Jarrakul

Dwarf. Because honestly, there's nothing quite like being four-foot-nothing and making the tall folks look like pansies.

If you fireball the fire elemental, you deserve what you get. It's basically a walking mass of fire. What'd you think a fireball was gonna do? If, on the other hand, you fireball a flesh golem, only to see it be immune, you had no way of knowing that. It's not particularly fair to you. Which is still kind of okay, because you can adapt. Yeah, you were basically forced into a mistake, but it's one you can recover from. It's not so much a sucker punch as it is a block. A sucker punch is when something you had no way of foreseeing just sort of kills you because you weren't prepared, or if nothing you can do will hurt it because you don't have the precise counter. See demiliches, many of the stronger BG2 mages, and basilisks that show up without warning (but if you see a bunch of surprisingly-lifelike statues, it does kind of become your fault for not preparing). As for needing magic weapons to hurt things... I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it adds more annoyance than interesting challenge. On the other hand, I really don't see how you're gonna hurt a ghost with a normal sword. Now, Hassat, as to your "snoozefest" argument, I find that very interesting. To my mind, the sucker punch stuff in the IE games tended to be really frustrating until you figured it out, and then totally trivial forever after. The most sucker-punchy fights in the game (Kangaxx and the BG1 basilisks) were also the most boring, because once you'd figured out the trick they took no further effort. For the sake of PoE not being a snoozefest, I think avoiding those situations is key. Especially for non-unique enemies and repeated playthroughs.

I totally agree. Ridiculously impractical fantasy weapons just look... kind of dumb, to my eyes. Give me a good old fashioned German longsword and I'm a happy man. That said, I do think it's a bit of a trap to ignore the fact that fantasy has, well, magic. Real weapons are cool because they're feats of precision engineering to produce the best results given certain constraints (physics and materials, mostly). If weapons can be magical, the constraints change, particularly with respect to weight. Historically, there was a fairly strong push to make weapons longer. So if you have a world where you can slap a lightness enchantment on a weapon without impacting the strength of the materials, you might be well served by making a magic sword a foot or so longer than it would be in the real world. If you can go really fancy and make the weapons lighter just for the wielder (or make the wielder significantly stronger), you might get some good mileage out of unusually thick blades for added chopping power. This is the sort of thing I'd like to see fantasy weapons explore. Not ridiculous spikes for no purpose, but "here are the tools we have, how do we make this more practical by using them?"

I'm not totally sure that's true. We're discussing which sorts of "sucker punch" situations are actually problematic, a which can potentially add interesting variety to the game. That strikes me as potentially useful info for the devs to have.

Cera Sumat also required fighting what may have been the most difficult fight in any unmodded IE game. Which apparently a lot of people were upset about, because they put so much effort into winning the fight and then got an item only paladins could use, but personally I thought find rewards for proving you don't need them to be kind of pointless. It's like Aec'Latec or Demogorgon. You didn't fight them for the loot. You fought them to prove you could.

Could we not argue about the definition of RPGs? Yes, it's a vague term and people don't often agree about what it means. We get it. The thing is, people always talk about this as though it matters for the evaluation of a specific game. As though there's some inherent quality that something gains if we can call it an RPG. But that's not how genres work. Genres define terms, which is useful, but they don't add quality to the things in them. So please, please stop arguing over whether something is an RPG and start arguing over the relative merits of what the game actually has or does not have to offer. It doesn't matter, from a game quality standpoint, whether IWD is an RPG or something else. It matters what IWD brings to the table, and what it does not.

I'd love to see IWD get a spiritual successor. Of course, I'm more excited for PoE and the new Torment, but nonetheless IWD is really cool and there should be more of it. Because you know what? Even if it's totally linear and has little-to-no non-combat player input, I love me a good dungeon crawler with a plot worth playing through. Unfortunately, precious few games have lived up to my standards in that regard since the original IWD, very much including IWD2, even though quite a few have tried. So I would be somewhat skeptical about backing such a project, even though I would want it to succeed.

I don't like inserting content into the middle of the game. You want to add new NPCs and new classes? Fine. But adding content creates all sorts of balance issues. As the OP points out, Watcher's Keep is kind of the poster child for this if you play it in BG2 proper. You can get so many levels and so much incredibly powerful equipment that the rest of the game becomes utterly trivial (at least until ToB proper, where it becomes... mildly harder). I do like new content in general, though, and I think the ToB (minus Watcher's Keep) and DA: Awakening approach works quite well. In both cases, the expansions came after the main game. The story was finished. And then the expansions were like "okay, but because of all that, this new stuff happens." It was a natural continuation to a story that didn't require one. Kind of like a mini-sequel. I like that, because it lets the expansion add new content without disrupting the balance of the main game. I also like that because I'm gonna finish the game before the expansion comes out, and I'd really like to be able to play through the expansion with the same character.

This is fair. There are a few other options to deal with the enemies that require very specific preparations. I actually considered including those very examples. But the thing is, those are still fairly niche strategies that require some degree of specific preparation. Summoning undead is great against basilisks... if you memorized Animate Dead and happen to know that the basilisk can't petrify it. Protection from magic scrolls are great for individual encounters, if you thought to buy enough to cover your whole party for every single mage fight. I'm sure there are more ways which I haven't bothered to figure out because, hey, I've already got multiple working strategies. But that's not really my point. My point is that none of those strategies (except the area transition one, which is definitely an exploit) can really be used without preparation (unless you happen to be lucky enough to randomly have the counter prepared, which is feasible for things like Animate Dead against basilisks). Traps are also an example of this, especially in Durlag's Tower. Don't have a thief with high find traps? Sorry. The dungeon is filled with highly lethal traps that don't go away when you trigger them. Hope you have more potions than God.

I would argue that the problem is less Kangaxx (the extreme case, but there's only one of him) and more BG2 mages in general. Barring exploiting their AI by ducking through area transitions, you don't have a lot of options other than True Sight + Breach, or inquisitor dispel. Now, you learn that pretty quick, and you start preparing for it just in general, but it's still a "be prepared or die" situation. Same with BG1 basilisks. Giant sacks of XP if you have Protection from Petrification, ultimate death machines otherwise. There should totally be some tactics that work better against some creatures, but they should not be as extreme as some of the things in BG. Although that could be neat in a few cases with proper foreshadowing and in-game information, this hard-counter behavior is best reserved for unique enemies. Basically, I'm fine with needing a vorpal blade to kill the jabberwock, so long as I can piece that together from info in the game. I'm not okay with needing the vorpal blade to kill 10% of enemies in the game.

I think this whole idea is really, really cool, although I too wonder about scope. That said, the devs know about scope issues better than we do, so I'll just say I love this idea. One thing I'd really like to see is something where, if enemy A takes damage, the attacker generates aggro from enemy B. In other words, one enemy could be protective of another enemy. A pair of lovers, for example, might each get really angry when you hurt the other one. Or a commander who cares for his men might do his best to protect them, while a necromancer's minions might do everything in their power to keep their master safe.

Oooh, DMing. How I love DMing. :3 It sounds like you have a pretty challenging group. In many ways, each of those three players exemplifies what I would consider a cardinal rule of DMing, and therefore of game design in general. The powergamer exemplifies the need for balance, because he's so good at exploiting imbalance that he makes it difficult to properly challenge the group as a whole without letting the powergamer hog the entire spotlight (some would argue that this is irrelevant to single-player crpgs, because there's no such thing as hogging the spotlight; I would argue that single-player games are like DMing thousands of players at once, because you have to balance for all of them). The rogue exemplifies the need to provide a flexible framework and reasonable incentives for a variety of players (this is hard in crpgs, because it's hard to adapt without interacting with the players directly). Finally, the other guy exemplifies the need for things to be fundamentally fun and cool (crpgs actually tend to be pretty good at this, what with their fast gameplay and fancy graphics). So, basically, if you're managing that group well, I'd trust you to design and run good games.

I certainly can't speak for everyone, but my thinking is "why leave to repairs what you can fix in the design?" Not everything can be fixed in the design phase, of course, since no amount of playtesting is going to test the game as well as its release into the wild, but you have a lot less work ahead if you fix what you can early. Basically, here's the thing: Being willing to play something weaker for thematic reasons is awesome. I applaud everyone who does that. But from a design standpoint, no one should have to. The roleplayers should not be punished for not being powergamers, even if they're willing to endure it. So some of us, myself very much included, are very strongly in favor of extremely tight balance whenever possible. Which is not to say we don't also have other priorities also, just that we consider balance to be very important. That said, I do have no end of respect for the devs, both for the quality of their ideas and for their listening to fan concerns. I trust them to make the decisions, but I love that we get to make our arguments in a space that they actually read. Makes it feel a little less pointless to argue on the internet.

My initial reaction to the project was "how are they going to make this on so little money?" Even when they made almost four times their original goal, my concern remained the same. But you know what? I backed it. I backed it because I wanted the old-school-style RPGs to have a change, and because I wanted to see what Obsidian could do without publisher intervention. I wanted that enough to outweigh my reservations. If it turns out they didn't have the money to make the game they set out to make, that'll be sad, but it was my gamble to make. I knew the odds going in, and I believe that the potential payoff was worth the risk. Seeing the project unfold has done nothing to curb my enthusiasm, and has done much to assuage my concerns. But even if it flops, I am convinced that I made the right decision, because the payoff was worth the risk.

Fair enough. Well, if my examples weren't ideal, I apologize. They're crystal clear to me, of course, but that hardly says much for their merit in communicating ideas. Have you all basically figured out what I meant to convey, or should I think up some more?

Secondly, I'm not sure what you mean by "you can't (easily) have spellcasters gain access to entirely new spells as they increase in level." Sure you can, right? The sheer fact that spells scale as you become more powerful has nothing to do with how and when you gain spells, and in no way prevents you from introducing beginning or additional/new spells in any fashion you please. Are you meaning that, since you can choose whatever spell you want (in PoE) at each level (and possibly learn them in various orders, depending on what grimoires you manage to find after battles), that you might learn "Holy Hand Grenade" before you learn "PewPewbolt"? Because, while true, it doesn't change the fact that, if you don't learn PewPewbolt until level 7, then it's still a "new" spell to you when you learn it. Whether or not it's affiliated with a level or potency is a completely different matter. *shrug* Honestly, the way I've always hoped to one day see a magic system work is to have the whole "you gain 'better' stuff as you go" aspect deal specifically with the complexity of spells, rather than the damage of them. Instead of "Okay, you're level 4 now? Time to give you a 50-damage spell instead of a 20-damage one," you could gain a more complex spell (one that boosts your tactical "seeds" from which to develop specific combat tactics." For an extraordinarily simple example, we'll go back to my favorite buddies, Firebolt and Fireball. Maybe when you hit level 2, you learn Fireball. Well, now, you can do more than just hit one target with fire damage (Firebolt). But, that doesn't mean FireBALL has to do 3 times the damage of FireBOLT. It CAN, in total numbers, if you hit 6 enemies for 10 damage instead of 1 enemy for 10 damage. But, if you ask me, a single-target fire projectile spell should be just another tool in your magic belt, so to speak. What if there's ONE guy on the battlefield, and I just want to hit him with fire? Why would I use Fireball, or Magma Storm, or SUPER IFRIT WORLD-MELTING ASSAULT CELESTIAL 1,000 LOTUS BLOSSUM DRAGON STRIKE!? I probably wouldn't. So, even though those spells are cool, if I have the magical power capability to summon THAT much fire damage that behaves in a certain manner, you'd think I could just form ONE really, really potent Firebolt and be done with it. Now, that's not to say I think it's just plain bad to have any kind of power difference between spells. Namely, when you use something like the spell level system (a la D&D -- the system that PoE's pretty much using), you have tiers of spells. And this works. Why? Because when you're level 7 and have 4th-level spells, you maybe can only cast two 4th-level spells, but you can now probably cast 8-or-so 1st-level spells per encounter. (Just an example... I dunno when you can cast exactly how many of whichever level spells, in the actual design, or when something shifts to per-encounter, or at-will). But, yeah, it's balanced by the limitation. However, as I mentioned before, if Firebolt does 7 fire damage, and you reach 4th-level magic, and there's some 4th-level spell that does 100 fire damage to a single target, and most things have like 3 or 4 armor now, then what's better? Using the 4th-level spell, or casting ALL 8 of my Firebolts and doing 24 total fire damage to the thing over a lot longer period of time? So, yeah. Even in that system, there's definitely room for SOME scaling. Maybe Firebolt gets like +1 damage per level (just for example). And then, maybe Fireblast (a made-up "upgraded" Firebolt spell of 3rd-level) gets +2 damage per level. etc. *shrug*. This is all just to point out how things could function, and not specifically what values should be used or exactly how it should be set up, etc.. Another thing I'm fond of (but don't think would necessarily fit into PoE's current design) is the improvement of spells as you level via the addition of effects. In other words, you level up, and instead of "Yay, Firebolt now does more damage, according to your level," you'd get something like "Firebolt now has a chance to knock the opponent down." Or, even better (in isolation, admittedly), the Mass Effect ability-improvement tree approach in which you get to choose from a few different options. In ME's case, it was just a pair of options each time. It was pretty basic... I could see more than two, though. Maybe you can add armor penetration, or DOT burn damage, or increase the number of targets the spell can strike (half damage to each, but it's something you couldn't do with the spell before as it was only single-target, even if there were two very-low-health enemies standing around.) Anywho... I seem to have jumped from one idea to another without connecting them with a sentence. I meant to say that in systems that rely totally on spell scaling, and not also spell levels it's difficult to add new, cooler spells. Because probably the mage has already taken the coolest spells early on, because they were all available from the beginning. I did note one way in which this might be overcome, but of course it can also be overcome by adding both spell scaling and spell levels. But this tends to produce the aforementioned quadratic power growth, which for the purposes of this discussion I am calling a bad thing (it usually is when it's tied specifically to spellcasting). That said, I don't really disagree with anything you've said here. Increasing complexity, rather than strictly power, would be an interesting way to have a spell level system and spell scaling without necessarily producing quadratic growth (except in available options, which admittedly can be problematic but is easier to balance for on its own). It'd be interesting to figure out what the spell level limitations should be in such a system, but it's definitely a cool concept.

Yeah, that is a part that I'm deliberately leaving out but should probably disclose for completeness sake. I'm kind of a recovered powergamer, and that's kind of like being a recovered alcoholic. Once a powergamer, always a powergamer, whatever else you are. So while I can tolerate being less than optimal, being genuinely weak at something I'm not supposed to be weak at hurts me. While that's not the best reason in the world to fight for balance, it is part of the reason why I care so much.

All criticisms of GW2 aside (I swear that game was the closest I've ever come to enjoying an MMO on its own merits), I agree that a Kickstarted MMO would be cool. Unfortunately, MMOs tend to be really expensive (which is why they so often kill studios when they fail), so I think people would be unpleasantly surprised how little they'd get for their money. In short, while I agree that it'd be really cool, I doubt it'll happen. Or, to be more specific, I doubt it'll turn out well when someone inevitably tries.

Hm. I seem to have lost track of exactly what we're arguing about, which I suspect is not helping things. Let me see if I can clarify my stance and then we can see if we actually have an argument. I think balance is important. I don't necessarily think balance has to mean that everyone is equally good in combat, although I do think I'd argue that combat balance is more important in a combat-heavy video game than in the average PnP game, just due to the amount of playtime invested. What I really think is important is that each character be able to contribute to nearly every situation, although I do not think their contributions necessarily need to be equal. I do think total contributions need to be roughly equal (hence combat balance being more important in combat-heavy games). I think individual character balance is important because I'd hate to see players punished for running the party they want to run (outside of obvious option-limiters like a party of all one class). That means I should be able to run a party of holy warrior-types (paladins, priests, maybe some mage support and a chanter) and a party of underhanded mercenaries (fighters, rangers, rogues, maybe a druid) and they should both be overall about as good. Exactly as good would be ideal, but is hard to achieve and probably not worth the effort. It's also hard to define, because both groups really should be good at different things. Now, I will acknowledge that in a single-player party-based game, balance is not as important as it is in many other sorts of games. If one character is totally useless, there's no player sitting there being bored. But even so, I think the threshold of usefulness is useful to consider, because it'll help keep parties from hitting a brick wall if they find something that no one's specialized for (like running into Durlag's Tower without a thief in BG1). I'm also not sure I agree that 2E thieves were closer to their respective fighters than PoE rogues are. It sounds like PoE rogues can really fight, for one thing. 2E thieves... well, at level 1 there were barely passable. It really only got worse from there. And for that matter, PoE fighters can do skill stuff like sneak if they put points into it, which 2E fighters never could. But honestly, I think that's neither here nor there. I also have no problem with 4E-style classes in a video game. I hope I haven't given the impression that I'm railing against them. Don't get me wrong, even in video game form I think 4E has some problems (mainly the samey feel of the various classes), but I think it works a lot better in this medium than any other edition of D&D. As far as I'm concerned, the devs are smart to draw ideas from it. Anyway, sorry for rambling. As I said, I'm not entirely sure what exactly we're arguing about.

I explicitly stated that my argument wasn't about everyone being great at things, but rather being basically competent, and yet people seem to be assuming that I mean that thieves should always be as good in combat as fighters, etc. I am not asking that every class always be in the spotlight in every situation. Different people excel in different situations, and that's fine. What is not okay is when one character is either doing nothing, or might as well be for all the difference it makes, for a substantial portion of the gameplay. In my head, I have this concept of "threshold of usefulness." This is not the point at which you're really good at something. It's the point at which you're good enough that your contribution will matter more often than not. When a thief in pre-4E attacks something without sneak attack/backstab (always against undead), he's below the threshold of usefulness, because his entire round of attacks doesn't add up to one of the fighter's (this is especially true at high levels; low-level characters have a much easier time meeting the threshold in any situation). The thief might spend the entire encounter fighting an enemy that the fighter can kill in one round. And if the thief hadn't done that, the fighter would've just killed it himself with no difficulty. The thief, while technically able to attack, is not having a noticeable impact on most encounters, and thus is below the threshold of usefulness in combat. I am not arguing that everyone needs to be as good in combat as the fighter, but being unable to contribute is boring and, from a game-design standpoint, stupid. The thief needs to be above the threshold of usefulness, although it's fine if the fighter is further above (as long as the thief is more competent at something else that comes up fairly often). When the party needs to infiltrate something, the fighter is similarly useless. He can't sneak, he can't open locks, he can't bluff the guards, he can't create a distraction without revealing his presence, which might well blow the whole job. If he's lucky, he gets to boost the thief over a wall. His contribution isn't noticed, so he spends the whole time being bored. Again, he's below the threshold of usefulness, and that's a problem. Now, I'm just going to say this, because this is getting kind of ridiculous. From now on, if anyone accuses me of wanting all classes to be equally good at everything, as though that's the only possible definition of balance, I am going to ignore their entire post. Sorry, but I've spent two posts now explaining how that isn't my position, and I don't really see how a third is going to convince you. I'm just not that interested in combating strawman arguments.

Yup. All those MMO's where, due to PvP every class is just a clone of the other. It's the worst thing imaginable (and also why most MMO's are really bad, this PvP balance making them more and more symetrical and less fun to play per patch). Let's not wring a fun system with that kind of MMO clone balance. I totally agree that creating classes that are functionally identical is a big problem. It's why I don't like 4E D&D. Classes should feel different. That said, more-or-less perfect asymmetrical balance does appear to be possible, at least in theory. MOBA games may be an example of this, depending on how different you feel the different characters are. Of course, even that only works among top-tier heroes, and those seem to arise basically by trial and error. In a more abstract sense, Starcraft serves as the poster child for the general concept of asymmetrical balance, although the lack of RPG-ness makes it only peripherally relevant. So, basically, I do philosophically believe that perfect asymmetrical balance is possible in an RPG, but I'll admit that I haven't seen it, and I don't want to fall back on symmetrical balance because that defeats the whole point of having different classes to balance.

That really depends on what you're trying to do, though. It worked for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but PVP was never the purpose of those games. Or D&D, for that matter. So 'balance' was never really on the agenda. The idea of D&D was never "my level 3 pally can totally pwn your level 4 rogue!", but more "okay, your pally can beat my rogue in a straight up fight, but just try getting through all of those traps without my help.". It's not so much about "my paladin is better than your rogue" as it is about the rogue not being able to do anything when undead show up, or the paladin not being able to do anything when there's a trap. The issue isn't optimality, but usefulness. Obviously some characters should be better in some situations, and that's okay. In fact that's the way it should be. But every character needs to be at least useful in every common situation, and you need at least some degree of balance to accomplish that. Also, as much as it isn't supposed to be a competition, it's really frustrating to be obviously second-string. As is always the case for non-spellcasters in 3E after about 5th level, and for thieves in earlier editions. Fourth eliminates this problem, at the cost of differentiation, as noted before.

Balance I am in favor of. Strongly. Because a character being useless isn't fun. People always talk about how if you roleplay, being weak isn't bad, but sometimes (pretty frequently in D&D-like things) being competent is part of the character's concept. If that character isn't the best, fine, whatever. If that character isn't useful, that's out of line with the character concept (and also just boring, although with 6 party members that's not as much of a problem). So balance is important, because it allows me to play whatever class I want even if the character concept involves being vaguely competent. I am also really big into not punishing roleplayers for roleplaying, and I find balance is the most important part of that. This argument has historically fallen flat, though, because of people arguing that it doesn't matter in a single-player game. Never mind that the game can't be balanced for everyone, and the more balance there is the better the difficulty curve works in practice. *shrug*

I totally agree with you, both in your opinion of chance in general and in your assessment of the quality of the dev team's ideas (Josh has yet to say something I disagree with). But then, I come from a pen-and-paper community that averages two sets of house rules per DM, so I may be more inclined to change than most. I also know what it's like to be utterly convinced that you're right (that's me, most of the time; all the "in my opinion"s are really just me trying to be diplomatic), so I can see why people might be a tad stubborn. The only reason I'm taking the changes as well as I am is that they're the changes I would make in Josh's place. I am ashamed to say that everything I know about Cornwall comes from Arthurian legend. Somehow I imagine that's not the best source for real information.

You know... that'd be a REALLY good basic background system: Select your race, THEN select the culture you were raised in. I mean... I guess some sub-races would work with any culture? But then, some might not. *Shrug*. I dunno. Depends on how much of the sub-cultures is genetic, and how much is not. I mean, if the Boreal Dwarves develop the complexion/build/etc. that they do because of where they live and the diet they consume, etc., as they're growing up, then being born to Boreal Dwarf parents, in the Ocean Human lands wouldn't really result in your being a Boreal Dwarf -- you wouldn't really be Boreal unless you LIVED and developed in that culture... But... An Orlan raised by foster parents in the Ocean human sub-culture? Sweeeet! Your chosen culture could function sort of (the key words being "sort of") like Etiquettes in Shadowrun. Almost like an abstracted set of various knowledges specific to that culture (knowledge of the mannerisms of that culture, how to act and speak as one from within that cultural group, etc.). 8D! This is actually what I've started to do for my pen-and-paper games. "Racial" modifiers are split between race and culture, and a given character has one of each. You have to monitor it a bit to keep players from just selecting some bizarre race/culture combination because it gives them the bonuses they want, and sometimes it's a pain to balance properly, but overall it seems to work. That said, I don't really expect or even want it in Eternity specifically for the monitoring issue. Although maybe it could be done with a small penalty for race-inappropriate cultures, so as to deter the powergamers but not the roleplayers (for whom a small penalty is a small price to pay). I'd be cool with that. I sort of expect we'll only see race-appropriate cultures as options, though.