JFSOCC

Not true. How conflict plays out when you're detected is entirely separate from the circumstances that govern your ability to go undetected. And honestly, I don't see why a masterful thief SHOULDN'T basically be able to either knock people out in one hit OR kill them in one hit. If you sneak up behind a human, and you've got 2 daggers, I think you could probably slit their throat or stab them in both lungs. Without their knowledge you're there, they're completely defenseless. Armor doesn't mean anything if you have all the time in the world to strike wherever you want without any resistance. And, if there was, instead, an ogre in a corridor, you might just want to sneak past him rather than attack him. The goal being to avoid engaging him until you've completed some other task (or all together, perhaps), so how quickly you can dispatch of him is moot. Also, I just want to point out, for what it's worth, that I don't see the act of saving and reloading as inherently degenerate. I mean, if you're fighting a very challenging fight, you might die completely (unable to continue the game in any capacity) and be forced to reload again, but that's just part of gameplay. You're not circumventing anything. You should be presented with the opportunity to gather enough information and control your party in a sufficient manner to complete the fight in a single try, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't ever end up having to try a second time. So, yes, you shouldn't be required to save and reload JUST to gather the required information to be ABLE to complete a task. That's just terrible design. But, save/loading is really only degenerate when it's intentionally used to achieve a better result with less than the intended amount of effort. Just a side-note, really. Again, I posted the suggestion for a similar stealth system, not a suggestion to do combat, not the save abuse.It's singly the mechanic of observation that I wanted to focus on.

Not all stealth has to end in combat, my suggestion is a similar system, not the same system. For one I would divide the enemy view cone into sections, where the size and placement of those sections is based on their observation stat, conversely I would let your stealth stats determine how far you can penetrate these sections without being spotted.I reckon stealth will play a lot without going into combat in P:E. (and a lot with it) Nor do I suggest the single hit silent kills like in Commandos. I really hope Obsidian would be willing to play Commandos with the tracer cheat on, simply to see how the Eidos team did the mechanic. And then build from there. The video I selected I selected because it shows of the stealth and observation systems, not because it showed the save/load abuse.

Of course, but by referencing other examples we can get a vibe of what kind of thing is appreciated. They're supposed to be inspiration, nothing else.

How about...Soulbound

this one at least has a bit of everything, visual observation, sound as a distraction, observation of left behind tracks.

I don't think you should focus on the few things he mentioned, besides them being examples, it shows that this is just something that has slowly been building up for the past ten years. When you don't really get along with someone, or have a bad first impression, it's easy to get a positive information bias where you focus on someone's faults, the longer that goes on, the more you'll see in a negative light until every situation you'll only see the negative and this will only confirm what you already believe. Rather than call your dad a ****, get him to reality-test his thoughts. If you can get him to try and see things from a different perspective, you can work on breaking the cycle of positive reinforcement of negative ideas. This is why dialogue is so important. If I am annoyed by someone taking me along to a store, something I now HAVE to do, because she (OF COURSE!) didn't have the wit to prepare for guests, and I don't voice this, then she never gets to explain how she thought it was a nice thing to do, an excursion to a good wine place, and you can come along so you can select the best wine yourself, so you can only be satisfied. The fact that there was no dialogue meant that both your father and your wife got stuck with a view that was incorrect. Your father believing that your wife didn't care to be moved to do a single thing herself for the family, and your wife believing she reached out to your father. This is why, if you want things to be right with your family, you MUST have dialogue, or rather, your wife and family must.

Having different ways to detect seems a cool feature making stealth more complexAbout the guy in plate, he would have a much greater noise radius, which means he might not bypass a guard an inch from his neck, but certainly it might be done some 10 meters distant.

My condolences as well. Sucks losing your dad.

I second Aljazeera as a good news agency, although they do have blind spots.

Now I know intelligence is going to be in (because of the low intelligence dialogue comment) but I've always thought that you can't really fake intelligence. Ultimately, the problem solving skills of the player will either outdo, or limit the problem solving skills of the party characters. Also, the distinction between wisdom and intelligence, like between strength and dexterity, is sometimes ambiguous. I never enjoyed the DnD examples of low/int high wis or high int/ low wis. It brings to mind another fear of mine, which is that certain classes need to focus on certain attributes, which means generally that you'll find no high intelligence fighters, high strength wizards or low dexterity rogues. It should all matter to all classes, that way you get much more ability to diversely roleplay your characters.

The word you were looking for is antagonist. Garnier de Naplouse in the first Assassins' creed game. It was his job to take in beggars, prostitutes and mentally insane, (which were kidnapped by another target in another city, to avoid too many questions) break their spirits, and reshape them so they would become soldiers for his cause. He truly believed he was helping them. (tough love) After Altair kills him he argues his case: these people had a terrible existence, I was providing them a new life, but before that can happen, they had to be brainwashed first. Utterly evil or philanthropic, you decide Ofc the game decides to show him breaking the legs of someone who doesn't enjoy his help, to show you how evil he is. So the game pushes its own morals at you, bit of a pity.

Today I did everything that was expected of me, but little that I liked.

There is a lot of different folk music in the world, it's not really one genre. Sardinian folk music is different from slavic folk, which is a world of difference from American folk.

Sorry to ask but what do you mean by light therapy and how is that related to your sleeping times? I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as winter depression.Light therapy involves an easy to follow,but strict regimen of Staring into a bright light (10.000 lux) every day in the morning at the same time (9.am for me) for 30 minutes. This is supposed to simulate sunlight, and helps wake you up Also required is that you have breakfast prior to sitting in front of the lamp. You must have three meals a day. at regular times. and you must go to bed on time. lastly you must turn off all bright light sources an hour before sleeping. All of these things are intended to reset your biorhythms. I suffer from ADHD, which means I'm also less sensitive in changes in light(long story, got to do with melatonin production cycles in the brain), which in turn means I adapt my rhythm too slow, which makes me more vulnerable to SAD. Usually you do this end-September beginning of October. Which I did. but anyone thnking I'm keeping my rhythm during the Holidays must think I have no social life. So, after the holidays are over, I usually do it again. To me the difference is between having suicidal thoughts and being happy, which is quite significant.

So Israel is planning on building a wall at the Syrian border. Why not give that strip of land to the Palestinians so they can connect their territories? If you're going to close the borders anyway, might as well give it to those who can use it instead. I know, wishful thinking.

I think you'll be forgiven for threads that have more than 3 pages, but otherwise, yes.

Right, and as a developer it might be easier to create challenges as you can use defaults for certain classes in their observation/patrolling skills and behaviour. All you need to do then is placement, and even if you haven't designed an encounter with stealth in mind, it could by virtue of the game mechanics work out that way.

Truth. That would be really cool. Though, how would that work with combo's? What if I have 1 character that is in good favor with the Thieves Guild, likewise they "hate" the City Watch. In the group I have 1 who has a strong standing with the City Watch, would the Thieves go "hostile" against 1 character or all of the character? Would the City Watch character have to wait outside? Likewise, how would the overall Party reputation work? And how would Morale function with that? Would the Thieves Guild character and the City Watch character work well together in the party? Would it be a functioning (with Morale penalties and whatnot) hassle? (E.g. one of the oddball groups) Or would we see Jaheira start fighting... that Shadow Druid don't remember her name (Cloakwood). I'd like to get a warning somehow. Baldur's Gate with mods, Imoen says something like "Oh I don't like the looks of these guys" about Montaron and Xzar, but in vanilla she says nothing. I'd still have the choice to recruit them, but getting some sort of feedback on "Who are these people?" before recruiting. Parties in cities as well, I made a thread about it some time ago, being able to individually send out party members. Sending party members on "Tasks". What is the in-party reputation? What do Forton think of Aloth? Could "Reputation" deem it somehow? Does party members react to someone getting a better reputation? Can we help the party members get the reputation they "deserve"? Can we influence the path somehow? What I am trying to convey is some sort of "Player Controlled" reputation. Let's say Edair has a steady growth of his reputation according to his own quest tree, but instead of doing that we take Edair off to other adventures and his reputation grows to be like-able by the opposing faction of what he initially goes for... can we influence the NPC's path? EDIT: Can Forton start to like Aloth if you bring down Forton the same "Reputation" as Aloth? As for a Baldur's Gate example... could we bring down Imoen's personality, make her more evil and instead she welcomes Montaron and Xzar like family into the group..? Well, I like (as I've argued a while back in another thread) the idea of having solo-gather information quests, where party members can play to their strengths. (The warrior infiltrating the guard, the rogue sneaking into the shadier parts of town to talk with the local crime syndicate, the bard getting drunk with people in an inn, the wizard searching an academy library. each can find a different piece of information which could help with the next party mission. This way individual failures aren't disastrous, just gives you less of a full picture.)Having mixed reputations can bring mixed results, but generally If the city guard knows you did them some favours in the past, they won't suspect those who travel with you when they've worked for the thieves. Hell, maybe they'll ask you to investigate one of your own crimes. that could make for interesting choices. I also think that eventually the further you go in one faction or another, that should close some doors elsewhere. As for party-member conflict. I don't know, they're not exactly my strength, I generally try to please everyone and thus fail to please anyone.

hour of love. Ask your dad to list a few things he thinks are nice about your wife, and vice versa. that might help set the mind at looking at the positive things. It doesn't even matter how little it is. It's not the things that matter, but what it does is refocusses the mind to pay attention to different things. that might (over time) break the cycle of focussing on the negative and reinforcing the bias when that is observed.

You don't want to hear what I have to say about those books.

been doing light therapy the last week. lots of early rising and early beds

Watched Dredd, was a well crafted movie.

Here in the Netherlands, the Israeli embassy and the US embassy are both about 500 meters from our parliamentary building, and as far as I know, by far most embassies are the the embassy park, about 3 miles further out. I think that illustrates our international relations nicely.

First off, let me apologize for not having pictures to explain what I mean. I tried doing screenshots but somehow they came out all garbly, and online I cannot find examples of what I wished to demonstrate. So, Commandos is an isometric game of a different sort, for those who haven't played or heard of it, you play an elite group of special forces during the second world war, each with their own specializations. Never is your team greater than six members, so in many ways, it has some overlap with the IE games. Despite not being a RPG. I bring this up because I believe stealth is done pretty well in Commandos, and with a few minor tweaks could actually be pretty well implemented in P:E. If you cheat in commandos, as I was prone to when I was younger, you had the option to "trace" the enemy's observation. This involved a few things First you had line of sight, a cone moving outwards from every npc, divided into two parts, a part nearby where anything could be seen and a part far off where you could be observed if you were standing up. Enemies could also see tracks left in snow, though these disappeared after a while. Then, there was something you could only see if you cheated, which was your sound signature. Different weapons had different signatures, but all of them were basically a radius around the player, whenever they were fired. If you moved at speed, your movement had a sound radius as well. enemies within the radius of the sounds would become alerted to it. they would shout out in alarm, which had it's own (rather large) sound radius, but if they were isolated this would not be too troublesome So commandos worked by sneaking towards enemies, dealing with them one by one, moving corpses out of the path of patrolling enemies. Or if the fancy struck you, by ignoring them and using your observation skills to bypass them without leaving a trace. I don't see why this system couldn't be implemented in P:E. Your Stealth skill could affect the range of your enemies observation skills (visually) or perhaps their sight cone could be divided up into pieces, the more stealthily you are, the more parts of the cone you could enter without being spotted. Vice versa, observation skills could increase the sight cone of enemy NPC's, those with tracking skills would be better at observing footprints left behind by your team (and you might see enemy footprints based on their distance to you, and the time since an npc walked past.) I think this would make stealth immensely more dynamic, and would make it a skill where the levels you had in it would change the challenge, but never eliminate it. You couldn't just walk in front of some dude, so you would have to keep paying attention to their movements and positions. and their patrol routes. Skill in move silently would decrease the sound radius/signature you have. A "silent running feat" would make your running sound signature whatever your walking sound signature is. Armour would affect this too. so you could be a stealth character with heavy(loud) armor, but this means you'd have to avoid enemies at greater distance (rather than just have a stealth check fail) and walk slower. Different enemies might have different ways to spot you, some being excellent listeners (their hearing range has to overlap your sound signature in order for them to notice your sounds) Dogs could use scent, seeing where you've been (but this would evaporate over time, quicker outside than inside, and not through some obstacles.) Spotters could have narrow but long vision cones, Guards could have short but wide ones. I think this would create gradients of stealthplay, where it isn't a simple pass or fail check whether or not stealth succeeds. You'll still have to play and pay attention. Your bulky barbarian can still sneak, it's just much harder for him because he'll get spotted much easier. And most importantly, getting spotted doesn't have to alert the entire base to your presence, which means that if you enjoy stealth, you're not forced to instantly reload. (I imagine some alarms could trigger everyone to go on high alert) Oh, and no "must have been nothing" nonsense. An enemy alert isn't going to back down quickly. - Finally, I think this is fairly easy to implement. Sight cones can be stuck to characters' orientation. The shape of them to their class(or role), the size of them to their observation skills (linked to a numerical value, so that things like equipment and skill can affect it) And what they can spot (tracks, movement within distance x , stationary within distance y) while stealth abilities will allow you to move the range of either enemy observation skills, or decrease the range of your signals. Also for weapons some make noise, some might have a noise radius where they impact while others have a noise radius where they come from. Sorry for the rather poorly worded idea. maybe I'll format it better later (don't count on it) --- TL;DR: an idea to make stealth more dynamic by making skills for stealth and observation work in gradients

the smooth operator, suave, polite, guarded, not afraid to get his hands dirty, just not in public. Loves his creature comforts. Arrogant. Has a public face and a discrete face.