Lephys

@Tauron: I wasn't meaning to say that you were intenionally in favor of unnecessary stat-point gains (like buying them, etc.). All I was saying was, I think that the whole "make sure everything's viable" goal they have is an admirable one, alone, and that, if met, that already accomplishes the elimination of really needing to "correct your stats" like in other games. Look at D&D's ruleset, for example. In DnD games, if you pumped DEX as a Rogue, then decided to stop using crossbows, and switched to shortswords or something, then *poof*, you're suddenly needing that Strength modifier instead of that Dex modifier. But, in PoE, your Dex affects your Accuracy, no matter what. So, what I'm getting at is, the only thing this doesn't really cover is just drastic mind-changing decisions, like "I no longer want to be accurate, I want to be super strong and have boatloads of Resolve!". But, I dunno that a game should really allow changes that drastic, or anywhere near that drastic. I'm not against a handful of point differences throughout gameplay, whether it's gain a stat point every 5 levels, or occasionally come across items/quest solutions that will present you with one, etc. But, the whole point of an RPG system is that you build a character that is distinct from all other characters -- a point on a spectrum -- and you play through the game, and the game reacts accordingly. The more able you are to change the foundation of your character, the less of a point all that reactive setup has. Also, in line with tutors and training, etc, that stuff is fine, but could easily apply to skills rather than stats. You don't lose the ability to think well just because you sit around for a while. You just fail to remember specific knowledge that you haven't used in a while. If you relearn that knowledge, you don't learn it again more slowly. You're still just as intelligent. Granted, with fitness, yes, there is flexibility, but this has been addressed before in similar discussions. STR (and, especially PoE's Might) is more a measure of your sort of permanent strength level. Essentially, I don't think an RPG adventure really supports you just sitting around and suffering muscle atrophy for 3 months, so, for all practical purposes, your Strength is supposed to represent whatever fitness lifestyle you led + whatever natural biological musculature/genetics you've got going on once you reached adulthood (Level 1 adventuring character, usually). It's abstract, yes. And, in a PnP game, it's much more likely to fluctuate more often. But, in a cRPG, it's a lot more permanent. Plus, you could always have a fitness/physique "skill" rating, or something similar. Thus, your STR X your skill would be the full result of your immediate Strength. That would actually be pretty interesting. But... pegging your Strength as just the amount of time you've spent working your muscles recently is no more accurate than just having it be completely permanent and never change. Not many people are going to body-build for 7 hours a day, then go off adventuring and fail to keep up with their body-building regime. Nor are people likely to just sit around on their arse on a daily basis, for years, then suddenly begin a crazy adventure situation and just survive, even though they can't lift a 10-lb brick. So, generally speaking, there's not going to be a whole lot of constant fluctuation in even something changeable, like Strength. Granted, maybe you go through a situation that's now become slightly cliche in RPGs: You get locked up for a manner of months, and just do hard/labor and/or are tortured for a while, thus your Strength/Constitution is increased permanently, once you get some food back in you and such. Again, I'm all for representing changes like that, when appropriate. But, I'm not sure the nature of the game and story really support a Strength fluctuation every month of travel or anything like that. I don't think it needs to be measured quite that accurately, for what it's worth.

I've come to realize that my main concern with an all-encompassing Might is that it will dilute the potential for things like scripted interactions and dialogues. Like I said in the update thread, I'd rather play a game in which whether I'm punching a wall or melting a sword with magic could actually produce different results in something like an intimidation attempt. As opposed to "*Might check:* ... Well, you vaguely exhude power, and the other person just knows you're really powerful, no matter the specifics, and is quite afraid now. Because power." It's really not a problem in relation to combat, BUT, it's still somewhat of a freebie for that Wizard who runs out of spiffy spells. It's still more the principle of the thing than a super huge problem. I get that splitting the "Magic potency" aspect to a different stat (I'd go with Resolve, if I had to pick, especially now that it doesn't affect other offensive things, like AoE range and/or spell/effect duration) has adverse side-effects, as well. If you've built your Wizard (just the stereotypical example for magic-vs-strength capabilities) to be Accurate (high DEX) and powerful with magic (high Might), he's AUTOMATICALLY accurate and powerful with a sword, too. It's not about "Oh no, now he's a Warrior!". But, that aspect of a Wizard build is just... free. I mean, slap some plate on him, and you've got yourself a contingency plan. One of those foes break through the ranks and charge your Wizard? He can thwack that thing for 10 damage, instead of 5. He may not be as good as another class, but he's better than a less-Mighty Wizard. And what did he have to spend to get like that? Nothing. There's no trade-off. It's not that he's uber-McFisticuffs now. It's that he gets two aspects for the price of one. And the only reason for it is "It's easier to just have that one stat, mechanically." Which IS a valid reason. But, I just mean that there's no reason that makes that supposed to happen. The reason isn't "Because Wizards are SUPPOSED to be more damaging with swords when they're magically potent! 8D!" or anything of that nature. There's no reason for that effect. It's a side-effect. And, like I said, it manifests a lot more in what you can and cannot do with non-combat interactions with Might. What could've been a bunch of various situations is now just "Might." It's like picking a lock and jumping a gap with the same skill. "Well, that could've been different depending on your character, but now it's just the Doing Stuff skill." *le shrug*

I fully comprehend these sentiments, and they're legitimate. We should be worried about making sure that's not the case. However, I don't anticipate good positioning and tactics somehow allowing you to just keep everyone away from harm at all times. You've got Rogues who basically have an action-roll-backstab that allows them to pretty easily circumvent engagers. And that's just one thing we know of. I'm sure there will be creatures that can charge through the ranks, or maybe even creatures who are drawn to magic-users like a moth to a flame, so it's all but impossible to keep them from your backline casters, at least conveniently or with any ease. Also, I very much agree that Resolve should have some sort of defensive effect (durations for negative effects seems a really good fit, for some reason, JFSOCC). If that were the case, then, a la D&D (where there's an average for a stat, and below that you get penalties, and above you get bonuses), you could have a "Oh, you've got low Resolve 'cause you think you're safe on the backlines? Well, when that stun DOES finally hit you, you're gonna be stunned for 170% of the duration, 'cause you thought this was a dump stat! MUAHAHAHAHA!" situation. Stuff like that. Ehh, to put it simply, while I don't think it's dumb to consider potential bad designs and how they could affect things, there comes a certain line at which you're just saying "but would this design really be very good if the rest of the game happens to suck?". I think it's best to explore the effectiveness of design aspects in the context of otherwise good design. Because, either the team's after good design, or they aren't. So, if they're going to screw everything else up, and we're talking about a good idea that only works if everything else isn't screwed up, then what reason would they have to implement one good design in a sea of crappy contextual design? I don't mean that to be hostile... I just think it's easy to express concern regarding stuff like "What if we don't really end up needing Resolve?". But, like I said, if they got the design of Resolve this far, and it's completely out of sync with the rest of the game, then what chance is there that any of our discussion/suggestion for how to make it good is even going to reach the devs or affect their choices in any way, if they weren't already concerned with Resolve being affective within their system?

While it still won't cover every location on the map, I'm sure, I recall a quote (from Josh?) talking about the scope of the IWD games, and how, even if you didn't go to a greater NUMBER of places, necessarily, you covered a greater distance on the map, and saw a greater variety of locations. So, I think it's likely that, even if the story only gives us a tour of 50% of the map (example percentage), it will give us the scenic tour, rather than "here are all the super-specific locations within the greater-Dyrwood metropolitan area."

While this is most certainly true (we've already seen comments here and there along the lines of "When do I get to play this early?! 8D!", I think Walsingham is still correct, in that you're going to see relatively more people legitimately willing to test the beta build out of people who had to pay $25, than if you had just given it to everyone in the universe. Or, I shouldn't say "more," but... a greater percentage of the beta folk will probably be legitimate testers, with the price tag as opposed to "Hey, just download this and play it! YAY!"

It isn't possible at this time (once your pledge has been finalized in the pledge manager), BUT, I'm fairly certain they're working on allowing us to edit our pledges... I'm gonna try and find that quote that says so.

EDIT: Basically, Yonjuro already said it.

Look in the upper left corner of the webpage, and click on your avatar to view your forum profile. If you scroll down a tad, below the "Community Stats" box/frame, you'll see "Badges." It won't actually show the badges in picture form, but it should list which badges you have (at least, as far as the current status of your obsidian account is concerned.)

@Stun: You either know what I'm saying and just enjoy going "haha, you technically could've said it all better!", or you don't care what it is I'm actually getting at, because your correctness just somehow trumps all else. Either way, I think we've exhausted the argument. I was debating with you because I thought you were actually interested in the debate, not because I require your validation to be content. There's a "that's a bit ridiculous" threshold for the necessity of specific information in a particular combat encounter, and that's worth considering when designing them. Simple as that. Whether or not you can beat something doesn't validate it as nothing shy of optimal design. @Hiro: Allow me to clarify. "I cannot find a reasonable point in what you are saying." Yeah, yeah, I'm still wrong, regardless. Saved you the trouble. I hope you both have a pleasant day, and I'll see you around.

Umm... I was just using D&D as an example. I don't think D&D is the end-all-be-all of how to perfectly do things. That being said, where do you think D&D got the idea for its stats? From some OTHER game that was obviously the REAL root of the problem? Or by asking "Hmm... what's an attribute that affects what people can and cannot do?" Umm... Education does exist. But it's not a stat. You're not born with education. You don't develop education by existing and reaching adulthood. There's something in RPG rulesets called knowledge skills. They are categorical ratings of your knowledge. Ergo, your education. Resourcefulness is represented by a combination of Intellect (your raw thinking power) and your knowledge. If you don't know anything about a metal rod, or physics, for example, then you can't resourcefully use it in any capacity. Again, people aren't just born with "resourcefulness." That's simply a specialization of Intellect. How important is it, really, to measure "wit," by itself? Really, what all does that affect? Besides, it, TOO, is represented in the game. You can't make clever/witty comebacks if you don't possess the knowledge of words and intelligence required to establish the connections between the words. Thus, it's not its very own stat, but it's not absent from the ruleset. Yes, things are abstracted. Beauty is (at least in D&D) under the Charisma umbrella. In Arcanum, it's a separate thing. The thing is, there's something inherent to video games and our idea of entertainment that makes most of us not want to play something with 72 stats. So, things are simplified, and abstract. It makes perfect sense that Intellect allows my character to do things that require brain power. I think we, the players of the game, are more than capable of imagining the specifics from there, under the specific situation. Also, the writers help by providing details of what to do. The goal isn't to create virtual reality that we then watch. It's simply to create a world that makes sense to us, so that we can control people-who-are-not-us in adventures we're not actually having and/or could never have in the real world. Is it really that difficult to figure out what's "worthy" of even potentially being a stat, and what isn't? This group of people have all been beaten every day for the last week, and that guy on the end is STILL getting back up. Endurance. Boom. I measured something that significantly affected someone's capabilities, and named it. I don't think it's really that complex. Then, it just comes down to making sure that your number-of-stats restriction (again, for simplicity's sake) covers a good range of character measurements. You wouldn't want to have all physical and no mental measurements, for example. "Is someone smarter, or quicker-thinking? WHO KNOWS! 8D!" You're representing a world pretty close to the real one, in terms of how things generally work: The people are humanoid. They breathe atmosphere. Gravity holds them to the ground. They grow food and eat, and live in houses they construct, and people start wars and fight about things, and use resources as real-life humans would if they had all those resources (including soul-magic and the like). It's not as if its preposterous to look to reality to analyze what to represent and what not to, when that's the design of the game. Actually, it kind of does. o_o

This is true of every attribute in every RPG, though. Attributes are arbitrary by nature and there's always potential for more atomized attributes. A single strength attributes ignores that there's many kinds of strength and a single intelligence attribute ignores that there's many kinds of intelligence. Splitting charisma is rad, but all the systems with a unified speech stat still worked well enough. Then, as I pointed out earlier with the three different types of persuasion-type methods, why not just have a "Persuasion" skill and be done with it, instead of representing intimidation, compulsion, and logical appeal? And Perception covers both seeing AND hearing, and yet you can still hear things in dense fog that you cannot see, and see things under water that you cannot hear. If a bandit is sneaking up on your party in the dead of night, and he accidentally trips over something and makes a bunch of noise, do you want your 20-Perception character to just instantly know exactly where he is and make a headshot, or would you rather the game represent the fact that you could hear him, but not see him? If you don't feel a strong need to split them, then fine. But I'd appreciate it if people at least acknowledged that there does exist a reason to do so... that a distinction would serve an actual purpose.

Consider this your first payment: I really wish I could've discovered your ability to comprehend and brevitize my points trans-sooner rather than trans-lator.

Yonjuro... Can I hire you to be my translator?

I think maybe everyone's going to always have the same permanent movement speed, but there are things that will temporarily increase that in combat (Barbarian's Wild Rush ability, or whatever it's called, for example) or decrease that in combat (stuff like Slow). I believe the goal is to prevent your passive (out-of-combat) movement speed from differing, as that's not even tactically significant anyway. It doesn't really matter if one of your party members moves faster than the others if there's nothing currently threatening you at the moment. There's no time-sensitivity when you're just traveling about in the woods.

... Maybe if you'd realized that before you said this: So? I've never in my life played a game that contained combat, that DIDN'T have at least 1 such encounter. Oh and by the way, POE won't be any different, so.... We could've all done more constructive things with our forum time. I should clarify that "impossible" isn't really the right word. Or that it lacks the specifics, at least. "Impossible without precisely the correct party build/composition and/or luck." Or, better put, "impossible to win because of your deliberate actions/choices." No, not really. I can't say with certainty that there are definitely any encounters like that in any of the IE games. But, I'm not sure you can really say there definitely aren't. PoE isn't going to use AD&D, so you can't take your prior elaborate knowledge and experience with the ruleset into your first playthrough with you and happen to beat things other people can't, then go around emphasizing how perfectly possible things are to overcome, and how the game design isn't bad because intuitiveness is stupid and everyone should have to die (the only thing in the game that amounts to a "Game Over") JUST to acquire the knowledge you needed to then much-more-easily dispatch some combat encounter. Maybe that's a better way of putting it. Possible or not, the probability of victory doesn't need to be astronomically higher after you've died to something, than before. If it's challenging, then it's just as tough even after you know what it does. That's the kind of challenge I want. Not the "if only you know the specifics of all its abilities and behaviors" difficulty. D&D is literally built around a world full of crap that your character isn't supposed to have any knowledge of. Sure, the player can read the entire bestiary and such, but your Level 1 Fighter who just recently left a militia isn't exactly going to go "Oh, hey, some scary ethereal creature from another plane I've never seen before! I know what that purple beam it just shot at me does! 8D!" And yet, the player, in a CRPG, learns this when that purple beam gets shot at his character. In a PnP campaign, the DM wouldn't tell you/allow you to know. Thus, you can't even have an encounter designed around having to die, then reload and use your newfound knowledge to drastically increase your probability of defeating the creature. And yet, you slap everything into a CRPG, and you all but demand that very scenario. Simply put, the player shouldn't need intimate knowledge of all foes/effects/abilities just to intentionally prevent his own death (his party's).

Annnnd there it is. Amazing. It's like I'm psychic! Yes, Stun, admittedly, I worded that poorly, and, technically, there was no third option. I meant "more than 2" when I said "multiple," but I should've used a better word. However, the key word there was "require." Basically, what Yonjuro said. You always beat something "in one attempt." Your actual killing of something can't span multiple attempts, right? So, what I'm arguing against is it being impossible (without otherwise looking up the "how to do it" outside the game somewhere, like online or in a strategy guide) to beat an encounter until you find out what it entails, specifically, die, then reload to do it correctly the next time. When I run into 7 heavily-armored Ogres for the first time ever, I should know what options I have against heavy armor. Then, when they start moving really fast, or using certain abilities, I should know what that means for me and my party and my options. The difficulty comes from the time/efficiency constraints. "Did you figure out a way to not-die before they killed you, and did you come up with effective enough tactics, with what you've got at your disposal, to take them down before you ran out of resources?" See, easier fights don't require as much precision/accuracy in tactics. Harder fights mean that if you just spam fireballs, you're out of spells well before the things are dead, etc. I'll say it again... if you think it's fun to have to die at least once before you can even know what you should possibly do to combat something, then more power to you. But if you think the absence of that is just easy combat, then I think you're crazy and are ignoring an awful lot of combat design factors. Firstly, there it is again! Didn't know I'd get TWO side-step arguments! 8D! I didn't say you beat everything in one go. But it's possible to, if you're skilled enough, rather than requiring information that you cannot obtain from the game itself without first blindly entering combat with your best tactics, then finding out something you wouldn't have known until after you already screwed up too big a portion of the combat to come back from. If it's possible to beat every encounter without dying, then you'd do so by changing your tactics and adapting to circumstances, not by knowing all the steps to the dance from the get-go because you saw them already in a past life before reloading the game. I don't understand what you're even saying here. You're applying all kinds of words arbitrarily to other stuff. When did I ever express the desire to have all combats be identical in their victory conditions?

No... no no no... Okay, let me try this a different way. Does everyone in the entire world have soul powers? And does everyone do everything with soul powers? Like, people walk around, not using muscles to do the walking, but with soul magic that "telekinetically" animates their legs into bipedal locomotion? If so, then... well, that's kind of a bland world. If not, then obviously there's a subset of people who either have soul powers that are too weak to do as much as they could do with their own physical bodies, or simply lack soul powers altogether. Thus, these people still retain physical capabilities, do they not? If so, then this is something represented in the game world.. Thus, it's acknowledging that people come in various shapes and sizes, and have various strengths and weaknesses of physiology, regardless of the possession and/or potency of soul magic. So, the question is, do we just pretend that the only thing that exists is soul power and not even implement anything that ever even acknowledges the differences in people? Or do we actually differentiate between what's "magical" and what isn't? Does that make sense? If they don't want to do it, then fine. But what I'm pointing out is the fact that the world bears factors that are affected by that distinction, and that doesn't change just because you pretend the distinction doesn't exist. In the Wheel of Time, there's a blue root called forkroot that inhibits people's abilities to use magic, essentially. So, people find themselves in situations where they've been drugged with this forkroot. The ones who rely solely on their magical abilities have no need for honing their physical bodies, so, with their magic taken away, they're basically useless. However, others have actually trained with swords and exercised, and are capable of a lot more, even without their magical abilities. With just "Might," and no distinction between physical and magical capability, you cannot have that situation, or any even remotely similar situation, anywhere in the entire game or its story. OR, if you do, the stat makes it redundant. "Oh no, you can't use magic here! So we can't check your Might... you can still physical means, though! Better check your Might, u_u... Oh look! Same value! 8D!" Also, checking class doesn't solve anything. All that would do would ignore the fact that a Wizard COULD be both big and strong AND magically potent. Like in D&D. I always play a Wizard in D&D campaigns, and I usually take a bit more Strength than most people, and it's helped out a lot before. Someone starts going crazy? Strength check. Yep, I can restrain them with my arms and we can dose them with something, instead of my wasting some spell on them. Maybe I can carry something that no one else can because everyone else's injured or something. Etc. There are plenty of things that can't be done with magic that CAN be done by physical means, and vice versa, and I don't think just letting magic power do literally everything in the entire world and checking it as separate from physical capability is a very good idea, ideally. It eliminates an entire subset of possible scenarios/factors/situations. Nothing does. I... think you didn't understood the point of that example. It was, "If you wouldn't merge these two obviously separate aspects, so why merge physical and magical capabilities into one measurement?" It's not the writers that determine such things, anyway. They write the scenario, and the mechanics allow them to write an accompanying line for something. How can they write one line for a reaction to a hideous character, and one line for a reaction to a beautiful character, for example, if there's no measurement of character beauty to check against? So, yeah, it would be different if magical and physical damage were influence by different attributes. If they have the time to write different outcomes for a given check, then they have the time to do so. Yet, even having the time, if they have no way of checking against just one or the other, then they can't tie those lines of text to the actual attribute system.

So... a dragon's claw-swipe knocks you across the room and deals 50 damage, but that has nothing to do with the dragon's being much more powerful than, say, a bandit, whose attack doesn't knock you across the room and only does 10 damage? Also, for what it's worth, I think a percentage is way more effective as something like a Strength modifier than hard numbers. That's sort of a tertiary point, though. The decision I'm making doesn't need all those specifics laid out in front of me, because it is the nature of the abstracted game mechanics of an RPG ruleset to measure everything separately, then have a constant method of interaction. For example... DnD. Is it a ranged weapon? Then your DEX modifier affects your chance to hit. It doesn't matter if you're a bowmaster, or don't even know what a bow is. If you lack bow proficiency, then your chance to hit with a bow gets your DEX modifier added, then gets your lack-of-proficiency penalty subtracted, resulting in the final number. That's the nature of the system. It still represents everything fine. If your lack of proficiency gives you -4 to hit, and your DEX modifier is +2, then you end up with -2 to hit. So, you still suck compared to someone who's proficient, but that hardly means your DEX isn't affecting anything. If it wasn't, you'd have -4 instead of -2 as a final result. That's what people don't seem to be getting. The abstraction comes from the simplification of a numerical rating for a bunch of more specific factors. The abstraction is that Strength can be simply measured with a number, which is very difficult to do, realistically. Not that Strength doesn't really do anything in real life, but it suddenly does in a video game, because abstraction. And, actually, you CAN measure Strength in real life. People do it all the time. You set up a science experiment, basically, and test force outputs and the like. Sure, it doesn't measure every possible thing you could possibly do that would rely on some aspect of strength, but it works pretty well. I don't know how to say it any more clearly... Strength is strength, devoid of other factors. A weak person can use leverage to accomplish what a strong person can without leverage. But, then, the strong person can accomplish even more if HE uses leverage, than the weaker person. That's how things work. Just because someone with a crossbow and good aim can pierce an armored guy's heart, and a strong person can't punch that same guy's heart through his armor, doesn't mean that Strength doesn't affect anything ever, and all that matters is the proper usage of a crossbow, for example. There are things that Strong people can do that weaker people cannot do. Which is exactly why it tends to get measured as a stat in RPG rulesets. Is it PERFECTLY measured? No. It's abstracted to a single number. Doesn't mean it's pointless. The two options aren't: 1)It's pointless, or 2)It always affects everything. As if what you're able to do with muscle fiber is completely standalone? "I've been lying in a hospital bed for 7 years, in a coma, and have suffered muscle atrophy, but I CAN JUMP OVER BUILDINGS, BECAUSE I'M JUST AWESOME!" Nay. It's muscle fiber, AND what you can do with it. Again, I'll say, that's the abstraction of a Strength stat. However, proper pressure-point-striking techniques are not part of your Strength stat. They are measured in RPG systems by skill/feats/abilities and the like. If you can punch someone harder with your 10 mega-badass muscle fibers than someone can with their 20 less-badass muscle fibers, then more power to you. You're stronger than that person. That just means that you can't judge a book by its muscle-fiber count. The Strength stat doesn't care how, exactly, you're able to push that heavy thing. It just cares whether or not you can, using yourself and nothing else.

I dunno about getting to choose what everyone'll call you. In my Drawing 101 class, freshman year of college, a guy who was trying to be friendly and remember everyone's names from Monday (this was a Wednesday that this occurred), he greeted me as "Brian" when I walked into class. I laughed and said "My name's actually Andrew, but no worries." The entire class (and even some people outside the class who got wind of this) called me "Brian" for the entire semester, at the very least. People decide what they're going to call you, and why. The player controls his character/party, not everyone else in the world. Maybe you could decide what name to GIVE people when they ask your name, but I don't know that you should decide what people in the world will decide to call you, especially when reputation and the like enter the mix. A very common example in many a fantasy game/book is the application of the title of "lord" to leaders and such. Characters often say "Don't call me 'lord'; I'm not nobility." Yet, people keep on calling them that, for their own reasons.

I don't know that stat "correction" is really an issue, so long as you know up front what's affecting what. Especially with percentages and such. You can't really put points into Might at the beginning of the game, see "+30% damage" out next to it, then 20 hours later go "Wait, I've been building everything to support Accuracy and AOE radius this whole time! I didn't know my Might wasn't helping that! Where can I fix my stats, lest I be doomed to a certainly unavoidable... erm... doom?!" Sure, you might get somewhere and think "Man, I could use a little bit more Accuracy... I figured 12 Dex would do it, but I'd really like to have a bit more crit chance, statistically." But then, that's where items and such come in. Nothing needs to allow you to simply alter your character's innate attributes halfway through the game, is all I'm saying. By the same token, nothing really needs to give you stat points via progression. A few isn't such a big deal, but "get up to 10 more stat points simply be becoming better!" has always been a little weird to me in games.

I hate to tell you, but "multiplayer" and "co-op" are not "two completely different things." That being said, what people are meaning by using these terms seems to be the problem here. I agree with your meaning, and I even agree with co-op play being the ideal setup, but co-op play is multiplayer play. Multiplayer literally means "multiple players." It doesn't mean "Not co-op." Which is the same point, really. But, again, I get your point that co-op is completely different from what a lot of people who keep referring to "multiplayer" are talking about, specifically.

I'll ask again, as well (since I not only answered the question you're asking again, but you failed to answer mine): Why are my only two options encounters that require, by design, multiple attempts just to beat them, or encounters that only ever require 1 attempt to beat? Also, what's wrong with that is the same thing that's wrong with making everyone play on Trial of Iron mode. There's nothing wrong with the very idea of someone wanting to play the game with only one save/life, just as there's nothing wrong with someone enjoying figuring out, reload by reload, how to take down a tough boss/combat encounter. But there's no reason to design these combat encounters in such a manner, so that, the average person, just playing through the game, HAS to die to a group and reload just to have the knowledge necessary to take down that group. So, actually, yeah, I'm gonna go with "It should be possible to beat everything in one go," actually. *Waits for someone to argue against "No one should ever fail to beat something in a single try," instead of what he actually said.* Again... Maybe I'm just weird? But, I'd rather actually best someone at darts by throwing darts better than they do, rather than by having the ability to teleport my dart straight to the bulls-eye, or the ability to simply prevent them from even throwing darts. It'd be really nice to just create 5 permanent clones of myself, too, because I'm such a powerful mage, but that would also kind of defeat the purpose of tactical combat; overcoming limitations. With an ability like Time Stop, it either completely supercedes the challenge of tactical combat, OR the encounters are balanced against it (at some point), so that it becomes a necessary thing just to get through them. In which case, where does that end, and why? "I have a spell that does 1,000,000,000 damage. Now, we'll run into some enemies that have 1,000,000,000 HP, because otherwise my spell would just be super ridiculous." Great, the triangle block goes into the triangular hole. That's the pinnacle of tactical excitement. Truly.

A) This is great. *thumbs up* B) This presents an excellent example to clarify to those folk who think the physical/magical distinction doesn't matter at all (I just want to re-iterate that I'm not trying to bash the system, and I realize that it's a lot simpler the way it is in terms of balancing and mechanic/system coding, etc., and I'm not trying to say "THAT DOESN'T MATTER, FIX THIS ANYWAY!" -- I only want to make my minor concern clear and understood, as some seem to not understand it, exactly) Wouldn't the game suffer if, instead of those various methods above, you simply had a Persuade skill that represented all three of them? Put some points into Persuade? You're now: 1) Better able to intimidate people with physical bullying, 2) Better able to appeal to people's interest in reason and logic 3) Better able to intangibly compel people to believe you due to the sheer conviction of your presence and words. That would be worse than having Might affect physical things, which someone might happen to be intimidated by, having Resolve affect people's compulsion to believe/trust you, and having Intellect affect your ability to use reason and logic, which certain people might be quite concerned with. With Might, what if you, as a Wizard, try to intimidate another Wizard, and he knows the workings of all your spells and has immense magic defense or something, and thusly isn't really worried about magical attacks to his person? OR, what if you try to use a big, burly Fighter to intimidate a bigger, burlier Fighter? He's probably not that worried about you taking him down, but someone who just manifests fire in his hand (a Wizard) or lifts him up into the air without even touching him would probably be pretty scary. With everything jumbled up into Might, those two distinct scenarios don't even exist, because everyone's just either Mighty or they aren't. If you're mighty, you're scary. If you're not Mighty, you're not scary. Going even further, it's a bit like anything else in the game with distinct, contributing factors. Race. What if someone HATES godlike, AND Orlans, and you're a godlike Orlan? Wouldn't you want a system that represents that, as opposed to just shrugging and saying "You've got decent Resolve, so this person trusts you just as well as they'd trust anyone else who WASN'T a godlike Orlan, u_u"? Reputation. Well, this faction isn't very fond of you, BUT, this individual within this faction happens to be smitten with witty folk, and you're quite witty, so you get the combination result of their faction rep + their liking of your wittiness. So, I just don't see how Might offering absolutely no distinction between burliness and magic is somehow completely inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Again (because people don't seem to see this when I say it), I don't think it's the biggest problem ever, or that the entire character system is screwed up because of it, but I simply think that, ideally, there'd be a distinction, and the game would benefit a bit from that distinction. All that being said... @Josh, if I might ask, is there a plan for such non-combat-damage-related situations and interactions in relation to Might? Is it just going to be a Might-check no matter the circumstances (ignoring the specifics of anything being physical or magical, or affected by that distinction at all) for things such as Intimidate, or moving heavy debris, or throwing something really far, etc.? I'm okay with the system as is, if that's how it's got to be, but I'm just curious how that will be handled, is all.

I'm sure they've gotta have some kind of regulation on those, for balancing purposes. Otherwise, everyone could just design The Magical Weapon of +7,000,000, and the devs would just have to shrug and tweak the entire system to work with those item designs. I don't think balancing will be too big of a deal with those. It's no different than if they had designed them themselves, in terms of deciding where to make them available and where to put them, etc.

Why is everything either one extreme or the other? Oh, so because I don't want a bout of combat that's basically try 17 different things that are intelligent and tactical plans, but all fail, so I reload each and every time, then find the one strategy that the encounter was designed specifically to be beaten by, somehow that means I want combat to be easy? There's a difference between the game having tough combat encounters that to raise the bar for victory, and having encounters that hide the bar in the woods like an easter egg in an easter egg hunt, and have you simply search for it until you find it, at which point you win. Combat has puzzle aspects, surely, but I think when it becomes a puzzle, it's crossed the line. A puzzle only has one solution. Combat is more than just a puzzle. For the love of all that is holy... extent. If you taste a meal, and it's too salty, you can adjust the recipe to have less salt. Your only 2 options aren't: A) The amount of salt currently in there, or B) Absolutely no salt.