Ninjamestari

I advocate KISS because it usually works, KISS is not an authority, just a rule of thumb you want to keep in mind at all times. But as you know it doesn't really lead to simplicity; a chaotic code is a mess because it is complicated. What I mean with simplicity is that the core system, the core systems should be simple. Take math for example; it's the simplest system there is on the planet. Everything hinges on the assumption that 1+1=2, and everything beyond that are merely implications of that core assumption. Mana system is like that; the core principle is simple, yet there is an enormous amount of depth to be achieved when you start building around it. It doesn't really matter what external goals you have for your system; you can tweak a mana system to achieve that, and you can easily use mana system in tandem with other factors. In gaming, mana has the advantage of translating easily to other variables, you can calculate the value of mana in terms of health and damage for example, you can tweak the experience by adjusting values without tampering with the core mechanics at all. Want a meaningful resource management? Have no mana regeneration. Have an even more punishing resource management? Have negative mana regeneration and thus force the player to consume potions prior to encounters. Mana can easily be viewed as a substance that can easily be transfered from one object to another, from one character to another, from one character to an external object like a mana-battery item, from external objects such as mana fountains (which need not be limitless!) to the character, etcetera etcetera. Hell, you could even make a game where mana could act as a currency of its own if you want. Due to it's simplicity, mana system is extremely flexible, and there are countless concepts that can be incredibly easily implemented with mana as a base. If you want to add complexity, there can even be several types of mana in play at once, although I wouldn't do that without a good reason. One such reason could be that maybe arcane mana and divine mana are separate; you wouldn't even have to call divine mana mana, you might call it faith or divine favor, and since both are numeric values you can have mathematical relationships between the two easily. Perhaps divine favor is more powerful than pure mana, and can be used to cast both divine AND arcane spells, while normal mana is restricted to the latter. Or you could dictate that you can use any form of mana to cast any spell, but the sort of mana you use dictates a set of side effects; you could have some "evil chaos mana" that is more readily available but drains a little bit of your soul away every time you use it; you could track this with a debuff that grows stronger as the "evil-mana spent" - variable increases; converting a healing spell to heal this 'spiritual damage' is as simple as writing a flag for it. Then there's the obvious opportunity for 'blood-magic' that in one way or another converts health points into mana. The reason you don't see the limitless potential of mana systems is because a) you haven't given it nearly as insanely unhealthy amount of thought as I have and b) I don't think any game has ever truly taken advantage of the incredible potential within the idea. And as far as a sense of mystery goes, arbitrary feeling systems such as spell slots that don't really feel like they represent anything real in the context of the world kill that mystery far worse than mana, as with mana you can imagine it as an energy you use to cast spells. It's incredibly intuitive, and if you build enough depth around your mana system, then believe me, the mystery can be there. Just imagine the kinds of cool implications you could have for a concept like a biawac; if it attacks your soul, it could first drain your mana, and only after having drained your mana it could turn to draining your health. Or there could be a hazard / spell that burns mana, not only destroys it but causes it to ignite, dealing damage equal to the amount of mana they burn. WarCraft III used this concept and I have to say I LOVE it, along with concepts like creatures that feed on mana etc etc etc. Also having mana doesn't exclude having other resources when applicable as well. Let's say most spellcasters use mana (Cipher, Druid, Mage), but priests use Divine Favor instead. It functions like mana, but cannot be influenced through ordinary mana drains and mana burns; a priest doesn't have to use natural flows of magical currents, as their spells are powered by the gods they worship, but as another consequence they are unable to benefit from mana potions for example. The examples of cool things you can do with mana are *limitless*, and you can tailor a system to fill every single need. Oh, and mana doesn't have to be a property of the character either; maybe you could have a spell casting process where first you need to connect to a power source through an incantation; let's say mana is intrinsic to the natural world, and you can start draining the magical energies of your environment in order to cast your spells, or you might be able to carry magical substances to compensate if you run into an area with no natural sources of mana. This could be combined with the whole different mana types and side effects thing: let's say you're in some mad wizards tower. The wizard has created a portal to a hell-dimension, which would grant you a virtually infinite font of mana for the encounter, but it is of the "evil-chaos"-kind of mana that has side effects, so you can choose whether or not you wish to draw upon the portal or try to make do with what little other means of mustering mana are available for you at the moment. Ok, I'll shut up now before this turns into a damn novel. I hope I've managed to make my point though; a mana system can do *anything*. It's simplicity gives it versatility and flexibility, and that versatility and flexibility can be used to build *depth* around the system. EDIT: oh, and a spell slot system is already just a badly made mana system, you just have these arbitrary 1st - level mana points, 2nd - level mana points, 3rd - level mana points etcetera etcetera, and the system is never used beyond the basic function of restricting the amount of times you can cast spells. A proper mana system can do so much more.

It gets old after you've experienced enough times. If you've never experienced instant attraction, then it can be quite intense and definitely worth experiencing. The problem when it comes to a fictional character though is that it is quite difficult to actually get that reaction out of the player. Giving the player a cheesy response-option to a cheesy "Damn, I just saw you and am already in love" doesn't usually generate player attraction. Quite the opposite really; try to remember Ashley from ME1, and how they tried to hammer in attraction from the very first encounter while failing utterly in their attempts at subtlety. I'm not going to even talk about Liara. Attraction doesn't form naturally if you try too hard to force it, which is why a gradual relationship is so much easier to do properly in a game. Not to mention that a gradually growing more deeper affection is so much more satisfying, both in gaming and in real life. When you get enough instant gratification, it starts to feel disgusting.

Having a beard doesn't hurt though, yes? ^^ The point is an important one though, as so many people seem to get the whole "reduction to core components" - idea so very wrong. It is important to understand that simple fetch - deliver - loot - kill - quests are the lowest of the available standards, and that we not only can but absolutely should demand more than that. Much more.

Whadabout cursed soulbound items themselves? They'll initially have their full strength but will also have negative effects to be removed by usage/other methods, instead of gaining/upgrading the positive effects at all levels. Or maybe a combination of power progression and the weakening of the curse? OR, maybe even ways to utilize the actual curse; for example, a powerful enough curse could be reasoned to 'leave no room' for other curses, so in essence a powerful cursed item could protect the wearer from other curses. Or a similar approach some settings take to vampirism; it is a curse, but it also has benefits. Turning your curse into a blessing is a powerful theme for story-telling as well.

I don't care how lame the excuse is. The less PoE1 will affect PoE2, the better in my book. I don't want to be compelled to play PoE1 again just so I can get everything out of Deadfire. I've noticed how today it seems to be trendy to follow the Bioware model of branching progressions carrying over from one game to the other, but that is simply promoting the series at the expense of the individual games. The worst part of ME2 is actually the connection it has with ME1 mechanically; you have no idea how many times I've simply decided not to play ME2 again because that would mean I'd also have to play ME1 again. I say a strong no to this practice in general, for a game with an already niche audience, making the threshold of playing, and by extension buying, the game even higher than it is already is a profoundly bad idea.

or kill something. I actually disagree with that. Those are just some of the parts you can use to construct a proper quest. Dry french fries alone do not a meal make.

Then faith +1. Oh wait, that came out wrong

Ok, now I understand where all the bull**** crap on the other forums here comes from; you all congregate here in order to generate poison and bull****. Damn I wish I hadn't opened this thread, I was actually beginning to regain my faith in humanity.

It's a zero sum game because if the item on the merchant isn't the relative *best* item of that type for that part of the game, it won't get bought, and if it is and gold is plentiful, it will be. Why would you buy incredibly expensive items if you can get a better one from somewhere else? This is where the limited gold comes in handy; you can't simply buy all the best stuff, you need to make choices on which items you buy and which slots you'll depend on drops to fill. So: there are only so many inventory slots to fill, and the ones you can fill with drops, you won't fill with vendor items, and the ones you fill with vendor items will prevent you from fully enjoying their weaker drop-based counterparts. Hence, a zero sum game between vendors and drops. The point is, gold becoming so abundant that you'll be able to afford everything isn't something that just happens automatically. Dragon Age Origins for example had a very limited supply of gold and you would never be able to get everything you wanted, considering that there were those 'mandatory' skill and stat books and back-bag extensions that already devoured a huge chunk of your treasure. Unless you exploited that double-sell glitch of course. That glitch was way too easy to do for my liking, and I found myself struggling not to use it on every single play-through.

It always bothered me in Bioware games how quickly the relationships progressed. They usually move from "hi, who might you be?" to "let's go make kissy-faces" in less than a couple dozen lines of dialogue. It always made the relationships feel forced, shallow and cheap. Then again, their decisions for making romances are made in the faceless-men with suitcases department, so it isn't that surprising. So hell yeah for a more natural and gradually developing relationship. If the game manages to make me care about a character, *then* it has my blessing on introducing the possibility for a romance, not before. Too bad about Pallegina though, she was such a promising character, had all the right little nuances, but I don't think I can ever unsee that Joshugina picture. Seriously people, have some shame, I don't think that character will ever recover from that xD

What I *didn't* like in DA:O is how you had to manually go to the codex and try to find those lore books. A simple Book-Cover art pop-up with the text when acquiring the entries would've been neat. Agreed entirely, it was frustrating It's funny how a feature in a game can be an example of 'how to' and 'how not to' at the same time ^^

At least complexity is interesting. Just compare Baldurs Gate to Diablo. Neither of those games is really complex though. There is a fundamental difference between "rich" and "complex". Complex systems are usually quite shallow. Take for example just about any MMO and their rotation based damage spells: A needlessly complicated system that still doesn't manage to accomplish anything beyond the very basic task of dealing damage. Complexity isn't the thing you're looking for, it's depth you want, and making a simple system with loads of depth is the holy grail. Having simple tools that you use to solve complicated problems is far more satisfying than having complicated tools for a simple problem. The problem with complicated systems is that they're highly restrictive; the complexity restricts player actions rather than enables it, and as such the layers of problems the designer can introduce in a given encounter are more limited. The more specific requirements an ability has before it can be used effectively, the less this ability is used and the less likely it is that players find the ability useful. Same goes with a resource system; if your resource management is simple and doesn't require much thought and management on the part of the player, it frees the players mind to tackle the problems presented by the encounter and thus frees the designer to design more layered encounters.

What I *didn't* like in DA:O is how you had to manually go to the codex and try to find those lore books. A simple Book-Cover art pop-up with the text when acquiring the entries would've been neat.

Precisely the reason I want to get upkeep spells :D EDIT: btw, you've got me intrigued on that Shadowrun game. I noticed there are several games in the series; which one would you recommend as a starting point?

Also they are far more stupid. Untrue; a solution can be simultaneously simple and deep. That is called eloquence. Overly complex solutions lack this sadly underappreciated quality. It is the fool that mistakes complexity for wisdom.

Dragon age origins had it's flaws, but it did many things right as well. The merchant inventories are a prime example. By far, many of the most powerful items were found in merchant inventories; this gave gold value. I remember KotOR being rather similar on this, especially the PC version that added those Yavin space-station items (although they arguably broke the game a little bit due to being way too powerful, and the super merchant that paid about 2.5 times the amount of money other merchants were willing to dish out for any items you sold him kinda broke the economy too)

The problem with balancing spell slots is really tied to the whole spell level concept. In a mana system, you don't need to create spells that are fundamentally more powerful than others, because they can freely scale with level and stats without worrying about stepping beyond their spell-level constraints. Same applies to spell-burns and spell-theft; you need to specify which level it is that the spell slots are stolen from, which not only adds potential balancing issues but also feels kinda arbitrary. Mana system or equivalent has the benefit of staying within one power-range of spells, with 9 spell levels you effectively have 9 systems to balance out, and after that you need to take into consideration how those levels relate to each other in terms of power. Having a one pool to draw power from is much easier to manage both from design standpoint and a player standpoint than having 9 pools. This also helps define the power level of upkeep spells, *and* the amount of upkeep spells there are. You don't need to have weird stacking rules defining how multiple versions of effectively the same spell interact together. I'm sure you've heard of K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid. Simple designs are far more flexible than complex ones, and thus can be used to allow for *way* more potential approaches for both the player and the designer. I like the way a mana system easily bends to different forms and functions, while the more rigid spell slot system will often break rather than bend when you try to mold it. Damn I really can't shut up about the mana system, can I. The whole point was upkeep spells, and how they remove the hassle of pre-buffing while still allowing for that "arcane-warrior" - style approach where you keep certain buffs on you at all times to compensate for your weaker physique. Having to cast those buffs at the start of combat kinda butchers that game-play style, as if your character serves an offensive role, a crowd control spell or a debuff is almost always a better choice than a buff. Except for priests who really don't have that many good debuffs, but that just makes for a binary choice of absolutely having to have a priest in your party if you want any reasonable buffing to occur.

Why does that remind me of those grinning skeletons on that amazon planet in futurama? :D

Bah, **** elves and their pointy ears. Gimme a DWARF!

Not really, why would you use CC spell effects that will just eat away from the experience you get from getting beaten up? With a proper build and healing spells you were completely immortal anyway, and that extra xp would just get you that much more punching power. The more you used CC the more you would lag behind in levels.

Yeah, though a Mana system is easier to balance on a per-encounter basis, as it is so much simpler than dealing with multiple levels of spell-slots. (mana system also allows for neat spell concepts like mana-drains and mana-burns). Spell slots as they are tend to be so numerous that pre-buffing and an upkeep spell would essentially be the same thing. Unless you specify that certain spells have upkeep costs of more than one spell slot. Hmm, that just might work. I think it would be an eloquent solution to the whole thing; you can have certain buffs ready, but it severely restricts what you can cast in combat. Would also work insanely well for caster/fighter combos. I really liked playing Arcane Warriors in DA:O, despite them being incredibly over powered. Something about the concept just appeals to me.

Don't need mana for this - upkeep could simply limit your number of spells per rest / per encounter. SHHHH! not so loud, everyone will hear. I want to get a mana system

I'm not really convinced that having sex is a good idea in the first place. It tends to cheapen the whole 'romance' thing. Also, it just might remind people of some recent BioWare titles and cause violent projectile vomiting.

Hah, I remember using the innkeeper in the first village as my own personal junkyard to avoid this issue ^^

.... .... .... That was just EVIL! EDIT: and now I saw the pic. **** my stomach hurts xD