Hormalakh

Even if you had boots of speed, everyone would need it, or at least your slowest party member, because as it currently stands, non-combat movement is locked to slowest party member.

Party can always find nearest campsite to rest up. It's a weird assumption to make that party will always be "ground down."

If you are able to run away and rest up to become a "fresh party" your enemies should have the same advantage.

My biggest concern is that it'll be too slow. Especially with the bigger local maps, I don't want to spend a good deal of time just walking here and there for one-off chores.

Just as long as you don't have to navigate multiple conversation nodes to reach "I want to buy/sell" I don't care what else merchants do. Rumors Investment mechanic that Feargus really liked Encyclopedic knowledge of certain items that they sell(to help lore) Quests Knowledge of who to go to for certain items, ingredients. Caravan rides to stronghold - trading with stronghold Having different values for equipment at different venues can lead to taking advantage of the mechanic and making too much money.

Going "as fast as your slowest party member" and changing it to 1x-3x as fast would still be better than nothing at all. Again, you're making this out to be a bigger deal than it is. You give a range that MOST people would find reasonable, and you go with that. Otherwise your argument works for any sliding-scale option given to us, e.g. who determines how loud the 100% music/sound or the 100% contrast/brightness is? The ranges are made within reasonable ranges and 98% of people can deal with those speeds.

Your words are true when you're exploring the first time. But when you're going back and forth between local maps to run errands/do one quick thing/restock/etc, either you allow the player "fast-travel" (which I would argue would require some sort of lore behind it) or you allow the player to adjust the walking speed as needed. A mage spell like "teleport" would be nice, except it doesn't help parties without mages. Other ideas are also welcome. The least difficult implementaion, in my opinion would be adjustable game speeds.

Just imagine actually rolling a petrify via chromatic orb on a shadow-dragon in a P&P game - the table would go crazy. Same with a finger of death. That's because the act of rolling the dice is the game in PnP. Not so much in CRPGs. That part, because it's black-boxed away, really takes out that intimate feeling. cRPGs should try to bring back that feeling in their own way.

Let's be reasonable. "As fast as human eyes can see" is unreasonable. The speeds allowed in IWD1's options is a good first approximation.

You let the player decide what "kills the mood" and what doesn't. Everyone has their own speed that they feel comfortable playing. Some like it faster, some like it slower. Sometimes you want to bump it up, sometimes slow it down. Let the player decide.

I don't think his point was that it broke the game rules: it's more of a matter of making sure the player stays in the right "mood", i.e. when you explore, you want to "stop and smell the roses." Making something that is mechanically different takes time and balancing. I don't want any of that. I just want something simple: the ability to change the "game speed" for lack of a better term when it comes to moving around outside of combat. You start making up mechanical rules and it becomes more complicated, not to mention, really unnecessary. Moving outside of combat doesn't mean that enemies move slower comparatively. It means everything just moves faster altogether.

@BjornB do you know the answer to OP's question? Thanks in advance.

The reason that players move slowly is the one given by Josh Sawyer on Something Awful. It is the default. BTW it only matches speed for clicks made out of the combat state. If you initiate any movement while the combat state is active, everyone moves at full individual speed. quote quote

i c what you did there. I agree. What's good for the geese should be good for the gander. Don't disappoint me Obsidian.

no no. no changes in mechanics. just a faster walking speed.

I know that the current walking speed is supposed to be "match to slowest" and i've read where Josh has stated that if you walk too fast, it could be dangerous or it might lose some of the "adventure" or "exploration" aspect of the game, but I would much rather be able to adjust my walking speed. My proposal: Make walking speed (outside of combat) an adjustable speed that ranges from slow to fast. Let players choose how fast they want to walk. Why: 1- Once you've completed a local map, that adventuring aspect is long-gone, and sometimes you just need to get to place A to do X, Y, Z and then go back to place B to do R, S, T. 2- Different people have different "biological speeds" in that certain people might find one walking speed too fast, and others might find it too slow. Being able to adjust it to a player's preference is always the best option. 3- If it comes down to it being too fast and engaging in battle, there's a "pause when enemy is seen" option, right? This shouldn't be an issue. 4- Customization is always better. I really liked the IWD AI pathfinding option, because it really made the game a much better experienec for me - I cranked it up all the way, but also knew when to take it slow (innuendo!) when the time was right and it got hard (more innuendo!). This is just another variation of "slow mode for combat."

These three fights are very interesting to discuss because I believe that - if I understand Josh and co's goal correctly - they can bring light to the discussion. The first fight (final fight of BG1) really doesn't seem to have any "sucker punches" per se. It was a difficult fight and it's not "swingy." It needs tactics and you could win the first time, or you could win the 100th time. But the battle doesn't really require any meta-gaming (you don't really need to know anything about the fight other than it's tough) to beat it. This is not what I understand Josh to have an issue with. Let's leave that battle in. The second fight (twisted rune) is also good to go except for maybe locking in the player to that site. So if that battle had a flee option, then it would be again a worthy fight. If you step in, realize that it's about to go down, there really isn't much to change (maybe beholder's sucker punches, but that's another issue...). So again, pretty good. The third fight: the one thing you mentioned that really strikes me is that you had to play the battle once to figure out exactly what was going on, then you could quickly "solve" the problem and the fight was a cakewalk. Kangaxx's imprison really has no counter outside you knowing Kangaxx can imprison. You would never know that the first time around. It's impossible to know. that's a sucker punch. Imagine if Kangaxx always imprisons your PC. Basically, you can never win that fight the first time around, because there is really no way you would know that Kangaxx will do that. You'd learn that the 2nd-30th time you play that battle. But Kangaxx is still fun without imprison as a spell - or at least, as it currently stands. At the same time, Kangaxx became a "battle of luck" for you. That basically ruined what was supposed to be an interesting battle for you. You can remove or adjust aspects of the Kangaxx battle (imprison for example) and make battle still fun. What difference does it make if imprison occurs immediately after it's cast or if it's adjusted as Josh mentioned? The only difference is that you don't have to reload and that imprison can actually still be a viable tactic for the enemy AI. My third playthrough on BG2 - I was able to finger of death Fiirkagg (Red Dragon) and one-shot him. That felt extremely unsatisfying because my previous experiences taught me to settle in for a long fight. Being able to finish that battle in less than 5 seconds made me wonder what happened and I felt like "oh well, i guess I won that battle."

Liking something and knowing why you liked something are two very different things. You liked BG and BG2 as a whole experience - most here did. But when it comes down to very specific minutae and mechanics, it's very tough to tease out the nostalgia, genuine enjoyment, and just putting up with it. Especially when it comes to fully understanding the back-end workings of these games. If you can properly explain why you liked those aspects of "meta-gaming" in a clear way, I think that would be a fruitful discussion. But jumping to hyperbole and demagoguery really doesn't do much. Try to think what aspect of them you liked and maybe we can move forward.

I think that would be a question for Paradox.

As for traps: I think again it deals with the "immediate data/incomplete data" conundrum. Imagine if each dungeon had traps set with a RNG for each that "turned on/off" or another RNG which changed the location of each trap on every reload. Sure, you might know where the traps could be, but in each reload, you aren't sure where they are. You have incomplete data. The best way through this sort of game would be to play it slowly and hope your trap detection is high enough or use a tank to explode each trap becasue the meta-gaming knowledge doesn't help you: you have some data (there are traps here, and maybe a few of the locations where the traps might be) but you don't have complete data (where the traps are and whether they are activated with each reload). Minesweeper is fun because it's random. You have some data (10 mines in an easy map) but not all of the data. Playing the same game of minesweeper over and over again (complete data) isn't fun.

I also want to say that I don't want to take away what Sarex says about "enjoyability" from those difficult encounters - those do exist. But I don't think those encounters are enjoyable due to their metagaming potential. They're enjoyable despite their meta-gaming potential. In other words, what players see as enjoyable in those encounters actually has nothing to do with being aware of what is coming up or being able to quicksave/quickload; the reason they are enjoyable is because they provide an interesting monster, a different way of playing your party, or a very nice reward after defeating the tough boss (carsomyr +5 after beating the Red Dragon in Windspear)

I think another aspect of this is also the risk/reward analysis that occurs in these games. The party members are extremely "expensive" aspects of the game: if a member dies a good chunk of gameplay is lost completely if they are not "renewable" - you can't bring back a teammate who has leveled up to where he is. Basically, at that point, there is no reason to continue the game because it's impossible to bring another team member to that level quick enough. Contrast this with games where your "team" is renewable. The old-school XCOM game for example, even if you lose one guy, it doesn't take that long to bring in another one to that level (unless of course he's a high-level offier, at which point people will reload). Or RTS games, where individual units are expendable. I think there are two ways to sort of "beat the player's system" in these sort of risk/reward analyses that cause players to quickload/quicksave. One is to make consequences occur later than the player has time to react to. For example, imagine a "witch's curse" spell that doesn't work immediately and has some sort of randomization for whether it works or not (so that the player isn't sure if s/he's really cursed), but it starts working during the next battle. The player then has to make a decision: should I quickload and try to completely avoid all curses or do I risk the quicksave and hope that the curse didn't affect me. This sort of late-consequence can help make "big-hit" abilities more difficult to avoid because players can't see immediate results and have to decide based on incomplete information - a much more scary thought for "save-scummers." The other is to reduce the "risk" aspect of the equation. If your character dies, that's fine. You can always hire another one at the adventurer's hall with similar levels, stats. Just pick up the equipment, and travel back, then hire one (with a cost that's high, but doesn't pass the threshold of "too expensive"). It again doesn't bring back the "scariness" of table-top, but at least it makes the battles less likely to be "annoying" because the "annoying" factor of reloading is equivalent to the party getting another adventurer. Obviously, this isn't true for NPCs like Aloth, Eder, etc. I think that the issue I have with meta-gaming, is that it takes you out of the "mood" of the game. In a lot of other game genres, that "excitement and fear" of playing occurs during the actual game-play. From minecraft to MOBA's to other games that don't allow me to "meta-game", that aspect of "losing what I've worked for" is what makes it scary and ultimately enjoyable. For people here who think "replaying the last 30 minutes of a game" is "annoying" why isn't Dark Souls or Demon Souls "annoying" when you die? What makes that game more interesting to play and "scary" as compared to games like BG/BG2 where I can quicksave/quickload/rest after each battle?

i guess the only real benefit i see from this is sort of a "quick just get me playing the game already!" sort of option. The chargen, while sometimes a fun aspect of these games, can get a little annoying when I'm going to play/replay the game - as the poster above me mentioned: 30 minutes for dice rolls, etc. A randomizer is always nice to help make the next replay a new experience and quickly.

it's a very difficult thing to pin down, amentep. It's like that saying "Art is never finished, only abandoned." Polish cannot be measured or quantified in any realistic way, but ultimately it goes back to how long they can spend on re-iterating weaker aspects of the game, working on the beta, fixing bugs, and adding smaller side-quests. If you've ever played any of the older IE games, you'll notice that pretty much all of them have two mods: the fixpack, and the unfinished business packs. That money will likely go to making those mods less and less necessary by working on those aspects so that most of what they design will go into the game, and the game will "feel" satisfyingly finished and complete. Artwork will get that second (or third) paint over. More money means more time to work on the game. This can mean pushing back the deadline (as was what happened) or putting in more man-hours (more eyes to look at the game) befor the deadline.

it would be great to see how kaz does a portrait (maybe using one of the backer pictures) on a youtube video or something (speed draw) so modders can learn how to make good looking portraits.