Pipyui

^ ^ That's quite a take you got there. Details that particularly caught my interest were the delivery and personalization (like color) options. I'm used to being limited in making only touch, single projectile, and AOE spells, so having a plethora of means of delivery appeals to me. Unfortunately though, some of the more interesting methods like scattershot sound like ARPG elements - meaning they might not be possible in a pen-and-paper cRPG type system, where success and failure is determined by die rolls. Delivery by ethereal weapons sounds fun, but I fear would be very difficult to implement correctly. How does the game know how you want said object to behave? Besides predesigned "summoned floating weapon" and "flying spear projectile," I don't see many options here (though these themselves should be fine enough). Same argument applies to the "spell consequence" section. Consequence options would require a lot of specific details to be accounted for regarding other spell options, so I think many of the elaborate ones would require me to mod them in myself. Can't ask for too much from the Devs for this. Granting color and visual effect personalization options to the player sound neat too. I might remake a generic fireball spell simply to make it purple. This should be easy enough, I think (defining an effect texture with variable hue is easy, right?). Drawbacks are strangely not present too often in spellcrafting. I'd be okay with them, if they were well designed and specific to each spell effect. i.e. making a damage spell more powerfull at the cost of melee is silly if I don't wield a weapon; slowing player movement is fine, but if I create an AOE binding spell that is bigger and lasts longer at the cost of my own speed, does it really matter? Making it more powerfull, but binding myself as consequence is more appropriate for this particular effect. In short: delivery / consequece - maybe, but it would be quite the project. Color / Visual effect - yeah, go for it! Drawbacks - sure, just be carefull with it. Others usually come standard in spellcrafting, so ... yeah (I'm a word wizard). Edit: So in the end, I'm still pretty ambivilant on spellforging. On one hand it could be made pretty neat, but on the other, accomplishing this would be a considerable dev project.

Nice to have spare parts. Given all of the fighting you endure, spares are good. Could always use another waterskin. Tents don't fashion themselves. Companion Corpse! Modern art. Target practice. Anyways, I'd be more than pleased to receive final requests from my dying (or dead) companions. If I had befriended them well enough, it would be neat to get emotionaly-charged (though not melodramatic, please) content from letting them die on me. Heck, maybe on a second playthrough I could learn more about a companion through their death than I got from life (especially if they're that "solemn and mysterious past" type). Edit: Removed a joke in poor taste. Funny at 1am, but I'd have regretted it come morning. Don't give me that; it wasn't all that bad, just a little poor in taste. Ugh, I'll just stick it down here and read all the flamemail in the morning.

Fully persistent corpses aren't good because they can cause save bloating, but I'm not sure that was expected. I would of course like to see corpses persistent within a game session, or at least until I leave an area, and scavenger birds when I return to a battlefield would be awesome. Someone already pointed out though that the UI managment of this would be aweful. Perhaps you can tab between corpses / fleshy loot bags? The borderlands 2 idea would be good for boss encounters and the like. Leave the giant corpses lying around for posterity.

The trouble isn't in the functionality of Steam, many of us just don't like supporting DRMed games is all. A personal issue, and one for a different thread. Since my copy of PE will not come through steam (okay, I might make an exception if I can get it for linux through steam but not GOG ), I would just like to be sure that the game isn't insistent on self-updating. I don't need a game tied to the internet (Blizzard gets enough flak for that), or that even tries to connect to the internet without my consent. Update button in the game menu is fine, and if (when) it doesn't work I can just manually patch.

Sorry, didn't mean to incense anyone with my previous post. The balancing thing wasn't a huge issue and a lot of fun can be had with it, but I do feel that spellcrafting as a "legitimate" game mechanic (at least in TES and many other RPGs I've played) was never much fun (except 100+% cameleon). You couldn't create many unique spells, it was mostly just "fireball and lightning! Complements perfectly my other generic damage spells!" Given the time and effort that the devs would require to put a spellcrafting system in place, I just don't think it would be worth it. This isn't at all to say that the devs shouldn't try to improve spellcrafting if they have any insightful ideas, by all means they should, just that I don't need a half-baked spellforging system stapled onto my game just for the sake of having one. Edit: I'm digging myself into a deeper hole, aren't I?

The trouble with spellcrafting, and the reason I think Bethesda removed it in Skyrim, was that it was too exploitable (now it's alchemy and smithing to exploit instead ). Mixing predefined spell effects never appealed to me so strongly anyway (I need something new) - at least not so much as to justify the work and balancing. When I want to create my own spells, I think I'll find the most enjoyment out of scripting and modding them in.

Well put. I'm also glad you managed to address a point that was part of the impetus for my original post, but that I had failed to nail down into a concrete idea - finding content shouldn't solely be a game of entering a tavern and conversing with every uniquely-named NPC in search of a quest. Also, needless to say I'm definitely on board with the option to include player notes in the journal. Along this line, it would also be beneficial for me to be able to mark points of interest on my map. Edit: Knick-knack, this thread is back!

Hassat Hunter poses a good suggestion, I think. Impose a "time limit" on a quest by dictating how many preperations you can make. If zombies are knocking on your door, maybe you can only accomplish 3 of 7 tasks to prepare for their eminent arrival before they bust in. The tasks may seem mostly equivalent in worthiness, but may change the outcome of a quest based on which you choose - maybe in what order you choose them. In a sense, you provide a pseudo-random mechanic to the player. It's completely deterministic (especially if you've played before), but outcome isn't immediately made obvious from choices made, and further playthroughs may yield new outcomes. On a similar note, perhaps you need prepare for the zombies, but don't know from whence they will come. You can prepare for a quest / encounter, but must account for uncertainties in how it will take form. Thus quests / encounters can have randomized elements, but they'd be implemented as a game mechanic, and the player granted control into how they decide to handle them. If the player is informed that assualt may come primarily from any of three sources - magic, archery, or phalanx, they could choose how best to distribute resources to prepare for any one in particular, or all three possibilities. Accounting for all would be safest, but you'd be effectively guaranteed to take heavy casualties. You wouldn't necessarily lose if you make the "wrong" choices, but combat could flow much differently then you had planned for, and you'd have to account for it mid-battle. This succeeds in making encounters more dynamic, and gives a level of randomness to quests without arbitrarily (much) imposing on the player experience. Could players reload and try again if they are unsatisfied? Yeah, but the option wouldn't present itself as being almost a necessessity to producing satisfactory outcomes. In this latter implementation quest outcomes aren't arbitrarily random, just quest application.

Cursed weapons of great power, but with high chances of critical failure would be neat.

Good going necromate! I think you just inadvertantly stumbled upon what could well be a religion of PE. Perhaps Forton is a monk who rejects the filithiness of his own corpus, and yearns to become an existance beyond physical limitations - a soul without a form. Maybe we can have a humanoid elephant race that lives a life of solitude because the people of PE find his countenance too ridiculous. Anyway, pulling that into the realm of seriousness, the physique of a foreign race shouldn't be too bothersome so long as it is decidedly appropriate (no furries in my RPGs, please / same style, no mix-and-match (leave the bug-eyed green aliens to fallout)). It's more important that they have a rich culture and history - that they enhance the world of PE.

Good question. If we can presume shaping magic is like making art, identical spells may be implemented differently depending on the caster. Thus one wizard's fireball scroll may not be identical to another wizard's. Reading an unidentified scroll and translating it into your own implementation might then require at least a basic probing, and maybe some experimentation. Could a booby-trap be hidden in there for the uncareful or unobservant? Maybe. Identification has it's own criticisms though, addressed in a thread from some time ago: Identifying unknown items Obtaining spells that tie together with your journey sounds neat, and Necromate's comment makes me wonder whether an alternative to learning spells through trainers could be to upgrade certain spells through trainers / quest(s). Also : I like the way you think. Edit: Tried unsuccessfully to include a pic, accidentally removed my profile pic instead

True enough, though as a function of soul, shouldn't a spell's form make itself evident in casting or probing its "structure"? The way I imagine it, it seems like a spell can only be cast if one knows how to shape their soul to accomplish a specific task. Without knowing the task, one doesn't know how to shape their soul. A scroll might facilitate the conveyance of such knowledge, and would itself define the nature of the spell. I do like the idea of finding unknown spells, but (speaking only for myself and my understanding of PE magic here) need it to be explained so that it is consistent with the nature of soul magic in PE. (<- smiley of "trying not to sound like an ass")

Sometimes you have to go through a quest to obtain unique equipment, right? Can't see a reason why not to do something similar for certain spells. The spell descriptions thing rubs me the wrong way a little, though. If I use my soul as a medium for a spell, I think I'd know the "structure" of the spell. Magic as described so far doesn't feel to me like a "speak words and magic happens" type system, but more of a "shape my soul to influence reality" kinda thing. Seems odd to me to be able to "shape" my soul into an unknown force. Of course, unknown spells might just be "soul schematics" or something, so I'm not against the idea outright.

Elephants, it seems, ruin everything from video games to forum threads.

Hrrm. Well, taking a look at the map blows my "isolated" idea out of the water. Despite the mountains blocking the east, the plethora of coastal cities concludes that trade isn't new to the folks of PE (on these coasts, at least). Of course, this means that we may see a whole lot of foreign influences in these locations, from people to cultures and architectures. Ghettos (in the traditional sense) might not be uncommon here. Further inland seems to be these uninhabited Ruins of Eir Glanfath, so likely only small towns around here near the rivers. Probably not much foreign influence in these parts, though the inhabitants might be a little "unusual" themselves. So my guess is that we might see a different mixing of peoples and cultures depending on our latitude along the coastal regions. Anything to add or rectify?

Indeed. A little mixing in of foreign cultures and events can suggest a world much more vast than the player can explore. Perhaps these men are renegades of a great war being held elsewhere, and the world of PE is like the Shire of LOTR - isolated and oblivious to the world at large.

I loved Beyond Good and Evil, but I'm not sure how I feel about an elephant-man in my western RPG (ambivalent maybe). To the (real) topic at hand, I'm with gglorious on this. A few scattered or localized non-playable races from other lands would be neat, so long as they "fit" in the PE world. Ultimately it's a world-building decision - if they don't enhance the world, history, and lore; don't add them.

I myself have little fear of such conent being too inaccessible. Riddles can be pretty straightforward, and not everything has to be one. Verbal directions conveyed through a tome can be followed so long as a distinct landmark is presented (or at least definitively referenced). My rat example requires almost no problem solving skill whatsoever. Besides this though, even a little content that is relatively inaccessible would be welcome to me. To be rewarded for connecting and understanding bits of lore to find a unique (though perhaps not rediculously powerful) item could be neat. It rewards an understanding of the world, but doesn't depreciate the value of the game to those who don't find it. Kinda like an easter egg without the metagame references. (People will just find it through the internet eventually anyways). I don't think it's wrong to reward those observant enough to find this "hidden" content, I do think it'd be wrong though to make that content central to the game though. You're not always alone there. However, I think that while the journal can dictate my adventure for most of the game (main story and most sidequests), I would also like to experience many adventures outside of its strict instruction. Can't just have everything handed to me now, can I?

So I got to thinking, does every quest have to come explicitly from someone? It's nice to get clearly defined tasks sure, but what about quests and content that don't present themselves to the player so easily? Though the experience is rare, I really like when I can find a riddle, vague instructions, or gossip in a tome or hinted through dialogue but never clearly expressed that leads me on a "quest" I wouldn't be given. It's very rewarding to follow a lead only thus hinted at to discover otherwise "hidden" content. To be clear, I'm not talking simply about extra caves and such here that aren't tied to any task. I'm talking about (fairly) rich content that is tied to lore and social interaction that doesn't yield itself in the form of a "go do this" journal entry. A book detailing the death and ritual burial of a legend might implicitly convey a particular landmark hiding powerfull treasure. Words written on the wall of one cave might contain a riddle leading you to the next, which of course could also only be opened by knowing the riddle. After a long series of riddles and locations/NPCs/tomes, you discover the lair of a cult to which you just unwittingly completed a hazing ritual to join. Words shared between citizens on the street might be mostly garbage, but hint at a rat infestation in the city's infrastructure. Hearing of rats showing up in peoples' basements enough times, you investigate to find a HUGE rat nest in the sewers (with a giant rat queen, of course). No one "tells" you to solve the rat problem, you just decide to see if there was anything behind it but garbage dialogue. I enjoy the satisfying feeling of discovery when I find this content without explicit aid. It also helps the world feel more organic and adds history, I think. Some things may be forgotten in time to NPCs, but are still recorded in the world for you to find. Maybe I can't find every task in the game by asking people explicitly for them, but problems abound whether people request of my assistance or not. This ended up much longer than I intended to type about a very simple idea. Anyway, what are the thoughts or ideas of the fine folks on this forum about my request?

I'm not even interested much in the mechanics of being "bloodied," I'd be fine to me if I could just see at a glance which enemies and which of my companions are significantly injured. I think stamina is supposed to mangage the fatigue / injury mechanics anyway.

I actually like having to hoard ingredients to perform a few particular spells, so long as the acquisition of these materials involves a real cost. Having a collection of spells that can only be used with certain reagents gives me access to more (or more specific) power when necessary, but must be mangaged as a non-infinite resource. It's not much different from potions, really - just more class-particular.

The bloodied idea sounds really neat, where enemies with little remaining health would appear so. That could help me prioritize my targets without breaking immersion with health bars. I don't think it would require much dev time either, as you could just stamp a (maybe even the same) bloodsplatter mesh on each character/creature model. As an aside, what would be neat but would also require more dev resources would be to have NPCs react to my bloodied PC (or party). "I'm ready for a quest, sir!" "Ready? You're a mess! I like your enthusiam, but I've no need of a martyr. Go and get some rest, and then come back and speak with me." "No sir! I'm a martyr, a sucker for punishment, and I will not rest until every concievable task in this land is seen to a conclusion!" "Alright, alright. If getting killed is your wish, I'm not gonna stop you. I need you to ..."

How does stamina factor into this? Do we want health to be a constant, but ramp stamina? Vise-versa? Both? Neither? That aside, this sounds like an interesting idea to consider. How would scaling enemies work though? Tougher enemies have to deal more damage to be more dangerous, but weaker enemies have to deal damage too, especially at lower levels. Suppressing other factors, constant health would mean that tougher baddies will either insta-kill you, puny ones will be insignificant even at lower levels, or baddies will all be equal in power. To solve this, enemies would not scale damage, but would scale hit percentage? Thereby the only way to gain effectiveness against them would be to increase dodge chance or armor rating? I'm trying to understand the implications of fixed health from a mechanics viewpoint. I feel somehow that this isn't such a simple task as just dropping health ramping. Unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to fully comprehend this on my own. Anyone care to help me out?

Right well, so far as I understand it, "multiclassing" hasn't been detailed by Obsidian yet. They certainly have plans to allow for some class-fudging, like creating spellswords, but nothing is concrete yet (unless my info is dated). There is a nice multiclassing thread where speculation and ideas are being thrown around if you are interested. Edit: There you go, KaineParker

Melee casters? Sure, why not. Meal casters? Isn't that what I donated for?