Lephys

That's a good question. I know a lot of spells get "+X" versus defenses, but... I dunno what it uses as the base. Maybe just your base Accuracy?

Here's what happens, using your example: Your 26 (attacker's accuracy) goes up against their 65 (defender's appropriate defense -- in this case, Deflection). 26-65 = -39. So, -39 is the modifier that's going to be applied to your combat roll. The actual attack roll is always the same -- it's 1d100 (a roll between 1 and 100), with your ACC - DEF modifier (from above) added in. So. Let's say you roll a 100, the highest thing you can roll. You get 100, -39, = 61. 61 is your final attack roll. So that would be a Hit (regular damage). You've got a scale for the final roll value, to determine what happens as a result: 01-15: Miss (no damage, no effects) 16-50: Graze (half-damage/duration) 51-100: Hit (normal damage/duration) 101+: Crit (150% damage/duration) I believe those ranges are right. I think they changed it some just before the game released, and I can't remember if that's perfectly accurate or not (Crit used to be 96+, and it's possible Grazes might be a smaller range? *shrug*. I could have misses wrong, too. They used to be 1-5, but I THINK they changed to 1-15... SOMEONE PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG!) But, that's basically how it works. You just plug in all the rest. Are you attacking Reflexes instead of Deflection? You plug that number in, and subtract it from the attacker's Accuracy. Roll 1d100, add the modifier, then look at the chart with the final number.

I don't. No one's against your petition, really. Obsidian's not like "Man, whatever we do, player characters will NEVER WALK! I SWEAR IT UPON THE BEARD OF SAWYER!" Let me recap, to clarify: You said "Why can't we walk?", and people said "Because it's not in yet. It's not a huge deal." To which you replied "Uh huh! It's a mega-huge deal!". I then explained how it isn't really that big of a deal, if we're measuring deals. And you took it upon yourself to tell me how what's a huge deal is different for different people. So I explained how that very line of thought doesn't really help the reasoning behind how to prioritize what to put into the game, because it would result in everything anyone ever wanted in the game becoming #1 priority. I don't know what doesn't make sense to you, but if you could elaborate, I'd be glad to try harder to make sense of it, as I apparently did not present my point well enough.

It's like Pokemon, gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Well, that one in particular is a secondary effect. And that's roughly two people's attacks -- 17 damage -- depending on the foe you're targeting and its defenses/armor (couple of grazes, high DR, etc.). How many attacks could you expect to get off in 6 seconds, normally? WHILE still getting to attack that foe with other means of damage output? I'm not saying it needs no adjustment at all (or that others don't), but the idea of an ability dealing 17 damage over 6 seconds is not exactly insignificant, in and of itself. Again, especially on Necrotic Lance, since it's got a primary effect PLUS that DoT. *shrug*

Yeah, you don't actually have to be "in-stealth" to sneak attack. An attack from your Rogue within the first 2 seconds of combat is a Sneak Attack. Basically, it's you catching the enemy off-guard. So, you can stealth around to very close to a foe, with higher stealth, then start the fight with your other peeps, and sneak attack a "straggler" foe (in regard to the direction the rest of the foes are running). That should be possible in at least some situations (a melee sneak attack, that is), if you do it right. But, yeah, if you planned on sneak-attacking one foe in a group of foes, then somehow not being engaged in melee combat afterward, the whole "My Rogue's going to go backstab them, guys!" idea is kind of silly. He is? that's great. What then?! Why wouldn't they all hear Gary the Goblin scream in agony from a knife in his back, turn around, and swarm your lone Rogue? Is he STILL invisible? What is he, an apparition?!

Exactly. The company's philosophy and history didn't send cookies to Obsidian, yet people are cursing EA in direct response to "Look! People at EA sent cookies!" Maybe someone from Bioware BAKED those cookies. That's what gets ridiculous. There are people who hate "EA," then there are people who, if they saw an article about how an EA/Bioware employee were in the hospital after a car wreck, they'd be like "KARMA, BEECHES! THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR SUCKING!" I hate how they're steered, but there's plenty of good in their games, too. I enjoyed playing Mass Effect 3, even though I don't like it at all as a complete narrative. I enjoy playing DA:I, even though there are countless changes I'd make to it. It's not like "Oh, THE TREES SUCK! AND THE WATER SUCKS! And CHARACTER MOVEMENT SUCKS! ALL THE ANIMATIONS SUCK!" No. Parts of their games suck in certain ways, and if they fixed that they'd have excellent games. Instead, they have "meh, kinda fun" games. In fact, if they weren't claiming to make RPGs, the scores for their games in most people's eyes would skyrocket immediately. "Oh, well yeah, if this isn't supposed to have a super-well-written story and significant character choices throughout, it's pretty good!" Too many people are just children who discover that they can form powerful opinions about things, and share them on the internet to feel like they're part of a big horde of the same opinion. They could actually take the time to form more useful ideas regarding such things, instead of "yeah, any time someone mentions EA or Bioware, I'm gonna just act like it's a kid down the street whom I hate! 8D!"

Not-using your muscles doesn't make them not exist. I can never ever punch a guy or lift anything over 10lbs, but that doesn't mean I don't possess the physical strength to do these things effectively. If you make a Wizard with 18 Might and just never cast any spells, did you just make a magically-weak Wizard? No. You made a magically-strong Wizard who happens to abstain from magic-slinging. He's got the capability of casting spells that deal more damage than other Wizards (or characters, for that matter) with lower Might, as well as the capability to swing a greatsword with greater force than other characters with lower Might. So, the real question is "is there something in the game that is automatically going to make your Wizard as weak as a child?" And no, there isn't. And the "well, that 18 Might for my particular Wizard is soul strength, not physical strength!" Then what's everyone else's 18 Might? And if your soul strength applies to all things that physical strength does, as well, AND to magical things, then what do muscles do? Do they just store soul? They aren't actually bands of fibers that possess the ability to contract to produce kinetic energy via nerve pulses in this world? Your soul just animates your arm? And if a 3-year-old can just have a really strong soul, and throw a piano across the room, then why does anyone ever have larger muscles/a larger physique than anyone else, if those people don't have the ability to have the same strength of a soul PLUS physical strength that has nothing to do with how strong their soul is? Imagine if we just rolled Resolve into Might, too. Might's your soul's power, right? Well, isn't Resolve the power of your will? Does your will not come from your soul? Or could someone be really, really strong, but lack resolve? Sure they could.

I somewhat disagree with the inventory management needing to be back thing. Somewhat. I think there should be some manner of inventory limitation/management, in regard to the significance of any given item being in your possession or not-being in your possession. A good example is money. No one in the realistic portion of medieval fantasy times carried around thousands of gold pieces anyway, unless they were transporting it on a wagon in a strongbox or multiple chests. So, I really don't need the weight of my coins simulated, and for some kind of "Oh, you can only carry 70lbs" simulator to be in place. That mostly covers lots of cool aspects of inventory limitation, but annoyingly just requires that you keep making trips just to drop off coins of precious metals into a box at your base or in town, then fast traveling back to the place where more, weighty money is located, etc. Another thing I'm not cool on is "limitless inventory just lets you vacuum-cleaner up all the loots, so we need it to be limited so that you can't do that and get so rich, etc." Not really... That isn't the reason it should be limited, because "I can sell 97 leather armors to the armorsmith, who makes leather armor, for significant amounts of money!" is not a lack of inventory limitation's fault. It's the wonky loot-value system's fault. It's this really, really weird notion that video games have developed that all material items on someone who is dead are loot. Like, in the modern day, if you mugged someone in an alley, you'd take all their clothes, their shoes, their wallet (not just the money in it) their piercings, etc., then go try to sell it all to someone. No... you'd probably take their money out of their wallet (or maybe their whole wallet, for convenience, depending... but not so you can sell the wallet), and maybe their phone if it was nice. Everything isn't supposed to even have a sale value. That's the thing. Sure, maybe Old Man McWinterburger loves and adores leather scraps. So, you COULD gather all the old leather armor you can find and bring it to him, but all that's going to accomplish is the appreciation of Old Man McWinterburger. Maybe he gives you something, or you get something from that you deem valuable. Maybe not. There ya go. Problem solved. Something needs to stop us from taking all the leather armor in the world? How about a lack of a reason to do so (like an Xcp sale price on each and every one of them?). Now, that doesn't mean there's no reason to limit inventory space/size/weight. But, like I said, the reason should be that it actually contributes to the significance of certain things being in your inventory or not at any given moment. An inventory management system is only as good as the reasons the game gives you to manage your inventory. "Because you can't carry infinite stuff in real life" isn't a very good reason. Don't get me wrong, as I love heavy simulation in my RPGs, too. But, in the end, the game has to have a reason for it. You can't just simulate something, THEN try to come up with a reason for it. You've got to do it the other way 'round. Same with item degradation. I love item degradation, but "this item essentially has HP, and you have to repair it all the time just because you actually play through the game like you're supposed to" isn't contributing anything to the gameplay, save for a chore. What's significant is the effects of your item's degradation, and how you can make decisions that interact with the likelihood of those effects. An example I gave regarding this in another thread was for armor damage, for example, to be a temporary thing that happens when certain attacks/weapon-types are pitted against certain armor types. Don't want your breastplate to be rent, and your armor value lowered? Don't put your breastplate-wearer against a guy with a huge mace or warhammer. If he gets a critical hit with that, against that armor, it'll become damaged. Afterward, when the danger's gone, you can fix it. I don't care how you do it, really. You don't have to necessarily go back to town and pay a guy to fix it, but, even if you do -- even if the only thing that's different is that your armor and weapons don't just ALWAYS degrade -- that's a huge difference. You can decide between option A, which will make sure your item degrades less or none, or option B, which will result in more degradation or risk of it, etc. Heck even Diablo 3 realizes this, as your items only degrade when you die. So, it's an incentive not to die. You COULD die, and just respawn, and come back and try again, but now your items are suffering. Not a super-in-depth amazing system, but at least it's not "wait, you hit stuff with your weapon?! WHO DOES THAT?! Now you have to go repair your weapon, because realism! Don't hit stuff with your weapon if you don't want to have to go out of your way to fix it!" That's what gameplay is all about. If you want to put a system in a game, the first question you need to ask is "Can the player make significant decisions regarding this occurring?" With inventory management, if the only effect of its existence is "It's inconvenient to loot all the things that have a reason to be looted because they're all worth money for some reason," then it probably has no place in that particular game. And if durability's only purpose is "you can only go around adventuring for so much time before you have to go pay a blacksmith some money," then IT probably shouldn't be in the game.

While this is true, it is useless information. It works different for each person? well, then I can't believe I'm in a fantasy world unless there are anthropomorphic penguins everywhere. So, who do they fix it for? The person who needs walking, or the person who needs anthropomorphic penguins? And yes, that's a purposely silly example. You can laugh about it, but it doesn't change the point: Humans can want/desire anything for any reason at all. You can't make a video game meet subjective needs, because they're all different. Sure, you want it to meet some of them, but they have to already be in-line with what the design of the game already is, for objective reasons. I'm not saying having walking in the game is contrary to the objective design of the game. But the "necessity" of walking being in the game is a subjective necessity. You can't say it needs to be there for immersion, while simultaneously emphasizing how subjective immersion is. Unless you argue that each and every little thing that any players of the game decide "needs" to be in the game, should be in the game on principle. Also, as I've already mentioned, if you're overly sensitive to such things, and need flawlessness in your game's immersion factor or your play is ruined, then you probably should be EXTREMELY selective with your game-purchasing habits. If I'm terrified of germs, I'm not going to go into a public restaurant and demand that they bleach everything immediately to meet my needs. I'm probably just going to stay in my own, personal, germ-controlled environment where I can eat meals with satisfaction. It's understandable that public places are going to have germs, just as it's understandable that our video game technology is not at the level to eliminate any-and-all immersion-breaking factors (much less for everyone's subjective needs). That is not an insult. There's nothing wrong with people who have a fear of germs (going back to that example). But, I would tell those people not to keep facilitating the ruining of their own experiences and blaming it on the things that are understandably the way they are.

That doesn't bother me nearly as much as just a lack of customization options for a Wizard (for example) who's more physically handy but less magically handy, as Wizard's go. There's no stat choice you can make to make a hulking, strong Wizard who can accomplish things that small, frail Wizard's cannot, purely because anyone with 15 Might has 15 muscles-and-soul-power. It's not the abstraction that bugs me (as in "Oh no, your might doesn't affect bullets!"). It's what the game lacks because of it.

But now we don't know WHEN! Will it be in the next 5 minutes? The next 10 minutes?! Every second that goes by, I'm forced to wonder, "Could this be the second that the patch arrives?! WHAT IF I MISSED IT ALREADY ZOMG!!!11!11!1oneonewonwon11!"

True, but that legal entity is just a human, intangible construct. It doesn't make bad games. People do. And unless they're a hivemind, it's about 5% people making decisions, and 95% people just doing their jobs according to those decisions. I can't really think of anyone who actually hates the entire chunk of people that is EA, despite what people might say. "Nuh uh, I really do!". Nope.

I would disagree that immersion is "everything," or we wouldn't even have UI's or mouse controls. We'd only have virtual reality games. BUT, I was merely saying that being able to walk is a minor thing, as it is only one little detail that contributes to immersion. People COULD run everywhere. It's not actually infeasible to "always" run. You couldn't do it forever without stopping to rest, but then, the game doesn't accurately measure your stamina/fatigue anyway, so... that's one of the many things that isn't immersive, the second you think about it. Just like the fact that you're typing on a keyboard or clicking with a mouse, or that there are character portraits floating up in the air, attached to a window of buttons overlooking your characters. People who say "immersion is dumb" or it doesn't exist are silly people, but the whole purpose of a video game isn't "immersion!". There's an understandable level of non-immersion in any video game. If everyone glided around without moving their bodies or legs, that would be much more detrimental, for example, than "Oh noes! I can't walk around!". Doesn't mean it would't still be a positive thing to be able to walk around, but in regard to necessity, it's quite low on the totem pole. If you can't acknowledge that, then I'm uncertain as to how you enjoy any game ever, what with all the non-immersive elements I've already mentioned.

Yeah, I dunno. I can imagine it's pretty chaotic right now at Obsidian HQ, and there's probably not just a big button they click to dispense everyone's keys. But, silver lining? By the time you DO get the disc, you'll get to start out fresh with probably no major bugs to deal with (and possible some balance/tuning tweaks in place).

Fine. I strongly dislike humanity. See how useful that is? I really just dislike certain things that certain people do and not all the things that all humans do. Nowadays, it's really, really easy to "hate" a whole company, as if it's one thing. And, we apparently don't have time to bother with details, so it's easier to just make a binary decision about an entire group of people than to acknowledge that there's at least some good mixed in with the bad. If I wanted to "fix" DA:I, for example, I wouldn't have to start from scratch and do the exact opposite of everything they did. I would only have to change some things. Anywho, people can do as they please, obviously. I just wish more people would act less like children about everything. "My life is ruined, because BIOWARE! T___T". No. No it isn't.

The thing with resting in dangerous places is... a random chance roll to see if you get attacked by a group of enemies (especially infinite, respawning groups of enemies that don't actually occupy space in a dungeon/area normally) is WAY too swingy of a mechanic to use to abstractly simulate the dangers/limitations of resting like that. I'd much rather just always be able to successfully rest, but not for 8 hours. I mean, why would you: A) set up a WHOLE campsite in the middle of a dungeon, in the midst of creatures with predatory senses of smell and such that have lived in this area for a while now? B) not simply wake everyone else up quietly, as a scout, and have the option to get the hell out of there before something's actually attacking you? The threat of being attacked wouldn't force you to sleep until you were attacked. It simply prevents you from continuing to sleep. You can either wake up and fight the stuff, or wake up and get the hell out of there. I don't need the game to have enemies that respawn independently of game world time/occurrences to materialize out of the ether and force me into combat just to limit my resting. There are things for which to use dice rolls, and things not to. That's what I'd go with, off the top of my head; just limited resting capabilities in dungeons/dangerous areas. Maybe you can fully set up camp on the world map (or in an area that's basically been cleared -- the game could basically just reduce the "danger level" based on how many enemies are left in the map area), and rest for as long as you like (or as long as the danger level would allow). And there, the amount of healing you're able to achieve in your rest depends on the Survival skill, etc. OR, you can go back to town, always, and rest for free (takes longer to actually fully heal), or for not-free (you rest more quickly because you're not sleeping in the stables for free). So, basically, you can ALWAYS heal a bit, if you want to throughout dungeons, but it's not going to be up to full unless you do really well in battles and come out of them with less missing HP than you're gaining in your limited rests. If you're just going to have a system in which you always get to heal back to full in between every battle, there's no point in even having long-term health. Might as well just use the "infinite mana, everyone can constantly heal" system, where-in the only way to fail and die is for the enemies' damage input to your party outweighs your party's healing output. Which, to be honest, I've grown quite tired of. It's a perfectly valid way to do things, but hasn't it been done enough now? And isn't it more fun to actually not-get-dead in fights, than to simply keep undoing damage? At some point, you've got to have a limitation, or you've just got to have absolutely no incentive to worry about how you're doing as you move through an area. "Who cares if we all got down to 1 HP every fight! 8D!" At one extreme is "there's just no healing of any kind in a dungeon, and you have to make it all the way to the next checkpoint where you can heal." And on the other extreme is "you basically always just heal up after a fight, so you never ever have any kind of long-term conservation thoughts of any kind." I think somewhere in the middle makes for the most interesting gameplay, however you do it.

I believe you are fibbing. u_u

^ That's a perfect example. If it's shown that for more than a day, chances are it's just out-of-date information. To clarify, I think the "shipping soon" status in the portal is a bug. Or, is very likely a bug. I believe there is a bug involving that not changing to "order shipped" when it has actually shipped, so I wouldn't go by that. Again, if you got an email from Paradox saying your stuff's shipping, I'd assume that it has actually begun the shipping process, and just wait for who-knows-why-it's-out-of-date tracking info to update.

Nobody hates EA. People hate many of the decisions that key members of EA have made, and maybe the fact that they're often more worried about shareholders than they are about creativity and game design potential. I don't hate the guy who sat at a desk for 11 hours a day texturing character models to make a living for his family.

Whenever you see tracking info show something "not moving" for like 3 business days, that usually just means they haven't updated the tracking info for some reason. For whatever reason, some carriers are far more notorious for that than others. There have been times when the tracking info for one of my packages hasn't budged from "Shipping label created" until AFTER it actually gets delivered to me. Once they mark it delivered, it fills in the like 7 other steps: "Left City A, arrived in city B, on its way to city C, out for delivery, DELIVERED!". 8P For anyone who got shipping confirmation, I know we live in the age of technology, but that doesn't mean humans don't still lag behind it. If you got shipping confirmation, I'd just assume it's shipping, and expect it in the date range provided. If you don't get it by the last date in that range, then maybe worry about a lack of tracking info and start asking "where's my package?!" to make sure nothing happened to it.

Ehh. If you haven't started a game yet, you might wanna wait. I'm probably going to wait until the patch comes out, but then, I also have wayyyyyyy too many games to play currently (haven't even INSTALLED Wasteland 2 yet, and Evolve just got a major update). Also, I'm thinking about starting over with a slightly different Wizard build (since I'm not too far in), especially after some tweaks and fixes are in-place, however minor they may be. But, really, if you look up the bad bugs, the list isn't that long. You wouldn't have to go too far out of your way to avoid those until the patch drops. 8P

Yup, Bioware is totally one big hivemind entity, and isn't made up of actual human beings, who might just decide to send "congrats" cookies to another team of human individuals, u_u... Obviously, it's a corporate ploy, and the entirety of Bioware just sits around skulking and wondering how the entirety of Obsidian is doing. MAN you guys have it figured out.

I'd check the Backer Portal again. If you're at the $140 tier, you should have both a Kickstarter Royal Edition key and a Kickstarter Hero Edition key now. As for the $65 peeps... I don't know why you guys got left out, 8(

Well, the game already calculates the per-tick damage properly, initially. So, I would think that, instead of having it add your duration bonus, THEN calculate the damage per-tick, they could simply change it to go ahead and do DMG/BaseDUR, then treat the INT modifier as bonus seconds. So, if it does 50 damage over 10 seconds, but yours is going to be 12 seconds because of INT, just have it do 50/10, then add 2 to the tick counter.