centurionofprix
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Posts posted by centurionofprix
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Also as far as i know two handed weapon fighting never existed historically but it's something you find in most fantasy games. (i'm not that certain on that, please forgive me if i'm wrong)
A minor point, but too cool not to be mentioned: Musashi the legendary Japanese swordsman also fought with two weapons. Or a wooden one, sometimes.
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The last couple of pages of this thread make me want to put a gun in my mouth.
In a good way or a bad way?
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It only appears so. For armor you have real-life knowledge of it's working and examples to draw from. You have a basis for realism and believability.
You don't have that for magic. and evne then you can make magic more or less"believable".
I have real-life knowledge of physics and chemistry that tells me that many of the effects of magic shouldn't work the way they do.
Fireballs should blow out the walls of any room they detonate in (unless they're made out a foot of solid rock).
Getting frozen solid should kill you instantly from the water in your body crystallizing.
Lightning bolts shouldn't have a travel time.
When it comes to understanding how these things work we have a "basis for realism and believability." On the other hand a smith making a chain mail bikini and then getting it enchanted with some spell that provides the wearer with an invisible layer of whatever across their whole body can, in fact, be handwaived away as simply being "magic."
It's still inexplicable (in a serious setting at least) why a character would choose to wear such an item, and why it should be made of mail or in the shape of a bikini rather than, for example, a pair of socks or a normal bikini to be worn *underneath* clothes or another layer of actual armour. Or why they would forego the additional protection afforded by the armour itself (which usually amounts to the bulk of the protection granted by enchanted items anyway).
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... Because I clearly stated that you don't lose anything.
You did, but clearly we don't agree.
Actual difference vs. no difference is a quantifiable factor within discernibility, which is absolutely an important part of party control within gameplay. How pleasant no armor difference makes you feel is not quantifiable by any kind of standard, and therefore is subjective. For example, the specific color of two things that need to be distinguished from one another is subjective, and nowhere near as important as the resulting contrast of whatever two colors are chosen (distinguishability being objective). You might not like red and yellow, but they would be discernable from one another even to the colorblind (because of the lightness/darkness contrast of the two colors). It is why stop signs are red. You need to have your eye drawn to the stop sign to make sure you stop more than you need to enjoy the color of a stop sign. So, I really don't know what you're arguing here. For realsies.
A stop sign has a certain purpose: to draw one's attention and to get the message across. Graphics in games (certainly in P:E) represent a fictional world into which one is supposed to be immersed and in which one is to play a role. The graphical representation is part of the way the gameworld is presented to the player. How "pleasant" the graphics make one feel and, moreover, how interesting they make the world, is relevant in the context of a role-playing game.
Also, since you have no control over the perspective (it's an isometric game) or the size and detail level of your character models (they're pretty small, even when zoomed all the way in), your ability to intuitively discern between characters is constrained by the game's parameters. Therefore, it is up to the game to compensate for these factors. It's the same as with a company logo. If it's the size of a building and you can tell what it is, that's awesome. Maybe you can still tell what it is when it's on a T-shirt. When you print it on a pencil, however, you may not be able to tell it from several other logos. For this exact reason, many companies have a different logo specifically for very small instances of the logo.
Basically, the smaller things are, the more you have to exaggerate subtle details to keep them recognizable. That's pretty much design 101. And, since the game is suggesting that I'm SUPPOSED to be in full control of my characters, then ideally, I'd intuitively know who's who and just command them with my mind. However, since we're still limited to GUI interaction for commands and controls, I must rely upon an image on a 2D screen to figure out where a character is in the viewable area, then select them with my mouse (or other input device). There is absolutely no reason for this process to ever be infeasible or troublesome.
I think everyone agrees; the point is how much divergence between the sexes is needed to make the characters distinguishable from one another, and if this divergence needs to exceed what is decreed by realism/sense/good taste. It seems to me perfectly possible to make the characters distinguishable without sacrificing the aesthetic.
Of course! Let's make sure that people who happen to have a party full of Warriors and want them to all wear nice-quality plate armor have each character have a completely different color of armor, and that their names float mystically above their heads, all in the interest of preserving the immersion and verisimilitude provided by plate armor that is never proportioned any differently for different character body types! GENIUS!
So it would seem. If only people would argue fallaciously, then all your counter-arguments would actually be applicable. Darn people!
If only!
Now, the colour doesn't have to be the colour of the armour itself, but can come from tabards, clothes underneath the armour, etc. Characters even of the same sex and race, in the same armour, were perfectly distinguishable in the IE games through helmet styles and a rudimentary colour choice for clothes. The names don't float "mystically" (if at all) since the UI traditionally isn't taken to be part of the gameworld.
Wait, you're going to use sarcasm "logic" on me, while referring to it both by its fancy Latin name AND as a strawman? You do understand that sarcasm doesn't in any way allege the specifics of your stance, right? It simply parallels it with something blatantly absurd, so as to highlight a fault in the reasoning shared by both.
I love how internet forums have turned "sarcasm for emphasis" into "strawman." It's kinda like how Alanis Morrisette has everyone thinking that rain on your wedding day is irony. o_o
It's a strawman if the "sarcasm for emphasis" relies for its effect on misrepresenting the opposing argument.
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*in* combat, that is.
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In regards to the posts stating that you wouldn't wear plate while adventuring, the spanish conquisitors, historical real life adventurers, wore plate while exploring south america. Plate was not that heavy also, there was a reason it became the de facto best choice of armour wanted by everyone.
Breatplates, but full suits of plate though? There's a difference in terms of convenience, even if plate wasn't restrictive combat.
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Why are people concerned with recognizing characters easily
... Why are people UN-concerned with it? In that case, why should equipment even look different? A leather vest and steel plate should just look the same. I mean, you can check your inventory if you want to know what someone's wearing. All weapons should use the exact same sword model, even if they aren't swords. Because, it's really not that big of a deal. They'll still all function properly. It's just aesthetics at that point, and we're obviously being overly picky and want the art team to waste their time, u_u
I guess the point was that there is no need to compromise the setting's aesthetic sensibility to differentiate between male and female characters, because it's sufficiently easy to tell individuals and the sexes apart by body size, colour choices etc. Only using one model for weapons and armour would compromise the aesthetic (as well as making it more difficult to tell characters apart, since these are precisely the sorts of things one uses to do so).
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I'd just like to see darker nights.
Really. Torches etc would look gorgeous in this scene, though I don't know how easy it would be to implement in the 2D environment.
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Looks brilliant. Are there going to be weather effects in the game? I can only imagine how fabulous a howling storm with rain and wind whipping the water and bushes would be in this scene.
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Here's a couple of guys using these:
Eeeee, not using very properly, I'd say. That edge on edge contact is hurting my soul.
Off topic, but since it was mentioned, I don't think there is anything wrong with that picture. The edge-to-edge thing gets exaggerated/poorly worded by the ARMA guys; there are historical manuals (admittedly not medieval, but 18th century sabre if I remember right) where one is advised to meet blows precisely with the edge, and some earlier material describes hard blocks that wouldn't work with the flat.
The crucial point is that the parrying in the picture is done with the half of the sword closest to the hilt, that is, where there is the most leverage against the opponent's sword. You aren't going to strike anyone with this half of the blade in any case, and it was often left unsharpened, which made the blade more durable for blocking even as the half towards the point (with which one wouldn't want to receive blows to begin with due to the poor leverage) often had a very fine edge for offense.
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No not really. Also I can't help that you have no sense when it comes to game design. Removal of options in an RPG is never a good design move. Forcing the player to play a specific way in an RPG is never a good design move. PS:T does both without even leaving the character creation screen. Unless of course you don't mind being a subpar character who sees less than half the lore/story (only reason to even play it), being forced to get the bad ending since you missed half the story, or being forced to be a mage
The game is about investigation of TNO's past. As the gameplay is mostly investigation and dialogue, with rather little combat sprinkled in between, I cannot see how investing in these abilities more central to the gameplay than combat ability is forcing you to play a mage. You are not supposed to play a min-maxed 18-18-18-3-3-3 fighter in PST, and it's perfectly sensible design that such a character would be at a disadvantage in a story that revolves around investigation, unable to solve the central mystery and doomed to die and try again, especially as the game explicitly advises you about this at character creation and in the manual.
since it is literally the only viable class choice, too bad you have to be hours into the game before you can actually be a mage.This just isn't true. The game is perfectly manageable on a first playthrough with a high intelligence/wisdom fighter. Perfectly. Very easy to a fault, even.
This is a single-player game, again revolving around investigation, not multiplayer centered on beating other players, so whether the combat balance is finally tilted in the mage's favour over the intelligent fighter is irrelevant when both classes can easily make it through the game. I don't even know to what degree there is any inbalance, as the issue simply never became relevant in playing the game.
Why was it a game that took place in a city located at the center of the universe with doors leading literally everywhere had fewer options and more restrictions on where you could go and how you could play than one that started in a backwater keep in the middle of no where?Because one game was more about telling a specific story centered around specific past events, the other more about free exploration and adventure without much of story or detail.
PS:T is the ultimate expression of "substance" over "quality". It doesn't wash for anything other than effete snobs and fanboys.Oh bull****z.
(at the cost of brevity and wit, it seems almost all the critics and most of the gamers that played it loved it. For whatever all that is worth when discussing the game itself, but it's a hedge against QUESTION BEGGING AND INSULTS. THIS IS A FORUM FOR CONSTRUCTIVE oh whatever.)
If by swing at people you mean flail away like an incompetent oaf then yes you will probably remember how to do that. If you think learning how to properly parry an enemy thrust so you can counter with a riposte that will hit vital organs is something you can do without years of practice and study well... there are lots of real world martial artists and students of medieval swordplay out there who will gladly educate you on how wrong you are.
Does muscle memory go with amnesia? It's a pretty common trope that the amnesiac discovers physical skills from his past, and this one had been a high level fighter in past lives. I don't know how it works in the real world, but that's irrelevant anyway as the game is about a *magical curse* that removes memories. Clearly this curse leaves you with some muscle memory, or it comes back easier than highly theoretical knowledge.
There is nothing wrong with a forced stealth situation, or a forced diplomacy/investigation section, or even forced combat. But when 50% + of your game is forced diplomacy/investigation you had best be making an adventure game or you are doing it wrong.Or maybe games aren't, and shouldn't be, separated on such essentialist terms. PST certainly has an adventure game influence.
Lastly the argument of the game being better because it did not follow D&D rules is so dumb I actually had to read it twice to be sure I got it right. Especially since multiple people seem to be making it. If you aren't even going to bother following the ruleset you had to pay a licensing fee to have in your game then maybe you should have saved some money, not been a pretentious moron, and just made the game without that ruleset in the first place. I am sure TSR would have been fine if they had just used the setting (which they weren't faithful to either, no idea why) and just not used the actual "mechanics" of D&D.It's merely irrelevant to the quality of the game itself. Although Avellone delights in investigating strange setting conventions (as in KOTOR 2), and Planescape as it presents itself in the game certainly suits the story.
Also I appreciate all of you constantly making comments about PS:T that are downright false. No, no mage would teach you magic in the hive. But I ran into plenty of Mages in the Hive, some of them even talked about how they knew and or used magic. I mean how did Ignus (a mage living in the hive) wind up in his situation? He pissed off a bunch of other mages (who lived in the hive) by being a pyromaniac. Also the Hive isn't a Ghetto, in the actual campaign setting it is supposed to make ghetto's look like Martha's Vineyard. But again they weren't really faithful to the actual campaign setting.I can't remember whether you meet many mages in the Hive, but Reekwind tells you in the same breath that the "mages" in the Hive who stopped Ignus were midwives, witch doctors etc. Not really people who could teach you arcane magic, only extremely dangerous in their combined strength.
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PS:T is a great story I am sure. You not liking what I am saying also doesn't make what I say any more or less true. It is, by far, the most over rated "GAME" Obsidian has ever made. Note the word "GAME" as in, more than just "STORY". The fact that it sold badly and was outsold by both Baldur's Gates as far as I know also says the majority agrees with me, not you or the other fanboys who will hop out of the woodwork to reply.
Or it might just say that BG's high fantasy adventure had more mass appeal than the weird PS:T. The fact that more people played BG doesn't mean the majority of those who played both agree (or that this would be particularly relevant anyway). In any case, the "game" in PST is not really separable from the "story".
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Or even "mcmanusaur". You're cool fella.
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That would be cool.
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Indeed. PnP sourcebooks just gives DM tools to build his campaign, he's not obligated to use an element if it don't fit in his setting. So It's up to DM (developer in our case) to decide what to use and what not.
While a specific monster may not be part of a CAMPAIGN, it is part of the SETTING and D&D as a whole. So still suck for me.
Soekaing of which, while JRPG's and WRPG's have some design preferences, excpetions prove the rule. Anime did give us some interesting armor designs.
That's the whole point of D&D. They added everything into the rule books so that players could pick and choose what they wanted; thus appealing to everyone. The only people who don't like that approach are those who feel everything should be exactly how they like things and damn everyone else's tastes.
However, the fact that the source material provides many different ideas from which to pick and choose in creating the setting is not the same as, and doesn't redeem, the DM throwing every contradictory little thing from the source material into the same campaign, or a CRPG designer making the setting into a mess of incongruous aesthetic elements. The actual setting of the campaign still needs to make sense, unless you're going for surrealism or humour.
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Privet. I couldn't have possibly have had any qualms with the gameplay, because:
1. I am not that familiar with D&D.
2. It felt exactly the same as BG, with way better spells.
3. I can't imagine making combat in Diablo, Arcanum, BG, etc "interesting." I can see how fallout gameplay can be made interesting because of cover, range, and flanking (potentially), but not a fantasy setting. You just grind away. In fact, Planescape was the only game I ever had casters in / played as a mage. All the other games I listed, I either back stabbed and/or bashed with my magic sword (everyone in the party got one!). As such, it didn't bother me.
1: Your lack of knowledge of D&D mechanics and the Planescape campaign world is hardly a defense for the game failing to be faithful to either.
The question of how closely PST adheres to DnD mechanics and the Planescape setting is irrelevant to how good it is as a game in itself. There doesn't need to be any defense.
2: Right, just like how in Bladur's Gate I needed an 18 int to get access to all the conversation choices. Or how in Baldur's Gate 2 I couldn't wear armor. Totally the same.I admit I've lost the train of thought here.
3: I am sorry you have never played a game with good combat and or didn't understand how to properly build a team and use tactics in the Baldur's Gate games. Again, this is no defense for the combat of PS:T being complete crap.There wasn't much *need* for building a team or using tactics in the Baldur's Gate games. It was messy and trivially easy, most of the time, only made interesting by the varied encounter and location design. In any case the combat, while flawed, is a secondary concern in PST gameplay, which revolves around dialogue and investigation.
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Baldur's Gate: My only explanation for people liking it is that they played it as a kid. Nothing wrong with that - I wouldn't recommend Quest for Glory to anyone over 12, but it was a great game. On the other hand, most of the characters weren't memorable (I remember the necromancer and the early thief girl - though I never quite got what her story was), and even the ones who were had very little dialogue. Combat was pretty boring. Eventually I got bored and dumped my party. Then I snuck around and backstabbed everyone, all the way to the end of the game. Actually, I don't think I ever finished. I got back to the library and was supposed to do something there, and there were some side quests before you go underground, and there was some drama going on, but the result was utter apathy.
BG1 no memorable characters? Misc and Boo are the most memorable characters of RPG pc gaming history.
They are memorable, for being so incredibly, utterly moronic. And because the internet won't let you forget about them.
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Indeed. PnP sourcebooks just gives DM tools to build his campaign, he's not obligated to use an element if it don't fit in his setting. So It's up to DM (developer in our case) to decide what to use and what not.
While a specific monster may not be part of a CAMPAIGN, it is part of the SETTING and D&D as a whole. So still suck for me.
It doesn't have to exist in the setting of the campaign, either; the DM can choose what parts to include or omit from the source material in designing the world in which the campaign is set. Tasteless or unfitting aspects of the source material don't have to exist in the setting of the campaign.
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Yes, if there is a situation that calls for it - absolutely. If the player meets forces presented as being much greater or of an entirely different kind than himself, they should not in the end be flattened down to his level just to please the ego. The same goes for "unwinnable" encounters Pshaw mentions above - a godlike being shouldn't be defeatable by caving him in, and the PC party shouldn't have the power to cause them to retreat either (if the setting has such creatures). If the player insists on throwing himself off a cliff, let him.
Perhaps give the player a chance to retreat, though, or a fair warning.
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The hardass Xena warrior woman. Don't mind the chain bikini either.
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The game shouldn't hold your hand through the morality of the thing, or fellate you for taking the "selfless" modern-sensibilities PC choice. It's when the morality is obscured, perhaps as part of some greater questline or in interaction with the world rather than as an obvious binary choice, or when there is some actual advantage or temptation to the selfish path, that the choice itself becomes meaningful.
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Umm, no. That's Hollywood. You don't use a hammer the way you would use a sword. If you did, only then it would be legitimate to say that it's slower due to physics. Different weapons employ different techniques, also based on physics, however, which make up for the relative speed differences.
As I said before, that's physics. You can't cheat physics.
You move mass either way.
True, but the physics of the matter don't reduce to "heavier is slower". There is also the leverage created by the use of two hands on a long hilt/shaft to consider, allowing for very quick and nimble handling of the weapon compared to one-handed usage, as well as the fact that even "heavy" polearms can attack very quickly with short jabbing attacks. You don't slash with them like you would with a one-handed cutting sword. Furthermore, your speed of attacking is often constrained not by how fast you can swing the weapon, but by the speed of your feet in stepping into striking distance, which is almost always slower than the time it takes for the hand to strike. You don't just stand in striking distance wailing away as fast as you can. Time of the hand vs time of the foot vs time of the feet as George Silver explained it in 1600; and in time of the foot the person who has more distance to cross is at a disadvantage. The spear thrust coupled with a short lunge can be faster than the taking of a full step into striking distance with the arming sword.
I think the more accurate abstraction would be to give one-handed weapons defensive bonuses with shields or, if going without the shield, grappling abilities with the free hand or bonuses to defensive grappling checks (if there are grapple checks in PE).
And while you don't use them both completely the same, in some cases you do.And in some cases you use them in ways where the attack with the bigger weapon is faster.
Even worse for hammers it they don't have a piercing tip, since they depend on large swings, and not short jabs/stabs.I don't know if the DnD "hammer" ever really existed as a weapon, or if it appears in PE.
Of course, absolutely true. But all things being equal, different types of weapons, produced with the same level of quality and craftmanship, can not be compared and rated as "better or worse balanced than each other" which is how I interpreted your previous statement. A fine sword is just as balanced as a fine axe or mace or hammer or halberd or whatever.
Nope, it's not.
The center of mass for an axe will always be higher, making it inherenlty less balanced.
It's not less balanced, it's balanced in a different way for a different use. It's inherently less balanced for being waved about like a sword, but the leverage of two hands on a long shaft makes many of these polearms perfectly balanced for their own purpose, and wielding those weapons like swords wouldn't be the most efficient way to make use of their advantages anyway. Even without the leverage of two hands, one-handed axes and maces were usually quite short and light, making them more nimble for many uses than a long rapier, for example, but then the technique and the time of the foot is crucial again. Speed in use just doesn't reduce to weight or size.
Which IE game do you want Eternity to most "feel" like?
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by centurionofprix
The first Baldur's Gate. I can't seem to explain just what it is, but there's a subtle sense of alternating solemnity and eldritch wonder to it sometimes, regardless of the quality of the storyline or the general consistency of the tone, that I enjoy (and that I guess the PE team is already going for). I don't know where it comes from; Bassilus's midnight reveries have a feeling of depth to them, for me at least, that isn't at all supported by the rudimetary text. Maybe it's the visuals and soundscape coupled with the fact that the scenario itself leaves so much to the imagination. That would be a great scene for a mod to elaborate upon with some investigation and intrigue before the encounter with the man.
Better yet, Mask of the Betrayer.