Ninjamestari

You started that. Now try your own medicine. Actually I didn't. If you don't even have the decency to put in the effort to know what the hell people are talking about, then you might as well do everyone the favor of staying silent. I never said *anything* to you, you haven't contributed *anything* to this discussion besides this butt-hurt bull****.

This. If a person can't manage the common decency to not get involved in discussions just to bash their opponents on a personal level, then it's better for them to utilize the ignore feature and spare us all this bull****. They don't see my comments and I don't have to respond to their idiotic and disrespectful attempts at wit, and the actual discussion can continue unhindered. Everyone wins. I'm not here to please anyone, I'm here to discuss game mechanics, if someone cannot appreciate that, then they can go **** themselves for all I care; I'm not going to treat disrespectful people with kid gloves.

Noone likes you. Did you know that? Noone really knows what you wanted to achieve with your "system". Did you know that too? Your "system" is crap. You certainly didn't know that. I don't tolerate bull****, that's why people who are full of it never like me. It's nice how you can't be bothered to actually think about the subject matter and try to understand the issue, but you're so incredibly ready to jump at every chance you get at being an ****. I understand that you're used to living in an echo-chamber of sycophants too busy kissing each other's asses to ever produce an honest thought, but you could at least make an effort not to be so lowly a character. And there are plenty of people who *do* understand what I want to achieve, you know, people who have actually *read* what I've written, and those who actually *do* agree with me, who are trying to achieve the very same thing. Your lack of understanding is the result of your own attitude problem and lack of effort, and you hate me because I have forced that very unflattering truth about your personality to the surface. Your kind gravitates towards echo-chambers which is why you never learn anything and get threatened when confronted with opposing viewpoints. This is also why your opinions are essentially worthless to others. There are a lot of things about PoE I do like, that's why it bothers me so to see an otherwise excellent game ruined by a few idiotic design decisions. This is an old issue, a small but incredibly impactful part of the game that many people dislike immensely. I'm not here to mindlessly praise Obsidian like an idiot, I'm here because I'm interested in ideas that could improve the game, and that means discussing about things I don't like so much. And if you think that minor tweaks can solve the issues then by all means, share your ideas with the class: those ideas are the reason this thread exists, not this bull**** spewed by infantile people getting defensive because their favorite game gets criticism.

The current system is exactly what you propose to "change". Go back and read the discussion, I've absolutely no desire to repeat what has been said a dozen times over just because you decided that now is an appropriate time to act like an idiot.

It may seem like a little thing but once these elements start to become very simplistic it starts to make the game feel arcadish which destroys immersion. everything needs at least some level of depth to it. Now this is an important point: everything needs at least some level of real depth, the illusion of depth that is offered by so many games these days doesn't qualify. Many people mistake complexity for depth, but in order to really have depth you need multiple layers of game-play. A game economy that doesn't progress beyond "sell stuff to get money and use money to buy stuff" doesn't have real depth, neither does a system where money isn't scarce, as if you just have enough money to buy everything then things devolve even further into "click on the item you want and it'll be added to your inventory". Junk items that only exist to be sold at a vendor don't add depth; items that serve a purpose on their own but can still be sold to a vendor do. So a strong no for pure junk items from me, create real depth instead and have stuff be useful. Looting an avvar toy soldier or the right half of a lover's know does *not* enhance immersion, and I'm glad that junk items of that level were mostly absent from PoE.

If some snowflake feels like my comments are personal insults to them then that is their own personal shame to bear.

Now that has been abundantly clear from the very beginning.

Realistically speaking, I doubt any sensible adventuring party would carry around junk at all. Tiring yourself out by carrying junk is a great way to get killed in a setting where bandits and other on the road dangers are commonplace. Thus I think you're right, removing the junk items completely might end up improving the overall experience. I think overall PoE has way too much loot, and thus the feeling of getting loot has been inflated quite badly. Give the occasional potion, a few coins here and there and something else that is actually useful as loot, with the rare magical weapon or piece of armor every now and then, and I think that would be better than having floods of junk that doesn't serve any purpose beyond getting sold to an innkeeper.

Actually the graph you posted is simply a depiction of the current system. I really don't understand what you wished to accomplish with it.

If they go with the literal bastard route then I see no reason why this wouldn't work. You can just imagine a scene of someone hunting them staring intently at the few rings he has managed to capture, obsessing over his task of hunting down the bastards.

I don't think the special Black Isle Bastard Item has to necessarily be a unique one. What if they all carried a Black Bastard Ring that would have some certain magical property the crew finds especially useful in their tactics, like giving them a connection to their ship or minor spell protection. Or maybe minor fire protection, if the Bastards are fond of setting their victims' ships and huts on fire, so the ring could protect them while they go looting. Magic rings made of Obsidian could be both symbolic as signifying the wearer as part of the group and practical tool for some wider tactic the Bastards are fond of using. I'd even suggest limited invisibility if that isn't too powerful. Or perhaps water breathing, something that allows them to visit an underwater hideout. Or they could just act as a magical key when activating a particular portal. EDIT: the ring could provide some limited version of true sight that would allow the Bastards to leave hidden messages to eachother. This might work better with an amulet, say there's a large obsidian-gem in the middle of the amulet that emits a faint light that reveals these hidden messages, while also having an obsidian tip that would allow drawing and writing said hidden messages. EDIT EDIT: If going with the rings, there could be a particularly dedicated White Coast Warden hunting down the crew who might already have a few of those rings as trophies. Maybe he has made them into a necklace, letting let's say four black rings hang around his neck openly, signifying the crew members he has managed to kill so far.

I think you may have misspelled Iselmyr there ^^

Sorry, not possible in Deadfire because of likelihood of confusion. All jokes aside, I like this approach as well. I prefer there to be some fluff to it though, like in Tyranny. I can't believe you just made a joke about junk and then linked a ship ^^

You mean besides everything that has already been mentioned a few dozen times?

One thing that could improve all the attributes would be to get rid of the whole Fortitude - Reflex - Will - Defence scheme and instead just have certain abilities introduce attribute checks. The general guidelines could be: Strength - used in checks against knockback and knockdown effects and such Constitution - used in checks against poisons and diseases Dexterity - used when dodging attacks Perception - used to measure reflexes, IE to check if you notice something early enough to attempt a dodge roll Intelligence - used to combat illusions Resolve - used to defend against direct mental attacks, such as fear, sleep and charm. Perception is still the problem child, I'd find a replacement for it to represent that spiritual strength stuff. It's too easy to make perception affect absolutely everything. Maybe wits to represent the ability to think quick on your feet and split second decision-making, or something like that EDIT: the point is, there's no need to over-simplify the defensive rolls and not to include several at once when the computer is handling the dice. For example, let's say your character is being strangled; if your strength isn't enough to resist the force applied against your throat, then constitution could determine the amount of time you can go on without oxygen before passing out, or something like that.

Maybe not, but the way they presented the whole stat system when it was made was all about your soul determining your stats. Also, having the two together is just moronic, as it kills the 'feeble but powerful' archetype so many of us are so fond of. It doesn't matter how you twist the issue, the end result is, always has been and always will be that the way the Might stat works is detrimental to the game as a whole, and the people who defend it tend to do so out of some misguided sense of loyalty rather than any insight on the supposed benefits of the system. I have never ever heard anyone complain that STR should also represent spiritual power in D&D, and the whole notion is just damn ludicrous. Physical strength is a fundamental part of what makes a person who they are, and not having a stat to represent it properly is simply a bad idea.

1) Yes. Probably several, and they're being discussed in several threads that are not about stats. The current stats thread is quite a bit younger than the discussion on stats on this one. 2) No they don't, as your body in this world doesn't have a bearing on the strength of your muscles, clearly physics no longer function. The moment you declare that strength is the property of ones soul and not ones body, you abandon natural physics quite completely. Worse, physical strength doesn't even appear to exist in this world, and since the story and the setting do not reflect on the implications of that a single moment tells that this bit of 'lore' was made for the singular reason of justifying the ridiculous stat-system, not the other way around. 3) The "strong souls are rare" and "souls get reborn weaker" is an interesting story-concept, but has absolutely nothing to do with the character stats.

This. He does that a lot.

Strength is a representation of the character's muscle strength. The way might works now is that it just represents a game mechanic (damage), not a trait of your character. If that is unnecessarily contrived to a theoretical individual then might I suggest that said individual would lack the mental capacity to effectively play a game about different characters and complicated tactical combat in the first place. What you're implying with that statement is that you're stupid as ****, which I have a hard time believing due to you playing a game that actually requires a fair amount of intellect to enjoy, and thus I must conclude that this statement is not completely honest.

I don't think direct relationship would be that good; after all, knockdown is easier to accomplish if you understand Newtonian physics, but understanding Einsteins theories don't really provide an additional benefit to that.

Have you played Dragon Age: Origins? That game messed up a lot of things, but game economy was actually pretty well balanced. You could never truly become rich, no matter the effort you put into because the gold that was available to you was limited. Scarcity is what gives anything value, not mere purchasing power. In fact, in reality, purchasing power is the result of scarcity; If everyone had a billion dollars, then there wouldn't be any real incentive for someone to sell you a taco for a couple of bucks now would there? This is more difficult to measure in a single player game, but the general idea is that you never want your player to be able to afford everything, this will force them to make choices and as we all know, meaningful choices are what make a game interesting.

The bigger problem is that they tend to balance each other out, so unless you exclusively dump either offensive or defensive stats, they will have little impact on the overall performance. They affect the same things too much. Hell, I'd go so far as having MIG be the stat for melee damage and accuracy, DEX could affect deflection and ranged accuracy, CON does HP, remover PER completely and replace with Willpower to act as the power stat for spells and magic, INT should be the versatility stat (could be renamed Wits), meaning more skillpoints, unlock talents, increased AoE, RES could then handle improving your passive abilities and increasing the duration of both your temporary buffs and debuffs. Fortitude saves would be handled by MIG and CON, Reflex by DEX and WIT, and Will by WP and RES. EDIT: That way all the stats would have definite roles and there would be minimal overlap, and you couldn't really compensate the loss of one attribute by the increase of another.

Then might I be so bold as to suggest that both sides are currently (at least here anyway) wrong. A more D&D style approach to what the stats represent allows for everything the defendants claim they want, silly builds aren't down to the 'system', they are down to the details of class and ability mechanics. There are two groups of people; the ones that can see the disconnect caused by the whole soul-stat-system and the ones that can't. Fixing the issue and separating the stats into physical and mental ones would fix that for the first group, but it wouldn't take anything away from the second group. Everyone could be a bunch of happy pandas.

It has an *illusion* of sense, until you realize that the world they created is actually aiming for high realism in the renaissance setting. That's one reason this soul-based stats stick out like a sore thumb. For example, why would body size matter for a character's might, and thus his ability to perform feats of strength? If Might if the property of the soul and not the body, then an Ogre shouldn't necessarily be any stronger than an orlan with a strong soul, which would mean that ogres should've effectively gone extinct long ago due to not having any real benefits for their larger bodies. If the metaphysical reality is more important than the physical reality, why do people even bother with technology? The soul-stat-system makes zero sense in the context of the world they created and it breaks the immersion, it doesn't add to it.

No it doesn't, because the two aren't mutually exclusive. You can create a game that has well specified mechanics for the different kinds of characters people want to create; this benefits both groups since strongly specified mechanics firmly rooted in reality and fantasy rather than being there for convenient gearing and easy stat distribution will not only make the game more interesting, but it will provide a stronger context for those 'silly' builds people are so fond of and why they're weaker in some aspect and useful in certain other ways. Like has been said, there already are lower difficulty options for those interested purely on the make-believe, let game-mechanics have some actual meaning for the rest of us.