Lephys

It's the Morning Star of Cleanliness +1. Clearly. u_u

Let's just say that I hope there's a lot of... wind in their "sales."

Well, the other thing about symbolic, communicative-at-a-distance graphics like heraldry is, you could make a particular instance of a banner or tabard as detailed as you wanted, so long as it still maintained simple contrasting overall shapes/geometry and read at a distance. For example, you could have a dragon in a really clear "that's a dragon" pose, and as long as the whole thing was generally yellow, you could have all kinds of detailed scales and eyes and such up close. Obviously you wouldn't see all those details across a battlefield, but you could still see the background field of the banner, and the silhouette of what would look like a yellow dragon.

I like him too. Which is why when I see people like him being so pre-emptively disappointed by negative aspects of the game that he seems overly sure of, despite the fact that we don't really have any info specifically suggesting things will be so, I just think "Man... I wish I could help that guy not feel like that about this game that we're all hoping we can love and are so excited about, to the point of giving people oodles of our currency up front." So, again, just because I say "I really don't see why such-and-such," that doesn't mean "HAHA! YOU'RE DUMB IF YOU THINK THAT!" I'm simply trying to point out reasons to not feel so bad about a lot of particular things in the game that aren't necessarily going to be anywhere near as horrible as some people are concerned they might be. I just think it might help some people to dial their worries back from the "probably" setting back to the "might, but might not" setting. Telling the devs "I thought of this possibility, and it doesn't make me happy; please make sure that doesn't happen," is constructive. Saying "I have a feeling they're not going to sure that doesn't happen, and they don't care about making sure the game isn't annoying and anti-fun, and there's nothing we can do about it, and the sky is falling" isn't doing anything but trampling our own excitement and anticipation of this game that I think we all owe to ourselves to preserve. I have plenty of concerns, but I also have plenty of the-opposite-of-concerns. I say why focus on how something could suck, when you could ALSO focus on how awesome it could end up being (if we don't know either way, really). *shrug*. Just my advice. Take it or leave it. Feel free to leave it. It's not for me, it's for everyone else.

I'm going to make an all-Rogue party. They're going to "tax" the entire realm, with or without a stronghold. *wink wink*...

If we got rid of all the stuff in the game that wasn't "necessary," we'd get rid of an awful lot of stuff. It's not that torso shape is some kind of necessary addition to allow even the possibility of gender distinction. It's more that it's already an existing feature, and they're simply rolling with that. There's really nothing else to say. You hate it, plenty of others (including the devs) don't mind it. I get it. No one's like "OMG, this ABSOLUTELY is of the utmost importance, and if you don't think so, you're wrong!" It's just a mild allowance with an acceptable cost-benefit ratio. It hardly costs anything, and it provides a mild benefit. Just like any other individual differentiating factor. I'm sorry that the decision swings away from your preference on this matter, and I hope you can still enjoy the game just as much. Truly. Maybe we can talk about something else now that the devs know how we all feel about the mild abstraction of female armors. They're either going to deem it prudent to alter their course on that matter, or they aren't. More power to 'em, whatever they decide.

Feeling cheated = deciding you've been wronged. Feeling like you might be cheated = just being concerned about potentially being wronged. If I don't call you a cheater, I can't feel you've cheated me.

I dunno. I distinctly recall that being a simple question. And I think it was about level as a basis for the design of foes and encounters, and the control over the player's interaction with those foes and encounters. What did it seem to be about? o_O

For starters: That's not "I'm worried they might do this." That's "They're doing this." I'm not judging Monte Carlo as a person. I'm simply pointing out that deciding you're being cheated based on "concerns" isn't really helping anything at all, and encouraging the simple pointing out of concerns rather than such conclusion jumping. Again, if you hate my advice, don't take it. Or encourage him not to take it.

Aww, crap... I forgot to put that disclaimer at the bottom of my post: "These words are meant to directly represent everything Monte and Stun have ever said in this entire thread, all lumped into one thing, and I'm just directly arguing against them." Luckily, Stun figured it out. *brow sweat wipe*. That was a close one. Also, what the hell am I placing "the blame" for?. Unnecessarily deciding to feel bad about mere possibilities? How is that blaming anyone? I'm simply asking why some people aren't simply reserving judgement, and are judging what isn't even certain at all. If you think it's a dumb question, then awesome. Go you. Don't act like the innate logic of the universe dictates that it's preposterous I should wonder such a thing, or encourage people to simply reserve judgement until we actually know something that specifically suggests their worst nightmares will come true.

^ Splendid, ^_^ I know that's not "realistic," but it makes me think of PnP play, and I love it.

I apologize, as my point was obviously a bit too ambiguous. I was simply pointing out your sentiment as a shining example of... not so much "what to think," but, sort of the line it doesn't really do any good to cross? If that makes sense? I wasn't trying to say you were suggesting the game will play poorly. I was saying "This is a fantastically problem-free thought that doesn't hurt anything," and was commenting on the fact that other people share your thought, but then don't reserve judgement. Thus, the judgement they produce is rather arbitrary. That's the heart of almost any debate on here regarding these unknown specifics. People kinda get all "this is bad until you can prove otherwise, even though I can't even prove it's bad," rather than just who's choosing to be optimistic and who's choosing to be pessimistic. To use betting as an analogy, there's a difference between betting hard that something's going to end up being a problem, and demanding your money from the bet right now. You can believe as strongly as you wish that your bet is the winning bet, but you can't collect on the money until it actually is the winning bet. Basically, I wish everyone could be more like you, SqueakyCat. That was my point. *shrug*, people just seem to think those of us who are trying to point out there's no reason to jump to any conclusions are trying to pretend there aren't even any unknowns. I don't get it. It serves no purpose.

I didn't cite anything you said. Nor did I make reference to you, or any specific game that wasn't Neverwinter Nights, at all. I'm quite confused by your confusion.

Understandable. Out of curiosity (from what Cubiq said), how does Attack Speed factor into broken-engagement attacks? Are they completely unrestricted -- as in a Fighter in Defender Mode will make 3 attacks within a 30-frame period if 3 opponents cross out of his engagement radius (even though only one animation has played)? Or will there be some kind of delay that's significantly shorter than the overall standard attack delay for that given Fighter?

The point is, everyone's operating under the same constraints. There's a level cap, for example. So, even gaining experience and leveling faster than your whole party normally would, you can never be level 15 when your party of anywhere from 2-6 people would've been level 12, and stuff was still challenging, even for them. Either: A) the stuff is easy for the level 12 party of 6, or B) the stuff is ludicrously impossible for the single level 12 person. OR C) what you face actually scales to how many people are in your party, in some form or fashion. Those are really the only possibilities. No matter what level you reach, solo, you're going to be 1/6th as mathematically capable than a full party at that same level. No matter how much player skill you have, you can only hit so many enemies with a single spell, and you can only have SUCH high defenses. This isn't an action game, where good enough timing and active dodging will prevent you from taking damage. You can't just will Attack Resolution to not take place. So, yeah, it should be pretty darn ridiculously hard to get through the whole game solo, and probably only possible at all on Easy, MAYBE Normal. Karkarov is simply observing this inherent relationship in the difficulty. It's not about players being super skilled. It's about inherent limitations that no amount of player skill can change. Those have a relationship with the number of characters you're controlling, no matter what.

Purely functionally, it seems like a melee weapon's recovery time really shouldn't come to a complete halt just because the character is moving. I'm thinking of a character swinging a sword, then running across the battlefield (maybe it takes 3 or 4 seconds to do, when his recovery time only would've been 1 second, normally), then STILL having to wait 1 second after arriving at the new target before attacking. *Shrug*. Maybe it should go at half-speed while they're moving? Or, maybe movement should always incur its own recovery time "penalty," no matter how far you've moved? If a sword-wielding Fighter attacks something, then moves to another target, his attack recovery will have finished. But, as long as he's still moving, he can't attack again, and once he stops, there's still a .25-second recovery time before he can attack again. Something like that. It's not really a big deal either way, but it just seems strange in practice, ya know? "Hang on, guys. I'm running around, so I've yet to recover from that sword swing I made 30 seconds ago." It makes sense for casting or cross-bow reloading, etc. (great example, btw, teknoman2!). Plus, if with different possibilities for the effects of movement on recovery time, you allow for things like fire-while-moving feats (with a bow/crossbow), or spell preparation while moving (cast time lengthens, but you can actually begin casting a spell while not standing still). Etc. That sort of thing. *shrug*. Just isolated suggestions, I realize. I have no basis for whether or not these things would be more or less feasible than what is in place right now, as I am not on the dev team. It sounds like a pretty functionally sound system, as-is, and I understand why it might not be more complex than that.

The magic is in not-the-person in almost any magic system ever. All the person ever does is channel/shape it. Who cares if your body holds the magic while you shape it, or anything at all that isn't your body does so? You're still the one doing the spell-weaving. Specifically in PoE, it's not as if there're just fully-formed spells in any given tome, and anyone who isn't a Wizard can just pull a pin on the tome, hurl it at someone, and watch it magic-grenade everyone to death.

Ahh. My mistake. Didn't realize the scope of that particular comment wasn't directed at the general discussion.

See, this is 1,000% understandable. However, "Nothing yet suggests, definitively, that it will play like I feel it should" is world's apart from "Since there's an unknown, it obviously won't play like it should." To say "I'm worried about exactly how class builds will work now," for example (Monte) is one thing, and to say "Welp, clearly they've removed class builds" is another thing entirely. If the classes didn't all have point-of-reference foundations from which to expand around, there wouldn't even BE a class system, because you'd just make a character, then decide what you want them to do. Just because a Barbarian performs some tasks more easily than a Fighter doesn't mean they can't both perform a lot of the same tasks. A Hummer and a Prius will both let you travel around on roads. They just do it differently. If you go really far, the Hummer isn't going to fail to work. It's just going to need gas more often. If you need to pull a small Uhaul trailer or camper, the Hummer's going to do it with much more ease. *shrug*. I get people's concerns. What I don't get are people's conclusion-jumps. "There's an unknown, therefore I'm going to assign a negative value to that unknown, instead of just treating it like the unknown that it is. It's definitely bad, since it COULD be bad."

Robes do usually get treated pretty lamely. At best, you end up with maybe 20 extremely simplistic variants throughout the whole game. Or, the ones that ARE distinct go so over-the-top 1,000% different from any others that it becomes ridiculous. "This one has 0 cloth in it, and is instead made entirely out of a xaurip skeleton and shards of green crystal! 8D!" Ummm... maybe those things could be worked into an actual robe design, instead of weird, drapey bone-crystal "armor" that isn't really armor, somehow?

Vote Quant-ality, 2014.

What's hilarious is, the basic game, itself, is "based on your level." Why do 90% of the foes in the Blargle Forest fluctuate around the toughness median of Level 5, and you just so happen to progress to the point where you an actually travel through that forest when your party is approximately level 5? I'm sure your party's level upon reaching that forest was in no way a factor in determining the naturally-occurring enemies there. It's all just a huge coincidence. Thank goodness the encounter-design team never bases anything on level when determining the toughness/challenge an encounter needs to present. Thus, when you suddenly introduce something like level-scaling, you're tainting this pure, pure game world, in which everything is completely random. Suddenly, level is actually used as some sort of basis for the challenges that are presented to the player party! *GASP!* . So hilarious. Also, if I gain 2 levels and my enemies gain 1 level, for example, then obviously they're always going to be exactly as tough as I am. It is simply impossible for something to be strong-er then it would've previously been (but never was because it never actually "existed" in my playthrough's instance of the game world), but still actually less powerful, relative to my party. Clearly that's nonsense. Also, basing an adjustment on anything other than level would be absolutely fine. I mean, you could base it on the number of quests completed. That'd be fine. Because, I mean, you could complete 53 quests and only gain 1 level, or 1 quest and gain 5 levels. The two are clearly unrelated. So, as long you don't base challenge adjustments on level gains -- which are completely unrelated to the passage of time or the amount of tasks/encounters completed prior to the present point in time -- everything's 100% fine. It all makes so much sense now! 8D

They're not coming up with "changes." Female torsos are shaped the way female torsos are shaped, and that is not the same as male torsos. Thus, they're simply applying armor to the female torso, and retaining enough of the female torso such that its silhouette/form remains visually distinct on some of the armor (even the more rigid, plate armor and such seems to be distinct for females, just not strictly because it fits around the chest, because it isn't flexible at all.) Talk about "changes" that wouldn't mean anything, "Let's make sure we spend the time to make sure the female models' torsos become EXACTLY like male models' torsos whenever armor is applied! What? No, no don't just make the armor for that model. Make it for a DIFFERENT model, then make it fit that model, too. Yeah... yeah, 'cause this mechanically means a lot." They already talked about how none of the equipment models are universal -- a male Dwarf gets a different armor model than a male Orlan, etc. Thus, why would female models be any different? Also, how do you know all female torsos in the whole game will look the same? Acknowledging that boobs exist isn't sexist. The female characters are defined by a thousand different things. Saying "why is a female defined by her chest size?" Is like saying "why is a male defined by his lack of chest protrusion and the existence of his extra upper-body musculature?"

I don't think I have enough musical expertise to even really comment on the significance of specific parts on the quality of the overall track or anything, and I'm not going to say there's nothing that could possibly be tweaked or improved in it, but... I finally got to listen to it, and, as an overall background piece (and imagining playing the game and ambient noises in the foreground), I think that track fits quite nicely in its habitat, and sounds pretty splendid.

I didn't realize it was specifically the recovery time between actions that fluctuated. Thanks for this breakdown, Josh. ^_^