Hormalakh

Wow.... I guess I'm in the minority here. I'm not sure how missing (0 damage) suddenly equates to RNG-hate. Can someone explain this to me? The HP bloat problem really hasn't been addressed as well as the issue when considering risk/rewards in this sort of structure. While I don't necessarily have a problem with resource-heavy things like spells having minimum damage, resource-light mechanics like melee battle, seem a little less interesting when not considering the risk/reward of missing/hitting for higher damage. You are looking at averages over time and seeing that they play the same, whereas it's not the averages that matter or make the older approach interesting, it's the spikes and valleys over time that make one different than the other.

lol @Malekith. I was just reading those posts.

There is a question that has been asked on Josh's Formspring and I wanted people to share their opinions on the matter. Right now, Tim, Steve, and I are experimenting with with a set of defenses that cover the basic "did you get hit?" mechanics of all sorts of attacks, from melee swings to arrows to fireballs to mind control spells. Currently, characters have a defense against melee attacks that attackers try to overcome (like AC without the armor component -- but with shields). A "miss" against any defense translates to half minimum damage inflicted or half minimum duration on any sort of status effect. I.e. there aren't "full" misses, but mitigated effects. A hit is the standard damage/duration. A hit that is within the critical hit range does 150% max damage or duration. This system is already implemented and seems to be working pretty well, but we'll continue to experiment with it. Some people asked a few follow-up questions. Josh's answers have been highlighted in green. Q: Wait...so neither the enemy nor your party members can ever miss? As in causing 0 damage/duration? Also what about critical misses? Not currently, no. There is no special effect for a "critical miss". Q: What made you decide that there shouldn't be a 0 damage miss. That is to say, what problem did you see with prior implementations of this that made you decide to try a new approach? All-or-nothing results tend to produce large spikes in conflict resolution. On the extreme end, you have traditional AD&D spells like Disintegrate that either annihilate the target completely or... do nothing. More typically you have the standard to-hit roll that either results in normal damage or absolutely nothing. Because the gulf between success and failure results is so large, random chance has a very large impact how the conflict works out. This system normalizes the results. Our goal is to make your choice of tactic ultimately more important than the results of the die roll (though the die rolls still matter). If we're only implementing mechanics that are proven to be fun in RPGs, I'm not sure why we're talking about D&D's THAC0/BAB system. Players generally dislike the all-or-nothing results of those mechanics, which is why you saw a move away from it in 4E. Q: Do you have any sort of source material on which you're basing this system? I'd assumed you're only implementing mechanics that have been proven to be fun in RPGs, ideally CRPGs. As for source inspiration, 4E's dailies' miss results are a pretty good start. Also a lot of RTSs and MOBAs have moved to much more deterministic systems. Q: That doesn't mean you should preclude 0 damage misses completely, especially in something as resource cheap as melee damage. Disintegrate was a resource heavy spell and I can understand that. Why not weigh your probability distributions and still have a 0 damage for those unable to pass a threshold like you are intending with lockpick and other events. Afterall, even a failed lockpick doesn't allow half of the party members through a locked door. Locked doors are a traditionally problematic conflict resolution in games (as are most all-or-nothing checks) and, I think, highlight the problem rather than absolve it. My question is: how do "full" misses make gameplay better than mitigated results? Q: It becomes a problem of victory through attrition. It can also limit the number of enemies attacking a party at one time. If you have 100 goblins and each always gets 1 point of damage even when they miss, that's a problem. Have you considered how this scales with lower-level and high-level party members? I can't simulate this, but does this adversely affect certain stages of the game more than others? We're not planning on hundred enemy combats, but even at normal IE stages, I don't think it's a large problem. As for how it scales, we already know how standard THAC0/BAB scales (poorly), but it is one area we will continue to test. Q: I'd wager that you're underestimating the fun of dodging and missing. It doesn't need to be as prominent as it was in Baldur's Gate-era missfests, but people like making characters that dodge all incoming damage. Also, the risk of doing no damage is fun. I think you're overestimating the fun of dodging and missing. I don't think most players find it particularly enjoyable, and it's exacerbated/amplified in games like the new XCOM where players are constantly in stunned disbelief at the RNG. What are your thoughts? Post them here or at Formspring if you wish. http://www.formsprin...896189576204826

What's less surprising is the lack of love for Barbarians. Give us more information about these guys, Obsidian!

Hey guys, just checking in on this thread. Some very cool ideas and I'm hoping some future modders can work this out. I'm really having high hopes for this game, and if all else is good, a RL mod would be awesome. As for Diablo, I've played Diablo before and I never thought of Diablo as a rogue-like. So there's that. I still don't think Diablo is a roguelike, but to be honest, I've only started getting into the RL scene, so I'm not sure what defines a true "rogue-like." Anyway, most people have understood what I meant here, so that's cool. A true endless path would be endless It's meant to be a fun mini-game - one where you can never win... (or can you?) No, no you can't.

cant wait for the RL mods.

Stash is available at CAMP, HOME, STORE, and probably a few other places.

Think less. Wait more.

All I could think was YABBA DABBA DOOO

I remember having a link to ideas about uncovering fog of war. I'll repost it here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61425-let-us-see-the-whole-area-please/ Many ideas were talked about here, so in case the devs do look at this thread and do want to change FoW and how it's implemented, this would be a good place to start

The game pausing thing is very much one of those "if you want it, you should restrict yourself" kind of things. If you're interested in the challenge provided with limited-pauses, you can go ahead and place that limit on yourself. RT with unlimited pause has worked effectively in the past without sacrificing gameplay or challenge. While I hate this argument, I feel that it works here: don't railroad other players into your own playstyle. If you want to limit your pauses, go ahead. Don't force others to play that way.

You could always just wait for the game to come out :smug:

So an idea: The endless dungeon, Od Nua, is going to be a pre-designed dungeon featuring 15 levels of dungeon crawling. I was wondering whether (either in this game or in the expansion) it would be possible to consider leaving a "secret entrance" to levels below 15 that are randomly generated with increasing difficult monsters and sort of act like a "rogue-like" mini-game? a few thoughts: 1- this will probably require a lot of design work, so I don't want this being part of this game but maybe for an expansion, it would be nice to continue down Od Nua forever? 2- Obviously the balacing would have to work so that you don't really gain too much treasure and experience to unbalance the game. maybe you can use what you find down there and the experience helps you to gain levels, but whne you leave you get level drained back to what you started with. (just an idea) 3- this also requires randomly generated tile-sets which isn't what this game is. Hence more design work. Obviously a rogue-like only works with infinitely procedurely generated tile-sets. Anyway... think about this for a future expansion or a mini-game type thing. It'd be fun! Now destroy my idea everyone! Pile on!

No, no. No anime size, but it would be interesting to know how a halfling carries a two-handed sword... I would imagine a claymore would be too unwieldy for a halfling. Maybe they two-hand regular longswords?

Exactly my point. Which means the addition of a, imo, pointless "deep stash" is there only to limit players from accessing 100% of the stuff they have picked up. Why? Please dont say beacause of "degenerative inventory". Punative. You make it sound like any sort of strategy or tactic is punitive. A game without rules isn't a game. Just wanted to requote this from the OP for you, emphasis mine:

Weapons aren't race-restricted in game. However I do agree with the OP: it would be interesting to see a halfling wield a larger weapon. Not sure if strength checks will be implemented, but it might be interesting to see such a thing. Of course, then we will also see things like FO:NV with the fire hydrant melee weapon.

The fallout version (implement such a thing for important NPCs) would be more than "fun-sized." THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!!! :dancing: :dancing:

Of course, Oblivion isn't what Project Eternity intends to replicate.

Do not mess with the Jesus...

I don't know what you guys are talking about: this is a day-1 purchase for me. Gonna save up and try to donate the $10k if possible.

This is probably not going to happen because of the extremely high amount of artwork it would take, but I really liked Fallout1/2 use of close-ups of important NPCs that you could talk to (Gizmo, Harold, Sulik, Marcus, Tandi, etc). I thought it was a nice touch especially since they also had voice acting. It was a nice change of pace and being able to see the visual profile of some characters can raelly add a lot to the experience.

rjshae are you asking for Cazadores to be in the game? Great idea! To be serious for a moment though, larger spiders can eat non-insects and many do. some larger spiders eat frogs and birds, so I spider that large might be able to eat a human or a goblin. really, our own biology is much weirder than we can imagine: for example, we have fungi that create zombie ants, or fire ants making rafts from their bodies to cross bodies of water, or even these tree-hoppers Bocydium globulare which look like helicopters.

double post n/t

I was interested in knowing whether an unlimited "stash" backpack would be a problem from two perspectives. 1) If players do not need to discern between infinitesimal increases in gold by picking up all "vendor trash" and selling only "valuable loot," will this be a problem mid-game when it comes to balancing party economy? Have you considered whether players SHOULD pick up and sell every last useless armor and short sword, for example, to have enough gold or whether this would break economy balance? If the stash backpack isn't limited, are there any other ways you intend to limit this type of economy imbalance, e.g. vendors not buying "useless items", or vendors only having limited gold on hand? 2) Will an unlimited stash inventory cause any technical problems with savegames becoming too large? If the player picks every little thing up in the game and just stashes it in his backpack, can this pose a problem by corrupting savegames or having overly large savegames? If so, have you thought of ways to make sure that this isn't a problem?

Point taken. However the "stash" is meant to be a "party stash" not a single person's, so it really doesn't matter how much "weight" someone can carry. The whole thing is an abstraction anyway. As for specifics item counts, that is obviously up to the devs to figure out what works best. However, currently, the stash is considered "infinite." As for the mentality of "sell everything you buy" you'd be surprised how often this happens if it's allowed. People will carry every little thing that they can and will try to sell it. Why wouldn't you do it if you couldn't? Think back to the older games, did you NEVER stop to pick up all the leather armors and short swords unless you didn't have space? I don't think money should suddenly become a non-issue mid-way through the game and many others also share my sentiments. Look at the other threads on this board in regards to "economy" and you'll see. All of this to say that once again, this isn't really meant to be that huge of a deal. It was just something to help understand the "lore" as well as play with a few not-so-important mechanics of the game (like fast travel, limiting stash space). I wanted to put up this quote from Mr. Josh Sawyer that I found in another forum that deals with this, emphasis mine. So ultimately, it really doesn't matter to Josh what the in-game lore is for such a thing, nor does he think he can come up with something that isn't absurd. I agree with him. I wouldn't dare imagine that too much time should be spent on this if the benefits don't outweigh costs. It's why I asked for everyone's opinion - I'm not sure what's worth the dev time and what isn't. It also doesn't matter for a lot of other people either, what the lore reason is. But it's a "fun" little thing that makes the world a little bit more "alive." At least I think so.