Lephys

Not really. You just claim what happens in a game. You haven't shown any evidence that it occurs, or even begun to explain WHY it occurs. At least Stun did a bit (the explain part). I don't understand why it's all on me to produce concrete evidence that perfectly reasonable notions are, indeed, in effect in the game mechanics, while there's absolutely no pressure for you to produce any evidence that it is, in fact, happening in the game. I'm sorry, but "see, people say it's easier with 4 people instead of 6" is not proof. People also say placebo pills work better for them than the real thing, until they know it's a placebo. Through no fault of their own, the human brain allows us to perceive differences where there aren't really any differences. Anwyho, the whole point at the start of this whole debate was just that, if the game's challenging for a party of 6, it should be extremely challenging for a party of 1. In the context of that argument, the whole "a party of 4 is actually easier than a party of 6" scenario got brought up, which I simply observed shouldn't always be the case. Having 2 more people always grants you a higher potential by raising the ceiling on your limitations. It's not always huge, and there's a lot of chance involved, but that's all a constant. Your party of 4 could suffer a bunch of ill luck just as easily as your party of 6, etc. There's no point in comparing what COULD happen to one group to something ELSE happening to the other group. No, I'm not. You're having the fact that they can be liabilities supercede the fact that they absolutely offer additional combat-challenge-tackling potential. At the very least, 4 character can only be 4 different classes. Thus, in PoE, having 6 characters will provide two entire additional categories of abilities with which to form tactics and provide support for your other 4 people. Not to mention Stamina Health, standard attacks, engagement potential, etc. You know what? I may not be a BG expert, but I'm really not worried about that. Because PoE isn't going to be BG. And my reasoning is sound. What disturbs me isn't that you're suggesting the results might not be what I'm estimating they'll be. It's that you're dismissing my reasoning, as though it doesn't somehow make any sense. And, for some reason, you keep taking it not as something to consider and observe in all this, but as "SEE, THIS IS WHY EVERYTHING YOU SAID IS WRONG!". @Stun: Thanks for being reasonable. I do understand how factors in BG might lead to more additional trouble from just two extra party members than one would think. As I said, you pointed out some detriments I hadn't thought of. And yes, I can see how, the more people you have (beyond 1), the less significant additional people become (especially with distributed EXP, etc.). It's a bit of a curve, I'm sure. However, I don't think it peaks at 3 and goes back down. I think it starts leveling out. Thus, yes, circumstantially, you might find a lot more benefit from the pros of being short those extra people than you do from utilizing their presence. That doesn't mean it isn't there, though. I'm not telling people to be better at the game with 6 people instead of 4, and that every individual factor of the additional people is always better than the factors of the smaller party. I'm simply pointing out mathematical potential. Again, the whole meat and potatoes of this was the concern over a game not being impossible for a solo character while still not being too easy for a large party. The disparity is a lot less between a 4-person party and a 6-person party, but the 6-person party still provides a lot of raw potential (especially, it would seem, in PoE's design, which is the specific game we're discussing here) over a 4-person group. Doesn't mean you're dumb if you roll with 4 people instead of 6 or something. Doesn't mean there aren't certain situations in which the benefits of the smaller party outweigh the detriments of the larger. If you want, we could record an entire playthrough of a 4-person party, and a separate one of a 6-person party, side-by-side, and point out every single factor difference throughout the whole game. But, shy of that, all I can do is point out general, mathematical advantages. I know they don't cover everything in the world, but they are a constant in their presence, despite the fluctuation in their exact value.

Yeah, teknoman2, in a way, it doesn't make sense (realistically, that Fighter would have recovered while taking his 5+ second stroll across the battlefield), but, mechanically, and specifically within the context of the rest of the system, it serves a far greater purpose. If the game simulated everything perfectly, it would be detrimental not to have that simulated, too. However, since most of it is abstracted, that one, isolated simulation is inconsistent with the rest of the mechanic. So, a person with a sword shouldn't be unable to recover from attacks until he stands still, ever. BUT, in context, it's perfectly reasonable. Fitting into the game trumps fitting into reality, under the circumstances.

I was just trying to point out that the raw idea behind level-scaling is the same idea behind designing the game such that level 1 player parties aren't made to go up against level 35 enemies and such. No "and therefore it's great." No ulterior motives, here. Just some food for thought, from the "I don't want to burn level-scaling at the stake" faction. I want to burn some level-scaling at the stake. It's hardly ever useful to the extent which it is used in games, unless it's one of those "pure gameplay" games that's pretty much based upon it (Diablo 3/Borderlands, etc.). I will say this, too: Just because a developer wants you to be able to do A, B, and C in any order you wish does not mean that they inherently don't want all three to still maintain a decent challenge for you. Not the exact same challenge, but not "C is easy now because you did A and B first." Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. I honestly feel like trying to argue that any further isn't productive here, so I'll just state my case and let people do with it as they please.

^ Guild Wars is such an excellent example, because that game has like 80-million builds with any given character. Earlier on, they had like 50% of them that were blatantly inferior, and they improved that. They didn't do it by killing diversity.

I'm confused... do you mean the searching mechanic could lead to lots of repetitive mouse-clicking? 'Cause we were just talking about the "highlight stuff that's lying about on the ground but that might be inadvertently camouflaged with the surroundings, to the player's eye, despite the fact that your party absolutely knows of its existence" button. I am rather interested in how to do searching, though. I'm not immediately sure of the best way, but I know that "click a button and detect things in a radius" is bland, and that definitely leads to a bunch of repetitive mouse-clicking and slow-movement in jerky steps just to "explore." I think Josh said it will basically just be a modal thing, and the closer you are to something (plus the longer you're near it), the better chance you'll have to detect things, relative to their difficulty to detect. I do hope there's at least some form of clue system, though. Manually searching, I'm fine with. And obviously it's going to go a little slower than just jogging through areas. But, maybe instead of you just magically discovering that a section of wall is really a door, you simply detect something out of the ordinary, which is revealed to you via descriptive text. You then must "puzzle" out where the door actually is by finding a switch or something. *shrug* I mean, obviously there'll be simpler things that are just kind of hidden, and you simply see them. But, with anything that could feasibly use it, I think the descriptive text is a good way to go. Basically, your character's keen awareness lets you find clues, so that you, the player, still get to do more than jog your guy around clicking the "FIND ALL THE THINGS!" button.

Wow, Unity. Way to discriminate against all the rusty joes and masterwork joes. Blasphemy! It's 3D instead of 2D! That's 50% more D! It's CLEARLY superior in every way! u_u

rjshae... This argument has been lured to the Hot Gates... our reasoning will count for nothing!

Exactly. Which is why I'm observing that 6 people grants a mathematically greater potential than 4 people does (or especially than 1 person does, which is what this all started about... solo-ing versus the potential of a full party). I don't know how to convey this, especially when you're blaming me for trying to apply constants instead of recognizing the flux of variables. When someone points out a constant, like "those other 2 people could become confused and be a detriment[/i] how is that not applying a constant to a variable? And how is my pointing out that they could also remain a benefit somehow not emphasizing the nature of the variable? Please explain to me how you're arriving at your accusations/conclusions, rather than simply stating them. Pointing out a crack in something isn't dismissing it. Maybe you should try explaining yourself before simply assuming I won't actually acknowledge your explanation, then justifying its absence with that notion. I've explained everything I've brought up. If anything, I get fussed at for explaining too much. And you come back with "Nope, that's just not true! The end!" I tell you every single time why I believe something is incorrect or flawed, even to the point of repeating entire explanations. How does that leave me pre-emptively dismissing people's arguments, and you (who finds it pointless to explain things to me?) doing the opposite?

If you don't get what I'm saying, you don't get what I'm saying. It's no big deal. The world will spin on. I just figured maybe we could get on the same page. No worries, Gromnir. I'm sorry that the armor design will be a hair in your soup. For realsies.

Haha. Look, it's not you, it's me. It's not a big deal. It's not an insult. I seriously, honestly, do not know how to word what I'm trying to word to convey the thought I'm trying to convey. I don't know how to specify the boundary of what it is I'm after, if that makes sense. It's like I'm pointing at something across the room, and I can't step any closer to it, so I just keep pointing, and you (and others) keep, understandably, grabbing something in the vicinity and saying "What, this?" So, *shrug*, I just feel like I'm wasting your time, despite my intentions.

The returns may be diminishing, but they are still in the positive, nonetheless. And what happens when those extra 2 people use summons? Now you've got two casters worth of extra summons, AND, if need be, two characters to be cannon fodder, that you did not have before. You seem to now be arguing that 2 extra people doesn't necessarily make things any easier. That's definitely true, but all that I'm contesting here is that it makes no sense that the sheer fact that there are additional people lessens your capability to take down the very same encounter. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever to the contrary. So far, the most reasonable piece of evidence presented was the "spells like Confusion that make your own party members a detriment to you" example. Which, as I mentioned, is a bit like saying "critical hits aren't helpful, because the enemy can score them on you," while ignoring that they simultaneously have the same potential to be scored against your enemies. I have absolutely no doubt that specific combinations of 6 characters are circumstantially detrimental as compared to specific combinations of fewer characters. However, 2 more hypothetical party members who could become confused and attack you is also, as I pointed out, 2 more party members who could cast confusion themselves, or counterspell, or summon things, or serve as cannon fodder, or just fire off two huge AoE spells before they die, etc. One possibility of a situation of chance does not inherently supercede any other possibility until specific circumstances dictate that it does.

That's a fair point that I hadn't thought of. The potential for each party member to become an antagonist, for all practical purposes. However, in the realm of potential, you still have the potential for those 2 additional people to remain in full control of themselves (and therefore add their capabilities to your offensive efforts in a given encounter). So, I'm not really sure how to say those 2 people are inherently detrimental OR inherently beneficial. They're kind of in flux. See, this one, I'm not so sure of. I understand what you're getting at, but, as I told Hiro, you could feasibly just pretend those extra 2 people don't even exist and not worry about healing them, and still they could serve as targets and/or extra attacks/damage in your favor, at least until they're dead. If you stuck to just healing 3 or 4 people, and just let the last 2 die, versus just fighting with the smaller party to begin with, then, no matter how you look at it, you've come out on top. Unless the enemy has spells that do MORE damage because of the increased number of targets or something, (or, as above, where the cpabilities of those people can be turned against you, etc.), they're serving as nothing but a supplement to your party. Again, so long as we're talking same-level people, and just different numbers of them. I'm not about to argue that 4 level-7 characters can't make things easier than 6 level-6 characters, etc.

Maybe I'll do that. It still makes no sense, though. I wish you'd at least acknowledge that I'm not being ridiculous for pointing out that there should be no logical basis for that being true, if it somehow is. At the very least, if you can beat something with 4 level-X people, you can beat the same thing with 6 level-X people, using the exact same 4 people and just using the other 2 as diversions/cannon fodder. Again, exact same scenario + advantage. It's the same fight with 2 HP sponges. Is that not intuitively true? If nothing else changes, then you've got the exact same capabilities plus 2 people's worth. Again, if statistically, people just control 4 people in combat better than they do 6, that's a whole different story. I'm talking about sheer capability, here. And, call me weird, but I don't readily accept things without any explanation whatsoever. So, even if it IS true (6 person party makes the game harder than a 4 person party), I don't understand why you're just expecting me to stop trying to figure out why that is, or instantly abandon the reasoning that suggests the opposite, in favor of absolutely no reasoning at all. Also, wasn't it already confirmed that there was a bit of scaling/adjustment going on in BGII? If that's the case, then if any of that is affected by the presence of those extra 2 people, that would be a significant explanation. I'm saying if here, and asking a question. Not attacking you or telling people who are experienced at BGII that they're idiots or that I know more than they do.

^ My bad. I read the wrong tone in that, I suppose. Really, sorry about that. I shouldn't have jumped to a conclusion. I appreciate the sentiment. And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry that I'm often difficult. Really. I get that the way I say things and think is frustrating, and clarifications and stuff wouldn't be necessary if I just thought like a normal person. But, *shrug*... I'm weird. I just try my best to mitigate it.

*facepalm*. I give up. I don't know how to address a specific factor in a way in which you understand. I don't know how to speak your language.

^ Sorry. typo.

No... from a design standpoint. We've already established that the hypothetical level-35 foes will crush your level 1 party. Not might crush. So how, as a person who put them there in the first place (a developer/designer) do we remedy that? Again, if our goal is not for the player to definitely be crushed by a given foe.

My apologies, again. I wasn't aware that your clarifications of things to me were valuable, but mine regarding the exact same issue you already voluntarily spent your own time addressing were somehow wastes of everyone's time. Lesson learned.

^ I see you've mastered the art of "... No YOU!". Congratulations, and godspeed!

^ I don't disagree. I'm simply saying it's an additional variable in the list. Not that nothing's variable without it. That's all. As I've said about 3,000 times, I don't know that it's really all that valuable, all-things-considered. I don't think I'm undervaluing predictable AI. I think you're not understanding that I'm not disregarding that.

^ And thus, what do we change to remedy this, assuming your party having some semblance of a chance at actually not-being slaughtered is the goal, as opposed to the game being called "Get Slaughtered"?

And this after you just recently chided someone else about context? The only reason I mentioned fabric is because you said "this is metal, not fabric" in support of how it wouldn't be stretchy. I merely mentioned that there are fabrics out there that don't stretch at all, and are still attached together to fit a person. Didn't say anything about connecting metal with stitching, or allowing metal to stretch, or metal being similar to fabric in general. Yeah, you'd have to fasten the armor laterally, like breastplates, etc. that have a back piece and a front piece, etc. I suppose you could do it by using metal bustier pieces in the chain, or a number of other ways that are a lot less ridiculous. It would probably still be more troublesome -- at the very least to put on and take off, if not also in the "it's too easy to compromise the integrity of my armor fastening" sense. That, I'm not arguing against. That would be more of a "are you gonna wear leather, or metal?" type thing. It's not that leather armor is preposterous in its design/existence. It's that you'd probably go with metal, if you had to choose (specific circumstances aside for the sake of this simple example). I don't know why you won't let me make observations without simultaneously arguing "and yes, that's why it's TOTALLY practical to design armor that way, and everyone would do it! 8D" Literally all I'm getting at is that it could be done. Thus, my mind isn't boggled by the aesthetic choice for the purposes of a video game.

Nope. I'm trying to check my thinking process by asking the questions I ask and getting other people's answers to them, instead of just assuming it's all clear and presenting my resulting thoughts. Okay, but... I don't know how else to ask this... How do I look at level 35 enemies in the starting area (where the player party is only Level 1) and determine "that's an inappropriate challenge"? What factor functions as a basis for this comparison/decision? Is it not capability/level?

My apologies. I was not very specific. I was referring to the Recovery time being paused every single time when you moved during it. Realistically, there would be plenty of times when you would recover from an attack during your movement. That's all I meant. Again, that was merely a clarification of the observation I was making regarding simulation. I'm still totally fine with the system not simulating that possibility. It's mechanically sound and wouldn't really benefit from it as it is now.

I don't know how else to explain this, Hiro. The dynamics of tactics are only expanded upon by the presence of more people. I get that there more factors at play than just mathematical resource-based capability, that might lead to human players statistically having greater difficulty controlling 6 people instead of 3 or 4 to overcome a specific challenge, etc. That does not at all change the fact that, if you get 6 attacks every 3 seconds instead of 1, you have a greater ability to kill the exact same encounter. I am in denial of that "fact," because so far it's just been a "this seems this way," while I know for a fact that mathematics are not dynamic. 6 isn't SOMETIMES greater than 1. It is. And in a generally consistent system (basically, any capabilities 1 character could have could also be had by the other 5 characters you could fill the party with -- nothing is obligating the comparison to be between a party of 6 individuals with hugely differing class choice/ability selection than the solo character, etc.) like this type of ruleset, it means you have far greater capabilities. And, again, I've already acknowledged that, since a solo person will level faster than a party, there are plenty of sets of circumstances in which you'll have a great advantage that will somewhat cancel out the inherent detriment of being X people shy of a full party. That's why I specifically stated that, at level cap, a full party has 6 times the capabilities of a single person. Call that not-better, if you want, but it remains a fact. Especially with no set party makeup. The Adventurer's Hall lets you build whatever combination of 6 people you wish. 6 clones of the same character, if you feel like it, in which case you would literally just have 6 times whatever capabilities the solo character had. Again, at the same levels. I don't really know what else to say about this. Hinder your own thinking by disregarding facts all day long, of you'd like.