Ninjamestari

I dunno, trying to maximize the amount of happiness that results from your actions sure sounds like a workable practical definition of "good" to me, but I guess it doesn't really count unless you also make your own life miserable in the process? "Good" doesn't have to be stupid. Someone who isn't willing to make the sacrifice and still wants to be considered virtuous would say that, yes. By your definition, someone who sees the suffering of people infected with a deadly illness, rushes in to help them to the best of his ability, then gets infected and promptly dies in a few months is a "better" person than someone who actually puts in the time and effort to devise an effective way to help those people, invents a cure, and saves countless lives without getting himself killed in the process. If your goal is to explicitly portray good as stupid and ultimately self-destructive, I guess that can work as an artistic statement, but otherwise it's no less cartoonish than the currently prevalent portrayal of evil as "someone who is rude to people and occasionally kicks a puppy for no good reason". Don't put words in my mouth. If you're genuinely interested in the topic then at least discuss it honestly and with respect.

First, I disagree that tedium is necessary for meaningful resource management. There just needs to be more meaningful opportunities to spend resources than what you have available at any given point in time. Tedium is certainly one way to limit the available resources, but so is cutting off any way to replenish them during a fixed amount of time, like during the missions in shadowrun. Second, I don't see how the fatigue induced by traveling is a real price. Assuming that the fatigue only depends on the travel distance, I would always end up with the same fatigue at the beginning of a dungeon. So either I have to immediately rest at any new area, or it is not a real price to backtrack, since I'm just as good as I was the first time I entered. The only way I could see this as a penalty was when resting at any new area was mandatory due to fatigue and traveling through the map induced more fatigue than fighting the enemies on the way, which both seems very illogical and / or gamey. I agree on your assertion that you either make resting hardcore or mostly irrelevant. But thats exactly whats happening now: The role of resting is reduced in favor of encounter based abilities. You do realize that cutting off ways to replenish resources in some peoples minds would equate to Tedium? This is why I used it as a very broad umbrella term. There will always be consequences, and there will always be someone who finds those consequences tedious, no matter what way you choose to handle them. I'm glad you agree on the main point, and you're right that this is exactly what is happening now. I never said it shouldn't happen, because PoE was this weird middle-ground compromise that really implemented the problems of both worlds, and that it is necessary to move to one direction or another. The point was to illustrate the problems of vancian magic in a crpg environment, and that in order to have a meaningful resting mechanic, you really need to go all in with that, and half-measures will only cause more trouble than they're worth.

[citation needed]

It's difference in kind. Wizards pay for that ability to unload godly magic by being very limited in the less challenging encounters. I don't see why that is *necessarily* a bad thing, although with the way too easy resting in PoE it certainly was.

I thought this thread was about *crazy* ideas, I don't think surnames qualify ^^

It's still a ****ing idiotic statement. Meaningful tradeoffs are necessary to create meaningful resource management. "Player patience" is certainly a resource you could tap into and use as the basic currency for your meaningful tradeoffs, but that solution is suboptimal because it's fundamentally a meta-currency, disconnected from the closed internal economy of your resource management system. First of all, I don't really appreciate being called an idiot, and I REALLY don't appreciate you mocking an idea without even putting in the effort to read and understand it first. Second, player patience isn't a currency here, although you being poor on that regard certainly would explain your strong reaction. You can't work around that system with patience, you have to successfully manage your resources through multiple encounters, although you still require patience. Meaningful game-play ALWAYS requires patience from the gamer. If you want a game that doesn't stress your patience, then you're after mindless entertainment and not after a meaningful experience.

I dunno, trying to maximize the amount of happiness that results from your actions sure sounds like a workable practical definition of "good" to me, but I guess it doesn't really count unless you also make your own life miserable in the process? "Good" doesn't have to be stupid. Someone who isn't willing to make the sacrifice and still wants to be considered virtuous would say that, yes.

It was me who said that, you can cite that all you like.

Everything is about sex, except for sex, which is about power.

For how long will you be able to play a game that punishes you for everything you do just because? All that’d do is you either drop the game or stay away from optional content to minimize your frustration. And, IMO, it’s more of a caricature than anything. Basically, the same level of “adultness” as “let’s add sex here and kick a few puppies that’ll show ’em our game is for adults” is. Speaking of 10 golds, Dragon Age already did that once (at least I remember that one instance): NPC keeps asking for more. I remembered that alright, but I’m not sure it’d entertain me to encounter that again. You do realize that if you'd rather have mindless entertainment than a thought provoking learning experience, you're kinda wandered into the wrong niche group of gamers? A game that constantly rewards you for being naive is a naive game, and since most people here are adults and prefer a more mature approach, a certain amount of duplicitous **** that try to take advantage of you is to be expected. There are already a ton of games that shield the player from making bad decisions, and I'd rather have a game that does not. More to the topic, power should come from choices where it makes sense, not because of the morality of the choice. Devouring someones soul, it makes sense, would grant you power. The fact that it is an evil act is just a coincidence. If a player gains power it should never be because he did something "good" or something "bad". It should be something that makes sense in the context of the world. Sacrificing a part of your own soul to save another should come with permanent penalties, since you *are* sacrificing a part of your power to do so. Your reward is whatever you saved, and the price you pay is your personal power. The whole point of "good" is to make trades that benefit someone else on your expense, while the whole concept of "evil" revolves around trades that benefit you on someone else's expense. If the trade benefits both parties, then it is neither good nor evil.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. No one is trying to turn PoE into a survival-oriented roguelike, the purpose of this thought process is to explore the implications of certain design choices and the uncompromising division between a game that does have meaningful resource management and a game that does not, and why a game that belongs to one of those categories shouldn't aspire to lean more towards the other.

Not so. First, tedium is necessary to create meaningful resource management, which was the original goal. Second, resting at an inn isn't free, and traveling back from the inn to wherever you're adventuring causes fatigue, which lowers your stats to make sure that if you take this approach, there is a price to pay for it. The whole point I'm trying to illustrate is that you either go with a proper hardcore punishing system, or you forget about the whole thing and make a system that doesn't revolve around resting. Compromises between the two don't really produce desirable results.

Here's a scheme that I think could produce interesting results. Resting and Fatigue - Resting should be tied to fatigue levels, which will accumulate to characters through time and through exerting activities, such as combat, traveling, climbing, spell-casting etc. - These fatigue levels will add cumulative penalties to your stats. - Resting allows you to recover from fatigue - NO FREE RESTING ANYWHERE - Resting in a wilderness area has negative side effects, such as catching colds, not being able to rest properly, requiring camping supplies AND sleeping bags to be carried along. - Survival skill will allow you to better recover from fatigue while resting in a wilderness. A character without survival skill won't be as well rested after a night in the wilds. - Re-introduce carrying limitations by strength and containers you're carrying with you to make the ability to sleep in wilderness areas have a real opportunity cost. Spell-casting - Spell-casting is best done with a mana-system. The mana doesn't regenerate on its own and it doesn't automatically replenish during resting. - To replenish mana, one has to drink up mana potions, or consume special mana-recharging products prior to resting. Wounds and lost hitpoints - Wounds that are not treated properly with proper herbs or other medicines do not heal during resting. - Wounds reduce the fatigue recovery gained from resting - Untreated wounds may fester while resting - Magical healing is available, but costs mana. - NO HEALING DURING COMBAT, this whole concept is fairly ridiculous to me. And then for the last ingredient that is necessary to make this whole thing work: NO FREE SAVING. Saving the game should be restricted either to resting, or to resting at a safe location. So no reloading over and over and over again to avoid negative effects that require treatment, forcing you to plan ahead. It looks like we're looking at quite a hardcore system here, but any compromise would make the whole system meaningless. That final bit is the most important one not to compromise, along with the no free resting part, the others can be worked around with less severe consequences.

I don't think that trying to achieve all that with a system is the right way to go, there are ways of restricting spell-casting other than rest cycles. For example, some spells might require expensive and/or rare material components, other spells might require extensive preparation while yet others could require very specific circumstances. Having depth and variety doesn't come through a system, it comes through the details involved in individual spells and abilities.

You have many good points there; a game with vancian magic *can* be done better than PoE1 was. However, the inherent problem is that vancian system, and the whole idea of tying ability access to rest cycles, doesn't really lend itself well to a crpg environment where it is incredibly difficult to model the consequences of skipping 8 hours of time. If a crpg was made around the vancian system, the whole game should be developed in a way that allows room for modeling those consequences, or alternatively restricting resting to predefined scripted opportunities.

Fair enough. The point is merely that a stat system can be used to describe character traits in a meaningful way without removing choice altogether. Physical strength can be useful for a spellcaster just like Intelligence can be useful for a Fighter without succumbing to completely arbitrary effects like AoE & Duration. Strength should be a purely physical stat, although no one has said there can't be certain spells that benefit from high strength; for example conjuring a powerful magical current might require certain amount of physical prowess to hold onto, but it shouldn't directly affect spell damage so that wizards don't have to be steroid pumped body-builders, but there would still be room for a wizard build that can potentially utilize a higher strenght.

It didn't work well in baldur's gate d&d. you couldnt make a low int wizard or a low might fighter. This is the point you didn't even have a choice. At least in POE there is some choice. And no perception is not necessary for everyone. I've made builds with leaving perception even or slightly below. POE was a step in the right direction. If they tweek it i hope they dont go back to BG style for sure. Despite my strong support of the AD&D multi-classing, that is about the only thing I liked about those rules. 3rd edition did the stats far better, and I think it's dishonest to automatically compare the current system to the absolutely worst version of D&D out there that has been used in a crpg.

Do you even realize how much I want to say just "**** you and stuff your good luck where the sun don't shine"? :D Now I'm just jealous as ****.

Right, so I've got a little flu which restricts my activities more than I'd like. This lead to boredom, which in turn lead me to creating a few raw example crew member concepts. I'll add my notes here, feel free to mix and match, use what you like, discard what you don't, use as an inspiration or whatever. Pirates Male - The 'Mexican' Aumaua-Guy - drinks Tequila (The other pirates think he's weird) - likes beans - Runs a smuggling side-business - used to have his own distillery - doesn't talk much - is secretive, mostly a professional habit for a long time smuggler - is the distiller of the group (makes rum among other things). - The Priest of Ondra - Elderly man - A Priest, originally kidnapped to ensure Ondra's favor - loves the sea and quickly accepted his role as the crew's priest, becoming a willing member - doesn't really care for violence, and isn't interested in a share of the plunder, except for medicine which he uses to treat the crew. - Likes open spaces and the sea, and thus spends most of his spare time meditating on deck. - Friends with the Butcher - They share stories and tales, and together manage a collection of different sorts of writings; religious, fictitious, historical and otherwise. - They both love to smoke their pipes - The Psychopath Rapist/Murderer Guy - The elder Brother of Sister Stabbity-Stab - Unlike his sister, he's relatively relaxed at times. - Has a 'soft spot' for her sister, born more out of a sense of duty, familiarity and common background than any true affection. - Has earned his place on the ship through his talent in killing and overall cunning - His less desirable traits are tolerated by the other pirates as long as he doesn't cause problems on the ship - Many of the other pirates are afraid of him. - Doesn't force himself on other crew members, except for the ex Courtesan who actually likes the rough play. - Doesn't drink Alcohol, uses other mind-altering substances. - The Merry Dwarf Butcher-Guy - A real butcher, the kind that deals with meat, not the kind that kills people. - Happy guy, likes Pale Lagers and proper Bratwurst sausages - Friends with the Mexican Aumaua-Guy - Together the two are responsible for the ships food supply, cooking, brewing and distillation. - Looks after The Captive, acts as a sort of father figure to her. - Has a trained little monkey as a pet - Likes stories, both telling them and listening to them. - Likes to brawl and fight, but finds killing outside a fight to be distasteful. -Doesn't like to "butcher the kith" - Is exceptionally distrustful of authority figures Female - Sister Stabbity-Stab - The even bloodthirstier sister of the Psychopath Rapist/Murderer Guy - Only her brother can reliably keep her bloodthirst in check. - Twisted as they are, there is a certain bond and trust between the siblings. - Likes to torture and kill - Unlike his relatively predictable brother, you'll never know what to expect from her. - She's the main reason the crew has learned to sleep with one eye open. - A Cruel and Clean thinker, doesn't like drugs or alcohol. - Doesn't really like anything much in fact. - A clear indicator that something has gone horribly wrong somewhere along the family line. - The Pale-Elf Cipher-Chick - A middle aged elven woman - bitter, tormented and vengeful - joined the crew to escape the enemies of her family - rest of her family either dead or missing, she believes them to be dead and thus doesn't actively look for them. - the pirates use her talents to gain information from prisoners and such - mostly wants her past to stay forgotten and buried - likes the freedom and immediate necessities involved with being a pirate, as that helps with keeping her mind off her emotional troubles. - is friends with the 'Mexican' Aumaua-Guy, who is the only one in whose company she feels secure enough to drink alcohol - doesn't trust the Priest not to try and 'save her soul' and ask personal questions - thinks the Butcher is way too chipper, and thus doesn't really care for his company - the 'Mexican' doesn't speak much and doesn't ask questions, which suits her perfectly. - ex Courtesan - very promiscuous young woman - gets along splendidly with the other pirates - whatever diseases she has, the whole crew has. - greedy as **** - likes pretty and shiny things - doesn't like other women - has a very unhealthy relationship/attraction with the Psychopath Rapist/Murderer Guy - The Captive - a young girl, captured by the pirates - the unofficial pet/mascot of the crew - does menial tasks like cleaning, washing clothes, treats the sick - mostly serves as an assistant for the Merry-Butcher-Dwarf - was originally kidnapped for ransom as a child - the ransom was never paid and the crew didn't have the heart to kill her so they put her to work. - has learned to get along with the crew and is generally treated well, some pirates even having grown fond of her. - likes small animals, takes care of the Butcher's little Monkey - Is intelligent and likes to read. Has occasional philosophical discussions with the priest, who in turn is impressed with her sharp mind.

Now that you mention it, there should be different sausages as food options in the game.

Then again, forcing this 'sexual diversity' - crap will ultimately alienate both men AND women. Same goes for feminism. Not a good business approach if you ask me.

I really don't see why they even changed the system that worked for D&D so well. Strength describes a physical trait of a character perfectly, and there are consequences for having low or high strength. And since there is one other attribute that is problematic, namely perception because through providing accuracy, it is necessary for everyone. So remove perception, add Willpower that improves the power of spells and spell like abilities akin to Might, and split accuracy between accuracy for spells that comes from intelligence and an accuracy for physical attacks that comes from dexterity. Problem solved.

You're saying 'gender balance' like it's a good thing. What else would you expect from an Evol Feminist? Nothing, I guess, although I would like to at least expect the common decency not to ram their poisonous political agenda into a discussion about gaming.

You're saying 'gender balance' like it's a good thing.

I feel like this a personal issue for you. I was making a case against using statistics inappropriately. Not on this singular issue. I don't remember much about DA: 2. But I do remember that for me, it had way bigger problems than romances, and sexuality. Let's be honest, you were virtue signaling in order to appear to have the moral high ground.