Mico Selva

The Craft, look closely near the top of the image and there's a subtle clue... Haha, and there I thought the title was edited too. :D

Crafting system seems fine (I'm not a huge fan of this gameplay aspect overall). Item durability is a bit oversimplified for my taste, but I can live with that. Oh, and the image is great. I'm guessing it is a modified movie poster, but I'm not sure what movie it is. Anyone knows this, maybe?

Of course there are many aspects to toughness, endurance, vitality and such, but games are not able to simulate them all. Not that it would make much sense anyway, because no player would be able to wrap his/her mind around it all, and it would not be very fun. Abstracting is the only way to go. The question is, are we abstracting with emphasis on fun gameplay or on realism. Sometimes they are the same thing, but sometimes not. Hit points are pretty abstract and 'gamey' way to simulate body damage, but they are so prevalent and easy to implement that they are here to stay. If RPGs were to take a step towards realism, they would probably need to abstract damage inflicted into a few discrete cathegories (in example: no damage / bruise / minor wound / serious wound / maim / killing blow) and take bleeding into account. But even then some kind of character endurance would have to be taken into account (and abstracted too). I am kind of on the fence in regards to implementing 'realistic' mechanics, because they are sometimes very frustrating, but complete focus on gameplay balance is not optimal too. For example, if my badass level 15 character can never die from a single hit, I consider the game flawed, because IRL even the toughest tough guy will croak when shot in the head. In Baldur's Gate critical hits always dealt double damage. It was ok from gameplay balance point of view, but if critical hits dealt damage in a pattern like the one below, I would be a much, much happier player. 85% of critical hits: deal double damage 10%: 3x damage 4%: 5x damage 1%: 10x damage

I think we all expected more information in this update, after that awesome Rezzed presentation, but I understand why devs would not want to post all the goodness in one week. I'm looking forward to the pledge mangamenet system the most. I really need to upgrade my pledge for this game, and by a lot.

I disagree to a degree. Some people are tougher than others. Whether it is represented by hit points or some kind of natural damage reduction system based on toughness, or something else, I'd like to see a battle-hardened veteran be harder to kil than a lifetime librarian.

My point is that I'd rather see resources committed to making better audio content than providing better audio quality. Of course if better audio quality is generated at no additional cost, I'm all for it too.

In the case of game sound, technical quality is secondary to content quality. I'd rather listen to good music in 128kbps mono MP3 than to poor music in FLAC.

I can understand this abstraction of hit points. But as others have noted, it has resulted in weird results as P&P rules moved over into computer games. Why should a backstab of a high-level mage be less effective than a low-level mage? Perhaps a high-level character would be more likely to notice someone before they attacked (having years of experience dealing with sneak attacks), but they shouldn't be able to shrug off a critical hit. Similarly, as I noted, once firearms get into the picture, it just gets ridiculous. Even in action movies, one typically cannot continue to attack after getting shot in the head. One might miraculously survive the attack depending upon the needs of the plot, but you don't just keep on charging. I think the problem You describe is not in the hit points concept itself, but in the D&D-derived scaling of them. If a Level 1 mage has 5 HP a level 10 mage has 35 and a level 10 warrior has 75, while a sword deals 1d8 damage, things do get ridiculous. If, for example a level 1 character had 100 HP, and got something like 3-5 additional HP per level, with an average sword swing dealing (1d100 + 50) damage, it wouldn't be nearly so bad. The second example is taken straight from a Polish P&P game 'Dzikie Pola' ('Wild Fields'), which was praised (in Poland ) as having a very realistic (and also very deadly) combat system.

Resting does not equal sleeping, although it may (and should) involve it. You can't really sleep for 72 hours straight, but you can rest for that amount of time, essentially doing nothing but eating, sleeping and relaxing around the campfire. Artificial limitations on resting will always be... well, artificial. If the game is supposed to be a BG/IWD/PST spiritual successor, limiting resting to designated areas is more than enough. If I had any say in this matter, I would probably divide areas into three cathegories: dangerous, unsafe and safe. Resting in dangerous areas would be impossible, resting in safe areas would always work without interruption. Unsafe areas would have a (varying) probability of being attacked while resting, which would increase with longer resting times.

I'm hoping for other classes to have something to do outside combat too. I'm actually a little bit worried that 95% of the game mechanics mentioned so far concern combat. Not that I dislike combat in my RPGs (quite the opposite ), but I would like other activities to be present in the game too.

Thanks for the info.

I really like the look of the orlans (both versions). As for the paladins, flavour description was really nice. Combat abilities' usefulness will mostly depends on the scale of the buffs provided (+5% to move speed vs. +100% makes difference between useless and overpowered). But what about non-combat situations? Will playing a paladin have some sort of impact on dialogues/exploration/world interaction? Will they have any abilities useful for anything else than fighting?

Not sure if this is the right thread to ask, but will I be able to upgrade my pledge before the game is released? I mean a pledge management system similar to the one inXile is using for Wasteland 2.

An RPG with realistic combat would be great, but it wouldn't really fit into Infinity Engine Games Spiritual Successor term, so we should probably just accept breaks from reality in Project Eternity for the sake of the game. I think Josh Sawyer is already doing a tremendous job in getting rid of the most ridiculous legacy systems used in RPGs. A good step towards realism would be the ability to be killed by a single hit. Some P&P RPGs have critical hit systems, which allow that. The chance of such an event is usually very low (the P&P games I've played had it happen around once in every 20 or 30 critical hits), but it is there.

I believe the best solution would be pronunciation guide section somewhere in the manual, or in a separate booklet/file (like the Sigil slang guide in Polish release of Planescape: Torment). This way, people who care about such things could read up on it, while the others would be able to ignore the matter.

Thie dungeon concept art looks very very very nice. I'm not sure if I love all these updates (because they promise a really great game) or hate them (because there's still so much waiting for it). Of course, it is both.

I wouldn't mind if something like this was in the final game.

Arcanum is a ~50 hour game. Playing it in chunks of 20 minutes every two weeks, it will take Chris 300 weeks (6 years) to complete his LP. Project eternity indeed. That's fine, if the game is not meant to be completed. But if Chris wants to finish it, I'd suggest a more natural approach - he should play it normally, when he has the time, with commentary, and not worry so much abut the feedback. If we get 3 hours of play one week, that's fine. It can be released in 6 20-minutes episodes anyway. The feedback problem mentioned earlier was because of the large time gap between releasing episodes (a month, or even more). With bi-weekly release it should not apply anymore.

Nice update. Arcanum wasn't as funny as last time, but it's nice to see Chris doing some progress. Remember, Chris: Tim Cain made this game specifically to torment You (no pun intended). But You can ruin his efforts by reading the manual. Looking forward to next week's update.

You should be able to transfer funds directly to Your paypal account and then use them to donate to Project Eternity. That is the way I have done it.