Hormalakh

I'm not going to read all 27 pages. But I'm hoping someone mentioned Haer D'alis and Aerie from BG2. They had a romance between them. So not everything was between the PC and the companions. Similarly, I really liked Viconia's romance because it was quite difficult to achieve and nothing is sweeter than a difficult relationship

Oh I'm sorry I haven't used battle.net since it was good. You know 1.0. Once I realized that Blizzard became what it is now, I stopped playing their games. So.....battle.net v. 1.0 YESSSSSS?

It's why people continue to buy songs from iTunes even though there's been plenty of news about how you don't own the music you buy: you just own the "license" to listen to it until Apple says you can't. Edit: Now that this thread has been completely derailed, I am done. Sorry about that OP.

Obsidian's own Battle.net? I likeeeeeeeee.

Seriously though, I really can't understand the "logic" behind DRM. I'm pretty sure that's because there simply isn't one. Pirates just bypass DRM. No matter what sort of DRM you implement, it's possible to crack it. So basically, DRM is a way of making pirates the privileged players of the game. It tries to say "piracy is bad" but instead all it says is "piracy pays off because you don't have to bother with this crap if you get the pirated version of the game", and on top of that it actually costs money to implement DRM. There just is no logic behind it whatsoever. My personal feeling is that companies that employ DRM aren't doing it to stop pirates. If pirates won't pay, then they'll charge their customers twice to recoup those losses. Those guys are paying money already, so they figure they'd pay again to play a game that they should technically own. Thus, when a game suddenly gets hacked or no longer works, they'll just have to buy the game again to play it. Suckers that they are, they probably do, thus paying once for the pirate and once for themselves.

I also would be quite pissed if any of my friends ever pirated this game, nor would I ever condone pirating this game. Why? Simple: I backed it and I actually like Obsidian as a company. They haven't screwed me over and listen to their fans. Why would I do anything that could possibly harm them by taking money away from them? These are the actual developers of the games, not some middleman trash that does nothing but destroy the games I love to play.

We did have "cats confirmed for $4mil stretch goal" afterall.... :D

It's not a quest per se, but I really liked what it did with dialogue. The Viconia Romance was one of the best written and executed parts of BGII. No dialogue option was a definite "win" and there is a lot of uncertainty in whether you reach your objective because it occurs over a long period of time. Sometimes you think the "quest" is over, but then it starts up again and you think "sweet I picked the right dialogue choice!" It was a satisfying challenge.

Why just ancient theory? There's a lot on souls even in contemporary theology and philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul

"Is it better to be feared or loved?" Taking into account that this game will be based around factions and your reputation towards them, one very good way of achieving "evil rewards you" is to make one faction only either "fear you" or "hate you." Hating you is the "good option" because it's the option taht you start with. When you enter the town, and you save the puppy, are you doing it for the money that you are pretty suer you get or the experience that you get? In my opinion if you are doing things in the real world with an expectation of a reward, you aren't a good person, you're just a money-grubber. You're just trying to find the easiest way to make money. That makes me hate you. And when you come into my town, I'm going to charge you more cash for goods. But if you come into my town and start killing my children and eating the puppies. Then I'm going to start fearing you. Yeah, I'll give you the cheaper prices on the goodies (I might not show you rare items I have, unless you threaten me, but otherwise you get cheaper items.) There really is no way to be loved in this town. They hate outsiders. You're an outsider. The good option doesn't really reward you. The "evil one" does. Sort of.

Like I said, if you want to cast magic missle all day, go right ahead. I'll cast time stop, horrid wilting, and meteor swarm, and we'll see who wins that fight. Magic that implemented casting time was not degenerate in BG2. Go play the game again with a harder difficulty and a better AI (SCSII mod is a good one), then tell me the enemy mages sucked.

Both would always be the best option. But we live in a world with limitations on money and time.

I really love this thread, I mean I know this game is fantasy and all, but actually applying historical perspective to a game is soooo interesting. It makes fantasy a "what if" scenario. What-if we had elves, dwarves, etc? What if the printing press wasn't made? These are really interesting questions and I think a fantasy setting that's based on an anthropological and historical view is very cool.

I know I'm going to regret asking this, but... will the Priests be carrying holy hand grenades? As long as they can count to five, er three.

It is far from certain that something akin to blackpowder can even be made in a given fantasy world, just like electricity does not necessarily exist. Chain lightning anyone?

I think that what most of us in the forum talk about isn't really to stop "power-gaming," but to build efficient, robust, and thoughtful game mechanics that make the game fun to play in the way it was intended by the devs to be played. Having a backdoor that the developers didn't think about is what we don't want. But if the developers put in a mechanism that is well-thought out, it doesn't matter to us if players "power-game" that system. At least, that's the feeling I've been getting from a lot of the posts here on this forum.

lol look at you guys go.... even after you said there is a whole bunch of threads on this... nice troll OP

I used to play the same way - magic wasn't fun until i forced myself to learn how to play with it.

There are no spells that restore health. But there will be spells that restore stamina. I find that it is a false equivalency to think that fighters and magic-users should have similar mechanics. Fighters are usually damage dealers and takers while magic users have a much more versatile array of effects that they can conjure. Their skills are different; thus their resource management can be different. As I mentioned in my previous post, just because different classes manage different resources with different mechanics doesn't mean that every class has a resource it doesn't have to manage. Fighters and tanks usually manage health and stamina as a resource. Wizards and other casters, by virtue of the fact that they stand in the back of the formation, do not have to worry about stamina and health as much as they do about spells available. The mechanics for replenishing these resources do not necessarily have to be equal. I also do not have a knee-jerk hatred of cooldowns. The stamina mechanic works through cool-downs and I think that it makes sense for the mechanic to work that way. This does not mean that cooldowns are the only answer for every problem, nor should they be. We should be thinking of a varity of resource-management mechanics that the game employs for different classes; it makes for a more interesting game and one that is ultimately more fun. One of the examples that I like to always give is for the game, Starcraft. One of the very unique aspects of that game is that while each race is balanced in any fight, they each employ very different mechanics and strategies in combat. Using one strategy for all the different races would not make sense in that game: players would lose if they used the same strategy across the three races. Certain players thus become "experts" in certain races and learn how to best utilize the mechanics of that race to their advantage. I would love a RPG game to learn from this and try to make their classes as different as possible in terms of play style and resource management. It makes a game a much deeper and fulfilling experience when each class has to follow a different strategy.

I thought it solved some of the problems of the Vancian system as I described above quite well. No player will ever be fully ready for any given environment. This tries to play a balance between not knowing at all what you would face in that environment and having complete knowledge due to metagaming (reloading the game). As you find several spirit pools, you can change your spell arsenal between pools. I didn't talk about save spamming, only rest spamming. I also mentioned potions of restoration that would allow partial restoration for those who are, as you say, stuck between battles. Players would also learn to not completely replenish their spells at every pool. Perhaps they'd have a spirit pool saved in the dungeon for when they need to completely revamp their magic list. Similarly, towns could have spirit pools or temples that allow restoration of spells either for free or at a price. I think it's a matter of whether stamina is used for fighters only or whether it will also be used for casters as well. Just because you have different mechanics for different classes, doesn't mean that one class has to deal with resource-management while the other doesn't. Wizards and casters are less likely to rest due to healing wounds (they usually are in the back) while fighters don't need cooldowns for spells. The resources managed here are different and their mechanics are different, but that doesn't mean one has to manage it and the other doesn't. If I remember back to Baldur's Gate II, some fights were spaced quite ridiculously close. Especially in dungeons.

That was my understanding too. From what I understand, higher-level spells would still be Vancian-based. I'm just worried about these lower-level spells being misused as crutches. Even "wait-spamming" at lower levels isn't fun and it shouldn't detract from the game regardless if it's the beginning, middle, or end. You want the game to be fun at all stages, and I believe the spirit pools do a better job of this. The spirit pools is just an idea afterall: they don't have to restore higher-level spells if resting is the mechanic that OEI wants to go with. And like I said, a creative implementation of spirit pools can open up some interesting puzzles for the game developers. Ultimately, I'll be happy with what professional game developers come up with: i just wanted to throw out another idea for Josh and Tim to consider. Maybe it'll spark some new ideas for them as well when trying to tackle this very difficult problem. From all the discussions that I've been seeing on these forums about Vancian magic and cooldown-based/stamina-based magic, people have strong opinions on both sides. I'm trying to find out what the underlying problems are that people are expressing, and coming up with a solution that would address those concerns on both ends. I still don't think that OEI's current iteration (I know it's not complete and fully fleshed out, if it was, I wouldn't even be posting this) is satisfactory to everyone out there.

Unless you change the morphology it's not plausible no matter what respiratory or circulatory system you pick. If I make my spider 10000 times larger it's effective muscle strength becomes 1/10.000, which would not be enough to support it's body. Add to that that the effective strength of the chitinous outer shell or internal bones also drops rapidly compared to the mass of the creature and it effectively will shatter when it hits the ground. If we want to be scientifically accurate the creature would really not resemble a spider very much as it would have to have quite sturdy legs and a much reinforced body to not die from gravity This is a little off-topic, but some spiders (jumping spiders) use their "muscles" by pushing fluid into their limbs, making it stiffer and allowing them to move. The muscles in these guys' legs is otherwise too weak for this type of movement. http://science.howst...ids/spider6.htm Very interesting creatures, spiders. too bad they're always shown as being "evil" and "disgusting."

All the more reason to make sure we get the lower-tier spells right. If they aren't challenging and are dictated by a timer, how is that any less of an aRPG than what I have proposed? I'm not saying my system is the best, but I think it answers the challenges and problems better than a cool-down system. Edit: spelling

I would imagine so. Think about it. You have a 15 level dungeon with several parties of enemies on each level. You've used up all your level 1-3 spells on the first group of 10 goblins. You've got another 5 groups to go on that level. 20s cooldown for each group is a a minute 40 seconds of just waiting. Eh, it's not so much, but people might still wait out 20s at a time between each fight. You are still missing that key challenge of resource-management in between fights. The point is the cooldowns don't encourage the player to manage his resources over several battles: rather, he knows the lower-tier magics are freebies and can be careless with those spells. It won't matter anyway, he's going to get it back. But one spirit pool per level? You bet that the player is going to make sure to be careful with what he does with those spells in each battle. Edit: If the cooldowns are even longer, you'd be sure to have players waiting it out. A minute for a cooldown in our previous senario? That's 5 minutes of waiting right there. You have to be honest with yourself when thinking about these situations with magic, what would you do if the monsters were difficult to kill? Would you find the easiest way to defeating them? Or would you change your strategy?

I'm sure there'll be a mod out soon enough OP when the game comes out, so you should be OK.