Hormalakh

If you're able to simulate every nuance of a real situation, throw out the dice; i.e. one disadvantaged position throughout history was fighting with the sun in your eyes. So unless you have a 3rd person RPG with lighting that is realistic in this regard, you'd better stick to the dice. Games != realism.

I personally don't have a negative reaction to hitting 100% of the time. Mechanically, the "all-or-nothing" D&D hit/miss system can easily change the outcome of a fight based on a die roll even when the players/DM are performing the most tactically sound action. Our revised crit/hit/graze/miss system still allows for that possibility, but it is much less likely, especially over a series of rolls. While I agree that RNG != RPG, I do think that random chance does bring in sort of a "fun" factor for many people. Dice rolls are basically a product of the D&D era RPGs, and people still find rolling dice fun. RPGs without RNGs can be made, but I don't think they'd be as fun. Someone should make one though... I think this goes back to the "mortification of the flesh" aspect of the monks. While I'm not sure how "true" this aspect is to all monks, I do know that some monks IRL actually do this. Shaolin monks as well as Christian monks train their bodies/self-flagellate to reach a higher spiritual level. A humorous depiction of this.

It's sort of a paradox: the smaller locations (villages, etc) are affected more by outsiders (even killing the kobolds in the area should produce some changes in the village) but because they are small areas, they are less likely to be re-used to give quests. So developers don't bother expecting you not to return to the village. On the other hand, larger locations (cities) should in theory be less affected by minor quests but because they are large quest locations, are reused and encompass a lot of developer's resources. Yet, these places "change" more even though the cities are meant to be larger and more anonymous locations where people might not know you.

The way to solve this problem of "revisiting locations" is to make locations "re-usable." Stop making 100 different locations and making your adventurer travel across the whole world in a single game. Keep locations "local" and make the player return to the same locations further in the story to look for quests. Make your locations oversaturated with quests and make these quests chronologically-dependent and trigger-dependent. E: The other thing is that a lot of times, location changes really depend on the location we're talking about. A small village, because it is really small, should really show changes affecting that village. Changes to a village are more significant. But large cities because they are in effect, populated by many people shouldn't change as much. The changes caused by a party of adventurers really shouldn't be as significant (unless it's a huge quest, for example).

The question really is how deep down the rabbit hole do the devs want to go with "stealth-type" mechanics? There are a plethora of game elements they could implement. Will these game elements allow interesting things to happen outside of stealth? The development time isn't unlimited and stealth isn't the main purview of the game. Sound elements, enemies noticing comrades not on path, enemies noticing bodies/blood, enemies alerting allies, etc etc. These can be complex elements or fairly shallow. But do they add to other aspects of the game as well?

Is it worth the development time to implement the mechanics though? Let players relod if they wish.

I don't see how this benefits gameplay other than to limit quickloads. Am I missing something?

Me too. What they've done with the Monk bodes well for the Barbarian. Waiting to see what crazy crazy things Josh&co come up with.

We do not negotiate with fanatics.

I think that alerts should work within audible ranges. An enemy who spots something becomes alert. He looks in that general direction. If he sees danger, he alerts his neighbors this is within a sound range. If he carries a horn, the sound range increases. Similarly, sound ranges can work on the type of ground you walk on. So even if stealth skill is high, walking on bubble wrap will not be advantageous. E: Either audible alerts or line of vision should alert enemies. These should be working in mutual harmony.

I think you're mistaken. They pre-spend stamina, to be able to take hits (mortification of the flesh). That way, when they get hit in combat, it doesn't reduce stamina/health, it reduces another resource, called "Wounds." They will regain stamina at the end of combat. They will most likely need less rest than other classes because their health will not drop as fast.

Which post? I don't question anyone's love for these kinds of games. Are you making these cakes? I want to try passion fruit.

What kind of cake are you offering TRX850? Can I have some? ... I really want cake now.

Hehe...entertainment indeed. Until someone gets hurt.

Hi Josh, I wanted to know if you had any thoughts about the concerns that allowing several weapon slots and knowing your enemies armor type degenerating into a boring exercise of changing up weapon-types to "match up" with the armor type. Some suggested some sort of draw-back or challenge, slightly complexity involved in this equation to help make the answer so non-trivial. Something like using an attack or two to change weapons (player cannot attack during this time) so as to make it an actual decision. Some of these ideas came up over the weekend, so I'm not sure if they passed your notice. Thoughts?

After thinking about this further. I don't really care either way whether it's a blog, video, or stream. The point for me was for MCA to play the game, think about a few design ideas, give his feedback, and ultimately allow PE and future games to benefit from the experience. Changed my vote.

Monks as "tanks!" LOL that's new! I love it.

- n/t apologies.

Oh jeez, this wasn't a poor attempt at a troll? I thought we were all just being obnoxious because that was the joke. Otherwise I wouldn't have been so obnoxious either...apologies.

*pops head in* In other words, "I don't want to let other players ROLE-PLAY their characters the way they want to - it's my way or the highway. I find combat challenging and want a cookie everytime I fight someone. Those wimps using strategy shouldn't get the same cookie as me." "Combat-lovers are in. Story-lovers are out. I don't care that Obsidian said that Planescape:Torment was also an inspiration for this game." "I can't be bothered to come up with actually interesting quests and will attack the developers' choice by coming up with some really uninspired quests and attack those quests. I mean how else am I going to be rewarded for my genocidial/speciecial tendencies in this game?" P:E should be like Pokemon! Gotta kill em all! Otherwise it's a "joke." Loot plays two roles. It enriches those who engage in combat. It also pays for the cost of combat. By removing loot, you are effectively advocating for what you are railing against - discouraging combat altogether. "I can't think of how a developer can make a non-broken quest, ergo I want combat XP." O.K. Because you said so. "Only combat should be rewarded because I find it "tough." Only the tough and strong should be rewarded. There is no such thing as a "role" that your character should play. I also need to see my character getting his regular fix of XP or he'll go into XP withdrawal." Oh noes! Adventurers exploring the world?! That's degenerate! Also you cannot into good quest creation. Please stop using this terrible strawman. So you're saying that since combat now has a decision behind it, since XP is taken out, that all other strategies should also have a decision behind them? I agree. That's why some non-trivial loot will be placed on enemies. As for "lame MMO XP", please see http://appealtoemotion.com/ Sawyer has never stated MMOs to be an inspiration for this game. One mechanic does not make an MMO: by that argument, then all fantasy-games are MMOs because all MMOs are fantasy games. Or some silly argument like that. I think I'm done here.

Another thing they could do is "realism!" seriously, though, instead of a time-down before yor switched weapon is available, maybe they have a "throw your current weapon down and unsheath your other weapon". You'd have to pick up your weapon after each battle (god this would be so annoying)... nevermind...timed cooldowns better IMO

The thing is, it isn't really tactics if you always know what kind of armor your enemy is wearing before you even attack them. What I mean to say is, while I understand with humanoids and being able to see what kind of armor they have and basically remembering what kind of armor creatures have, there should probably be some sort of question like "should I spend an attack on switching weapons, (if the battle is long) or should I stick with my current weapon and finish this quickly. Some sort of drawback for quick-switches would be a great way to make weapon/armor mismatches more of a decision/choice as opposed to some sort of boring/frustrating/useless exercise. It should take up perhaps a single "attack" so that switching up weapons isn't always necessarily the thing you want to do and is more dependent on the situations and less dependent on solely the armor your enemy has. That is much more tactical and I think more fun too. As for your halberd example, I think that would be a good idea too to throw that in the mix. You'd have some weapons that you don't switch out, you just switch your attack type (change from crushing/piercing/slashing), but once again, these weapons aren't particularly "equally the best" at all three attack types. I would imagine a maul/club would be much more damaging (as a crushing weapon) than a halberd. But that doesn't mean you can't use a halberd to strike crushing blows. Once again, you have a question to answer, and not a pre-solved problem. The question here would be "should I switch to a heavier weapon (maul) and risk the single attack or stick with this weapon and finish the battle?

Interesting videos....

I do think that Valorian has hit on an important point about weapon-switching no longer being tactical and becoming more "reflexive" when armor type is known. I am interested in hearing how this will be remedied.

It wasn't really a serious proposition just because I doubt it's feasible and worthwhile, but one of those "wouldn't it be cool things." It's just basically more eye candy and might serve only marginal gameplay elements.