Hormalakh

I remember in BG2 that most multiclassed wizards could wear armor, but this affected their spellcrafting abilities. Perhaps something in that vein would help with those against plate mail wizards. Nothing that is so severe, but perhaps some sort of drawback like: - decreased concentration - more likely for spells to fail - slower casting time - certain schools locked out - increased cost of casting - decreasd accuracy of casting Each of these might have a place. Perhaps a class perk could be to remove this drawback at higher-levels allowing wizards to cast spells in plate armor, making the decision have more consequence. Perhaps there could also be certain spells crafted against wizards who wear certain types of armor. In would seem to me that since this world has mages who wear heavy armor, other mages (who do not wear this armor) have developed and researched spells that combat this: perhaps spells that bend metal or make it brittle (more likely to break that plate armor). Something to that effect would also be an interesting twist. ---------------------- In a completely different line of thought, I have noticed that the main issue most people are having with mages wearing plate isn't that mages shouldn't wear it: it's that fighters and those classes become particularly useless in battle because one of their defining traits has been taken away from them. Thus, in reality the problem isn't wizards per se: it's the fighters lack of versatility. Therefore, it seems to me that fighters here are the problem. Fighters should not be described as "swords + plate mail + full tank of HP" but rather a group of people who are masters in the art of combat. If this means that fighters have certain in-combat abilities (cleave, bash, coup degrace, stun, etc) that NO other class has access to - and to allow these abilities to begin from level 1, then fighters continue to have a deeper role to play in combat. Thoughts?

From all the guns I've seen from the 14th century onward, the one thing I know that has to be different from contemporary guns is the exquisite detail put into each gun. I would assume that these things were not mass-produced; guns were hard-crafted and decorated with great care. I expect that unless the PE universe has a mass-production factory for these and other weapons, great detail and care must go into making these weapons look beautiful, even if it means just in the item description box in your inventory.

I'm actually replaying Arcanum (bought it from GOG). Things I've loved: - The history and lore of Arcanum. The library has some extremely amazing books. - The fact that some "quests" are riddle-like in their execution. You can't just use the map to figure out exactly where everything is. You have to actually explore the areas. - The philosophy of Stone and Form - one of the best lore items I've found in-game thus far. - The twin skulls of Kree: didn't like it's anticlimatic ending though. - Crafting. The fact that you can't become a "professor" in more than 3, maybe 4 fields makes the game replayable. (Unless you take off max level cap). - Dialogue matters. Thing's I've hated: - The main character cannot attack doors. Only your companions can do so. - Picking locks is the worst! - I don't like point-buy very much. - Experience and how it's given. I always told my companions to "back-off" so I could get the exp for hitting an enemy. - The game has a very vague sense of direction. You could pretty much travel aroun arcanum for days and not get on with the quests. Sometimes I lose interest in the game, just because of the lull in story. Having to grind to get to the level I need to move on because frankly some of the monsters will destroy me.

I have somewhat similar concerns - but perhaps some of these things truly are broken. I just hope they get the **** tested out of them to make sure that they are true to the feel of IE games.

As for the weekly updates during the Kickstarter as opposed to now, you do realize that they had been working on this idea for at least a month before even starting the kickstarter right? There was a lot of planning going on without us knowing about it. Now that we're all caught up with what they've done so far, we expect them to have just as much stuff as if a month had gone by and they had figured everything out. It's only been two weeks since KS was over. Give them time. Lots of time. And be grateful for what you get.

I failed to mention that being fun is important, but when fun is not a factor, my thoughts as written above, stand.

I didn't know what respeccing was. But now that I've heard the arguments on both sides, I'd have to say no to respeccing. Everytime I haven't done the build that I wanted to have in a game, I've just told myself "That's what i'll do the next time I play this game." Or I restart. There is a gratifying feeling you get when you are sometimes forced to do things that you don't think you can with your character, but persistence prevailed and you were successful even without an "optimal" build. That isn't something I'd get with the ability to respec my character. X-COM (the older game) wouldn't have been as terrifying and fun if my bad decisions wouldn't haunt me as time went on. Respeccing takes that feeling away from me, especially if it's a feature of a game that I don't reuse. Putting time into making a quest where I can respec, is taking time away from something else. Allowing a game mechanic to respec takes time away fro focusing on other features. These options all have money and time costs an are not trivial mechanics to implement, if they want to be implemented in-game. If you want respeccing, wait for the mod. If you want it, just download it as opposed to those of us who don't want it having to forego a portion of the game that the devs made.

Actually you misread. The update wasn't about how they've already addressed these issues. It's about what questions they think are important in ALL mechanics. Armor was the example given by Josh, but he will be doing the same sort of thought process with all the other systems. He wanted us to get insight into how this is done from Obsidian's perspective. Then he gave us questions that they intend to answer with the armor system. You can therefore get an idea of how they will be tackling the other issues as well. It's very important because it tells you what things the developers are lookign at and especially what questions they believe we as commentators can make to help guide them as they make the game. They are most likely still in end stages of pre-production right now and probably haven't actually started fully developing everything. Give it time.

I'm not denying guns being a thing. I like them and want to see them. I just posted my thoughts as I saw fit.

Could not stop laughing XD

We only know about mages being killed by guns. Sometimes. 18th century Italian flintlock pistol. Very cool looking. Maybe magic can make bullets "explode" into many pieces (like a shotgun shell) right before it hits the enemy. Firearms appeared in Europe in the 14th century, but there is little evidence that they immediately began replacing the existing projectile weapons then in use. The inaccuracy of these early guns, and the noise and the smoke they produced, would have made them less successful than bows or crossbows as hunting weapons. Improvements in gun making gradually made them more effective, however, their use in hunting, until the end of the 17th century at least was restricted to birds at rest. Shooting at flying birds required an effective ignition system, and by around 1700 flintlock guns designed to shoot birds on the wing had been developed. The flintlock did have a problem though, the puff of smoke from its priming powder often gave the birds enough warning so as to avoid being hit. It wasn’t until the invention of percussion ignition by the Scottish clergyman Alexander Forsyth in the 19th century, that there was major breakthrough in smokeless ignition. The principle of which is still used today in modern small arms cartridges. http://www.royalarmo...allery-firearms Make magical guns that are "muffled", show no smoke. This would require magic since silencers didn't exist. It would be quite the deadly weapon for an assassin/thief class. The silenced wheel-lock. This makes me think: Magic severely stagnates technical innovation. Why create a bullet cartridge, if you can just use magic to silence the gun or stop the smoke? Heck, why even create guns in the first place? You've got fireball!

I had made a thread a while ago (when I first joined the forums) about "always asking why." In it I wrote a poorly worded plea to the devs to always ask why any certain thing works a certain way. What I was trying to ask for was for the world - as others have put it - to have a certain "internal consistency." Scientists and students of science (as I am) know that our world consists of certain constants and laws that make the world act certain ways (gravity, Planck's constant, organic materials being carbon-based life-forms, etc). Thus, the current world we live is always internally constant. Once you understand why a certain thing works a certain way, you can understand the consequences of what that implies (through logical deduction, etc). Then scientists begin to imagine and hypothesize how our world would be different were these constants changed. What they describe isn't real, but because they start from a position of changing those unchanging constants, the logical implications are immediately accepted. Why? Because these is no actual reason why Planck's constant is so and why so-and-so law of science is a law: it just is. Therefore, if those constants were changed (in another universe, say), the world would become an actuality. Our brains would not try to fight it. A good example of this hypothesizing and what-if scenario is shown in the website xkcd.com (http://what-if.xkcd.com/) So what does this have to do with verisimilitude and realism? Well, whenever you take elements of history and the real-world and incorporate it into your fictional universe, you are effectively taking a short-cut in describing a big portion of that world with its own internal logic. Why? Because you have just taken what actually exists (which by definition already has internal consistency) and have supplanted it into your world. It helps to know that it is possible for such things to happen, because they already have happened. Then you can focus in on certain aspects of this world and tweak the internal constants to your liking. Once you have done that, the logical implications must once again be performed throughout the world and questions that would seem illogical must be answered for our minds to accept them. This internal consistency once again holds firm and we are able to accept these worlds as possibilities in the infinite universe. Our brains begin to imagine this world as existing and do not fight us against believing in them. So when good fantasy or science-fiction draws heavily from real-life history, it is allowing us to not have to develop a completely new (and invariably HUGE and extremely complex) world from scratch. A lot of the "leg-work" has already been done. We can then start to use this world as a sounding board for our own philosophical questions and what-if scenarios. What if magic truly existed? What would that mean for humanity? What if other sentient beings existed in our world? Like dwarves and elves. What would that mean to us as humans? What would it mean in regards to nature and how we interact with it? What is the nature of a man? What can change the nature of a man? These things matter because when we are thinking about the philosophical aspects of this new world and their implications through our "thought-experiments" we don't want our brains nagging at us, saying "this isn't believable." "This doesn't follow any sort of logical thought-process. Why should any conclusions made be accepted?" We can truly begin to immerse ourselves in these worlds and spend our time thinking about the actual questions posed in this fantasy world. So, yes. Versimilitude and realism matter. Only to the extent that it helps us with the internal consistency that would keep our brains from actually entertaining the more important questions that the setting and plot are asking us.

Then why stick with a historical time period? Just make it a mish-mash. Put in cowboys and aliens and dinosaurs and everything else that is fantastical. Take your inspirations from Salvador Dali and Picasso. Deal with it. That isn't how you write good fantasy. The closer fantasy is to feasibility, the better. It's better to imagine a world that truly exists with a few interesting ideas, than it is to completely make things up from nothing. The way I see fantasy is that it speaks to our own nature as human beings with a few changes that allow us to make interesting "thought-experiments" about mature, adult topics. This is exactly why I think Josh Sawyer and the rest of Obsidian are the right fit for the job. They care about history and try to integrate the human condition in a world where humans aren't everything. Then they create world where players can think deeply about those characters, and in fact about who they are as people themselves. Edit: This is what makes fantasy and science-fiction even remotely interesting to so many people.

https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/ByVPmsSeSEG A must read for this thread and the devs. When people like Linus Torvalds are arguing for a change in resolution (I know this is DPI not resolution but they are very related), then this is something that the devs should take very seriously.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61857-oversexualization-of-females-in-video-games/page__hl__%20female%20%20armor http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60868-the-boob-armor-and-the-whole-issue-of-objectification/page__hl__%2Bfemale+%2Barmor Search "female armor". You'll find more than three threads on this subject. Happy reading! I want paper armor in this game now! Josh, make it happen. Glanfanthan paper armor FTW!

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61857-oversexualization-of-females-in-video-games/page__hl__%20female%20%20armor http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60868-the-boob-armor-and-the-whole-issue-of-objectification/page__hl__%2Bfemale+%2Barmor Search "female armor". You'll find more than three threads on this subject. Happy reading!

From what I've read (and reread) from JESawyer's post on armor, I've started thinking of the armors in certain classes. You have your doublet class, your hide class, your scale class, your mail class, and your plate class. These classes "level-up" if you will into higher-tiers. Armor Classes: Doublet -> Gambeson -> Armored Jack Hide -> Cuirass -> Leather Armor Scale Vest -> Scale Armor -> Lamellar X -> Mail shirt -> Mail armor X->X->Half-Plate->? A lot of people have been discussing allowing for adjustments being made to the armor by adding enchantments and so forth to improve certain armors. Others discussed allowing certain classes to be beneficial against certain attacks/damage types. Well, what about "multi-classing" armor or crossing-over between armor? Say you started with a hide armor but as you went up in tier, you can switch over to a scale class instead. That way you get a partial benefit of the hide class but have now shifted over to the scale class. Perhaps this locks your armor out of the previous hide class and you can now only move down the scale armor tiers.

You can just tint the image as it approaches nighttime, shifting from a white to more orange to dark blue image before moving over to the new map for nighttime. Problem solved.

The issue I have with point buy is that you sometimes have to figure out your whole character's progression several 10's of levels ahead of time. The point-buy system in Arcanum while being very good, has me figuring out exactly what points I'll be purchasing until I hit level 50. I would need to know what the maximum level is for this game, and the costs of buying points (does each attribute cost the same at all levels?), how many points I get per level, and basically planning everything completely out from the beginning of the game. I did have to eventually restart my game several times as I tried to figure out what I was actually aiming for for my character and this was a little frustrating. Of course, it also allows you to "fix" any problems you have with the direction your character is going as you play the game. Say for example that dexterity is more important in-game than you actually thought. Well you don't have to start a new game now, because you can just shift and adjust your strategy to take that into consideration. They both have pro's and cons. I like fixed numbers. It reminds me of BG2. Arcanum's system was fun too - it was just really different than the AD&D rules I was used to. Edit: apologies about the double post.

This is a refinement of a post I had made earlier. The one thing I noticed with all of the different stats systems is that they worked really well for their worlds. I think ultimately that the developers should probably create something very similar to these systems, but to utilize some stats (strength, int, endurance, etc) as ways to define unchanging attributes of the people of this world (what I call "gene stats") and skills (barter, mechanics, steal, etc) as more flexible attributes that can change during the game ("skill stats"). Gene stats should define innate attributes of people that do not change with training or experience over time (your "genes"). Changeable "skill stats" can change with training/experience or distribution of points with increases in character level. The creators of the game should decide a few questions. One is "What aspects of the game world are we trying to highlight in this game system?" Secondly, "What attributes do we want to make unchanging/relatively stable in this world?" For example, would one's access to his soul be something highlighted and will it be changing or unchanging in this world? If unchanging, consider making it a stat. If changing, consider making it a skill (Access soul skill, for example). In regards to fixable stats, I agree with JE Sawyer in that rolling a dice for fixed stats should not occur. Instead, you should be given a fixed number of points to distribute across your "gene stats" and then any variation in these is through very specific and limited situations (a la BG2 when in you are in the Nether Planes).

Jan Jansen and Sarevok have some interesting banter in BG2. As does Haer'Dalis and Aerie.

I think Arcanum had some interesting aspects to armor that should be taken into account. Namely, noise as a mechanic (plate armor was loud and monsters would attack you because they could hear you). It seems that leather and animal hide was better for elemental damage in general whereas plate armor was better for weapon damage. e.g. Plate was also a good conductor so electrical damage was worse. Leather is an insulated material. Less electrical damage. Fire damage might heat up plate more whereas a more insulated material might be better. This is the material itself being worse, not due to any magical effects. Cold damage? Price should be a balancing mechanic. Even in these days weapons are chosen based on their costs. We don't send out B-2 bombers on routine flights because it costs like a $million per flight. Higher-tier armors should cost more upkeep. Armors should be damagable. In Arcanum, I hated fighting ore golems because they destroyed armor. I'd generally try to use a less important armor there that I would be willing to lose if it broke. I just want to reiterate that making different materials able to reach different levels in your tier system can overcome this problem of maximizing down the tier-tree. If a certain hide loses part of its qualities (troll hide armor losing its regeneration ability as it becomes troll leather armor), it makes moving up certain tiers more of a deliberate decision than a no-brainer.

I was thinking along the same lines. Maybe certain races or cultures (Vailians vs Glanfanthan Elves perhaps?) are rally good at workign with a certain type of armor, but there are types of materials they wouldn't touch. As an example, perhaps the Vailians are quite good at making doublets, and make the best doublets in the game world. However, they do not work (except that one rare armorer) with a certain animal hide because of the cultural significance of that animal. Thus while making armor from that animal would be quite the effective armor, you cannot get the best armorers to work with that hide because of cultural reasons. Perhaps the Glanfanthan elves make leather armors in that hide, but glanfanthans aren't renowned for their leather work.

I kind of like this idea. Your armor grows with you as you adventure in it. You can add enchantments to it. It's like making your armor "level up" as if it were another party member. The more you enchant or improve your armor (by adding mail or it or plates to it, changing the stitching, using new materials, dying it different colors, etc), the less likely you are in completely going for another new set of armor. Of course, it might be worthwhile to change into that new shiny mithril plate mail for your fighter and try to begin enchanting that, but the heavy gambeson with dexterity enchantments and plate add-ons still comes in handy when the fighter needs it.

Some materials (let's take the troll hide as the example) should not be able to increase in the tier system. That way you can only have troll hide armor, but not troll leather armor. It makes for an interesting option for the player: should my barbarian wear the troll hide armor or should I move him up to a higher tier leather armor but of poorer quality animal skin?