[Combat barks--please use responsibly]

The people who were talking about Dragon's Dogma, did you ever try to use the knowledge chair to reduce their frequency of talking? I sort of remember there being an option for that, but I'm not completely sure. If there was one I'm pretty sure I always pumped it up all the way anyways, I like them chatty and can't really remember being annoyed by party chatter in any game I've played. But then again I'm pretty good at filtering out stimuli. Up to the extent of it becoming a problem at times. I'm probably like a textbook case for "looks but doesn't see". ._.

[Does the player-created character have to act as party spokesperson?]

I start off by admitting that I did not read through all the posts (to my defence, it's 4 am in here and I got stuck here reading and wanted to comment but too tired to read through all), so pardon if I may say something already discussed.

 

Since I'm getting the feeling that the game is about the PC and the companions (as the ability to create custom members was brought along later to cater user requests), I think you shouldn't be in control of how the companions think and talk and such. They have a backstory and they should act upon that and not necessarily say what the player wants them to in any given situation.

 

my idea, that i posted in another topic about a month ago, is that companions should automaticaly give advice to the player during important conversations if they have any insight on the situation just like some did in BG. also you can have the option to ask their opinion at any time during a conversation or if you think one of them knows better the subject of the conversation you will have the option to pass it to him and he proceeds to talk for the group without you choosing his answers, just like at the start of arcanum, you could let Virgil talk to that hooded guy,

 

I really liked this possibility, to ASK you companions to sort of fill in. I also think it works best in a logical way as you don't decide who the companions are and how they view things. Also I think this should be somehow related on the relationship between the PC and the companion. If the companion doesn't like you and you ask them to chime in, they may actually affect the conversation negatively.

 

Other thing I do like and which I think would make the companions feel more real is that they can actually either interrupt or join the conversation themselves in any given situation. You could then either tell them to shut up, or let them keep talking or whatnot.

 

Also controlling your group in general could be explained as PC giving commands to people and them acting upon it, but this wouldn't necessarily be a viable option in a way that during combat PC would actually just give commands and companions would act upon them autonomously, so a direct manipulation has to be used.

 

The only problem in that is the inclusion of Adventurer's hall and the custom made party members. But then again the developers have already mentioned it would come at a cost of losing the "feel" the companions have as they're properly fleshed out but the custom characters are not. Maybe that's a trade-off you would have to live with should you feel the need to spawn a group of your own outside the given premade possibilities.

[Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?]

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas? I ask because it is both Obsidian's most recent work, as well as a great example of a crafting system where the player crafts gear that is unique rather than superior. (Alright, the Hand Loader perk gives purely superior stuff for you to craft, as do a couple other perks, but those recipes are specifically from perk selection and you still can't make hollowpoint or armor piercing ammunition.)

 

I think I may have played it briefly, but I can't say I remember the details of it's crafting system. I remember Fallout 3 brought crafting as mostly using weapons to repair your existing ones and adding modifications but that's pretty much all I remember. Unique rather than superior does sound interesting in a way, but still my common sense dictates that if you craft something "in the field" which is most likely where you would have to craft unless you have built yourself the needed "crafting stations" on your home or stronghold even then you would likely lack the skills to create unique work even on par of what professional craftsmen would. And I don't necessarily see the point of going out of your way to craft things yourself if you have to go back to a location which has professional craftsmen available. I think what might work better for more unique items would be some mechanic of "leveling up" the craftsmen you could "employ" in your stronghold or something along those lines.

 

Given the track record of the previous IE games with crafting, I have a hard time taking his complaint seriously. Generally if you were trying to get something really nice created, the party had to gather the rare ingredient(s) needed and bring them to the specialized crafter. That may change with the whole non-combat skills thing, but that's still not going to be something stupid like spam items to increase a skill level from 1-400+ to farm items to vendor. MMO style crafting is incredibly unlikely with what they've described so far, which is pretty much where his complaint seems to be rooted in.

 

Sure, but you have to consider that this thread started with a person more or less unfamiliar with crafting mechanics in most games opening up a discussion on what kind of crafting systems people like and what the don't. I don't consider it as much a complaint than a opinion on what kind of crafting systems were enjoyed and what kind of crafting systems likely wouldn't work in this case.

 

EDIT: Also even if unlikely, I think it's a valid argument as a worst case scenario, if nothing else, as some people have spoken for PC crafting in a way that leads me to envision trying to force some Skyrim style crafting into the game.

 

RE-EDIT: Quick re-skimming of the thread didn't turn up kind of comments I was mostly thinking about when posting the horror vision of Skyrim crafting, either I've read them somewhere else or I may have just come up with them myself from the way most people talked against such things, which in my opinion is still a valid argument in the context of this thread as even a vision of such things in this case bring about shivers.

[Random encounters]

First things that actually come to mind from random encounters are Fallouts, so the must've done something right. They had fights (sometimes people attacking you, sometimes people attacking other people, etc), some odd "irrelevant" things which were essentially there as a joke or something (I'd like to say the bridgekeeper here, but if I remember correctly the robe you get is actually not that bad), some random "mini-dungeon" (the vault you get the solar scorcher from), etc.

 

I'm not a huge fan of combat encounters as more often than not they're too generic and too frequent and after a few become a chore and something to be avoided.

 

What I think random encounters should be are short and optional. They shouldn't take you away from your objective for too long and if you don't care for learning about the world or whatnot you should be able to just leave the area and continue on your way.

 

Those are mostly examples of like random encounters you would run into while traveling from place to another (usually on a world map) that come up as separate areas, but other examples could include small encounters you may or may not come across while exploring the "main areas" of the game. I honestly can't remember the good olden days of Baldur's Gate well enough to say for sure, but if my memory serves me right, there were small events like you came across a small secluded graveyard where there was or was not a necromancer attempting to raise an army of undead. Such things could also work well in the setting of PE.

 

Also what I think random encounters should be are plentiful and err.. limited? I mean you wouldn't be able to come across every possible random encounter in a single playthrough. In my opinion that reduces the pokemon mentality (gotta catch them all) and increases replay value.

 

One example of good random encounters that however might not be applicable to PE setting would in my honest opinion have to be the truly random encounters in VtM: Bloodlines while playing a Malkavian, where you might end up having a conversation with an inanimate object. A nice touch.

[Crafting mechanics: Lessons learned from prior games?]

Most player-crafting systems not only sabotage the games economy (assuming it exists in the first place) by allowing you to make a quick buck by crafting and enchanting, but also practically force you to specialize some of your characters for crafting purposes, just to be able to get good equipment. The silliness becomes aparent when there are dedicated craftsmen that earn their living by crafting stuff but are novices compared to a dedicated adventurer.

 

Most adventurers find legendary swords or are rewarded with custom-made enchanted armor. They usually are too busy slaying evil princesses and wooing pretty dragons, to sit down and do some crafting. There may be exceptions, yes, the smith or enchanter with wanderlust shouldn't become the rule, though, and they shouldn't be able to carry on their craft in the mid of a dungeon while besieged by hordes of monsters.

 

If you have a dedicated smith in the party, you may visit the next city and ask the local smith if you can rent his workshop for a day: then you'd be able to craft the same items the local blacksmith would be able to make at cost price, but if an adventuring smith is better than a settled one, soon all smiths would be adventurers, just to be able to make the really good stuff.

 

Wow what a load of BS. Every single word.

 

I'd like to have you elaborate on that.

I for one agree with most, if not everything, he said. Of which highly similar ideas have already been brought up earlier in the thread, from what I could tell by quickly skimming through.

 

If you can make the strongest gear by yourself it for the most part makes all the professionals in the world redundant etc. If you can provide a believable explanation as to why anyone in your party would be able to outperform any professional who has years of experience in their given craft after rummaging around some dungeons, killing some goblins and picking up some materials, please enlighten me.

 

If there had to be PC crafting, I think it should be very very limited, mainly because I just don't see it feasible for your party to be capable of the same levels of crafting as professionals. I mean it could be feasible if you were already a professional before setting out on your adventure, but in most cases you would effectively learn the trade little by little as the game progresses (and as mentioned earlier by someone, you'd often use the experience gained from slaying monsters to further those skills as well). Oh and all that player crafting would have to be done, while say resting or whatever. Definitely not freely whenever wherever.

 

Since there's going to be a stronghold of some sort, I really like the idea of being able to "employ" people to practice their trade in the stronghold. Of course, assuming the stronghold would come later in the game, you would also come across professional craftsmen who you could pay to craft items for you. For some reason for the stronghold part, Crossroad keep from NWN2 is the first that comes to mind, I actually really liked that part, although it didn't offer crafting but the similar concept should still be more than viable.

[[Wisdom]Using this dialogue option is a better choice.]

In my honest opinion, most of the time most of you are dancing around the same subject, even at times disagreeing on things and still explaining your point of view with basically the same arguments. I might be getting this wrong due to my limited proficiency in english language, but that's how I perceive things.

 

Anyhow moving on to how I see it and probably failing miserably to explain my point after reading through 13 pages of discussion and trying to consider everything but here goes nothing:

 

Let me first recap what I've gathered so far:

(disclaimer: this might get too generalized as I'm trying to recap 13 pages of arguments into few sentences to minimize this wall of text)

 

Argument 1: Skills like bluff and intimidate should be melted into a single skills because their use may overlap (?)

Argument 2: Person who can intimidate can't necessarily bluff. (RP)

Argument 3: Intimidation is always followed through.

 

I have to say most, if not all, of you have made arguments I wholeheartedly agree upon, but have some... flaws(?) in the bigger picture, those points I took are generalized views of the probably most conflicting things I picked up from the thread. Now, I don't consider myself a witty person, or good with words, especially on a foreign language but let's try to mix things up a bit.

 

OK let's start of by saying I don't think skills should be melted into a generalized speech skill just because their usage may overlap at certain points. Just like BetrayTheWorld argues that for example intimidation skill shouldn't be removed even if it is used less often than a bluff and bluff can at times (rarely, usually, always, it's all up to developers to balance this) used in place of intimidation. Because if that was the case then this generalized speech skill would effectively grant you proficiency in all aspects (bluff, intimidate, seduce, whatever). Sure you could still ROLEPLAY just intimidating person by only choosing the intimidate options, but even then there would have to be very clear indication which option is the intimidate one. In some cases if there's only speech, it doesn't matter whether the dialogue option is bluff or intimidation because the intent is in the players head, and it can be solved in the following dialogue whichever was the case. The other end of the conversation can't be sure whether it's intended as a bluff or an intimidation anyways, but if the game wants to have different options for both failed bluff and failed intimidation then they'll have to include both dialogue options. And for clarifying that to the level of no possibility for misinterpretation, tags are the simplest way. You have to remember not everyone speaks english as fluently as native speakers, so some nuances which to a native speaker would differentiate for example bluffing or intimidation might be lost (and as some argue in the end in case of. Also you have to account for cultural differences which nobody seems to consider. I'm not an expert on foreign cultures and I'm no betting man, but I'd be willing to argue there are cultural differences as to what people might consider intimidating and to what extent.

 

BUT if the skills are separate it HAS TO BE very very clearly specified which skill will the dialogue option use. While it's argued that bluff can be intimidating (intimidating dialogue, bluff roll) and essentially intimidation can be used as a bluff (intimidating dialogue, intimidation roll, not necessarily the intent to cause bodily harm) and while I agree to both (which I don't wholly understand why you think it's mutually exclusive) there are uses for bluff that can't be intimidated and if developers so choose there could be uses for intimidation that can't be bluffed, but for the sake of the mechanics it has to be explicitly indicated which skill would be rolled.

 

Trying to clear the mess of my attempt at explaining things:

 

- A fat nerd kid can try to bluff intimidation but more likely he would bluff something more believable, perhaps robbing you blind by hacking your bank account. (separate uses for bluff and intimidation)

 

- Some cases you can't bluff something else so you'll have to rely on bluff for intimidation but even then your chance of success (in my opinion) should be significantly lower than an actual intimidation (i.e high intimidation skill).

 

- You can use intimidation as a bluff but not even a big-ass warrior type can't intimidate everything you could bluff, you likely couldn't intimidate someone to believe you're the famous bard from the east, but you might be able to bluff that.

 

- Some instances of intimidation you just can't bluff, you could for instance emphasize your threats by already causing bodily harm to the subject, which effectively can't be bluffed as in bluff there's generally no intent. (i.e. rival group of adventurers attack you and you emphasize your warning to back off or face the consequences by burning one of them to cinders)

 

Essentially what I'm desperately trying to say is both have different uses, and how those present themselves are up to the developers. In my opinion, however, since bluff can be in a way used to substitute a wider variety of skills, it's rate of success should be lower in any given situation than the skill it substitutes. For example bluffing intimidation could work but not as likely as an actual intimidation, bluffing you're a bard might work, but rolling perform and singing a song or playing a lute or whatnot would of course be more effective in that situation and so on. Of course some might still argue that even if it's lower chance, some people would just pick bluff and save & load & repeat until they succeed, fine. If they want to do that they can do that for all I care, but I don't see it taking anything away from anyone if they are implemented as separate skills for different situations. Either way whether it works or not depends completely on the way it's implemented.

 

I knew it would become a wall of text, it might be due to my inability to express myself clearly enough with foreign language or something completely different but hey, this was me trying to express my opinion and if you actually manage to read this through feel free to point out flaws in my logic and I'll make another wall of text trying to explain myself.

 

Oh to summarize this in a way that it mostly stays on topic:

- In my opinion both intimidation and bluff have their uses even if they may at times overlap

- While tags (or similar clear indicators) might not be necessary for native english speakers and people of the same culture as the developers, in many cases they are necessary for others outside those parameters (I guess you may count this as a vote for toggleable tags).