Lephys

Fatback... calling something not-an-RPG is not the same thing as asterisking on it. I like Call of Duty... as a competitive multiplayer shooter. And they could like... stop making 17 of them, really, and give up on the campaigns. But, still... I like DOTA. You called DOTA an RPG, and someone merely questioned its being one, to which you responded "you level up skills and get items," suggesting that that's what makes an RPG. I then presented an example wherein you do such things in a game that isn't really an RPG. Again, you could've just called "fair enough" and emphasized what we can still take from something like DOTA, regardless. But, instead, you decided everyone hates you and doesn't even care what your point is. False. We don't know your point doesn't hinge upon DOTA actually being an RPG or not until you tell us.

I don't think we know about its finalized state, but, a ways back, Josh talked about designing the system to eliminate repeated manual skill checks. The system he presented is basically: "You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 20? You can pick it, but it's going to cost you 4 lockpicks." "You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 35? You can pick it with one lockpick." "You want to pick this lock, and your skill is 19? You can't." The numbers above are purely example numbers, made up just to show how it works. But, yeah. I think it's a pretty good way to go with it, though, I would like if there were some other factors, like "Oh, you're not super masterful at lockpicking, relative to this particular lock? You make lots of loud noises when picking this lock, and use more lockpicks than if you had higher skill." Or, "You get the lock open, but you can't actually close/latch this door behind you, because you've screwed up the lock too much," etc. At least something that produces a functional difference, other than just cost in quantity of lockpicks. But, even with just that, your skill affects the situation, and random numbers of chancical dice rolls are eliminated.

Seconded. I realize things will become more plentiful to cast (per-encounter/at-will), but, it just seems like there's a huge gap between stuff if there's absolutely no change in anything but frequency of casting. And yeah, D&D had stuff improve as you did. Just weaker spells improved LESS than stronger spells, each time, and their improvements/scaling capped off after so many level-ups. It doesn't all have to scale at the exact same rate, for the same amount of time. So, *shrug*. I'm curious what Team Eternity has to say about this, specifically, and how they're handling it.

My ideal combat "difficulty" would consist of engagement; it would keep me on my toes. Even if I'm the knowledge master and wrote the wiki on the game, a tough fight should still require mental effort on my part, the whole way through, and be easier, instead of easy. But, yeah, it's kind of a mix of dynamic reaction, and static "this works effectively" knowledge. If some specific strategy just works, and all the "difficulty" is just HP numbers and defenses and things beyond my control (no amount of party positioning or reactions or timing is going to affect anything any further), and all there is to it is to successfully execute the strategy for a good 10 minutes, then I don't really see that as quality combat difficulty. I know combat strategy is a bit similar to puzzley stuff, but I don't want to fight a puzzle for 15 minutes that I've figured out in the first 30 seconds. I think "the solution" to a tricky combat encounter should always consist of a set of various reactions and general effects in response to an array of combat behaviors and factors. It shouldn't ever be "Oh, as long as I just keep them sleeped, and have these buffs on my guys, we're golden." If you don't have to change what you're doing at all, then I think that "tough" fight is too simplistic, to be honest. To be clear, I'm mainly talking about either boss fights, or very intentionally tough/tricky combinations/groups of foes. Not just your average "Here's three trolls." I mean, the same principle applies, really, just to a lesser degree.

That would be interesting. What if they start becoming weaker/slower ("worse") the farther they venture from the summoner, or something like that?

They look like a bit like holly leaves... OUCH!

AKA People Who Hurt Things, People Who Prevent People From Getting Hurt/Soak-Up Hurtiness, and People Who Un-Hurt Things That Have Already Gotten Hurt. It's a true mystery why that doesn't somehow form the core of legitimately deep/complex gameplay. 8P Sorry... just felt the need to comment on the Trinity, in general. Continue, u_u...

@Fatback: There's a difference between flaming you, and simply pointing out a distinction. Suggesting DOTA 2 isn't really an RPG, per se, isn't somehow calling you a moron. It's just an observation. If you want to point out what we can learn of the balance of combat viability from that game, that makes perfect sense. But, that has almost nothing to do with whether or not it's an RPG. And responding to the first mention of this with "items and levels totally make it an RPG" is changing your argument from the initial "here's how this game could be useful to observe" to "what makes an RPG and what doesn't," which isn't serving your original intent at all. So, instead of getting worked up, I encourage you to try simply acknowledging people's sentiments about what is or isn't an RPG, and continuing on with what actually is relevant to your initial point and presenting that.

1 is true enough, but doesn't really have anything to do with actual dialogue. I mean, I realize that "dialogue" is the place where we usually see the descriptive text, even if it's not claiming to be part of an actual conversation, but, what I mean is, the lack of descriptive text has nothing to do with how the dialogue text that is there is written. 2 is fine, but, again, doesn't really change the fact that something's either crappily written or it isn't. I get the whole cost thing, but that's simply a factor to consider when choosing between VO or none. It's kinda like the super-early 3D games. Devs had to choose "Hmm... do we stick with a 2D engine and make something that looks pretty nice, or does 3D support out game so well that it's actually fine by us if each object model in the world is made of 3 colored polygons?"

^ A fine idea, coffee!

^ I hate to tell you, but in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (and all since, that I'm aware of), you level up and get items. Those might be RPGish elements, but that doesn't make Call of Duty an RPG, any more than it makes DOTA an RPG.

That is most unfortunate that an inn-weaver has not communicated about their inn. Maybe you could make it an abandoned inn, in the game? *shrug* With a spiffy quest centered around it, perhaps.

Yeah, I can make things sound bad too with a lack of context. Yup. Call of Duty. "Don't like shooting stuff? Don't play this game." Mean, or just truthful? I don't think Josh is really mean about any of this. He's not calling grognards idiots. He's just saying that ensuring that a bunch of hardcore worst-case-scenario stuff is in place, for nostalgia's sake, isn't really in line with the goal of the game's design, overall. Basically, it's statistically fun for too few people, and having it not-in-the-game isn't really making a game that's the complete opposite of what grognards will actually enjoy, anyway. Personally, I like that he just speaks his mind casually about stuff, instead of taking extreme efforts to make sure he phrases everything in such a way that it's most definitely sugar-coated for everyone. Being blunt about it like this is much better than stepping around it with "Well, unfortunately, that's really not in line with our design goals." That leaves a lot more worry to the imagination than "here's specifically what I think of stuff like that, and I'm just not going out of my way to support very specific situations that most of the player base isn't going to enjoy." He's not talking about all players in the world. He's talking about people who like to play RPGs.

Phew... it was already in the mail and everything!

You learn something new every day. Yup. Here we go. TechnicalityFest, 2K14. I'm just gonna get him some Olympic judges' signs, so whenever people say anything, he can just hold 5 of them up in succession: "Four-point-three... four-point-five... four-point-one... two-point-nine..." It'll be a lot faster than saying "I get what you meant, but I'm still just going to focus on how much below 100% efficiency your example was."

Maybe that's just its disguise. "Henry, from the farm at the end of the bend, started trying to use some new-fangled plow instead of just doing everything by hand, and something tore him to shreds in the dead of night!" (Old Man sipping his ale nearby): " 'Zat so? *swig*... *smile*" No one would suspect the old geezer.

It'd be great if a Grognard were a creature in the game world. It would live in ruins or nature, and if it saw you changing anything from the way it had been for a long time, it would charge your arse. If it just saw the results of changes, it would simply become upset (if it saw looted containers, opened doors/etc.). It would need to see YOU performing the change in order to direct that anger at you. It would require stealth.

Haha, yeah. That's why you get people saying movies like Gladiator were boring. Yup... no gladiatorial action in THAT film. Incidentally, while I generally agree regarding Michael Bay, I actually really like The Island. I do not know why... Also, I've gotta give him props for one thing (although it's sort of a waste because of the other failings of his films): He actually doesn't just say "let's just CG it" to everything. In the Transformers films, obviously the transformers were CG'd, but the cars they were hurling out of their way when chasing each other down populated streets were actually hurled out of the way. And, in the first movie, he actually just got with the actual military, and said "I want to do this scene like the military would do it. You tell me what you guys would do/say here, and that's what we'll do." Instead of making up a bunch of super-cool sounding military chatter, or saying "this formation would look really cool, no matter how much it has absolutely nothing to do with real military formations!" But, again... all that gets pretty cancelled out, haha. Annnnnnywho.

That's kind of the problem behind most issues with modern games, if you ask me. It's not exclusive to dialog. "Let's make an RPG for people who don't like RPGs! 8D!" "Let's make a tactical shooter for people who don't like tactics!" Etc. Then, the game has an inherent conflict with itself, right out of the gate.

I wonder if there'll be a throwing accuracy, or if it'll just be "where you click is what you get" and everyone's just flawless at tossing things in the middle of combat. 8P Also, it'd be cool if you could target the ground OR a foe. Even better if accuracy is involved, since you could target a moving foe, miss, and hit the ground behind them or something, Tanglefooting (for example) people you didn't mean to. It's not a huge deal, but, it'd just be nice if thrown grenade-type things had to play on the same playground as other attacks, instead of just being magical "This guy has no Perception or Dexterity whatsoever, but he can still knock the wings off a fly with this exploding potion from 30 feet away!" things. That was one thing I really liked in Shadowrun Returns. It wasn't like in Fallout 3 (and NV? Not sure... didn't use throwing weapons in NV) where you "miss" with a grenade, and it just doesn't hurt anyone at all. A grenade or AoE spell was always going to go NEAR where you were aiming (I don't think anyone's THAT bad at aiming), but it could actually not hit exactly where you wanted it to (depending on distance/accuracy, etc. -- it wasn't just a random chance that your AoE projectile will deviate from its course).

@Infinitron: I don't readily suspect there will be, either. I just had a side-thought of how a dice roll could actually still fit in. Just for that little pinch of seasoning, ya know? "Oh, hey, it only took me EIGHT lockpicks to get this open, instead of 10. Woot!" There wouldn't just be a dice roll that determines, from 0 to infinity, how many resources the lock too. It would still be dependent upon your skill versus the lock's difficulty. Just, instead of a set number, it could be a small range. Just like weapon damage. Hit or graze or crit each determine different degrees of weapon damage. Yet, there's still a "6-8"-type range on the base weapon damage, methinks (as Josh commented somewhere that we wouldn't be seeing extremely wide gaps in the weapon damage ranges, like 1-12 on some stuff in D&D rules). I was just thinking of the same principle for something such as lockpicking is all. Just a possibility. @Ffordesoon: You mistake me. The presence of chance does not force that chance to be applied to success or failure. As per above, I was only talking about a small range of specific outcomes regarding the resources used (lockpicks, in this case) in completing the task. You don't ever roll to see if you succeed or not. That's the point of the abstraction (as, if you fail, you're just going to try again, so long as your resources and your patience permit). The roll would just add in a "Yay, slightly lucky!" vs. "Aww, slightly not as lucky this time" element, is all.

That can be done, but, it just kind of depends on whether or not you want bows to be a "basic weapon" (i.e. "You can specialize in bows, and use bows 24/7 just like a sword or anything else") or if you want them to be a limited-use, almost secondary weapon, like D&D wands and such. If the goal is to have bows (and other ammo-weapons) be go-to weapons for characters, then the abstraction of "basic" ammo makes sense. If not, though, then it doesn't. Think of it like this: Wizards have spells, right? They only have so many per day, but then, they rest, and they get them back. So, they have INFINITE spells. They never won't get spells back from resting. They don't have to buy little spell crystals, and expend one for every spell they want to cast. Now, if they want to use EXTRA spells, on top of what they're limited to per day (possibly even more-powerful spells than they can currently cast), they have scrolls. That's the abstraction I'm talking about with ammo. Obviously, there's a difference between spells and arrows, so that would manifest as a difference in the limitation quantities, etc. (plus, they'd probably start at per-encounter, instead of per-rest. At the very least, per-encounter arrows kind of simulates the quiver limitation of "You can't just start drawing arrows out of your backpack and nocking them... they need to be readily available, and you can only have so many readily available at once"). So, yeah, it depends on what the goal is. There's not just a universal best way to do it. IF the goal is to have the weapon choice of an ammo-requiring weapon be your character's main weapon (and have it balanced against any other weapon choice as a main weapon), then having to buy arrows just to use it becomes almost meaningless.

I'd wager it'll still depend. It'll be a mix of both. Sometimes, you'll go down into some ruins and find some device or door you just aren't skilled enough to mess with. But, it's not going anywhere, so, later on, you mess with it. Obviously, Obsidian could intentionally not do this, and basically always allow you to -- in a state of "topped-off"edness -- handle any check thrown your way when you first encounter it. I get that. But, the only ones you'll not be able to pass AND not come back to will be ones that you weren't "topped off" for, at the very most. Also, I just wanted to make a note, regarding lockpicking-type situations, and "trying as many times as you want." I believe what Josh said regarding that is that, having the random roll plus skill bonus versus a DC check, for example, and having to simply re-roll a random number of times (until you hit that high enough number on a given check roll) in order to successfully complete a task like lockpicking, is kind of a waste of time. There's no urgency, and you're simply going to keep trying so long as you deem that you have enough lockpicks left with which to attempt. Thus, I believe he said that, instead of, say, having JUST enough Lockpicking (or, in this case, Mechanics?) skill to allow you to pick a given lock, but only on a roll of 20 out of 20, that same scenario in PoE will simply require more lockpicks. There will be one attempt, but, because of your low skill relative to the complexity of the lock, it's going to take you more time (abstracted out because it's simply waiting, from the player's perspective) and lockpicks (you'll break/damage ones you're working with until you eventually get the lock opened) than if you had greater skill. Interestingly enough, you could also keep the dice roll for that, but convert it to a minimal range of lockpicks that will be used to pick the lock. In other words, if you have 10 skill, and you're trying to pick a tough lock (that you're at least skilled enough TO pick, just... with much difficulty), then you could have a roll to see if it's going to take 9 lockpicks, or 13 lockpicks, or any number in between. Thus, you still have that element of luck/chance in there, but you still don't have to manually re-attempt the lock 30 times. And if you had higher skill, it'd be like 1-3 or something. But, I digress. I just wanted to make sure people knew that the plan was to eliminate multiple upon multiple attempts at something like picking a lock, under absolutely no duress at all, and instead better represent the effort and resources required in an abstracted, single attempt (from the player's perspective). It's kind of like in a PnP game, when you tell the DM "I want to search until I find something," instead of "I want to make a search attempt." Instead of "You find nothing... do you want to search again?" 15 times, he just tells you "Okay *roll*... It takes you 4 hours, but you eventually find a clue in the form of..." etc.. It's like that.

That ROUS is getting BLASTED!

I forgot about Talents. They could potentially check Talents, too. That could be interesting. Regardless, just because they don't have 73 skills in the game doesn't mean they can't have a great deal of depth to the non-combat-oriented usage/application of said skills. Also, I'm totally on-board for some level of the multi-person skill checks. Maybe sometimes, convincing a given, rather skeptical person of something (for example) requires two people with high Resolve instead of one. Or sneaking into a place via a particular window/entrance might require TWO sneaky people, etc, simply because one cannot get in alone, and the other needs to also remain undetected whilst helping them (think Splinter Cell co-op, heh). Note: I realize Resolve is not a skill, but a stat. The check functions the same way, so I used it as an example.