ever functioned as the simplest, most boring, and worst form of "money sink", one that most games are trying to do away with by planning their overall game economy better.
There's already crafting in the game, which could potentially be tailored as a money sink for people who rather make their own items from materials bought from a vendor rather than buy them from a vendor right away.
How is it even possible to make durability meaningful? If my sword breaks, I either backtrack to an area where I can repair it, or make sure to always carry 2-3 swords so that I can cycle between them until I'm likely to get back to town. If durability only exists as a money sink, it's nothing but an annoying mechanic that players will do everything to try to get around. Crafting, while I don't approve of the currently suggested system, would comparatively be a much more meaningful money sink.
By the way, if your single player game requires money sinks to control player economy from spiraling out of control, your game has bigger problems.
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I can't say I ever had MORE fun in a game just because it had durability, but this does seem a good way to implement it. And it gives you something to do with your ridiculously large stack of riches you accumulate in this sort of game. So I'm not against the implementation of a durability system.
If I have ridiculously large stacks of gold lying around, repairs very quickly become a meaningless chore. An extra button to click every time you visit town, nothing else.
If durability is to be a meaningful mechanic, it should create meaningful choices. Eg. "I have accumulated the fairly sizeable wealth of 10 pure gold coins, do I spend 5 of them to repair my dragon fang cudgel of smothering, or do I buy the food I may require during my next adventure?"
If durability only exists to send you back to town in regular intervals, it's not a meaningful mechanic.
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You should not make the game worse as a whole just to buff up the "Crafting Skill" to make to comparable to other skills.
This. If crafting and durability is to be in the game, it should not come at the cost of gameplay quality ("enjoyment") in order to make it a viable mechanic choice. Many a game has fallen into this trap. Ask "does it add or detract from the core experience?"
I have hope that PE will pull off "crafting" more elegantly than other "RPG's" of this past decade, but the description given in the first post gives a very The Elder Scrolls-esque impression of it. It would be great if crafting was not "get ingredients abc, press button, receive item x" for once. Add some lore, some dialogue, some pizzazz. I know there's a budget specifically for crafting (it was a stretch goal, after all), I'd love to see it used to create a more unique system that captures some of the magic of true craft. For example, it could be used to implement a guild of master craftsmen that don't lend their skills to just anyone, but if you happen to turn up with a backpack full of "moon dragon scales", they just couldn't keep their hands off of it! Make it something special.
I think part of the reason crafting has gotten quite a bad connotation in "modern" games is because most of the excitement has been taken out of it. It's either a form of gambling, a money sink, or an alternative way of getting items that can be gotten somewhere else. When I picture blacksmithing, I think of the heat of the forge, the red hot iron on the anvil, the resounding ring of the hammer as it strikes, sparks flying everywhere. No game can quite capture this, so it there another way of making it exciting?
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First update to leave me disappointed. There's been a lot of discussion regarding what 'crafting' system, if any, would be good to see in PE, and MMO/Diablo3 style crafting CERTAINLY was not one of them.
I'd much prefer to see IE style crafting (mainly BG2), where it's limited to certain legendary items, and you need the help of a master blacksmith to put the pieces together. This was fine because I could find for example the hilt and pommel jewel of the equalizer, and that would be exciting,something to look forward to, as opposed to finding 5 pieces of iron and knowing I can make my 3rd sword once in get back to town...
Also, having a skill that does nothing but reduce the cost of something (crafting/durability in this case), has never added to the gaming experience of any single player game, unless it had an amazingly complex bartering system. Durability is a great concept for adding an abstract form of realism to the game, but I have never played a game where it did something good (and where subsequent games didn't do away with it).
I'd write a longer reply, citing examples and linking to old discussions here on the forum, but I'm on my phone and going to work
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Welcome back!
Josh's lore posts get me all tingly. Lore update soon?
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Do paladin auras stack? To clarify, in a 6 paladin party, can I have 6 different auras active and receive 6 separate buffs for each party member?
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Yeah :D I've been so waiting for someone to post something like that quote below, so I could reply: 24/192 can even be considered *harmful*: at best it's no quality gain, at worst, it decreases audible quality. Simple physical reasons. Read http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Interesting! Thanks for linking the article.
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320kbps mp3 for everything, nigh lossless to human ears. I think that about covers it. I'd be more than willing to download a bit extra for that.
I highly doubt they'll use MP3 compression, it's a very outdated format that's only surviving because it's become ubiquitous. If they're going with lossy compression I hope they'll use something else, possibly OGG Vorbis.
I'd also like to see a losslessly compressed 192/24 audio pack if there's an easy/cheap way of distributing it
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Can't wait for Computex to start, some early 4k announcements are starting to leak out. 4k monitors to be available before the end of June, it seems
. That's just about timing the release of Haswell, which will prompt new motherboards with DisplayPort/HDMI that can output a 4k signal. Sweet.http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/31/asus-unveils-31-5-inch-4k-monitor-ahead-of-computex/
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Ironically graphics-unintensive games like Project: Eternity would be a great showcase for 4K, since being largely Pre-Rendered and all they wouldn't require that much power and would likely even run on the aforementioned Intel chipsets fine and realistically I'm not counting on it coming out before 2015 anyway.
This is the very reason I started the whole thread about proper high DPI support for PE textures! It'd be an amazing showcase, and would attract quite a bit of attention as such. If you've ever looked at high resolution images on a retina MBP beside the same image displayed on a "regular" laptop screen, you get an idea of just how good the game could look, without requiring insane hardware configurations.
Anyway, we're well beyond the stage where it may have made sense to consider it for the game, but given enough popularity, maybe we'll see an ultra-high texture set released at some point in the future. Post-release
. Maybe they could count the man-hours required and kickstart it 
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I completely agree with what you say, if I'm looking at the way current gen games are scaled it won't make sense at all to play anything at a native 4k resolution on a small-ish screen, but future gen games will more than likely have options to optimize for it. Even PE does, to some extent, with it's (assumed) scale-able UI and dual area renders.
HD 4000 kind of plays some recent 3D games (not Crysis, CoD, or BF, think DOTA, LOL, D3...) in 4k resolution and it's *almost* playable (~15-25 FPS kind of thing, with bad drops). Tested with dual 1440p monitors, which is pretty close to the pixel count of a 4k screen. HD 5000 performance shown so far looks quite promising compared to that
. HD 4000 plays full bitrate (30Mbps) 4k video like a charm, too. No, HD 5000 is not for hardcore gamers, but if you like to play a game now and then and don't care about the highest settings you'll be able to play most games, probably even at 4k, though doing so doesn't make much sense with current gen games (and their UI).Low quality textures on a higher pixel density screen would look much better than playing with higher quality textures at a lowered, non-native resolution. This can easily be proven by creating JPGs at various compression levels and display them upscaled or 1:1 pixels. A highly compressed JPG at 1:1 will look much better, the PPI density more than makes up for the artifacts created (this is a big thing in web design at the moment, since a low quality, but hugely sized JPG, can actually be smaller in file size and still look better on Hi-PPI screens).
It's all speculation, and both the low-ppi and hi-ppi markets will co-exist for quite some time, but I firmly believe the move towards hi-ppi will be relatively fast.
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"no one", well, at the moment, of course not. They barely exist yet. I'm talking about the future, the very near future (next 3 years or so). If you want to believe that low PPI screens will remain the norm for the next few years, you're entitled to. From where I'm sitting, there's far too much that points toward an unprecedentedly rapid adoption of Hi-PPI screens across all sectors. Lower res screens will certainly remain the norm until popular software properly supports Hi-PPI screens, which is why I was arguing for support in Project Eternity.
I'm not going to keep arguing for rendering PE in higher resolutions than they're currently doing - they're high res enough to be decently playable on 4k 15" screens (due this fall).
A few days after Samsung showed their prototype 13" 4k display, this laptop was announced: http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/23/4357696/hp-envy-pavilion-laptops-3200-1800-touchsmart-ultrabook-display-2013 this is practically my dream monitor, but I wouldn't dream of buying it until Windows/Ubuntu has proper Hi-DPI modes. I doubt sales for it will be very high, but that's not an indication of that the market is not going to eventually adopt Hi-DPI screens.
I agree that people aren't going to be hardcore gaming on such screens... yet. Haswell integrated GPUs (Intel HD 5000) are high performing enough to play modern 3D games at low settings on a 4k screen, though. Haswell is released in late June, IIRC. When PE is released, HD 6000 will be just around the corner. It's just up to the games to provide UI/texture scaling options for such high res screens to not make the games unplayable.
Windows 8 looks laughably ridiculous on a 13" 4k screen (there are photos circling around), but that's only until Microsoft releases full Hi-DPI support (like the 'retina' version of OSX, with all UI graphics rendered at 2x the size, similarly to how PE has its graphics rendered at 2 different sizes).
I personally believe 2560x1440 among gamers will be skipped in favor of 4k 24"/27" screens. There's simply no real market for a 1440p screen, and no specific content for them. The only reason 27" screens currently have that resolution is because it keeps the operating system usable at that particular PPI. The term 4k, or UHD, will be marketed to death by every major TV/Media manufacturer in the world over the next few years. There will be a larger interest among the general public, and easier to offset costs of creating new manufacturing lines for 4k than 1440p.
My guess is that over the next few years 1080p will become pretty much standard for 13" screens (once software supports it), with 4k for 15" and above.
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Will there be alternate art versions of monsters that appear in groups? If I encounter a roving band of 5 goblins, will they all use the exact same model?
I know this can be incredibly time consuming, but it'd be nice to see some slight variety (a bald one, a grey haired one, one with long sleeves, one with short...)
Happy to see the return of classic monsters. I hope they, too, will have Glanfathan names in addition to their plain English ones! If the cean gula is a type of Banshee, I wouldn't mind seeing it called so in plain English, in addition to the Glanfathan name. -
I didn't play Pools of Radiance, so I'm not going to comment on the game, but I would like to say that I really liked the feeling of being my own master in Baldur's Gate II. There was never that one person I had to attend to, no set of required errands needing completion, in order to reach the end of the game.
During the game people would want both good and bad things from me, but it was always my own choice which direction to take, if any.
Through the entirety of Baldur's Gate (II) you are a victim of circumstance, but at no point are you not your own master (unless you choose to join, say, the thieves guild and get sent on missions). Most of the missions, including the main quest, are pursued by your own free will (arguably).
What we've heard so far of the story in PE, it seems we will be a victim of circumstance again. Bodes well!
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It certainly had some difficulty spikes, but generally never in the direct path of the quests, as far as I can recall. Either way, I also like it when there are sudden spikes that can't be overcome without particular skill or item combinations only attainable in the later game.In BG2, if you kept doing Athkatla quests, they would become quite trivial towards the end due to the party being far more experienced and having attained more loot. This was mitigated to some degree by the fact that the best gear in the game wasn't that much better than what you find right at the start (this is certainly not a bad thing). Either way, due to the majority of quests being available from the starting area, they all had to have a fairly similar difficulty level. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, and it was nice that the difficulty level throughout BG2 was relatively fairly flat, since that allowed the PC's strength to remain fairly flat. Challenges were made more trivial due to your own actual experience playing of the game, and less so by the gathered experience points of your characters.
They didn't all have a similar difficulty level, though; there were certainly quests that were incredibly hard, if not impossible, to complete if you just wandered in and tried to take them on before gaining a couple of levels and improving your equipment. Which, speaking of things that make the world feel more real, I loved.
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I'm finding it quite a limitation in my current play through of BG2, but I guess I should just hurry up and get to their matters quickerThe companion quest time limits worked well enough in BG2 and I liked them there, they were well highlighted by repeated warnings and gave a comfortable amount of days wriggle room to the protagonist, made you think about who you'd pick up and when among the companions. Gave the gathering of your party and the quests undertaken a nice air of strategy, so that your wandering was a bit less aimless. That said could a cunning player with a silver tongue extend that period of waiting, through persuasion of the companion and perhaps a gift of money or equipment?
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I think BG2 actually had quest timers, where certain party members would leave your party if you didn't attend to their matters? Or maybe they just threatened to do so. I can't remember.I don't know. An IE- type game centered around quest timers (in- game time, of course) does not sound so interesting, but it could be added here and there for realism's sake.
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I didn't intend for the idea to sound like a limitation, but rather to function similarly to how you proceeded to describe it in the rest of your post, different "types" of quests could be as simple as:
why would you arbitrarily restrict that? I'd rather have all quests be diverse in nature. And I'd be cool with having challenging quests in either city.Just a though: I'd love if the second quest hub/city, assuming it shows up later in the game, would introduce new types of challenges/quests, rather than more difficult ones.They'd be more difficult because of being different, rather than being harder due to more enemies with more hitpoints and higher damage.
It might be hard to pull off, and I can't think of any examples right off the bat.
(IE,
Early chapters, you join organisations and learn about the world. after doing some you gain some gear and a better position in these factions, you've become comfortable with the area you're in.
Mid chapters, you've gained standing in the factions you work for and have gained some renown, meaning others contact you for more delicate assignments, some take you outside of the city you know.
The intention behind the idea was to allow the game to refresh itself once the PC is somewhere around halfway through (reaching city #2, assuming it will act as a "second tier" quest hub). I wasn't intending it to sound like Chapter 1 will be fetch quests only, and Chapter 2 will be limited to rescue quests. Rather something similar to what you described, that you reach a new stage within a quest line, one in which you will have to tackle presented problems in a new way.
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Quest timers = big no no.
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LOL, Durability has been removed
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by mstark
First of all, ask yourself this: do I trust the Obsidian development team?
If the answer to this is no, then the issue is larger than the mere removal of durability, and if you can build a compelling argument around it, that might make for a very interesting discussion.
If the answer is yes, then please consider that the team read both the for and against arguments provided in many locations on the forum. They, likely intentionally, stayed quiet for a few days, reading replies, discussed internally, and after evaluating with the team came to the conclusion that there might be even better ways to handle game economy than durability. We don't know the reasons for why they came to this conclusion, I would say it's probably because in order to implement durability well, as many pointed out, it needs to have a major gameplay impact, and that might be too time consuming design-wise. In the end, that time could be spent designing something more enjoyable for us players. But who am I to say.