Jarrakul

The point of a +1 weapon is to be a natural point of progression to the +2 weapon, or the +3 or +4 or +5 or +9000 weapon. If you make a D&D game and try to tell me to get all excited about a weapon that gives you +1 to hit and damage, I am going to laugh at you. It's as simple as that. (Note that +1 weapons are actually a marked improvement over normal weapons in many games, due to being able to damage creatures that would otherwise be immune and being unbreakable. This has precious little to do with the +1 bonus.) Natural progression with small steps is important, but if the end result is still small, then it's really not worth bothering. Something epic is only epic if it helps a lot. As for familiarity bonuses being small, you're right that the details are important, but you're talking about a mechanical bonus. Most people aren't going to go "wow, I have to use this weapon for a bit to get the full benefit out of it, that's so immersive!" Most people are just going to consider the bonus, and how to get the most out of it. If it's small, it'll either be quick to get and everyone will just farm +2 familiarity on all their weapons instead of trying to stick with any one thing, or it'll be slow and only the most hardcore farmer-types will bother, and even then only on weapons that are end-game already. This, I think, is ultimately where we differ. I have been modifying, rewriting, and then wholesale creating new pnp game systems for over a decade now. And I've been running games for even longer, in those systems and others. And of course I've been playing video games and interacting with people who play video games for most of my life. And what I've learned is that people trend towards optimal playstyles. Highest power. Not everyone does this, of course, but most people do. That means that whenever you design a game, most people are going to do whatever your game encourages. Not what you want it to encourage, mind you, but what its mechanics actually encourage. So when you offer players a choice, either explicitly or implicitly, if there is an obviously better answer, people will choose that one nine times out of ten. Which means you aren't actually presenting a choice to most of your players, and you're punishing the few players that will take it as an actual choice. This is a problem. The only way to offer an actual choice to the 90%, and to not punish the 10% for being "free thinkers," is to make sure neither choice is significantly better than the other. That's balance, and it is the only way to offer players true freedom. As such, it's the single most important element of game design. Except fun, I suppose, but fun is a lot harder to pin down. It seems perfectly natural to me, but whatever. That's subjective. As for why people would make a weapon that's actively fighting you... that's every weapon since the invention of the rock-that-you-can-hit-people-with. Call it weight, or recoil, or what have you, every weapon is fighting you in one way or another. You make those weapons because the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. And a powerful magic sword that I can just pick up and use, and the downside is that in two years someone's normal sword might be just as good? Yes please. I'd pay quite a lot to skip ahead two years.

I am in full support of A: the ability to use our skills to bypass obstacles, as appropriate, and B: believable barriers. That said, the map ending is a perfectly fine barrier as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, real life doesn't have a whole lot of map edges, but the gameplay area can only be so big and we all understand that. It's when said gameplay area is divided by barriers that couldn't stop a determined 5-year-old (but then, what could?) that I have problems.

@Trashman: I agree that I'm complicating matters, but I don't feel that I'm doing it needlessly. My proposed system is different from yours in that mine features much larger familiarity bonuses that take much longer to accrue. To my mind, this is a good thing, because frankly I don't see the point otherwise. If familiarity bonuses are minor, they don't seem worth programming in. Just have a weapon upgrade system and let that handle it. I'd honestly be fine with that, but I really like the idea of weapon familiarity, so I'm trying to propose something that I think could have a significant impact on the game. That said, half of your objections seem to be lore-based. You don't see any reason why magic and familiarity should be opposed systems. Fair enough, but allow me to offer a potential explanation. Magic in PE is soul-based, correct? So magical weapons have their own soulstuff, however undeveloped. Because that soulstuff doesn't belong to you, it fundamentally rejects you, like an organ from someone with the wrong blood type. This effect isn't overt enough to give you penalties to start with, but it does hinder you in developing a "rapport" with the weapon. If you want, since even warrior-types use their souls, you can even explain familiarity as the process of subconsciously aligning the weapon with the wielder's soul, and the weapon having its own soulstuff gives it a sort of spiritual inertia that makes this process more difficult. Jamoecw's explanation also works, although it is entirely different from mine. Take your pick. @Jamoecw: I'm sorry, I'm missing something. Diminishing returns are definitely cool, but I'm not seeing how they're specifically useful for familiarity (as opposed to being useful for nearly everything). Well, unless you substituted weapon "level" instead of character level. That might be something. In any case, I feel like you have a specific point to make, and I'm just not getting it. Am I just being slow?

Trashman: My argument about familiarity and enchantment being opposed stems from the styles of play that familiarity bonuses encourage in players. If familiarity and enchantment are not opposed, it becomes extremely important to get a good weapon early so you can stack familiarity bonuses onto it. This undermines the whole "use the weapon you like" approach, and changes it into "find a powerful weapon early" which is not at all what any of us are aiming to encourage. Furthermore, if familiarity and enchantment are not opposed, then we suddenly have to worry a lot more about "disk one nukes." You know, those really powerful items that you can often find in the beginning of games? Like the enclave power armor in Fallout 2, or the ankheg plate in Baldur's Gate. These items are really cool, and can be borderline essential to surviving the early game on higher difficulties (since you haven't had much time to optimize your character). But if these items get familiarity just as quickly as normal items, then they'll be significantly overpowered in the mid- and end-game, when you've already had a chance to get ahead and therefore don't need the boost. So yes, I think they should be opposed. I would also argue for familiarity bonuses eventually being very large. I want to be able to pick up a sword at the start of the game, and through some combination of familiarity, customization, and symbolic significance, be able to use that same sword throughout the entire game and have it be just as viable (but not more so) as going through the game using every new magic sword I find in turn. I would like the "ordinary" sword to play somewhat differently from the super-magic end-game sword (Lepthys quite nicely listed the different kinds of effects each could reasonably have), but it should be just as good by the end. And, of course, you could pick up a sword halfway through the game and end up with a something in the middle, and that should be fine too.

Maybe give the main character free "guard other" and "cower" options in combat? "Guard other" would target an ally and give you bonuses against anyone attacking them, whereas "cower" would make you semi-invisible to enemies (less likely to be attacked) if there are allies around? That would give you a potential way of breaking down combat influence without building the entire game around, but it'd also probably favor tanks heavily. Which could be a cool dynamic, if the tank classes are build around leadership.

I support the idea that anyone can break down a door, but only rogues can do it quietly and without damaging the door/lock. Locked door in a dungeon? Go ahead, alert half the dungeon breaking it down. Hope you're ready for it. Silence spells are a good option for counteracting this effect, so long as they're suitably expensive to cast. Basically, they should be rest-limited. Otherwise it just becomes "learn silence to make lockpicking obsolete."

So, this is a concept that I've playing around with in PnP RPGs. It's fun, but tricky. The way I manage it (which I do not claim is perfect) is by saying that familiarity grants attack bonuses while magic grants damage bonuses. So a magic sword might be incredibly powerful, but it's no easier to wield than a normal sword. Meanwhile a sword that you're really familiar with is still just a sword, but you know that thing inside and out and you know how to control it like it's an extension of your arm. That's the simple bit. The more complicated bit is about symbolism. Basically, the entire reason to have familiarity bonuses instead of traditional RPG loot upgrades is for symbolic/thematic reasons. Maybe you want to wield the sword of your grandfather for your entire career, or maybe you killed a dragon and there's no way you're getting rid of a spear that killed a freakin' dragon. You want some system in place to represent how iconically important a weapon is, in some way or another. Maybe your grandfather's sword has an inherent familiarity bonus and increases familiarity faster over time, and maybe your spear became semi-magical after killing a freakin' dragon. The point is to make whatever you choose awesome, because thematics are the only reason to bother with familiarity anyway. The problem arises when you start to combine familiarity with magic weapons. What if a character inherited the Blade of a Thousand Truths from his grandfather? It was already an amazing weapon, and now it's only gonna get better. And should it really help if you get lucky and find a longsword +1 in the early game instead of a normal longsword? For the entire rest of the game, I mean? Probably not. So the other component I would recommend is some system by which familiarity and enchantment are opposed. So, for example, every +1 bonus (to use D&D terms) might slow the rate of familiarity gain by some amount (you'd probably want something a tad more complex than this, but you get the idea).

I am in favor of level scaling on nearly everything. Well, more accurately, I'm in favor of encounter scaling most of the time and level scaling on bosses. Note, here, that this doesn't mean that everything in the game has to scale to every possible level. I think everything should have a certain range of power that it varies within based on PC level (sort of like what New Vegas did, but on an encounter level rather than a per-monster level). This is especially important for bosses (which is the one area where I support individual monster scaling), who absolutely need to be scaled to maintain tension. Basically, a boss should never be easy unless you've gone massively beyond its level range (like taking on an early-game boss right before charging into the final dungeon of the game). In particular, the end boss should never, ever be easy, no matter how much you've leveled. So, for example, let's say we expect people to finish the game around level 15, but some of them get to level 20. Instead of just making our final boss level 23 and calling it a day, we have him start at level 23, but if the PCs level beyond 15, he gets more powerful roughly in proportion. So, for example, if the PCs get to level 20, the boss is now level 30. Either way, he's hard. That said, it would be a mistake to make him level 15 if the PCs are level 10. The final boss is what the game builds up to, so you need for actual building up to occur. Basically what I'm saying is this: bounded upscaling is good, downscaling is not.

Complex visual effects for illusions could be potentially difficult, especially if they interacted with the environment. That said, some sort of big flash non-environment-adapting effect should be within the realms of reasonableness, and would be really cool. For an example of the kinds of thing illusions could do in combat (but not necessary what they should look like) look into the recently-defunct City of Heroes. The Illusion powerset for controllers had a nice mix of blinding effects, fear effects, invisibility, illusionary damage, effective mind-control, and invulnerable aggro-drawing summons. It was lots of fun, and would make a good basis for an illusion school of magic in most games.

I suppose we're unable to continue this discussion, then. It seems to me that the IE games provide a perfect example of how RTwP can be implemented without relying on AI (sure, they had optional AI, but it was hardly essential). If you don't think RTwP can be separated from AI in spite of this evidence, I don't really know what to say. I agree that RTwP doesn't work well with deep tactics if not implemented correctly. NWN2 is a great example of this, as you rightly point out. But there are potential implementation problems in any system. We have an example of how RTwP can be done well in the IE games (it's their greatest strength outside of storytelling, IMO), hinging on the non-reliance on AI. But again, I suppose I can't really make this argument if you refuse to acknowledge this non-reliance. EDIT: More typos than I can tolerate. :/

It seems our disagreement hinges on which makes Obsidian's job easiest. Since neither of us are video game designers (to my knowledge), I think we've argued this one about as far as we can. Unless you had something else to add, that is. I don't think I can say anything else, except that the regenerating stamina system sounds a lot easier to balance from my experience in PnP game systems. Since PnP systems don't translate perfectly to video games, I can't really call that an ironclad argument. Well, actually, they should cater to colorblind players. It's very easy and would help a lot of people. Should they do so to the extreme detriment of the rest of us? No, of course not. But I don't see any compelling reason why the stamina system is likely to be detrimental to anyone. Obviously we disagree on this point. (I also think that catering the game to people whose skill is perfectly aligned with the difficulty is closer to catering to the 1/7th than to the 6/7ths, but my point stands regardless.)

You claimed that RTwP had less tactical depth. Again, I quote "Thus a game with deeper mechanics ideally should be TB so thatTS are actually realized within the game." If this statement is true, where does that leave RTwP? Certainly not at the top of the tactics heap, or even tied with TB. And that is the claim I seek to refute, or at least call into question. You're absolutely right that AI can cause all sorts of problems. But these are problems with AI, not with the RTwP system. If turn-based games were inclined to use party AI, you'd see similar problems. Personally, I don't like AI in my RTwP games. Always played IE with the AI turned off, and I thoroughly enjoyed puppetting my entire party around. So yeah, if the don't let me do that and force another NWN2 on me, I'll be upset. But there's nothing in the RTwP system that inherently requires that. I recognize this, which is why your argument confuses me. I'm not challenging TBs right to exist as a game style, or your right to enjoy them. I am simply saying that I don't enjoy them, complete with an explanation based on my subjective preferences. Why does that bother you so much? D&D is more fun (for me), in roughly the same way, than every turn-based game I've ever played (except some board games, and of course other PnP RPGs). Whether or not it's fantasy has nothing to do with that, because it has nothing to do with what the game feels like to play. That said, this is hardly the crux of my argument. Not that I'm even particularly trying to argue. We're in agreement here. AI omniscience is just silly.

My point was that I don't think this system is more difficult to balance than a straight hp system. In fact, it makes combat difficulty easier to balance. See my comment about fudge room. If you think Obsidian can't handle strict balancing problems, it seems to me that you should support the system that makes game balance easier. Okay, fair point. But no system is going to solve Obsidian being bad at balancing. Again, I think the health/stamina system is actually easier to balance, combat-wise, and I certainly don't see how it's harder. Hurray! So game designers should just forget about trying to please their playerbase? Bull****. Making a game people can enjoy is their job. In this case, their main focus is on fans of the old IE games, and that's fine. We're paying for the game upfront, after all. But there's no rule that says everyone who likes the IE games has the same skill level. Aren't they doing their target audience a disservice if you don't do what they can to cater to all of us? And again, I point out that this isn't making their job harder. In fact, in one very important way, it's making their job easier.

I suppose, technically speaking, there is a near-infinite amount of possibilities in a RTwP system, and you can't realistically have time to consider all of them. Why is this a failing? By pausing every few seconds, you can easily get as many options as TB provides. More, considering that you also choose when to pause. I fail to see how that's tactically uninteresting. Different sure, but less deep? In what way? As for "the same function with less hassle" I disagree. The pause in RTwP serves much the same purpose as the TB, but the real-time offers many more possibilities. Why? Because when the situation changes, I can react to it immediately. You might call that twitch-based, and there would be an element of truth to that (although it's rare hard to press the pause button in time), but why is that less tactically interesting? It seems to be that tactical depth would include as many factors as possible, so why exclude reactionary actions? Why do you need more breathing space in a RTwP system? Isn't that what the pause is for? For that matter, do they even offer breathing space at all? I don't recall them doing that in IE. They just regulated the speed at which things could happen, which isn't a unique property of rounds. A slow attack speed would have had exactly the same effect.

Every game is kind of like this, really. But I see your point. Still, I don't see this system as particularly more difficult to balance than any other. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems simple enough to me. Sure, some parts will be harder, but others will be easier. Having all your resources doesn't make an encounter trivial. It makes it different. Easier, if the encounter is the same, but if the encounter is designed with your full resources in mind, it can be very difficult indeed. Again, I cite my own D&D experience, in which my players generally only get in fights every few days. And yet it isn't at all difficult to design things so that they just barely scrape by, even though they're at full resources. In fact, this is much easier than designing for the slow resource drain that repeated battles create. So if I can do it, why can't Obsidian? This actually makes me very sad. You argue well, clearly have well-formed opinions, and I'd love to know what you think makes regeneration work better in twitch-based games than in IE-style games. Regardless, if you don't think you can explain, I suppose I'll have to live with that. It's pretty disappointing, though. I had hope you wouldn't resort to that argument. Yes, that is what difficulty levels are for. In broad strokes, anyway. But even players of the same general skill are not identical. Some are better, others are worse. Some are only better at some types of encounters. Some use potions and such more than others (I, for example, tend to reload a half dozen times so I don't have to use one healing potion). As a game designer, you have to account for these variations, or you will fail. Difficulty settings are helpful in this regard, but they are insufficient to account for the sheer levels of variation. And as such, you need fudge room, even if you're perfect at your job (and if you aren't, fudge room only helps more). Would you argue otherwise? Obviously I don't know about your interactions with Josh. It's entirely possible that your information is better than mine. That said, cooldowns are not mutually exclusive with daily use limitations. Indeed, they could coexist on the same ability, or some abilities could be solely cooldown-based while others were solely use-limited. Regardless, I was merely intending to cite my sources, and see if you could provide me with any additional information. What they've said isn't really all that relevant to the question of which system is better, which is what's actually under debate here. We seem to be in agreement that Tim's loose proposal sounds more fun.

Gizmo: You're right, I am faulting TB games for something they're not trying to do. That's why I'm faulting the TB system. It isn't doing something that I think it should be doing. As for the abstract nature of turn-based combat, I find that detrimental to my enjoyment. I think, frankly, that this particular type of abstraction serves to limit my options with regards to timing and positioning. Since I like timing and positioning, and think they're tactically interesting, I think this is a problem. So I don't like TB games. (Also, when I play TB games, I always find myself wondering why I don't just go play D&D.) Shrek: I follow your argument until you say "Thus a game with deeper mechanics ideally should be TB so thatTS are actually realized within the game." I see why TB games necessarily need more tactical depth than other games, but not why tactically intensive games need to be TB, especially as compared to RTwP. Your argument is framed as though the important thing about TB games is that you have time to think, but RTwP provides this. So why do you say they're less tactically interesting? I also don't understand what point you're making about rounds. Do you think they're good or bad? What do they have to do with AI (the same problems crop up whether you have rounds or not, or even in turn-based play)? Personally, I think they're a terrible misuse of the computer's resources, left over from PnP days. PnP development and video game development are very different things, and the technical necessities of one should not be applied to the other.

When you say things like "but that is bad", without offering any explanation of why it's bad, I tend to wince. Very few things are as simple as that. Full regeneration out of combat certainly isn't. It allows every fight to be a true challenge on its own. That's awesome. It also eliminates the long-term strategic element. That's less awesome. Stamina regenerating outside of combat allows for a middle ground. I think that's pretty cool. I admit, however, that it might end up being the worst of both worlds, with just enough long-term impact to be annoying but not enough strategic potential to be interesting. I doubt that'll happen, but it could. I'd rather take the gamble, because if any games are going to gamble, it's gonna have to be the ones that aren't leashed to publishers. If you think regen can be fun in some games, why do you think it won't work in PE? Obviously games are different, but what element of an IE-style RPG will make in-combat regeneration unusually problematic? Or, if you prefer, what element of twitch-based games makes regeneration work? It seems to me that the ability to pull back one party member to heal offers more tactical options (body blocking, cost/benefit analysis of retreat, etc), not less. Incidentally, save-scumming (in any sense of the term) is not a major concern of mine. I really don't think it's a problem. That said, you said something interesting. The combination of always depleting resources in each combat but always having enough to continue is a difficult one. Players have different skill levels, and so will deplete different amounts of resources in each fight. I suppose by "finding" you might mean from drops and such, which makes the problem easier, but I can't say I'm a fan of consumable-based balance. It really just makes the entire game into "can I avoid using these long enough to make the final boss trivial?", which isn't fun. So you have to have enough of your own resources (use-limited but renewable) to tackle the next fight. And it seems to be that the health/stamina system, with stamina recovering out of combat, is the best system for this. It simply provides more fudge room for the game designers by allowing limited post-combat recovery. Are you opposed to this? I'm not honestly sure at this point what you want to see in the game. Regarding my claim about how spells worked, I apparently got that information from update #16 with Tim Cain. Tim said it was still very up-in-the-air at that point, but that's the system he proposed (little stuff on cooldown, big stuff requires rest). If you have a more recent source, I'd love to see it.

Honestly, I'd rather quest items just not take up space in the inventory. They can be stored in an entirely different system. Less realistic? Sure, but also less hassle. There's no gameplay reason why carrying that key should stop me from carrying a potion.

I like the idea of being able to choose a party spokesperson, but if it's not the PC, certain options won't be available (based on the companion chosen). I don't think this would be too hard to implement, but I could be wrong.

Shrek: What you've heard about spells is apparently contrary to what I've heard. I suppose only time will tell, then. I hope I'm right, as full spell recovery after each fight eliminates an important strategic element. In that, I agree with you. That is a very interesting post. I agree with you on many points. Not all, though. First, I would argue that, while limited resting will satisfactorily eliminate the rest spam problem, the stamina/health system offers more than that. The ability to combine long-term strategic elements with the short-term tactical potential that regenerating health provides (as each fight can now be individually challenging) is very exciting. I do hope they implement limited resting, as the stamina/health system does nothing at all to address the problems that limitless resting creates. But I also want the health/stamina system. Second, I don't see how your suggested encounter layout would eliminate save-scumming. Perhaps you're saying that the long-term nature of encounter strings (the spaces between rests) would make save-scumming less useful? You're right, but only sort of. At any given time, you either have enough resources remaining to win the next encounter or you don't. If you have enough, you can still keep reloading until you win. Save scumming still exists. If you don't have enough resources, you're doomed, which is just frustrating and not at all fun. In fact, in this case, the ability to reload an earlier save is the only thing that will keep you playing the game. In this case, save scumming not only still exists, it becomes necessary to progress. So I don't see how your proposed encounter setup would discourage save scumming (incidentally, I don't think stamina/health will either, though it will help to reduce the incidence of the necessary case).

My thoughts on this come from my background in psychology. Specifically operant conditioning as it applies to reinforcement schedules. If I get rewarded for each specific action (killing something, in this case), an odd exception to normal conditioning rules occurs. I actually stop enjoying the action. Basically, I only perform the action for the reward, not for the action itself, even if I used to enjoy the action. If, on the other hand, the reward is more loosely tied to the action (in this case at semi-arbitrary "completion" benchmarks), my enjoyment of the action will not decrease, even if I receive the same reward overall. Therefore, for my own enjoyment of combat, I would much rather have objective-based rewards than kill-based rewards, even if combat ends up being mechanically disadvantaged because of it. Let the powergamers do what they will, I want my fun.

Shrek, from what the devs are saying, your most powerful spells won't be on cooldown. They'll be tied to resting. It's only the weak spells that are on cooldown. So yeah, you can cast a bunch of spells, but choosing when to use your best spells will still be an important strategic decision. Also, except in a very few areas, there was nothing in IE preventing you from resting after each encounter. So, if you wanted, you could in fact spam your best spell every encounter. Not saying I like this, but don't hold up IE as an example of something it's not.

I agree. Failure is an important part of any good story, and of any good game. Why not integrate it fully into PE? That said, give us experience points for failure as well as success. Why? Two reasons. First, because if I don't get XP, I'm probably just gonna reload. Second, they're experience points, not victory points. You learn as much from failure as from success.

From what we're hearing, weak spells will be cooldown-based, while powerful spells will be used up and restored on rest. I hope they implement a limited rest system, such as the one you suggest. The IE system was functionally identical to full heal as soon as combat ended, and I'd like to see a bit more of a strategic element in PE.

So, I'd a tad confused as to why you folks are against regenerating health. Not that I don't see the arguments (I listed quite a few of them myself in my previous post), I just don't see a lot of reasons being given. Is it realism? Because a) that's secondary to gameplay, and b) regenerating health will promote the types of "clash and retreat" tactics that are common in real life (at least from my own experiences with fencing and martial arts). Also, taking 47 stabwounds before you die isn't exactly realistic either. Stamina at least carries the implication that you managed to avoid most of the hit, suffering only slight bruising or a small cut or something. Or are you concerned that battles will turn into kite-fests? I share your concern, but there are alternative ways to address that issue (see my previous post for one potential example). Now, I also see a lot of people complaining about regenerating health in modern shooters. It's important to remember that the ability to take cover (whether implemented in a specific cover system or not) is an essential part of the "regenerating health" experience in these games. If there's little or no cover to take, as will almost certainly be the case in PE, regenerating health becomes much more difficult to abuse. Sure, you can body block with your companions, but then they'll take damage. That's an actual trade-off.