Sacred_Path

Let me gently introduce a new word into the discussion: puzzle. Is a game an RPG if it has puzzles? Is it ok if said puzzles are independent of character skill? Is it ok if they factor in character skill somewhere? If lockpicking had a puzzle aspect to it, would that be ok? Would that game still be (gasp) an RPG? O_O

Now you're only arguing against twitch elements. I hope you're aware of that. If you're drunk and you make stupid decisions that lead to your character dying in combat, that's ok for you. If you're drunk and therefore not as precise in the movement of your mouse/ not as quick in your reactions, that shouldn't have an effect on the character's performance. I'll spell it out if it hasn't come across yet: your distinction between governing your character's hand movements (lock picking, swordfighting) and governing his leg movements (walking) and intellectual activities is completely arbitrary. Therefore, you shouldn't try to sell this as a good mindset for designing games. You might want to reread that sentence and then rephrase it yourself. What you're saying is that your idea of the holy grail of CRPG design is to find a way to make the character carry out the player's wishes automatically, which isn't possible yet so sadly the player has to push buttons constantly. If it were possible to make the character act out the wishes of the player automatically, this would make the character more independant of player skill.

Gize, the obvious answer is: make shoulder-smashing a skill that must be invested in. :trollface: :popcorn:

Paraphrased: "If I play drunk and therefore do stupid **** my character shouldn't die because he's not drunk." Logical problem obvious? No. The reason why this won't happen is because it result in Sims: The RPG. Noone wants less control over the character (if they're honest) just so the character becomes more authentic.

Latest official patch + Drog's patches.

Though I'd advice caution when it comes to teleport, I've found that it breaks the game if you teleport to the Elves instead of going through the pass (you'll never get an audience with the Elven queen)

I would expect most intelligent enemies to scatter in all directions at the signal of "AoE incoming!". That would be great. Abusing the shout button to confuse enemies, then just flee

Not at all. If I want to play my character as being suicidal, then I can do that (until he actually gets killed), no matter what the numbers are. I choose where he goes (within the limits of the game world), no matter what the numbers are. I dictate who he fights, when he casts, what he buys. But I'll repeat: Noone is asking for skill resolution that doesn't rely on your character's skill. If your character is completely unskilled/ very weak at lockpicking, then your manual dexterity shouldn't make him a master thief. Let's take your hypothetical scenario (which doesn't apply to all games): If I choose the non-charming dialogue line, then my character gets the appropriate reaction, no matter if his charisma score unlocked the "better" dialogue line. I've never seen a game where you get exactly one dialogue line for every stat your character possesses; the problem with such a game would be (even though it would suit your idea of what an RPG is) that the game plays itself, that I can make no choice beyond what my character's numbers dictate. And you'll never see that in a modern CRPG.

Poor semantics are poor. First of all, noone argues against character skill being a factor, possibly heavily so, since it's still an RPG. Secondly, for all intents and purposes, you are the character. There's a reason most games (and P:E will probably be no exception) adress the character as 'you'. Maybe you will decide to act like an evil puppy strangler one day, and like a saint the other day. Since we don't know anything about the whims and mood swings of that fictional character, we can only assume that your whims are his whims. Your stupid decisions are his stupid decisions. You're not overriding anything, because the character doesn't have any personality except the one that can be construed from your actions (which are his actions). See above. Also, as has already been remarked, just looking at what makes up 50-80% of the gameplay, your argument fizzles. There is no success in combat without your skill, there's no way to resolve branching dialogue without using your mental faculties, there are no puzzles that are resolved by character skill alone. All in all I haven't read a single good argument against more in-depth lockpicking (or other skill resolution) in this thread. There have been complaints like: 1) It breaks my immersion 2) I don't like twitchy elements in my RPGs 3) It's not traditional in CRPGs (= the ones I played) 4) Not in a party game because it doesn't make me feel like I'm a puppet master all of which are fine by themselves, subjective as they are. But deriving an ideology for game design from that is just silly.

I think you're being a bit academical here. There is no skill that tells your Barbarian to pick the blunt weapon against skeletons; you do. There is no skill that tells your Cleric to heal the Barbarian when it's time, you do. There's no skill that tells your Mage to cast ice spells against fire salamanders. Combat depends to a large degree on your skill, your timing. The difference to my lockpicking example is therefore minimal; in both cases, both character and player skill affect the outcome. The Wiz6 example is more twitchy than what you do in RTwP combat, that's the only difference. Dialogue depends entirely on your mental faculties, apart from player skill/ attribute maybe unlocking different options. Stealth in P:E hopefully will be more twitchy than in IE games; I hope you'll have to constantly move between covers, avoid lit places etc. So again, there would be no difference to the lockpicking example. Also pretty academical I'd say

An example: Wizardry 6. The tumblers alternated between being red and green, and you had to press space when all tumblers happened to be green (twitch element). The higher your character's skill was, the more frequently tumblers would turn green. In Wizardry 8, your character's skill decided how long a tumbler would stay "in place", or if at all (non-twitchy approach) Not that I'm even remotely suggesting that I want to see this copied 1:1 True, in an isometric party RPG you don't control your character's sword strokes. But success in combat relies heavily on your skill as a player, as I said before; positioning, choice of weapons and armor, choosing and timing of spells, etc. Vanilla lockpicking doesn't rely on your skills at all; it just happens. But I think we can agree to disagree here, as it's simply a matter of subjective preference if you like twitch elements in your game or not. Sure, sounds like a good approach. I think I understood you clearly, I just didn't agree EXACTLY. What you said (and I hope meant) is that "never should progress in the main story be hindered by failure of having a high enough level in a specific skill in your party". I didn't agree 100%, I suggested there should be at least 2-3 skills that allow you to get past a given obstacle in the story. I think you were missing my point in this case. What I meant is that you can't equate a required character class with a required skill level. The first is extremely limiting (out of my 4-6 characters, one must be a thief, one a cleric and one a mage), the other only requires some choice & consequence. If I know there will be a situation in the game that can only be solved by at least 6 ranks in either Lockpicking, Tracking or Diplomacy, I can still build the party I desire (in P:E at least).

Like I said, I personally wouldn't mind different skills being challenged by the game. Maybe there could be two different kinds of locks, or between lockpicking and trap disarming, one could be more twitchy (I know we're talking about lockpicking here but hey, if lockpicking is a nailbiting event, and disarming deadly traps only takes one anti-climactic click, that's broke). Sounds reasonable. I would rephrase: it's ok if a lock requires high skill to progress the story, as long as there is at least one other way to pass this obstacle. Can't get past the locked gates that barr the bridge you need to cross? Fine, there's a way through the wilderness too if your "Tracking" or "Scouting" is high enough. Alternatively, if your Diplomacy is high enough, you can talk the mayor of the nearby city out of the key. This does not necessarily force much reloading, as long as there's enough of an open world to get some XP and the skill that is required in question is moderate. P:E will use level scaling in the main quest anyway, so this wouldn't break the game. The skill level should NOT only be achievable by a Rogue who has specialized in Lockpicking from day 1. I think if there are skills that can at some point be mandatory to progress the story this should be hinted at in the manual though. "Lockpicking can yield vast riches and allow you to access all kinds of forbidden places", "Tracking will enable you to survive and find your way in the most barren wilderness", "Diplomacy is a very powerful tool that can be mightier than the sword at times". So noone in your party was interested in obtaining riches, wilderness survival or talking an army of lizardmen out of eating you, instead you put everyone's points into Accounting? Tough luck. This kind of goes against the "all skills shall be equal" mantra of P:E though. It's slightly different in that skills seem to be accessible to all classes though.

This. There could be mercenaries, who want to take a share of the gold but otherwise do your every bidding, and others who are in for the ride/ quest goal but can be upset/ get up and leave if you don't display competent leadership. edit: but gize I'm p. sure we aren't talking about P:E here anyway because in that as we know you can just create your own mindless goons through the Adventurer's Hall.

This doesn't seem like an obstacle to our fab devs though. Sawyer has said they aim at making stealth more complex than in IE; the thing is, in a game with 6 party members, complex stealth for all of them doesn't seem intuitive at first. Still, I'm glad they try. True, there will probably be quite a number of skills in P:E. So making a minigame for ALL of them doesn't seem likely. Still: - combat skills are already part of a complex process (combat) - same goes for casting skills (if there are any) - lockpicking and trap disarming minigames don't need to be terribly complex (see the Wizardry games) - An Alchemy minigame could be the following: potions can only be identified by drinking them. The content of a bottle is downed in phases. Obviously, the more you drink, the less is left in the bottle (until it's not enough to have an effect anymore). Also, if the potion has any detrimental effect (like poison), the more you drank, the stronger the effect that you suffer. Alchemy skill could reduce the number of swigs you have to take before you know what it is. Alternatively, alchemy allows you to identify the potion right away (like IWD2). Admittedly in that case Alchemy (the skill) isn't a minigame, quite the contrary, but alchemy (the process) becomes a little more interesting. Sounds terrible probably, but my point is that minigames don't have to be terribly complex to offer some variety. I'd say that skills that involve minigames should offer higher rewards than those that don't. It doesn in a first person ARPG Seriously, I don't see the problem there. Combat already taxes the player in different ways; thinking about tactics and strategy (positioning, party composition, character development, spell casting, cost vs. benefit). IOW, combat tends to be fun. Picking a lock by pressing 1 button isn't fun. That's my entire point.

I'm not withdrawing anything, I said: I don't mind twitch elements in CRPGs. If the game challenges the player in different ways, I'm all for it. A lockpicking process that challenges reactions/ dexterity of the player is an obvious choice, much like an Alchemy minigame should mostly require thought. OE opened such a can of worms when they advertised a game inspired by IE it seems. Ok, so your point is that this game shouldn't feature anything that wasn't in IE. Pretty weak argument when it comes to design. Why on Earth not? In IE games, your lockpicking ability depended on exactly one thing, your lockpicking skill. Why shouldn't a minigame depend on both your reactions and your character's lockpicking skill? You're arguing semantics.

Too bad you're arguing in circles, we already had this discussion. If the minigame is repetitive or not is a matter of design, it's not inherent. If it requires more twitch skills than thought, that's perfectly fine though. Not everyone has fat stubby fingers and cannot into controls. Your definition of what's "core gameplay" is entirely arbitrary. If character development is an important factor in the game, and a character's skill level is important in the act of lockpicking (no matter how that act is resolved) then there's no isolation, anywhere. Not sure what you're arguing here, I liked rjshae's idea and I'm not saying that if this is how it works, there should be tumbler manipulation on top of that.

If you add a mechanic to a skill that requires more thought and gives more varied challenges to the player, that's an incline. claims with no substantiation result in failure. Are you aware that "lockpicking requiring stealth" is, if the stealth part is well done and challenging (like in a stealth game, not like IE games), it's a minigame in itself?

which misses the point because noone argued for a system that doesn't involve character skill in some way. Quite the opposite actually. What I'm proposing is making ALL skills more complex to execute than clicking a simple button (well, most of them). Alchemy is another skill that lends itself well to minigames for example.

In your world: minigames: flawed concept putting some points into a skill, then clicking on skill icon: pinnacle of design

"There should be no minigames so the game can focus on combat. These games happen to focus on combat so there's no room for minigames." Sounds like a str...

This would be ok if you only have one choice to make across the board; like, giving a little expletive-riddled speech motivates the Fighter, but doesn't do anything for the Mage. Choice and consequence. A bad example would be giving you the choice to treat every character in the way that goes over best with them; taking aside the Fighter, then talking to the Mage. That's the "choose the most comforting dialogue option" minigame I resent. If Charisma is given a meaningful role in character development by being the "party" stat, ok. That could easily unbalance Charisma though, unless a) stat points are really scarce or b) your followers are pretty incompetent (Fallout 1&2).

Anything that forces me to powergame my relationships is bad. Letting character X dying two times or your own character dying two times resulting in X leaving - that would be ok. It simply forces me to play in a competent manner. What's bad is companions leaving because they feel "left out", or because you don't have enough "influence" on them (you didn't choose the comforting dialogue option q_q).

In that case (Steam becoming completely DRM free) I would be fine with it, it's not like I have anything against digital distribution. I only use GOG rather than Steam because of its policies.

The line of thinking "I use Steam but I hate it!" is comedy gold. it's hardly naive if you wish for Steam to fail/ be boycotted before its model (which usually includes DRM) becomes dominant in this industry.

So your main concern is you don't want lockpicking to pause the game. That should be doable, m i rite?