Lephys

*shrug*. You might be surprised what a difference the lack of publisher sled-team whipping makes. Publishers who directly control funding and the creative aspect of project development often (but not always) tend to inadvertently hinder that very same development with their disjointed choices (such as ones to "get the game to sell better," etc.) There are a lot of things in both DS3 and AP that a lot of people liked, but then most people will agree that a lot of other things in both games could've been a lot better. I don't know for a fact that was the consequence of excessive publisher zeal, but, at least with this game, it's not even an issue. Also, since Kickstarter's model funded the game up front, they really don't have to do anything purely in the interest of increasing the game's market appeal. So, that's comforting, at least.

Yeah. Just look at that studio that makes all those B movies, like Sharknado. It's not that they're getting the sales numbers that Avatar and other such films are getting. It's that they cost like 1/1000th what films like Avatar cost. That's their niche, but it works quite well for them, as a business model. Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not suggesting PoE is of the same quality as Sharknado. It's unlikely that anything'll ever even come close to that pinnacle of genius and splendor.

Are you suggesting Slowpoke isn't a pimp? Look at him! Girl, you can tell by the way he uses his walk he's a ladies man, no time to talk. And his arms kinda grow out from the sides. AND they match. I'm calling that close enough, u_u.

Wait... Facebook bought ALL their inventory?! o_o

Exactly. That's what I'm trying to say. A vaguer stretch goal has no higher probability of deception than a more specific stretch goal. Or any other claim, for that matter.

I understand that. My intention isn't to "defeat" the "what if" argument. I simply encourage people to apply it both ways. The "what if" argument is perfectly valid, but it should not be considered in isolation, or used to reach some arbitrary conclusion regarding the probability of the stretch goal being bogus or something. I'm not trying to accuse any particular person or call them out on this. A lot of the sentiments expressed in this thread just seem heavily saturated with the idea of that conclusion. So, my intent is simply a "don't forget to consider all there is to consider first" approach. It's human nature to notice "what if"s, but the impulse to think past them isn't always very strong in our minds, even if it's almost always useful. I also just don't like to see unbased assumptions sort of assault people's reputations, intentionally or not (i.e. "Obsidian just wanted more money, clearly!"). So, while the "what if" you raise is quite a valid line of analysis on the matter, and I realize you're not jumping to any conclusions with it, I simply point out to the people who might be doing so that such conclusions aren't really well-founded, and are really kind of unfair to Obsidian. Being skeptical is one thing. That's just caution in the face of the unknown. But, deciding the stretch goal is crap, just because it could be, is something I feel the need to actively discourage and point out the folly of, in case some people were doing this, as they seemed to be (but I could obviously be mistaken). For what it's worth. Sorry if I seemed to be counter-attacking you. I'm with you on that. Details would definitely be nice, even if it's just "we had Steve the Artist spend a whole 'nother week going back and touching up all the models, where, previously, he wouldn't have spent that week doing that."

But... they're not necessarily designed to be a pain to use. They're simply designed to require management. They only become a pain to use when the particulars of that management are ill-conceived. For example, you say you'll save and rest before every boss fight, and you somehow reach the conclusion that this DEFINITELY means you will have to hoof it some inconvenient distance back to some previous rest spot. Yet, that's entirely based on the assumption that there will not be a rest spot before every single boss fight. If that fight is designed with a fully refreshed party in mind, then it'd be pretty dumb not to put a rest spot before it. And if it was designed with a "you've already been through 6 previous fights and haven't rested yet" party in mind, then anyone could just inconvenience themselves for 5-or-so minutes to run back to the previous rest spot to heal, then wipe the floor with the boss fight with ease. Bad design. These are the things the developers have to consider when they design any management system, and there's no reason to assume they aren't going to consider these things. I just don't see a need to disguise "I sure hope the system isn't flawed and a pain to use" as "I know for a fact the system will inherently be a pain to use." You don't know you'll be inconvenienced before every boss fight. You just hope you won't. And that's 1,000% understandable.

I just really don't see how the intrinsic problem here isn't just "how do we know they aren't lying?", regardless of what they're saying. I mean, what's the difference between "at this amount, we'll hire George Ziets to write for the story!" and "at this amount, we'll have a deeper story!"? How do you know they didn't already hire him, and just wanted an excuse to entice another $100,000 out of you? You don't. Just like you don't know they were only going to spend X amount of time on the story before, but are now going to spend X + 1 time on the story because they reached the stretch goal. Sure, it's nice to have a specific distinction between what was there before and what the stretch goal's improvement will bring, but, a lot of times, a game development strategy doesn't really work that way. I dunno... maybe they could've listed stuff in man-hours? "We'll spend 60 more man-hours on character backgrounds!" But, it's a bit silly to act as though allocating more time and resources (thanks to a reached stretch goal providing more time and resources) is somehow a fictional/non-viable improvement. As if they just start working on things, then stop when they run out of money (at whatever point they're at) and release the game, and don't actually have things budgeted and allocated.

I think Josh gave a list (if not a "this is all there will be" list) of a bunch of afflictions somewhere... I'm gonna go hunt it down. *flees* *returns* Hmm... I think this is what I was thinking of: I'm sure that's not all of them, but... I'm sure there are more than that (more "magical"/elemental ones like frozen/chilled/burned, etc.). Also, methinks a couple of those are simply circumstances, and are not really "ailments" on the target (flanked, prone).

A nice way to go might be simply "what's your relationship with this merchant?" What I mean is, if you sell stuff to him all the time, but never buy anything, maybe he'll start giving you less money for your items, but offer discounts to encourage you to buy from him and "refill his coffers." And/or, if you buy a lot of stuff from him, as opposed to one of his competitors, maybe you get develop a good customer reputation with him or something. Getting that higher could lead to access to "back room" items or something. Or discounts. "You've helped my business so much, have 25% off, forever." This could make things a lot more interesting than "that guy sells a longsword for 100gp, but this other guy sells it for 90gp, so obviously I'm going to buy from that guy." Especially if you made it known to the player that one merchant had better access to caravans and stuff than another, etc. so that you'd know things like what kind of selection you can expect as time passes from that merchant. Maybe you want to pay more now for the payoff later of getting better/more varietous stuff at a discount, and/or getting access to certain arms/goods sooner than you would have, etc. Also, you could have a simple, "randomly"-occurring need/interest in a certain type of good from a given merchant, in this system. So that if Steve is in need of weapons at the moment (maybe he has a lot of demand for weapons, in general, from his clients or the local folk?), he may pay you less for them than another merchant would, but you'll get a significant boost to your merchant-customer relationship with Steve. This wouldn't really aim to have a lot of mutually exclusive stuff (although there could be a little bit). It'd be more chronology-based dynamics: Do you get more money now, or more money later? Do you get better stuff now, or better stuff later? Etc. Even if none of that is done, reputation, in general, could affect how a given merchant treats you. "You're the one always helping out those nobles, aren't you? My son was KILLED by nobles, you sonnova... I'll sell you stuff, for a premium! *cackle*"

Duh. That's because it's not really "challenge" (or, not as much as it's claiming to be). It's "under these circumstances, your chances of success are horribly slim, if not non-existent." But then, not only is the solution easy (enemy's using X? I should probably use Protection from X), but the remainder of the substance of the combat encounter isn't nearly as tough at that point, especially if you just generally know how to use your abilities to good effect (in general, and not just for completely situational extreme effectiveness.)

Even if you had boots of speed, everyone would need it, or at least your slowest party member, because as it currently stands, non-combat movement is locked to slowest party member. This. Basically, if there will be boots of speed (or any such item), they will only affect the wearer's speed in combat. Which is significant: Your Fighter reaching melee engagement range on that enemy caster in 2 seconds instead of 5 matters. Your Fighter covering ground faster than your Druid when just walking around outside of any threatening situation is just unnecessary manual formation management. Thus, the "everyone move at the same pace" default setting. According to Josh, these items (and other modifiers?) can lead to people moving pretty friggin' fast, which is great in a tactical situation, but a little silly when you're just trying to move around in a forest like a normal person, and not trying to urgently charge an archer or caster while every second counts. Another thing I just thought of: Honestly, you could have the out-of-combat speed be actually pretty speedy, then actually have a character's in-combat speed be slower than that, as combat is really the only time that the relative differences in speed matter. In other words, if you wanted to have a character who moved quite slowly, instead of just matching everyone's speed to that person's snail pace outside of combat, you could just take the average of the party or something (it'd be super easy, because it's all numerically represented). Then, when the combat state is entered, the slow characters can go a bit slower, and the fast characters can go a bit faster.

See, that would just be horrible design. The purpose of Health and limited resources between rest spots isn't to ultra-mega-test your minimalist usage of all your resources. It's not "See if you can take out like 50 dragons before having to heal again!" It's just to make sure there's no absence of strategy through short stretches of area. Yes, sometimes you're probably going to get your arse whooped and have to go back to the previous rest spot. But, I don't know why the assumption is that the design is going to always give you a rest spot to get you to 100% health and full spells, then throw X number of fights at you that require roughly 110% of your Health and ALL of your spells before you will possibly ever see another rest spot. "I hope things aren't designed that poorly" is a perfectly understandable sentiment. One that I share. But, I don't see how assuming bad design will happen is accomplishing anything.

And yet, as Endrosz said, the encounters are designed with this in mind, rather than each encounter being designed with the assumption that you'll have full Health, Stamina, and spell/ability "ammo" each time. It's hardly different from, say, a first-person shooter game having you at not-full ammo for most of the game. Sure, every now and then you find a bunch of ammo, and pick it up until you can't carry any more. But, the rest of the time, you have to make do with what you have. This is balanced out by the fact that you're easily able to slay 50+ foes without necessarily using all 200+ rounds of ammo you can carry. But nothing dictates how low you will get before reaching another rest spot. It's only death by a thousand cuts if you hit 0. If you rest every single time you get down to 5% Health, even, then it's just non-death by 999 cuts, in which case, where's the problem? Also, why are you okay with having to manage your resources through a single fight, until combat victory, but not okay with that same principle simply being spread out across multiple fights? If you always got "fully refreshed" after every single encounter, but the encounters were all designed with that in mind, then the tougher ones would sometimes require that you flee before finishing the encounter (if you didn't fight efficiently enough and ran out of spells and health and such), healing up, then returning to finish it up. How is killing 5 enemies, then having to heal before slaying the 6th, any different from winning 5 encounters, then having to heal before taking on the 6th, functionally?

They have a money tree. Every time they announce a delay, they collect our tears of disappointment, then water the tree with them. Money trees love disappointment-infused tears.

But I'm not pink. I'm salmon. u_u

I know what you mean. I remember when I used to be excited about getting gaming magazines and such, because they'd actually show progress and such on the game, and how it functioned and worked. Nowadays, it's like a 6-month PR campaign, instead of journalism. Which, granted, sometimes that's all the info the reporter is given. But, still. I'm not worried about who to blame, really, as much as I just hate that it's all screenshots and vague descriptions of concepts that make them sound awesome, but hardly ever end up being executed well in the game mechanics. "We're going to have an INNOVATIVE new crafting system!" (What that means when the game comes out): "Depending on the type of metal you choose, a different item is made! 8D! WHOA!" I've seen a lot of games that LOOKED amazing, but ended up having absolutely no originality in the mechanics and gameplay whatsoever.

No, I don't think it's a big deal. I'm talking a lot about it, sure. I think it's a very small deal, though. Okay, here's my thought in simple form: If you can just adjust your movement speed with no ramifications, then why should Stealth movement slow you down? If moving faster in non-stealth is going to affect your detection when you encounter some hostile entities, then why isn't moving even FASTER going to affect that? Or, fast travel. If fast travel is reasonable between maps, why isn't it feasible between places on the same map? *shrug*, I just don't think a move speed/time-passing slider ("time-passing" referring to if you just move faster, but not relative to other things) is really benefitting anyone. Volume and other options don't affect the active gameplay, so they can be whatever you want. The brightness slider possibly allows you to black out your game screen, depending on your monitor and its settings.

I meant "as fast as you can feasibly keep up with what's being visually displayed to you." I wasn't trying to be ridiculous. Sorry for the wording. But, see, that's why I suggest a simple, singular faster move speed with a situational penalty (running instead of walking, but being more noticeable). You're basically saying that a "regular" move speed is perfectly reasonable and there's not really any need to go faster... until you just want to cover ground. At which point, you just want to go as fast as you can. But, obviously there's a reasonable limit, so running instead of walking would allow this. There'd be no need for more than one additional speed. Like you said, a toggle. And really the only thing it should affect is combat/detection. Why? Because, when there's a threat around, you're being reckless. There's no reason there shouldn't be somedetriment for that, just like there is for the player simply attack-clicking his way through combat instead of using tactics. It's not that you CAN'T do it. It's just that it affects things.

We shall all drown in an ocean of story. And if we make it to the surface, it will now be a longer swim than it would have been to make it to shore.

Ahhh. Didn't realize that's what you meant by "playable." My mistake. Yeah, I honestly don't know what to think about how much they're changing/putting in this late. When the beta first released, it was QUITE rough. So... but, I can't really say for sure that it wasn't planned this way, and they won't surprise us with how playable it is by, say, the end of summer.

Ohhh. So you're disagreeing with any restriction whatsoever? I didn't realize that. Yeah, I mean, that's not wholly unreasonable or anything. I dunno, though. I mean, where do you draw the line? If people can move, say, twice as fast as "normal" speed, then why stop there? Why not just allow as fast as human eyes can possibly keep up with? Or, why not just have the default be really really fast, and have the option to slow it down as much as you want? And, I realize that there are auto-pause settings, but, that doesn't change the fact that you most likely want to approach combat encounters with some modicum of finesse and tactical thought. Or, rather, even if you don't (if you literally just want to move as fast as possible, run head-first into every combat, and still play through the game), it becomes less and less likely that you're actually going to get through the game. At some point, you're running into tricky-enough encounters that you're going to have to reload or something and try them again with an actual "don't just run straight into them because you were impatiently getting about the map" approach, in which case, why didn't you just move a little slower to begin with? All that time saved from speed is kinda thrown out the window if you lose tactical effectiveness by running blatantly into every combat scenario there is. *Shrug*. I don't have a problem with the sheer idea of letting players choose the speed at which "time flows," effectively, but it just seems like that leads to a lot of other "why not?"s if there's not a line drawn somewhere, and I'm not sure what the foundation of that line is. I honestly still think making you more easily detectable is a good approach, because, if you're going to just rely on auto-pause upon entering combat because you're moving so fast, then you're obviously not very worried about being detected by enemies anyway. Unless the move speed is just ungodly slow outside of combat, you should be able to get around with relative ease and swiftness already, especially if you're bypassing a lot of stuff (which, again, the whole "auto-pause will stop you when it needs to" mentality is kind of in-line with "I'm not really meticulously exploring, here"). I dunno. I know I'm weird, so maybe that's just me.

Yeah, I realize that. The objective is still the objective, though: to have players move (outside of combat) at a regulated pace, for the purposes of exploration, no matter the reason. Well, to be fair, it's not really making up any "new" mechanics. Toggling Stealth mode on your characters already causes them to move more slowly and, simultaneously, have their detection radii reduced. If you were to have a "run instead of walk" option, or something similar, it would already make sense and fit right into the current mechanic that affects both move speed and detection together. It would be sort of like an "anti-stealth mode." So, unnecessary? Sure, I'll give you that. But, that isn't to say that there'd be no reason for it at all. It just wouldn't be integral. True. I hadn't thought of that. I thought you meant some kind of run-vs-walk setting/mode that applied only to your party (just like how Stealth toggle slows them down relative to other things). Of course, the fact still remains that, if you simply add in a "speed up time" function, we have to ask ourselves what reason there is to not just use it all the time. And, as you pointed out with Josh's reasoning on the matter, wouldn't being able to move much faster through an area, regardless of whether or not it was relative to other things or just because everything was moving faster, still kill the "mood" for exploration? If so, how would you regulate that? Which brings us back to the whole "Do you restrict it outright, discourage it with mechanics, or just do nothing about it at all?" question. Does that make sense?

Ohhhh, right. I forgot about that. Oops... 8P Looks like that was useful for Endrosz. Good call,

quote That's exactly what I'm getting at. Either the game would have to make a hard decision on when you're exploring and when you're not before allowing you to move faster, or there'd have to be an implicit reason not to explore with the faster speed (such as "you are super noisy, tromping around like that, and you're drawing a lot of attention from hungry/hostile things"). Thus, when exploring, you'd have some kind of a reason (if not that particular one) to move at "exploration" speed. But, like you said, if you've pretty much cleared a map, and really just need to get from point A to point B to go pick something back up or something (covering already-covered ground), it would be really nice to move faster, and doing so is no longer (under the circumstances) detracting from anything, because there's no longer exploration taking place. Think of it kinda like the blackness behind fog of war. Not-having it there would be detrimental to the whole "I don't know what's there" aspect of exploration. However, once you've visited a spot, the terrain remains revealed at that spot, even when you leave. Why? Because you can't uncover the same information multiple times. Anywho, I just think if there's going to be an option to move faster, then the way to do it is to give it penalties that only apply when there's still exploration to be had, thus strongly encouraging the character to only use it when it's not going to hurt anything (rather than trying to restrict the character to when they are and aren't able to move faster, since I don't even know how you'd determine that.) I honestly can't think of any other way of doing it that isn't just "you can run around faster instead of slower, all the time, with no penalty whatsoever, situational or not."