Lephys

Everybody needs a nemesis.

So sorry for the delay, Silverback! Your title should be in-transit now. I was very busy over the weekend, then yesterday I was running on only a couple hours of sleep. I made a point to check this thread and saw your post, but then totally forgot to pass along your title. Cursed sleepiness... *shakes fist at sleepiness*. My apologies, -___-

*bites lip*... 'Dat Artwork! You guys are doing such an amazing job with the art. Keep it up, Art Team! I'm gonna call you guys the Aesthetic Alliance. Because I can... u_u I'm going to second that that water looks absolutely splendtastic, and I can't wait to see it move. I bet it likes to move it move it. The sand looks really good, too. I've just been noticing stuff like that, as, in this style of art for a game, you tend to see a lot of detailed on all the obvious things, but a lot of times textures across an entire floor get a bit neglected. However, it really looks like a damp, sandy beach that's been tromped upon. Good stuff! GREAT stuff! Better than Snapple's stuff, stuff! I do have a question regarding the armors. What kind of variance will we see in the actual different armors (as individual equippable items) in the game? I ask because, on the plate screenshot above, you easily get the feel it's going from normal, to fine, to exquisite (on full plate). But, how many different sets of, say, normal plate armor will there be? Because, on the scale armor screenshot, the one on the left is clearly a more substantial armor (offering more coverage/protection) than the one on the right. Are we going to see plate go from just a breastplate (with normal, fine, and exquisite variants), to, say, 1/3 plate (I dunno if that's a thing, but... I'm just talkin' body coverage here/number of plate components beyond just a breastplate, since I'm a nooblet and don't know specifically what the progression would be), with its own three quality variants? Then maybe half plate, then 3/4 plate? Then full plate? Or maybe even more individual variants in between those (Specific suits of armor by culture/faction, etc.)? Just curious, because a lot of past games have only had the very, very few, then differentiated with enchantments and +X ratings and such.

Not necessarily, even. I mean, I understand what you mean, but it takes time to level up. Especially in a game in which, by the end, you will only be level 12. If you can level up 3 times in one quest, then the leveling's a bit screwed up, I'd say. So, yeah, it should make sense, as with anything else that happens. But, the main prompting of some kind of adjustment like level-scaling still boils down to: - Sir Attacks-A-Lot is supposed to attack you when you reach SettlementVilleHold Keep, and it's part of the "linear" story (even though you have a lot of free range to do various optional quests in various orders before actually reaching this Sir Attacks-A-Lot), so he's supposed to be quite tough in relation to your party. - You can possibly be one of three different levels when you reach SettlementVilleHold Keep, because this is later in the game, so you could've either done everything possible up until now, or skipped pretty much anything you didn't HAVE to deal with yet. - Sir Attacks-A-Lot has to be easy enough to not be impossible for the person who's only level X (didn't do a lot of optional stuff yet), and thus easy as crap (relatively) for the person who's X + 2 because they did all the optional stuff and JUST reached a new level before actually setting out for SettlementVilleHold Keep... Why? Because if he's friggin' impossible to the Merely-Level-X people, then all that content isn't really "optional," now is it? "Oh, you don't have to do this stuff... if you don't want to be able to get past Sir Attacks-A-Lot in Chapter 9! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" Thus, an objective dilemma. To adjust, or not to adjust? That is the question. I'm really unclear on how the very idea of adjusting something's challenge "amount" in a situation like this is somehow inherently bad and nonsensical. I get that if you just do it for the sake of doing it, and don't care about how you do it, it can produce a lot of unintentional negative side effects. But, the fact that you've gone from level 7 to level 9 in a matter of weeks "adventuring" is already an abstraction. There's no way the game world's intent is for Sir Attacks-A-Lot to ONLY be ludicrously impossible before you handled those 5 quests you did, but somehow quite slayable after only 30 minutes of adventuring a day, 5 times a week, for rock hard adventuring abs (skills). Tell me one place in a fantasy story in which the adventurers, thanks to their diligence in tackling situations and improving their combat skills and prowess, EASILY dispatch all of their opponents at some momentous encounter, when before they couldn't even lay a hand on them. Frodo traveled around enough and stabbed enough things through the chest that now, he can just kill trolls with relative ease. No... it's still friggin' tough. Nobody scales the opponents in static fantasy stories, because they're static. There's only one possible state in which they can encounter that foe. When you throw a dynamic into the mix, I don't understand why it ONLY applies to the adventurers/protagonists. "Oh, you guys get to 'scale' yourselves all day long, but the entire rest of the world is under strict orders to remain exactly as it is the whole time. Sir Attacks-A-Lot is actually just standing around at SettlementVilleHold Keep, waiting for you to gain some more levels before attacking him. He's just yawning the day away, waiting on you." And lastly, the adjustment of things doesn't mean they're no less easy. It just means they aren't disporportionately easy or difficult for either the non-optional-quest-doer, or the all-optional-quest-doer. People don't do quests JUST to max their level. That's not the goal. It can be a goal, but so is the friggin' interaction with the content in the first place. Besides... you become better equipped as you go, too, regardless of your level. If you take the time to earn some nice rewards from wealthy/resourceful hands, instead of skipping such things, you're going to be able to handle that baddie better than before, no matter if he just stands around stagnating at now-two-levels-below-you or is actually a level higher and/or has more cronies with him, etc. It's not as if the entire game hinges upon everything in the world only ever being a very specific, static level, and nothing ever being appropriate (however it got that way) to your capabilities as a player party. I, personally, don't want to stay ahead of the curve and have the game feel like it's stuck on Easy just because I decide to partake in all the non-mandatory content I can. I want the story to be based on what choices I make, and not on what choices are somehow the "default" ones. "And then, since he actually stopped to help the three factions along the way, the dragon atop the volcano was only of middling difficulty, as the party had much better equipment and like 15 new skill points a-piece." The purpose of advancement in an RPG is to simulate the progression/development of your characters, not to somehow make you the only dynamic in a static world. The point isn't that the whole rest of the world falls behind. It's that you don't remain stagnant the whole game. That's why, even in non-level-based action games and such (assassin's creed, Legend of Zelda, God of War, etc.), you advance as you go.

So freely spamming pre-buffs to unintentionally make fights easy is a bad thing, according to you? Also, what Ink Blot says is perfectly reasonable. Cheat codes. You type them in, you get cheats. You don't intentionally type them in, you don't ever accidentally become invulnerable during your live-streamed IronMan run that's supposed to be legit. What exactly is the point you're trying to make, there?

What will happen, Volourn? Because, apparently everything no.

What if they possess excellent balance? o_o

*snatches the disco ball and confetti away from the Rogue.* "Stop wasting our party resources!"

A lot of that's a question of taste I guess. To me PS:T especially is eye-searingly awful graphically. On the other hand, so are all those earlier 3D RPGs, so maybe I just hate everything. I think the 3D has a lot to do with it. I mean, I know the 2D games are often trying to simulate 3D effects/forms/shapes/space, but, not quite to the same degree. It's kind of like watching a cartoon (2D), versus watching a 3D CG show. In the cartoon, you get the idea things are in front of other things, and stuff's shaped a certain way, etc., but you aren't really worried about the exaggerations, unrealistic proportions, or lack of detail in stuff. But, the second something's blatantly rendered 3D-space, you're super aware of how much detail is trying to be represented, even by just a solid color simple shape. *shrug*

Ehhh, to clarify, rest-spamming beyond 2-6 times (depending) is out. The sheer act of rest spamming isn't really out. It's pretty infeasible (if you've gotta make it through 15 fights, and you blow all your camping supplies after the first 4, then you've gotta go through 11 fights without resting.). Anywho, the point is, before this, one of the main "drawbacks"/costs of the stash was "this stuff won't be very accessible. You can obtain it, sure, but it's not going anywhere you can immediately use it." But, now, you almost always have the potential to just access the stash, if you so choose, just by resting. *shrug*. I'm just not entirely sure what the "cost" of the stash is supposed to be. Off the top of my head, I still say it feels like it would work best if you couldn't access the stuff you put into it until you went to a town or your stronghold. It just seems like "only when resting" isn't really enough of a drawback to warrant having a stash as separate from the rest of your inventory. Might as well just carry around infinite stuff, and still have the Equipment (accessible in-combat) and non-equipment portions. I don't know what the role of a third, nigh-infinite section is if you can pretty freely access it. It just seems like a really round-a-bout way to make sure it's not technically readily available. *shrug* It's not like they just found a world full of fully-coded virtual items, and they just said "You know what? These pre-existing virtual people were already carrying all this stuff around. We'd better just leave it be, and have all that stuff fall of of them, AND have specific sale values and such, whenever they die." I didn't say they INTEND for the player to carry it all off. What I said was, the only mechanical purpose those items serve, once they litter the ground, is that they have sale value. There's no other reason TO pick them up, and there's no reason to not-pick-them-up except "I don't have space for them because my inventory's full" or "I just don't need money at all." Basically, unless your inventory's always full, or you're near the end of the game and just don't have much use for money anymore, there's pretty much no reason not to pick up the fallen stuff. The funny thing is, you can carry around 73,000 gold, and everyone's fine with that. Everyone's always talking about how ridiculous it is to pick up some physical object worth only 2gp, but, if there were 2gp lying on the ground, you'd pick that up in a heartbeat, right? Well, I'd be interested to know what people's feelings would be if coins you found lying around had weight. "Oh look, a chest of coins and gemstones! Hmmm, even between all of us, we can only carry like half of it. Let's just leave the other half here, forever, because obviously we're not expected to actually desire the value of this stuff." I'm not saying there aren't extremes, but no one really seems to be providing a basis for what is ridiculous and what isn't. Especially when it comes to making an additional trip to get the stuff. If making a trip back to a cave to retrieve 207 gp worth of rusty swords and armor is silly, why isn't making a trip back to a cave to retrieve 207 gp (if it had weight and you had to make 2 trips)? Again, I'll say that, from a gameplay/game design standpoint, I'd much rather see things either pretty much not have value (there's a lot of used stuff in the modern world that most people don't want to buy from you, even if it's "perfectly good."), or should have some specific value other than monetary/sell value, OR should simply not be lootable (like grass, or teeth.) The game doesn't just let you loot grass, for realism's sake, but then laugh about how there's not really a reason to loot grass. "You never use it, and it's worth nothing, but you can have it take up space in your inventory! 8D" And, you know what? You could actually have SOMEone in the world need some grass. Especially in an arid location where it was extremely sparse. However, if you just gave grass a sell value of 1 copper piece, you've just pointlessly introduced a tedious manner by which to make money. And money is something your encouraging the player to obtain.

I'm pretty sure they're almost the exact same thing as in D&D. Skills are still skills. You can "use" them with checks and such, but they've got a rating that's increased by putting points into them when you level up. Abilities are the things your class does: Attacks/maneuvers/modes/spells. That sort of thing. Talents are almost exactly like feats, in terms of where they fit in and how they generally function.

^that's from your very first post on this thread. Now, I'm sure you're all c*cked and ready to give me your own Lephysville definition of what subtle as you want it to be, means, and that this definition in no way can ever mean so subtle that it cannot be noticed, ie. it is CONCEALED. But I'm really not interested in partaking, again, in your bizzare, nightly mental gymnastics. Hahaha. BRB, guys... I'm gonna scout ahead with my Rogue. Activating SUBTLETY mode!!! 8D! Subtle doesn't mean "concealed", you mind-boggling person, you. It can sort of mean "difficult to detect," but only in the sense that small/faint/rare things aren't easily noticed. If someone's use of perfume is subtle, they're not putting scented stuff on them to HIDE the fact that they smell like scented stuff. They could've just not applied the perfume at all if that was the goal. No, they can go with a subtle scent as opposed to a blatant/pungent scent. Art. You can put a subtle texture in something so that it's there, but doesn't steal the spotlight from the rest of the design, since the design isn't about that texture. The meaning I was going for when I said "subtle" there was delicate. Have fun looking up the definition, then ignoring it and telling me it doesn't mean delicate. And/or have fun explaining how "delicate" and "concealed" are the same thing. Go nuts, buddy. Lephys, this has already been explained to you a year ago. It is because you ramble on pointlessly. You are like a bubbly teenage girl with a phone. You are the Don King of message boarding. You take 10,000 words to say what a normal person can say in `1 quick sentence. And I told you that I will NOT waste my time addressing your deliberately long-winded rantings. I will pick and choose the parts that approach coherency. So... you know the stuff you admittedly and voluntarily did not read is nonsense, somehow? Furthermore, your best option is to ignore it, but still reply to it as if to an argument you actually read? Seems legit. That's friggin' amazing, actually. I'm beginning to see the patterns of clairvoyance, here. I'll speak for physics, rather than myself, if you don't mind. If you only ever encounter ONE instance of something, how can you ever know it had more than one? Those of us who aren't clairvoyant don't. You speak for yourself, you wizard, you. How do you know it didn't scale everything? Because you looked it up, or because you could just magically tell? I hate to tell you, but nothing works if it's not done appropriately. You can take something that you think is the absolute best thing ever in video game design, and should be in every game, and screw it up by simply doing it wrong. I dare say almost the entire production process of a video game is appropriation. "Sure, crafting should be cool, but how do we do that for THIS game? Sure, combat is great, but how do we put that in THIS game?" Level scaling is a mere tool. Like a hammer. Throw a hammer through your neighbor's window, and it's bad. Use it appropriately and it's good. Hammer a nail in the proper way and it's good. Hammer the nail sloppily until you dent up the fence post and/or crack a board, and it's bad. The sheer determinance of what kind of foes you're going to face at some given point in an RPG is not bad, and that's all level-scaling is. Until you use it in some specific instance/implementation/context, and to some specific degree, it's neither good nor bad. You, sir, are intentionally... okay, whoa, maybe not intentionally, but knowingly being a pointlessly stubborn fool right now, and it's a ridiculous waste of even your very own time. I'm done with you. There's nothing else that needs saying for you to be capable of comprehending what I've typed here, other than a modicum of effort on your part, and to take off those damned Rocket Boots of Assumption from your feet, so you can actually sit still long enough to process a point before deciding what you think about it. Enjoy your forums.

MReed... methinks you are looking at engagement in some kind of vaccuum. Like the rest of combat doesn't exist. If you knock someone on their arse, then roll past them, they're not going to get a leg-bite of opportunity while they're trying to get to their feet. Also, someone might've said this, but I didn't see it if they did (since all the questions about Defender mode were thrown back and forth in here), but, I'm fairly certain that unless it's changed, the fighter's Defender Mode increases the number of engageable enemies specifically at the cost of offensive capability -- his attack rate. So, you asked way back, "When would you want to turn it off?", and the answer is "When you're not expecting to make enough use of the additional engagement targets to warrant the decrease in your standard rate of attack." Another thing about it is, if there are 8 enemies moving around on the battlefield, and ANY of them cross your Fighter's engagement radius (which I think is larger than other classes' radii), he's going to attack them, for free (with some kind of Accuracy bonus, I believe), every time they do that. If you DON'T have Defender on, then, after the first guy engages your Fighter, your Fighter's engagement "queue" is full with that 1 opponent, so everyone else can just run freely past him with no penalty to consider. Furthermore, you've gotta look at how Accuracy works in PoE. You say "Big whoop... he gets a regular old attack with a better chance to hit." But, not so. Accuracy vs. Defense leaves you with not only your chance to hit, but your chance to hit to varying extents. Assume the foe crossing your Fighter's engagement radius has the exact same defense rating as your Fighter's Accuracy rating. Well, he steps out of that circle, and BOOM, your Fighter gets... I dunno, +10 to Accuracy. Guess what? Now you have a fifteen percent chance to critically hit, as well as [/i] no chance to miss[/i] on that attack. So, no, is having a Fighter in Defender Mode at a choke point somehow stonewalling the entire enemy force? No, but it makes them highly consider doing something about that Fighter, instead of just saying "Meh, first person in is fodder for that guy, everyone else rush the back lines!" They can still DO that. Maybe they have really good defense ratings, etc. There are also a lot of pretty cool abilities people can use, and some folks even get disengagement attacks that allow them to disengage without penalty. The whole point is, though, that it's all stuff to consider. That's kind of the point of tactical combat. There are always multiple options. It's just a matter of figuring out how they're affected by the circumstances, and how they're going to fit into the context of what you did last, and what you can do/plan to do next. Another thing to note about disengagement, as opposed to just D&D attacks of opportunity, is that it's a radial area, rather than a distance moved within melee range. Not that you could do this and live, I'm sure, but, once engaged with a foe in PoE, you could hypothetically run circles around that foe and never provoke a disengagement attack. You have to actually leave the circle before they get a free attack.

Ehhh, sort of. Again, they obviously did not have time to do this, and there wasn't anything else in the game to support any of this significance. You would've just had like 100 different things that were all slightly different in cost/sale price. Thus, again, it's a cost-benefit thing. With the system they had, it really would've been quickest and most beneficial to simply have cut (or at least cut-down) the amount of stuff they were trying to force into that crafting/trade system, and just focus on the quality and implementation of the system itself. If you ever play it, you'll see what I mean. It's a pretty fun game, overall, and a decently interesting story (although, apparently Connor not only was a part of, but also pretty much single-handedly was responsible for almost every major occurrence/event in the entire Revolutionary War, )

^ Fair point, Brainmuncher. Except, in PoE, there isn't simply per-kill XP, so this won't be an issue. But, yes, that is an issue when it comes to per-kill XP. Also, the thing about the loot, while valid, only presents a problem in actually supplementing the quantity of creatures there, and/or altering their equipment (such as in Oblivion/Skyrim). If you just beefed up their HP/defenses/weapons-skills a bit, this wouldn't be an issue.

Where have I said that? I willingly await a quote. Also, you've blatantly ignored 75% of everything I just typed, answering the very questions you're asking. You just quote like one little snippet, then ask as question as if I didn't already elaborate. You know what, though? I'll actually just go ahead and explain, again. You're not CONCEALING anything, because there's nothing to conceal until you've done it wrong. You no more need to conceal an encounter with slightly beefier orcs, in comparison to less-beefy orcs, than you need to conceal the very existence of the orcs and their combat attributes in the first place. If you don't play the game twice, you don't even know it's happening. You just go "Oh man, that was a fight, and I fought it, yay!" You don't magically see what orcs you WOULD'VE faced, in an alternate reality. The only thing you notice is what you DID face, and whether or not it was appropriate. Having everything be your level doesn't require level-scaling to achieve. You could just design the game such that NOTHING was ever weaker or stronger than your party at any given point throughout the advancement of the story. And that would be just as horrible as Oblivion/Skyrim "everything always just matches you." I mean, I guess you could say the entire game is concealing the fact that it's an intentionally designed-by-a-person interactive piece of software that consists of only 1's and 0's being read and executed by computer hardware? And that it's disguised as an actual world in which you take on the role of your main character and interact with "people" and "creatures" that are all really just illusions? But, other than that, there's nothing to conceal. You just implement things appropriately, so that they don't punch holes in the wall. Not-punching a hole in the wall in the first place is not the same thing as concealing a hole in the wall. A car isn't bad. But it COULD punch a hole in the wall -- which is bad -- if used incorrectly. Thus you don't drive cars into walls. Sweet jeebus, man. I worry about you. Go ahead and point out the many ways in which a video game doesn't need to concern itself with the challenge presented to the player, even though, in a believable world, nothing makes sure the bad guy doesn't just burn down your whole village when you're a baby and prevent your adventure from ever happening. Go ahead and point out how a believable, explorable world wouldn't conveniently save the level-5 threats for a bit later in the game (because you start at Level 1 and would be annihilated by them), but a video game has to or it would literally be impossible. You can't start people out at Level one and make them fight their way through Level 5 foes to progress, and you can't let people reach Level 10 and continue fighting Level 5 foes for the rest of the game and never present them with a greater challenge. So, what are the benefits of level-scaling? Hmmm... I dunno, the appropriation of challenges that would otherwise remain stagnant and static throughout the entire game, for really no reason at all? I'll go with that. And seriously, this is my last actual response to you if you're going to continue being ridiculous and ignoring half the stuff I say.

Doh! I somehow overlooked that line! Thanks, With that being said, now we can feasibly access our Stash after every single combat (so long as Camp Supply quantities allow), so doesn't that sort of diminish the "you can always pick it up, but it'll be a bit inconvenient to access" aspect of the stash? I'm just curious. I mean, I guess before, you could, most of the time, simply take the time to run to the nearest campsite and access it "whenever you want" (it would take more time, but you wouldn't have to progress through a certain amount of content before you could access it again). So, *shrug*

And yet they have the potential to simulate physics to an extent, without any actual ragdoll physics being used. They're not something because I'd call them something. They're something because they're objectively an alternative that can meet the desired goal to some extent, much better than "nothing" can.

Assassin's Creed III's crafting system. Not the whole thing, but, a lot of it could've been cut out. There was an awful long list of various items to craft with really hardly any significant difference in the outcome (trade price, etc.). It was a heck of a lot of variety for variety's sake. Sure, if they could've spent more time on it and made the variety significant, that would've been great. But, considering they were finished with the game when they were finished (deadlines are deadlines), it would've been better to have simply cut most of that out and focused on the simpler basics of the system than to have spent whatever time they did on SO many items that don't really do anything or make much sense from an economical standpoint (a lot of the items cost a GREAT deal more resources than others to craft, but sold for a pittance and weren't usable for anything other than to sell.)

And yet, sometimes the player will roll seven 20's in a single combat, and others he won't roll a single one. Would you not say critical hits occur sparingly, in relation to all hits in the game? Out of all the rolls in the game, how many will be 20s? Just because you don't know what "sparingly" means doesn't my example was bad. Also, you just completely ignored the pepper example. Here's another one, in case there's some reason threshold you've got going on that absorbs examples until I've hit you with enough of them to break it: Legendary swords as loot are good, too. Are they not also used sparingly? Do you not RARELY find such things, out of all the loot found? So, how is it a bad example? Encounters/combat challenges will be sparingly altered. Again, before you even encounter them. For actual reasons. You're thinking of it backwards. If it's not initially designed in such a way that it's noticeable in the first place, then there's nothing to conceal. It's not like dialogue's written well to CONCEAL the fact that some stat check produced the dialogue response you're seeing on-screen. It's written well because of the benefits of well-written dialogue. You don't have some NPC say "this sword will produce like... +3 more damage than your other sword" because you're CONCEALING the mechanics. It's simply counter-pproductive to have an NPC, within the world, breach the world's barrier and reference abstract computations going on in your computer. Thus, you just make it fit something you don't need to conceal in the first place, by having them say "this is a fine piece of steel. It sharpens much better than the Engwithan (I think I spelled that wrong) design, and is shaped for cleaner thrusts."

^ It seems as though the action bar only pops up on an individual character-selection basis, Mor. Meaning, there's no worry of "encroaching" on another character's "above-my-potrait" space, since you're only ever going to see one action bar at a time.

Yeah. As someone with approximately shoulder-length hair (and deceptively thick, at that), I can attest to the added heat of hair (even not confined to a helmet or cap). I kinda figured that any actual historical instances of that whole Hollywood "young lordling with shoulder-length, Heath-Ledger-ish hair riding into battle in full plate" image were pretty much only spoiled noblefolk who really didn't see battle very often (and/or had their own lavish tents in the camps, with personal attendants and bathers and such) and simply rode around in the armor as much more of a symbol than a necessity. I figure there were some who didn't have to deal, as much, with the practicality of such things, and they were the only ones who didn't just lop off the hair. Basically luxury. 8P

Josh just announced in this thread that resting will no longer be limited to campsites/spots (although these will still exist and will allow for resource-free resting; resting anywhere now requires limited resources called Camping Supplies). Anywho, I'm curious how this affects the Deep Stash access. Is it still tied to resting? Or is it simply tied to those still-existent campsites, along with towns?

If I find out after playing a while that a toggle is not to my liking, I don't want to have to restart to change it. Perhaps the best option is to allow for the ability to turn an option off at some point through a playthrough, but then lock the toggle? After all, it seems reasonable that you might decide you don't want it on, but it doesn't seem very reasonable to continuously change your mind throughout the entire game. I mean, look at Iron Man Mode. If you can toggle it off and say "nevermind, I don't want to do Iron Man, but I don't want to restart," that seems legit. But, how much sense would it make if you could turn it off, die, reload, get past the tough part, then turn it back on? Furthermore, what would that accomplish other than allowing you to exploit the nature of the mode? Now, all the individual settings that are PART of Expert Mode? Sure. You can toggle that stuff all day long, I guess. But, if there's a challenge aspect to it (which I'm not entirely certain there is, as there blatantly is with Iron Man Mode), then that shouldn't be toggleable ON during a playthrough. Only OFF.

*shrug*... I'm with Hormalakh. Ideally, you don't need to fight a different creature (no matter if the bestiary contains 30 or 3,000 for you to choose from) just to experience an unpredictable challenge. A good AI is mostly predictable. It always predictably "chooses" quality tactics/actions, given the circumstances, but doesn't always arrive at the exact same decisions. It's not unpredictable in that it's just going to do completely random stuff, or you're not going to know what abilities it has in its repertoire. It's just often going to have multiple "good" options to go with, in terms of "what action should I take right now?", and you're not going to know exactly what's going to occur, so you still hav e to react. Think of an attack resolution system that has no chance involved, versus one in which you've introduced the possibility of critical hits. In the former, you know that, if the enemy does 10 damage, and he attacks, he's going to deal 10 damage. So you can always calculate the best course of action. However, if he CAN do 17 damage, but you don't know WHEN he's going to do 17 damage, you now have a SIGNIFICANTLY less predictable outcome. You can no longer say "hey, this guy has 13 HP left, and there's only one hit to go to kill this beasty, so I can DEFINITELY send him in to kill it and the beast's 10 damage won't kill me." But, you also can't say "I HAVE to do something else, because he's going to do 17 damage." You don't know if he's going to do 17 damage, or 10. Now, apply that to behavior. You know roughly what the thing's capable of, and what it's sort of going to do, but you can't just foretell it's every action and/or the specific outcomes of those actions.