[Sound-based puzzles]

You know, I don't think I've run across sound-only puzzles in a long time.

 

Usually if it is a sound puzzle, there is also a visual aspect to it as well, just in case you run across a gamer who is also deaf.

[Now that you released the first video...]

 

Hell no. The last thing I want to do is have to carry around a bunch of torches (although we could carry the entire forests worth in our bottomless backpack) or have to put the torch down to re-equip my weapons.

Given how annoying that can be, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't make torches implicit. Although it might be interesting if there is a "Light Source" slot on each character, so that you can either leave a default torch there or add a magic torch, magic light, or other light source there. It'd also be interesting if stuff like lanterns could be used to change the light circle into a cone of light, or other shapes.

[Drunk girl rambles]

Could be that he's one of those people who defines level scaling specifically as a sub category of itself and can't (or doesn't want to) think of the terminology to make it more distinct.

 

In their definition, level scaling that is in moderation is no longer actual level scaling, because their perceived internal definition of level scaling includes "unmoderated" or "unrestricted" in the definition. So putting up examples of a boss that has a 2-3 level range can no longer qualifies as actual "level scaling," depending on the person.

[PC Gamer Interview with Chris Avellone]

 

 

To be honest, as much as I like Chris and PE, the Orlans sound pretty much exactly like The Elder Scrolls' Khajiit. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, but to say "I don’t think there’s actually an equivalent of them in standard fantasy fare" isn't exactly true. The whole "cat people" thing isn't a particularly new concept.

 

I don't think he meant it that way. And no, Orlean's aren't *cat people*. According to Sawyer not every Orlan looks even similiar to feline.

 

Also, from what we heard about Orlean culture, I don't really see the Khajit connection at all.

 

There's probably a misunderstanding somewhere here when he gave that interview. Either on the Interviewers or Chris side.

That drawing of an Orlan looked more like a leprechaun than a cat-man.

[Drunk girl rambles]

 

[...]

 

(2) "If the RPGs main storyline is a fight against another adventuring party who has also been gaining experience during the time the player has, shouldn't the adventuring party have its own leveling system that equates to what experience it has gained during the time you took to get to it so as to be "real" within your verisimilitude test(ie level scaling)?"

 

Or am I misreading your use of verisimilitude?

Giving that particular example some thought (since I've used it before), you really don't need level scaling specifically to make that happen -- just some form of scaling.

 

It could be scaled to in-game play time or the number of key trigger points activated, for example.

[So, about priests...]

 

 

PE Clerics are actually patterned after DnD Paladins.

Oh, I see. Good thing there aren't any clerics in this. ;D

Seriously speaking, how are priests patterned after DnD Paladins if Paladins are already in the game?

 

 

Because Project: Eternity Paladins are patterned after Warlords. You get healed by a drill sergeant yelling at you to get your lazy ass off the ground and MOVE IT.

[The BAD Kind Of "Multiple Currencies"]

Tiered Currencies:

 

I don't think tiered currencies (the platinum/gold/silver/copper breakdown) are handled correctly in games.

 

When you look at how money is used in real life, what do you normally see floating around? For the U.S., you'd see coins (Pennies, Nickels, Dimes, Quarters) and $1.00 to $20.00 bills normally. People know that $50.00 and $100.00 bills exist, and they're not exactly rare, but the large denomination doesn't get used normally.

 

So when you look at game currency, you'd normally expect to see something similar. For example, correlating game currency to US currency:

Usage tier    -- RL Currency   -- Game or D&D Currency
Poor          -- <$1 Coins     -- Copper
Normal        -- $1, $5, $10   -- Silver
Oddity        -- $2, $1 coin   -- Electrum
Affluent      -- $20 & checks  -- Gold
Rich          -- $50+ & checks -- Platinum

(I'm only familiar with US currency, but I'm confident others can fall into similar tiers)

 

With this sort of equivalence, this is what I'd expect to see:

You see Poor and Normal tiered currencies everywhere. Everyone uses them. Oddity tiered currencies do pop up as well, but not frequently enough to warrant grouping it in; they are not inconvenient enough for people to avoid using.

 

Affluent tier currency is where you start getting into more massive purchases, no matter what is being purchased. As a result, it best represents the large purchases a normal person can make, and carrying too many of them may make payment a little awkward if you were trying to be efficient with your money.

 

However, Rich tier currency is where it really hurts. It's practically a status symbol of being rich if you make all your purchases with this, but depending on where you frequently make purchases, it can limit where you can purchase things in the wrong neighborhood. For things that are at this large amount, at this point, it's simply easier to handle transactions on credit and IOUs.

 

Tiered currency makes sense in a game that can actually make this sort of distinction. If the game can't do that, I agree with the sentiment that the plat/gold/silver/copper breakdown is worthless.

 

Regional Currencies:

 

Regarding regional currencies (i.e. different currencies in different regions), part of my thoughts behind it (because I've suggested it before) are:

 

War/Peace states -- One country is at war with the other? Don't expect your money to convert well.

 

Origin flavor -- Can be used for quests/event triggers, depending on the origin of the money. Example: Spend some of that foreign currency to get the attention of the local thieves guild, who wants to smuggle goods in from the other country -- with your help!

 

More controlled options -- Aloof craftsman only accepts one type of currency as proof that you are aiding his compatriots. Either spend a ton to convert to that currency, or actually help them out to get the currency needed. (I'd rather earn and spend, say, 50 of one currency to spend on a trophy item than see a one-size-fits-all price that's 100x to 200x higher.)

[Wizards with swords: Should wizards have melee capability?]

 

Ive seen a lot of posts referring to Stamina being "used up" while attacking. Can someone direct me to a developer post that states that?

I don't recall one directly linked to attacking, but as your character will be hit regularly the constant thumping or dodging to avoid a blow will likely drain your stamina to a degree.  It also stands to reason that wielding a heavy weapon (heavy for your character, anyway) or a flail that must constantly be in motion might drain a bit of your stamina, but you'll need to ask an Obsidian employee about specifics.

His point is, people are ignoring (or ignorant of) the fact that "Stamina" in Project Eternity is what other games would label as your "HP."

 

Here's another explanation, if you are willing to read through to where it is.

 

There are people who do not like using Stamina in this way because they are too used to using it to mean something else.

 

Unless your attacks have some level of masochism involved or screw over your combat effectiveness, you are not likely to be using Stamina to power anything.    It's implied that something that affects your Stamina will automatically affect your health as well.

 

 

 

Edit: And I see Gfted1 replied back already.  That's what I get for sitting on a post for 1 hour LOL.

[Torment: Tides of Numenera]

Does anyone else feel that the pic of MCA on the goal looks like some ominous boss creature lurking in the shadows?

[Tired of the cliched set of Arcane Elements?]

 

 

"New" elements?

 

MEh, there's a reason these are classic. It's relaly hard to justify "polymorph" as an element..

 

How about "school of magic", then?

I was getting that kind of impression from the poll, myself.

[Tired of the cliched set of Arcane Elements?]

If you're looking for some examples of non-classical elements, there's a Japanese light novel series called "Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei" (Something like "The Poor Performing Student of a Magic High School") that categorizes magic by what you do to get the effects rather than the actual effects themselves, but it does mix a LOT of techno-magic explanations and magitek.

 

For a techno-magic explanation example, what would be considered "Cold" magic could be viewed as a "Deceleration attribute Vibration System" magic because you're slowing down molecules to create the freezing effect, but it can also apply to "Speed" magic because "Speed" magic in the series works by converting heat energy to movement and vice versa, so the faster something's moving from magic, the colder it is (if you don't apply other magic to deal with the cold).

 

For an example of magitek, virtually all spellcasters use a technological device called a "Casting Assistant Device" or "CAD" to cast spells because it pre-programs magic into electronic sequences to drop the casting time of magic to almost nil. They don't have to use it to cast magic, but it's a case of whether pressing one to three buttons is faster than making gestures and chanting.

 

Some of the explanations (and names) get a bit strange, but it is pretty consistent.

[Tired of the cliched set of Arcane Elements?]

I think this comic strip was made for people feeling your way.

 

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0423.html

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

Nice tidbits about grimoires. I interpret it like that: to cast a spell, you need some sort of spell focus. So, maybe you could use totems and hang your whole body full of items, or you can draw some kind of symbol on a sheet of paper and put it into your enchanted war-book, so you have a selection of spells ready to use without taking up a whole lot of space and weight. Extra bonus: the hide of the grimoire itself is enchanted with some kind of shockwave spell to get rid of pesky little melee fighters.

Not necessarily. It could easily be that this style of magic uses a focus to, well, focus the soul's power a specific way, while another style (like possibly Cipher magic) doesn't care about foci.

[Limited gold for merchants]

 

 

"Dur, me cant control self"

 

^^^

That is you calling everyone who disagrees with you stupid. (or retarded)

 

I don't care if you were responding to someone else, it was obnoxious and directly attacking everyone who disagreed with you, which I happen to be one. If you don't like getting a strong response, don't post such nonsense.

I dont care about your level of response or your feelings. If you cant control yourself thats your problem, not mine. Well, I guess its mine now that the game has to cater to people like you.

This is reminding me of a man telling a woman he was offended on behalf of lesbians about a phrase the woman used as a curse -- the phrase which she got from a lesbian friend. (The tongue lashing he got back was really funny and just too impossible to duplicate.)

 

That aside, a lot of the changes could also be summed up as "I don't see why you felt it was necessary to change this but whatever."

[Limited gold for merchants]

Then I don't think we've been playing the same games I don't remember ever spending a large amount of money in, for example, BG and BG2. It just kept piling up and ended up being useless.

 

If it is as you say, people looting everything because they need more money, then the whole system is inherently flawed. The main source of income should be actual money, gold and treasure, not daggers and shields. For me this is a question of immersion and being able to role play. Sure, if I know some rich dude has a sword covered with jewels, I'll try to steal it (provided it's in character, of course ), but I won't be picking up every dagger a bunch of goblins drop. It would probably take more time and effort than it would be worth anyway.

It probably depends on where you go in the games and when.

 

Re-using an earlier example, the Hand of Kazgoroth and Claw of Kazgoroth in Baldur's Gate are at High Hedge, which you can easily get to at level 1 (and may want to for potentially easy XP with Melicamp).

 

They're also > 10000 gp each. 

 

It's been a while since I played, but I know I've definitely made a point to get one of the two and used it through the game before.

[Limited gold for merchants]

It's already been mentioned but I thought I should add my voice as well.

 

I've never really understood the joy of looting every little knick-knack you run across. If I was out adventuring I wouldn't bother picking up a sword unless it was exceptional in some way or an improvement on what I was using at the time. It just doesn't make any sense from a role playing perspective.

 

Instead, what I would love to see, would be for money to actually have value to the player. So, after clearing a dungeon, why not let the reward be a chest of gold? It makes sense. Then make it possible to use that gold to buy actually useful stuff from merchants. Have them sell weapons and armor that are as good or better than what you find on your average adventure. Make it exciting to find gold, instead of having it be a useless resource that you just keep gathering, never to use. Maybe that reward from the next quest will be enough to buy that sword you've been saving up for, how's that for incentive? It would also make it easier to role play more pragmatic characters who aren't interested in doing good just because it's good. Giving gold actual value would give those characters a reason to take on a certain quest.

 

I really don't think your main income should be from selling loot, except for the occasional, rare, epic sword of badassary or things like gems. In short: wether merchants have unlimited gold or not shouldn't matter, as long as the whole economics system is implemented in a smart way.

They don't do it out of joy. It's precisely because so much emphasis is placed on money that people are selling everything with a vendor value.

 

It's when you see something nice for sale for 10000 gp and you only have around 200 gp that triggers people's inner pillager, willing to sell anything that's lootable to get to that goal, just to get there slightly faster.

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

The more I think about that Grimoire Slam ability, the more it feels like there might be a cooldown, if indirectly.

 

The ability and description pretty much imply that the book is going to be closed, physically swung at someone, and cause an explosion/shockwave to knock the target back.

 

What's going to shift that belief about a cooldown around is the following thought:

 

Is the "closed" state of the Grimoire going to have any effect on normal usage of the Grimoire?

 

For example, there's a couple different thoughts on possible in-game reasons for a Grimoire swapping cooldown.

 

1) The book needs to be open in order to awaken and use the magic stored in the book. The bulk of the cooldown is waking up the magic.

- This would make the Grimoire Slam closing the book result in a cooldown.

 

2) You need to re-create triggers for the active Grimoire to access the spells you need each time you swap out a Grimoire. You can only have one set of triggers ready at a time, so taking out another Grimoire means setting up another set of triggers, but opening and closing the book won't change the state of the triggers.

- This would make the Grimoire Slam closing the book irrelevant. You just wiggle your finger (or whatever other triggers are actually set up) and keep on using magic, kind of like an arcane puppetmaster feel.

 

I'm sure there's plenty of other ways it can work, but the question would still boil down to whether closing that book means anything.

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

 

The book thing I see more as someone getting close to a caster, not a caster running into battle armed with a magically enchanted grimoire rdy to slap to slap beasts down. As far as losing place or dmging book, I picture caster basicqlly leaving a finger on their page and the book being magically imbuened to where its not just a regular book but has a magical arua to protect against physical violence or wear and tear.

Pretty much. If you're going to be regularly using a book in combat, you're not going to be bringing in a valuable, fragile object. That would be the equivalent of expecting a warrior to fight in ceremonial gold armor. You're going to be using something that is made to stand the rigors of combat more.

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

 

 

Grimoires don't act the same way as D&D spellbooks here.

G

rimoires are what lets them actually cast their spells

you can do Grimoire switching

 

So... they are like spellbooks but are not spellbooks. Right.

 

Wizards can cast 1st level spells with no additional requirements.

 

If they want to use more powerful spells, they have to set them up in a Grimoire.

 

They can arrange sets of spells in a Grimoire and can have multiple Grimoires on hand.

 

D&D spellbooks, on the other hand, work by requiring the wizard to study them and mentally prepare spells in their head.

 

If you lose a Grimoire, it's not a big deal because you still have all your spells. You can get a replacement Grimoire, set up the same set of spells, and are good to go.

 

If you lose a D&D spellbook, it's a big deal because you lose all the spells in the spellbook that you don't have prepared and don't have in separate spellbooks.

 

If this is still too difficult to understand, I recommend actually doing research and digging through the previous updates instead of making smart-ass comments proving you have no clue what's been communicated in previous updates.

 

Edit: Or at least having the courtesy to ask clarifying questions.

[Limited gold for merchants]

I would like though, to be less dependent on looting for cash.

 

Maybe if you took every item for a band of brigands, you'd get 1000 bucks for the stuff, but full 10 grand as reward money.

Normal RPG practice is the other way around, 1000 reward and 10K in loot, trivializing the original incentive to do stuff.

 

Maybe then you'd still find it worthwhile to grab the brigand leaders masterwork sword and magic ring, but not the normal stuff.

Actually, another thought is that you could be requested to collect all the brigands' swords for a full reward, with a bonus for the leader's full set of equipment.

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

AOO's? Cool.

Oh and miniatures are cool too! Nice little dungeon you have there.

 

Grimoire Slam is lame though. Spellbook is wizard's life and treasure, you should't even try to do something with it which can potentially damage it. I'd make it a spell (like jedi Force Push) which you should choose to "memorise" on rest or not.

 

And where is next part of MCA's Arcanum LP? I WANT MY SEASON ONE OF DISCOVERY ABOUT WOLVES

Grimoires don't act the same way as D&D spellbooks here.

 

In this, Wizards have all the spells in their brains, and Grimoires are what lets them actually cast their spells (other than 1st level ones which they can cast without requiring anything - see update #36), not the other way around. That's why you can do Grimoire switching (See Update #39), which they are still working on.

[Update #44: The Rules of (Melee) Engagement]

I wouldn't be surprised if a "Spring Attack" ability would be included in this, to allow someone to make hit and run attacks without becoming engaged.

 

Also wouldn't surprise me if flanking bonuses will depend on if you are an engaged target or not.

[Limited gold for merchants]

 

Having merchants follow day/night cycles make sense in an RPG, especially if the day version of a location has totally different needs than the night version of the location.  What doesn't make sense is if no night merchants are provided at all, at least in locations that should be able to support them--it would be like being in denial of black markets.   

 

I'm a proponent of limited money at locations, but in a different way -- locations should have a limit on what they can buy.  In other words, it doesn't matter what the merchant's gold supply is -- the merchant isn't going to buy the item if it's above a particular value. So even if you manipulated a peddler to have 1000 gp available when he normally only has 50 gp, if you're dropping something worth 1000 gp on him, he's simply not going to buy it. However, if implemented, it does need to be tiered somewhat.  For example, merchants at a tiny village may have a limit of 50 gp, while that big city over there may have a limit of 5000 gp items instead. 

 

In addition, something that is so expensive that it is clearly out of your normal price range should be for barter IMO, not coin.  They could either be specific, unique items or items the seller would find actually useful. Using Baldur's Gate as an example, the Horn and Claw of Kazgoroth at High Hedge could have been priced with an item or items that the wizard was looking for.  The mage could have accepted scrolls and wands of wizard spells he doesn't normally stock, diamond dust, diamonds, rogue stones, black pearls, beljurils, topazs, rubies, carnelians and pearls at what they were actually worth (i.e. not the ridiculously low vendor standand buyback rate).  (The gems are also spell components of popular, useful or valuable spells or components for magical items.) 

 

Money doesn't mean anything if you can't get what you want with it, which really feels like a concept people can't relate to in this age when a lot of wants are just a google search and a few mouse clicks away.

[New Game Plus Mode]

New Game + is one of those things where we really need to see how the game storyline is supposed to play out first instead of just asking the devs to slap it in and call it a day.

 

For example, if you lose all your gear early into the game or are supposed to start with barebones/nothing, the only purpose New Game + would serve is importing in a high level character...which makes it redundant if that option was already available.

[Wizards with swords: Should wizards have melee capability?]

If touch attack spells work the same way as they do in 3.5 D&D, they will have a MUCH easier time to hit. Any attack that is not a miss should have it go off. The key factor is if holding the charge works, because that's what's going to allow the wizard to do hit and run magic. Melee range spells usually hit harder for their level, before you take caps into consideration.