Luridis

Thanks... I can wrap my head around the perspective now and see exactly what you're talking about. I'm using infantry as such but that's forcing the whole rest mechanic to revolve around a bar, a timer, I have no real control of. I can see how that would feel punishing to someone, even if it didn't effect me that way. What if priests or druids had protection spells that shifted the ratio more towards stamina damage? Not so many that you could use them wanton, as part of the standard buff cycle, but there they're when you know the tanks are going to be standing in a Cuisinart.

I'm getting that now and I really don't understand why... Action RPGs have hard core difficulties too, in fact I've seen rarely a genre where that didn't exist somewhere. Maybe I should have used the term classical RPG instead of hardcore RPG... I guess the fault lies with me there, but I never actually meant anything along the lines of, "you can't hack it." I'm often sarcastic as can-be, but I'm not a big one for being snide in the process. I'm sorry if it was taken that way, I wasn't trying to belittle anyone...

Not having all of your possible abilities at level 1 is frustrating. Losing a fight is frustrating. Having your tank one-shotted by RNG 10 seconds after the fight starts is frustrating. This loot sucks is frustrating. All the fights required to get from here to over there is frustrating. Extreme difficulties are very frustrating. So, let me ask you... What specifically is different about the frustrations of strategic health concerns than everything mentioned above that warrants it being a serious issue, while those other frustrations are more or less expected and accepted?? Is it because it's just a new frustration, or is it something else? I'm speaking for myself here, but it seems like over complicating a system that I personally think could have been fixed more easily and intuitively. Want to prevent rest spamming? Fine limit the number of rests one can perform without going back to town. Want to limit the fighting day, fine add a fatigue mechanic that kicks in and applies debuffs to your party which stack if you choose to go on until you rest. Why this? That's all I'm wondering. Why add another mechanic instead of just polishing combat. Just because I think this was a strange decision doesn't mean I can't hack challenging RPG's. Half these forums are all posts about the mechanics of the old games being poor design choices. Does that mean the old IE games where not challenging and those people aren't ment to play CRPGs. Come on now. Maybe it could have been done more easily and intuitively. But, limiting the number of rests before returning to town is... exactly what the mechanic is doing. Also, I reasonably sure they considered debuffs for not having rested in x amount of time, but decided to go with what they did. I don't know why, but perhaps there's a narrative through mechanics element later on that leverages it. I expect Od Nua progress to be heavily tied to this at the very least. BTW: Discussing mechanics, suggesting alternatives and trying to offer some perspective is not inherently a way of saying, "You guys just can't hack hardcore." That's got nothing to do with what I posted at all. In my book, it's up to each person to decide if hardcore is something that they find rewarding or not. I'm not the one sitting in front of your computer.

Man, don't even go there. My "casual" go to games are Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm DDA and my bedside reading currently is GURPS Bio-Tech. This has nothing to do with casual/hardcore and whatnot Out of all the questions in my reply... This is the one you decided to answer? Hmmm.... Did you think some slight was intended? Because, that was not my intention at all.

Not having all of your possible abilities at level 1 is frustrating. Losing a fight is frustrating. Having your tank one-shotted by RNG 10 seconds after the fight starts is frustrating. This loot sucks is frustrating. All the fights required to get from here to over there is frustrating. Extreme difficulties are very frustrating. So, let me ask you... What specifically is different about the frustrations of strategic health concerns than everything mentioned above that warrants it being a serious issue, while those other frustrations are more or less expected and accepted?? Is it because it's just a new frustration, or is it something else?

Doesn't change the notion that alarmist reactions are usually... counter-productive. I didn't mind it as it did just what they explained, stopped me from rest-spamming. Instead, I took a real hard look at how far I could push the warriors before resting. I never rested to recover spells specifically, but it has worked as advertised so far, except that in some cases I've done some very mild save scrubbing when I thought an encounter was too expensive, supplies wise. It's a game... The game becoming more frustrating when you play in a way a mechanic has been specifically designed to discourage sounds like it's working as intended. People seem to manage resources fine in other genre's, like RTS... I've never understood why managing food, supplies, water, daily abilities and encumbrance is looked on with such disdain in RPGs. Wins by the-skin-of-your-teeth are very rewarding. I went in without everything I probably should have, I gambled on a lackluster ability and it paid off... I won a battle where the odds were better that I would fail than walk away. Can you really not see that? Have you ever considered that hardcore RPG just may not be your thing? For a long time I tried MMO's and had a love-hate relationship with them that drove me insane and then one day I finally realized: It's not multiplayer I hate, it's not PvP, its massively multiplayer that I just loathe. If working your way through intricate mechanics like party resource management in RPGs is nothing more than a burden to you then perhaps action RPGs are more your style. Games where there are powerups and no down time. There's nothing wrong with them, I like them too. But hardcore is supposed to be a game where adventuring itself requires tactical analysis.

First: Topic name is melodramatic/alarmist. Can we address things without going off the deep end? "OMG! Games a failure... mechanics are a failure... fail, fail, fail.) That said, I agree in that the brunt of the health damage ends up on the characters holding the line. So, right now, yes it appears that rest cycles are dictated by the front-line warriors. But, that could change with higher level encounters, so I'm not sure it needs to be adjusted yet. That will really come down to what they're testing internally and how that pans out. I suspect they do all that stuff with spreadsheets that cover far more possibilities for encounter makeup: higher level mobs, range and AoE spam, etc. All I can say is: At any given time, I suspect the developers are considering more factors and looking at a bigger picture than we are.

Your poll is completely invalid... Because there is no option for don't-give-a-flying-F-about how XP is handled option.

I really don't know where this comes from. I watched all the videos and read the blog posts during the kickstarter and I've always had the impression that character progression wasn't going to be more of the same. I don't remember when no combat XP was decided, but it did not come as a surprise to me. And, to be honest, I just shrugged and thought "that'll be different." If, at this point, they put it in the game options with a toggle or slide Quest --|----- Monster XP and made it default to quest so that people would shut up, I really wouldn't bother to change it from the default; I really don't care. On the other hand: I hate monks! I hate the very idea of them in Western RPGs. I don't mind them in Wuxia at all, they fit, it feels right and they're cool... But, I personally find them jarring alongside Paladins and Rangers. But, I also did not whine endlessly like a petulant child about it. And, do you know why? Because I'm not the only backer and someone else might like them; so I simply won't play one or hire one. I also prefer turn-based, that's not happening and lo and behold, it's not the end of the world to me. I also never expected a direct port of Infinity Engine x.x to Unity 4 using anything directly resembling AD&D rules. My impression was: Obsidian's Story, Obsidian's Mechanics, Obsidian's World Setting. The idea that this was a minimum change from Planescape, with D&D rules and setting on IE to Pillars World on Unity 4 with almost-but-not-quite D&D rules that won't cause a plagiarism lawsuit from Hasbro has never crossed my mind. Never thought that on KS campaign day 1 and did not think that on day 32. This place is starting to feel like a swim through hot garbage...

Para: Mommy, need tention! The devs are all out at places of iniquity participating in as much drinking and debauchery as possible cause... That's what I'm doing when I'm at work and not twattering about whatever I happen to be working on every 2.781 minutes.

Another thing to note: They probably won't fix a lot of content bugs in the beta adventure. To do so is a waste of their time really... If they really put this little adventure together just for beta, then it will never see the light of day in the finished project. We're talking about stuff like typo's and missing dialogue, or unclear or unresolved story lines. So, if you see a <missing dialogue> or something like that, don't sweat it... They likely don't put a lot of attention to detail here; at least that's what I'd expect, because I wouldn't either. Have you ever looked at a concept car up close at an auto show? Most of them are missing all sorts of stuff you'd need to drive them legally on the street, if produced in a factory. Like: "objects in mirror may be closer than they appear", VIN numbers and D.O.T certification on the headlamps. Same thing applies here, so I'd say... look for functional problems, instead of a "they're" that should be a "their."

Just an FYI: The build we're testing is probably a month old, maybe two... So, I'll tell you what I expect: The first patch will probably address about half the concerns raised, and it's most likely the fixes are not the result of feedback. That is to say, they have likely already been working on the biggest hiccups for at least a month, possibly two. Give them a chance man, don't worry so much. If 60% of the issues aren't cleaned up by the second patch, that's the point at which I would start to worry.

Magic words are just words... often spoken in a different language (or a dead one) for dramatic effect. Skyrim: Fus Ro Da = Force Balance Push in the fictional Dragon Tongue. Excalibur (1981): Anáil nathrach orth bhais betha, do cheol déanta. = Gaelic (possibly Cymric), meaning, "Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making." LotR: Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum ishi krimpatul. = Fictional Black Speech and if you don't know what it means then you've been living under a rock. Potter: Expelliarmus = A modernized version of the Latin "expuli armi", meaning to expel arms. Though my sister, an Evangelical, swears up and down that Harry Potter is real magic trying to lead children to demons. To which I reply. Better to Remain Silent and Be Thought a Fool than to Speak and Remove All Doubt That said, just relax... I'm sure they'll get around to it. :D

I like the possibility of inefficacy in my characters. The industry trend towards Mary Sue protagonists is disheartening. Sometimes you're gonna screw up... Spilling the milk isn't a bad thing, it's a learning experience. Especially, if it opens up alternate quest paths.

I have really hard time to imagine game dev be happy with 1 character stun locking every enemy via unlimited interrupts Imagine going against Ogre with 2-3 melee characters with interrupts. Should this work? Sure, if you're blowing lots of tightly limited resources.

On the subject of making the non STR/Dex/Con attributes more attractive... Will Defense needs to be moved to Resolve. A smaller bonus to concentration from this stat would help too, even though I thought it (Resolve) already did effect concentration. Perception needs to produce a smaller, yet across the board bonus to all defenses (Will, Reflex, Fort). Perhaps even make it bonus rogue skills as well. It would make for more versatile rogues and rangers. i.e. Then it's not just about find traps.

Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen so far. No C++ runtime errors, no DirectX issues, even on my oddball SLI system with multiple video reflection drivers. No CTD's, no missing, scrambled or wrongly colored textures, no oddities from the 2D perspective projection they've created, no strange lighting behavior. In other words: The engine appears to be pretty solid. Fixing the rest is all in the scripting and data files, which concerns me far less than if I was seeing stuff like crash dumps. OP: You're coming across as a little alarmist. Raising issues is a good thing, but...

Is that what you really think? You do realize that they've been doing this sort of thing for years... yes? There are tools, mathematical formula, and spreadsheets that make this sort of thing not such a big deal. Add up all the mobs in a zone multiplied by a chosen time factor. Then decide how much XP you want the player to receive in that time factor and divide by the number of mobs found in the aforementioned product. Make some adjustments for tougher and weaker mobs. Note: This is just off the top of my head and I don't think it's possible for it to be much more complicated. "Why," you ask? Because it doesn't need to be... With a guaranteed upper limit to the number of mobs that can spawn in X time, how much should come from each one is simple math. How much XP is in each level, how much you get from doing X, blah and blah, blah is simple numbers and it's the least of what they need to think about in the realm of game mechanics. No XP from from monsters was a design decision, not one made out of just being lazy.

I'm going to assume you guys did custom shaders for Blight... Whomever did, awesome work that. The Earth one is like chocolate cake to the eyes. Edit: Now I can't wait to see the effects around incorporeal undead. I love it when it looks like the shadowy material is moving inside them and flowing out the bottom.

Spectacular find Sappho... I love when my "how it's done" curiosity is satisfied. What I would be curious to know is just how much time and manpower were saved over what would have been a comparable 3D render of PoE.

I do a lot of reading about game development, mostly just to satisfy my own curiousity. I've read a lot of the "for real" books on development like Real Time Rendering and Game Engine Architecture. I'm looking for a book, or academic paper that covers not only collision detection, but also collision avoidance, in detail. Any of you Pro's know of a book that covers this, typical college text, etc.? Avoidance is the one I'm really curious about because poorly implemented mechanics in this area I find particularly jarring and obnoxious as a player. I've seen this done badly in many games and it never ceases to amaze me how it makes it through play testing. i.e. http://youtu.be/AoKgxaMp3fc Yes, I do realize that video is also a product of game play AI, but it's the only example I can think of off the top of my head. I've seen many games where NPCs walk continuously into walls and, like lemmings, happily walk off the edge of cliffs or into pits of fire, etc. Some of that is obviously navmesh mechanics too. But, avoidance always seems to be well done in things like racing games where as jet fighter games often have NPCs that will happly plow into any and everything, including the player, without rhyme or reason. As usual, googling anything about "game development" brings up "how to write a game in 3 days using x language" for the first... I dunno, 250 thousand results. :/ I find most of the real-deal books as references in other books of the kind.

LOL My jabs at console players there are of the tongue-in-cheek varity. I do play console games myself, some are pretty awesome. But, when a game, it's concept, or genre typically expects precision and volume for a human interface, the game gets horribly hampered by reducing 104 keys to a dozen buttons and a mouse to a terribly imprecise gimbal. On a side note, gimbals don't have to suck as much as they do on game controllers. But, really good gimbals are expensive...

If you ask me... Lights will be the most difficult thing to get "right" in mods. Personally, I notice incorrect reflections, shadows and emissive light before anything else.

Why? Why not support controllers? Here's why... X3 - A game made for a PC... Though they did start adding controller support in TC & AP, hardly anyone uses them... they suck for aiming, period. http://youtu.be/Ua3zy9c59fg?t=8m3s Now, the series reboots. And, in spite of the developer's denial... the game files are filled with XBox 360 tags and the menus, while lengthly before, are now completely useless all together. X4 - That's why, consoles suck the depth and imagination out of traditional computer games and replace them with trivial and trite gameplay. I like a lot of games made for consoles, but when PC games have to be co-developed for consoles the whole game has to be engineered for people whom lack the mental dexterity to use more than two thumbs when playing games. Edit: Not to mention the lacking the ability to follow something called a clue, and call the game dumb if there isn't... well you know, this arrow pointing to where everything is. If you're a hardcore console player there's plenty of games for you to choose from. Isn't there another new FIFA or something... A new call of duty? FPS #14,218? I'm sure someone put some new sneakers and jerseys in something you could spend another 60 bucks on. Don't come here knocking when our stuff looks more awesome... Games are so much better when the "6 year old player" game play is not a consideration.

I'll bet you would be if EA was taking over PE... which is exactly what this is like to the OR backers. I'm going to write Kickstarter over this and if they cannot draft terms to prevent this sort of thing in the future then they can just remove my account, because I won't be supporting anything else.