Falkon Swiftblade

I am open minded to the style, but I'm more interested in usability and functionality before aesthetic choices even though I'm a fan of ui skins. I really want the ui to blend into the environment and assist me as I play. I don't want to be distracted by it, nor do I want to have to try and click on tiny icons or buttons to navigate. I'm a fan of having space to breath. I also like to stay engaged while playing and if I have to pause I don't want to have to keep selecting from one side of the screen to the other a dozen times a minute. I would prefer minimal movement from my characters and their skills. I might even prefer a ui more similar to ToEE to BG and IWD series, however not to say I hated them, I just hated having to stop and cycle through a dozen menus just to get a skill to cast magic for example. I liked some aspects of the ui such as picking custom portraits.

Ok, now I'm confused. What does crafting as a skill has been removed mean? Can we get a real world in game example of how things are gonna work now?

Betrayal at Krondor. I also thought Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was not aggravating. It was there and I felt had enough of a threshold you still needed to repair items, but it wasn't such a nuisance you had to stay on it like fly's on poop after every dungeon. You could play for hours before needing to repair. I think the more you died the more the damage to the item added up, so that could become money sink.

I'd like to answer your question and add an observation about why I think the trend is the way it is. I'd like to use my money on training, buying a merchant ship to travel to other islands. Maybe if you buy your own boat you can upgrade it as well. I'd buy Vanity gear, or buy a slot for extra storage until I have my house. Even then, maybe in your house you have a chest you can upgrade. I'd like to purchase certain things to customize my interior. I don't mind the idea of buying a mule that acts like a storage device that follows you in the outer world and you can buy bigger storage bags for it. I'd buy some rare items that are better than loot drops and that periodically update based upon how you've progressed in the story, but I think the epic items shouldn't be for sale and should be earned or stolen some how. At the least, limit them for sale. I find it silly the only item in game strong enough to save the world has been waiting for you to save up 200 more kills to afford it to beat the game. One final point, please consider having enough gear for multiple characters of the same type. If I want to make a party of all mages or as close to it as possible for example, don't only give one item per class type unless there are comparable options. As for the trend, I think the reason the trend shows don't like crafting goes. Crafting is not fun in most rpg's. You need to create it like you would design a quest. Make it part of the story. Make it personal, and don't add it in on a whim. Consider it like you would a character's attack swing or walk cycle. Ask yourself how does this make me feel smarter, or help my party, or why is this crafted thing unique or helpful? The worst thing is making the crafting repetitive for no reason. Why would I ever make 30 sets of armor to level up my skill in a SP game? There should be a reason to craft x to get to y. Maybe a better way to level up the skill is to collect recipes and create recipe books. Too often crafting feels like it was added in to fill a check box. I think the community has given ample reasons why durability might not fit in the game, primarily it comes down to it not being fun. Consumables also just feel gimmicky. Everything should be in the game to enforce the mechanics, it's a game and we want to play. If a battle averages 7 seconds, why in the world would I use a potion that adds 10% chance to hit? Similarly, if you are playing through and you find the beta testers are maxing out on XP by 2/3 of the game and have only done 1/4 the side quests, maybe adding xp potions in game is a bad idea because they are a worthless commodity. As a side note, I really appreciate the openness the developers give to the community. So even though some of us disagree or agree with your decisions, it's just nice to know that our feedback is being considered and listened to. So thanks a lot for that!

two more thoughts on crafting. I've mentioned it before I other threads, but one of my favorite uses of crafting was in the original star wars galaxies. If you were fortunate enough to unlock your Jedi character the first part of that story was to build your own light saber by hunting parts for it as you progressed throughout the world. They went pretty deep in how you could customize it, but it was fun. In a similar theme, if you make crafting a story driven event why the heros need to craft an item either for themselves or a companion, that will make it fun. Possibly one of the mechanics is the ability to upgrade your tool kits to craft slightly better gear. The basic one maybe anyone can use to craft a torch with, or a basic potion that gives infravision or something like that. Then if you stick with it your skills evolve, or maybe you find rare resources that allow you to craft better materials, such as a Diamond headed hammer that adds +3 to your crafting skill.

Hooray for my most anticipated stretch goal! Forgive me if this ends up being a small novel... Recipe's sound ok, and I like that there will be lots of them, and they'll be mixed up around the world, but I have some requests if possible. Can you try to make recipes a game mechanic, such as maybe there is dye and blank scrolls you buy and as you level up mastery over an item you learn different quality's of the item to write down a formula about it which allows you to master techniques such as improving speed factor or balance which may affect accuracy or something like that? Then those would be used in conjunction with the ones teaching you how to make steel sword. When combined, now you have unlocked how to make a sword of bunny slaying +2 Also for good measure, please make flaming weapons and the like actually show up in real time with the fx, and extra cool points if we can set baddies on fire on a critical hit and listen to them holler and run away. A bigger issue for me that I despise in crafting games that I hope you guys will consider, is could you please make crafted items visually different than world dropped items? I don't care as much which is better from loot and crafted, but man I hate seeing the same item 100,000 times in 30 hrs. If I can craft leather armor, at the very least please allow us to add a dye to color it. However I would like my weapon for example to actually have characteristics that makes it unique from loot. Such as an Iron sword that is looted might look like a faction styled Iron Sword in that region, but mine might have a little extra flair to it like a bevel or shine to it than the standard one. Similarly, if items drop like a Rusty Long Sword, can ya please make them look rusty?! The more your team can make items unique looking the better so we can store them as collections in our house. Personally I'm hoping we can store suits of armor kind of like how the Bat suits were in the hall in the Batman movies. I know you mentioned damaged items will show up as such in your inventory at 25% or less, but I'd love it if it showed up visually on the character to give us a sense of character progression. You didn't mention how Crafting Supplies will affect your inventory space. Please don't give it a weight system and keep crafted components separate from our inventory slots. Thanks for the update! OH I almost forgot, I don't remember what I was playing, but they had an option in the game to use the collected resources to craft one of like 5 items which all had different stats, but some carry over. It would be awesome to be able to choose to craft certain items into a collaborative set. Maybe an option would be to craft a set of daggers, or a pair of gauntlets, or a gauntlet and sword, or maybe an amulet and crown...

No, Qremesh is a great tool for quick retopology but its in no way better than actual retopologizing. The Qremesh guide brush is pretty much a guesstimate for were you want to put your quads and small geometry such as fingers or hair is lost because of lack of structural integrity. This in no way makes anything better for the animators who still have to work with a fairly high poly model that has uneven quad distribution and a lot of poles which cause bad deformation. Which makes it difficult to rig the character and screws up the animation completely. In short, that Predator head on your pic still needs to be rettoped before being considered a game ready asset. Have ya tried out the new patch? The time it saved to use zremesher versus to redo the topology by hand was about 8 hours from what he told me. You can still use the new brushes to quickly fix edge loops on complicated faces and make adjustments super fast. This is not Qremesher. If you wanna see more why it's a big deal ya can read the post by Swizzle here. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1868999&postcount=66

A 15 level dungeon without any combat would be a standalone adventure game put into an RPG. I'd simply question the reasons for that. Of course, a megadungeon with more puzzles and interactivity and less trash combat would be great. I like the option of having to solve puzzles to move the plot forward or navigate through a labyrinth of a dungeon. Maybe the mega dungeon could be a magical prison they're being housed in and the theme of the dungeon is to battle the worst boss types of baddies as you find a way to escape from it. Or maybe it could be a specific coming of quest, a trial of sorts which challenges the hero who must pass through to unlock their true potential. I would prefer a mixture of riddles and puzzles, mixed in with some scavenging and fighting.

I think the OP is basically asking for more ambiguous choices instead of obvious good evil choices. The Witcher 2 was good at that. I think the reason the games are pro good is typically because you are trying to save the world, and why would you save the world only to be a prick to people along the way? It's possible, but the story line should encourage and support that. I do think they could craft the game where the goal of the game is not so black and white, but I think if they did that it would really have to have strong themes of why I would choose one over the other and not fluffy endings. I'm actually working on a project myself that has currently 6 different endings and I wanted them to make sense from the perspective of the character. I don't think being evil is inherently effective unless you have a moral compass that shows you a true right or wrong path to take. The flip side of that is the good choice should really be good and not just the default thing to do. If you saw someone's house burning down and someone was in need of help I don't think it's specifically a good act to help them get out. To me that's common sense. Maybe a good choice would be to give them your cloak which might even be a magical one as you leave and offer a service of charity. Instead of rockem sockem kill everything because I'm a good guy killing bad guys types of game play.

Just to clarify I completely understand we've only been shown an example of work after like 1-2 months. My vision of the game might not be their vision for the game and that's OK. I was expressing my opinion. To me it looks the same visually with a new coat of paint. I just feel like they can still push it forward 20 yrs and still keep the overall feel to the game, and I questioned what makes those games specific to that style so they can innovate upon them. I'm just stating the obvious, we're starting fresh on a game that has the benefit of technology on our side ~15 yrs after the original shipped and use a middleware engine that saves them from having to do a lot of work. Not to mention they've developed custom tools that have also evolved over time that they'll be using in this game and isn't like starting 100% from scratch. Stuff that would have taken several months to try out can now be tested in hours or days to see if it works. Actually just a week or two ago another big improvement was made for one of the primary 3d tools for character creation that would save them a solid 8 hours of work a day, and allow the character artists to create much higher quality models at no performance hit. I just have high hopes if the tools are there, and they have the freedom to do what ever they want, then they won't just copy what's already been done. Remember too originally they only asked for $1.1 million to make a game like this. I can't believe we funded 200k for a player house which only takes 1-5 days to create and only 100k for 2 new class, but no technology goals. The budget for animation is tiny and 4.3 million is a LOT more than 1.1.

One thing I don't understand the thought process on, is what makes a IE game an IE game versus take the good and improve upon the system? The example of being able to show equipment on the hero or not or cloth and hair should be very doable now. Like it could be in the game in less than a week, but because they're so caught up in making a one inch avatar that blends in with it's environment, it negates that type of inovation. For some reason I get the impression if they scaled the world environments and characters up by 20% and kept most of the other elements of the game that wouldn't feel like an IE game to them. I wish they would get with modern times and improve some of the IE conventions that made the games a little clunky with the technology we have available today. They might need to pre render some hair or cloth into an animation, but surely it should be very doable. The PS4 demo was doing some crazy intense physics, lighting and shadows, cloth and fluid simulation in real time, and textures, etc. on a $400 machine. We've probably all got a machine that cost at minimum 2-3 times that and should be able to handle it. I understand too that it takes time to get to that level and maybe 4-6 weeks might not be feasible, but I'd like it if they at least acknowledged it and said what's the intent or goals in that area. All that stuff we haven't heard about is because it happens fairly late in the development process. With exception to some extent sound is ever going from preproduction to the time they ship it, although on PC they're less hindered by limitations of the platform like consoles are. Although I'm interested in all those areas as well. I'd also like to see one on animation for the game. There's been some really nice upgrades to animation tools in the past 6 months, and I think it should really speed up their pipeline.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I've just spent the past 2 days playing BGEE and it really reminded me even with it's new UI and enhancements how important a good ui is. The more I played it, the more I wish it was a little more like ToEE the way the branching tree came off each character to cast spells and do stuff. Not only does it keep you engaged in the moment better and flow better, you have to brute force stop in BGEE and micro manage too much. Things happen so fast in these games you are forced to try and navigate between a rock and a hard place on a dime with your mouse to click on things that sometime you might only use once every 4 hours and icons are small and not visually unique enough to know what each of the 40 spells are, but it's worse when it's a specific spell you use every time and have to page through 3-4 tabs just to cast it each time. I beg that you guys give us ample hands on time in the beta to refine it. I'm a usability designer and have a lot of ideas to make the experience smoother. Once we see the vertical slice and I have a ill more context of things I'll create a mock up and maybe along with some other suggestions it will be the best experience yet.

just to clarify why this is such a big deal since I can't edit my post anymore, is not only is it a huge time saver, it also makes things like animation way faster and easier and help remove that paper doll look on human faces with minimal work.

For me the balance comes from a combination of useful ability's and how powerful each one is. I could care less how hard I hit versus knowing I have 3-5 ways to attack someone because I know I'll find better loot that will do damage. I think the best designs offer a variety of tactical advantages and play styles. If I have to play through and swing the same way as a default attack the whole game no matter what kind of weapon I wield as I level up then I feel like the developers failed in some way. I think power upon level up should scale in not only ability's and damage or buff, but in animations as well. I proposed a technique in the Kickstarter that would allow your stats to affect your hero's animations. So the higher your dexterity for example the more graceful they ran or their fighting style. Nothing blatantly game breaking, but someone with a very low dexterity may drag behind the rest of the party regardless of his tactical position or rank you have him set as. The more your intel or whatever magic skill would have more exaggerated movements. Further, alignment may make them seem more agressive. These all would gradually change as you level up or equip items to help show character advancement. I don't think it's unreasonable in games like this to start off with several ability's. In these games it's not like you are a blank slate. You pick your class before you start. If you were a Dr. you still have to go to school to be a Dr. but you still know all the stuff the underlings know. Over time you may specialize in brain surgery but starting out you still know a lot about medicine. If anything I think it makes more sense someone might know a little about a lot of things, then over time they would specialize in one or two areas. You would choose what those would be. Not all Dr.s do the same thing if you get my analogy.

Holy Crap, yesterday there was a huge software update release for one of the main 3d tools used to create characters. My friend showed me a very high poly model ~ 1.1 million poly's just in the face and within 40 seconds it now is a game ready asset of his target range of 7k poly's while still keeping most of the detail. For grins he did another at 3.5k and didn't notice any issues. Since Obsidian uses the same software for PE, the characters will look even more fantastic and could easily look as good as the concept art with no performance or visual issues and the characters and environments should look even better. This example below required no additional modeling or sculpting and only took 40 seconds to modify. (It's the Predator face if you're wondering.) In addition, I suspect this technique could carry over into clothing, capes, and highly detailed models for weapons and armor. The Sky's the limit.

Hey Josh, since everything you guys are creating is 2d, what's the target size for your character models as far as poly count or screen size, or for the art assets in general and what dictates that limitation?

It would be incredibly easy to create a table top version of this since they're already working with 2d maps in the game. Just add hex overlay to the maps and make some cards or something and easy pen and paper game.

Nice find Ramireza! I like the direction things are headed.

Defiance Bay hints at something that I've been waiting for an uber long time in a game like this. Since we have technology to do it, this would be my favorite game ever if you guys included a sunken pirate ship cave/dungeon complete with lots of booby traps. Even better for an expansion if we get to buy a boat to travel about on and go on a scavenger hunt/treasure hunt. At the very least It would be fun to have an abandoned ship graveyard to explore. PS Since these games are not really made like traditional games, once you guys get your style guides together and work flows established if someone wouldn't mind making a blog or tutorials of how you guys are making stuff, I have always wanted to make a game like this and just unsure how to approach it. The idea Wasteland 2 is using so the backers can assist in prop making for their game sounds similar to what I'm asking. It would be awesome if you guys had a ton of extra bits to work from once you get going. Plus it would give us a head start for modding down the line when the time for that happens. Also just out of curiosity what programming language is being used? Oh one last thing, Hows the behind the scenes documentary going? Have they been meeting you guys regularly, or is it only like 3-4 times a year type of thing?

from the sounds of the Rezzed presentation with Chris Avalone it sounds like they might have 1-2 more weeks for vertical slice, then they'll get into actual production of the game. From there there are several methods that can be used to create the game. One method is called sprints and the company does 4-6 week mini goals which might be zone by zone, or it might be tackling things like all the armor for one class, then the next sprint would do the next race's armor, etc. Another method I've seen used is more like how Amish towns are built in days as everyone tackles one thing at a time and many hands make light work. The other way I've seen is similar to the first method that gets the game to about 80% polish, and then the last 3 months polishes stuff off. I have no idea how long a game like this takes to make, but I suspect it's crazy easier than some other games. The hardest part is the dungeons are customized and some stuff is still being made as they progress. At least with the advance of technology the down time is way less than it used to be. I was just looking at a 3d scene I created about 3.5 yrs ago in College and it took me 2.5 hrs to render one HD frame. Now it takes about 25-30 min to render the same scene because technology is that much faster. I think the first few months might be kind of slow, but after that things will zip on through and I expect it should be done by this time next yr certainly.

If they do new game + in addition to the stuff already announced for the difficulty modes, I'd prefer a unlock of either a new class or race with special ability's. Possibly an anti hero.

That big city artwork looks mighty big in comparison to the world map. If that's comparable with everything else, then I think the game will be sufficiently large enough for me. Things have seemed kinda micro sized for this being a new game coming out in 2014, and I still think the characters and zones are at least 10-20% too small in scale for usable space, but everything else is turning out better than anticipated. I'd be curious to know what the average screen size people are playing on is. Someone mentioned the possible cave covered with spiderwebs. One thing about the way they're doing the hand crafted dungeons I wonder about is if they'll have hidden passages and rooms? I always liked stuff like that in these types of games. I also hope they use some objects that you find to use them to construct legendary weapons or objects for your party, sort of a scavenger hunt. Even better if you have the option to choose how it's to be used. Such as collect 3 of X and 5 of Y and special item Z allows you to make either a pair of daggers, a long sword, or a pair of gauntlets, etc. Ohhh I just realized one thing about the way they're doing the dungeon creation. I think that's going to make modding the game kinda difficult. Hopefully we can find a work around, and hopefully they give us a reason to visit the same spaces more than once. Or, make the new spaces compelling and not the same look and feel throughout like Skyrim's dungeon design.

By now we've all seen the first in game example of lighting and water and some dynamism that Josh Sawyer mentioned. I have been coming upon several examples of technology used in or for the Unity engine that really take the lighting and textures up several notches from what we've played in the old IE games. Specifically, I've seen real time image based lighting that mimics real world lighting. Its now easy to create lots of textures like marble, brass, glass, metal, or cloth. Seeing as how Sawyer has mentioned we're going to have different hide armor and leathers, etc. I thought it would be appropriate to mimic these textures in game where appropriate. The question I have is, should the game stick to a more cartoon gamey feel, or should we use the available technology to make things more cinematic? My personal preference would be to make it realistic, and then use color and mood to dictate style similar to how the Lord of the Rings was dramatic with its use of light and shadows, but wasn't too CGI, nor too fake. I think from our first peek things are looking pretty solid. How far should we push it? I would like to see characters of this quality if not even a tad more detail, but I realize our characters are also micro machine small which would limit how real do things need to be. Hunter image by Warren Boonzaaier

Trey Parker was hesitant to say if its gonna make it out before holiday this year. Apparently it takes way more time to try an idea in game to see if it works than it does for the show. Fun fact, Southpark the TV show is filmed over like 17 weeks in a yr and the staff take 6 months off in between seasons. They've been working on this game for 4 yrs now, and said Ubisoft has been great to work with and are encouraging them to polish the game like they want to.

from what I gathered at e3 it seems like you do get to choose your playstyle. There is loot that mimics magic. For example there's fireworks like bottle rockets or ("moon candles"?) that mimic magic missile. Magic isn't like burning hands in D&D, rather it's Cartman lighting his farts on fire.