Lephys

Just for what it's worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll "Later, in Scandinavian folklore, trolls become defined as a particular type of being.[6] Numerous tales about trolls are recorded, in which they are frequently described as being extremely old, very strong, but slow and dim-witted, and are at times described as man-eaters and as turning to stone upon contact with sunlight.[7] However, trolls are also attested as looking much the same as human beings, without any particularly hideous appearance about them, but where they differ is in that they live far away from human habitation, and, unlike the rå and näck—who are attested as "solitary beings", trolls generally have "some form of social organization". Where they differ, Lindow adds, is that they are not Christian, and those that encounter them do not know them. Therefore trolls were in the end dangerous, regardless of how well they may get along with Christian society, and trolls display a habit of bergtagning ('kidnapping'; literally "mountain-taking") and overrunning a farm or estate.[8] While noting that the etymology of the word "troll" remains uncertain, John Lindow defines trolls in later Swedish folklore as "nature beings" and as "all-purpose otherworldly being, equivalent, for example, to fairies in Anglo-Celtic traditions" and that they "therefore appear in various migratory legends where collective nature-beings are called for"." Highlighted in orange are the sections pertaining to the P:E troll design being perfectly in-line with even old Scandinavian folklore regarding trolls: They look remarkably humanoid (instead of looking vastly different from people), and are very much "nature-beings." Again I say, If you just don't like that concept for a troll, then awesome. More power to ya. No one's here to tell you what you should like. But, to say that they "don't look like trolls," or argue that there is some objective problem with their design in clashing with established troll mythology/lore is just plain silly.

No no, it's perfectly fair to judge an unfinished work. It's not fair to judge it as a finished work. Saying "Hey, since I don't know what you guys are going to do to it in the paintover, here are a bunch of suggestions!" is a whole different animal from "OMG, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK THIS SCREENSHOT IS COMPLETE! YOUR WHOLE ART TEAM ARE NOOBZ, AND SHOULD BE FIRED!" They don't think the screenshot is finished, so the people who keep saying things like that are wasting their own time, and being a bit dickish, honestly.

A) If it was original, then it wouldn't look ANYTHING like any other troll you've ever seen before, and you'd still be displeased. B) I dare you to come up with a creature that you can't say resembles some combination of other things. C) You do realize that horns and tree roots/wood are REMARKABLY similar in form, right? Why do you think nature-based creatures tend to get that treatment? Again, I understand your preferences but don't see any kind of subjective case, here, against P:E's troll design. I'm really not seeing how P:E trolls are to other trolls as a flying bunny is to a dragon. Because they're not bigger? Almost every single troll depiction I've ever seen has them as differing sizes. Tell me... how big is a demon? What should a demon look like? What does a dryad look like, and what does it not look like? Same for an elemental? Should a fire elemental be made out of pure fire? Or should it be more substantial, like lava rock? Should it have a liquid body of molten rock/metal? Maybe it's made out of crystals? What shape should it be? How tall should it be? Should it walk, or float magically?

True, but, how do you even know if the "fullness" of Expert Mode is appealing to you or not if we don't even know what the fullness entails, exactly? How do I know if I'm going to pick the olives off my pizza if I don't even know whether or not the pizza comes with olives? So, at this point, I can only truthfully say that I'm interested in playing Expert Mode, as opposed to "I'm definitely going to play Expert Mode." An interest is not a decision. If the "fullness" of it eliminates any and all combat log details/feedback, then yeah, I'm probably going to toggle that off, just like I would toggle off "give all NPCs goofy cartoon cat heads" if that were also a part of the full Expert Mode setting list. For more than just subjective reasons.

I understand your intention. It's the reasoning behind it you've seemingly failed to convey. My bad, that was poorly worded. "Because it doesn't make any sense for you to arbitrarily march all the way to some location to the point of depriving yourself of sleep/rest for no other reason than that you have less than 8 hours of spare time but are arbitrarily incapable of resting for less than 8 hours." Fixed it. You're suggesting that any time you're in a rush, it makes sense to either sleep as long as you always do, or COMPLETELY forego rest all-together. So, any time you've ever had to work late, or stay up about an hour late for some reason, you just decided "Hmm... I could just sleep for 7 hours instead of 8, and still get up on time to go to work, but... nah, I'll just STAY UP ALL NIGHT! Might as well. I mean, I'm only going to get 7 hours of sleep." You've brought up some valid concerns for such a fatigue system, but, I'm sorry to say that being able to rest for not-8-hours is not one of them. If other factors (such as the frequency of campsite rest points, for the sake of replenishing health and spells, for example) are going to render it moot, then just don't have fatigue in at all. It's NEVER going to affect you unless it sets in after like 5 hours of being awake, in which case you're bending it to suit the mechanic's needs so far that you're not even representing fatigue anymore. You've invented some kind of uber-chronic fatigue that requires resting every 5 hours in an otherwise reality-based world. For what? So that people couldn't easily circumvent fatigue by using sensical rest options? Since when were fractions complicated? Rested for 4 hours instead of 8? Restore total Health/spells * .50. It doesn't exactly require some quantum physics or elaborate inn-resting options. I'm not asking for a system that asks "how long would you like to rest?" and allows you input pi. Just hourly resting. It's in oodles of other games, and yet the world hasn't ended. The problem here is, I'm attempting to present a specific situation in which you should be able to rest for a reasonable amount of time that just so happens to be less than 8 hours, but you're using this example back against me as if I'm suggesting that NO scenario should ever require you to choose between a fatigue penalty and time running out on some objective/situation. That isn't the case. See a reasonable argument might even be "Okay, but here's a bunch of reasons why I don't think the system would ever allow for a scenario in which you wouldn't get to rest the penalty away." But, instead, you're not even acknowledging the fact that, in some situations, it doesn't make sense that you'd NEED to rest for 8 hours, but it might still make sense to rest. That last part? How is 2 hours of sleep always going to allow you to circumvent the penalty? 2 hours of sleep is only going to negate 2 hours worth of weariness. So, in 2 more hours, you're going to be back to where you were. The travel time on the world map is just to get TO your location. Once you get there, you might have a 5-hour (again, in-game hours, just to be clear) situation ahead of you. You're argument assumes that, once you reach your destination, the time limit has been beaten, and you can rest to your heart's content, so there's never a risk of becoming fatigued after you've gotten to where you're traveling. You're arguing against what I'm not even arguing FOR. Please objectively tell me why something's a problem, and not "you SHOULD have to rest for 8 hours or nothing at all!", because I hardly doubt that's the basis for your line of reasoning. I have a feeling its more with the concern that the system will make the fatigue penalty moot, in which case, let's figure out if it will or not.

This^ See, the thing about DPS comparisons is that they tend to be RAW data, devoid of all the factors that exist in an actual combat encounter, in actual gameplay. Think of it as taking all the classes out to a target dummy that measures sheer offensive damage output. That's going to tell you how much damage you can dish out with your given tools, but you're not measuring how effectively you can put out that damage. Basically, a Rogue (for example) will do more straight damage, in general, than a Fighter, but more of the Rogue's time will be spent avoiding direct, face-to-face conflict with one or more enemy combatants. Meanwhile, the Fighter, doing less straight damage by the second, will spent much more of his time standing toe-to-toe (to toe to toe... to toe... ) with one or more (most likely more) combatants, dishing it out to them (while defending others and sort of getting all up in people's grills). So, not that that is going to cancel out perfectly, and both the Rogue and the Fighter are going to end up with the same effective DPS. BUT, you can't just look at numbers and say "so, wait, the Rogue can dish out 50DPS, but the Fighter can only dish out 20? So, every single second of combat, my Rogue's going to have dealt 30 more damage than my Fighter will have dealt!", because that's not how it works, and that's not what raw DPS comparisons are for (unless you're playing an MMO... a-burrrrrnnnn! No no, I'm joking, ).

The thing is, saying "that doesn't look like your typical troll" is like saying "that doesn't look like your typical demon." Look at all the different cultural depictions of demons, and tell me there's a "typical" one in there. Granted, I don't know that trolls have QUITE as varied of a depiction set as demons, but, still. Now, that isn't to say you can't prefer one look or another, but that's a completely different thing from pretending like all the variety is somehow just trying to steal the name from some ultimate, original troll concept. I bet the first-ever ideas of a creature known as a "troll" look nothing like what we'd consider a "classic" troll.

Seriously people... They're not claiming to show us a finished product. These are production screenshots. When they specifically say "And this is totally perfect and finished, and we don't think anything else needs to be done to it! 8D!", THEN you can worry about judging the crap out of their design decisions. Constructive criticism is one thing. "I can't believe you think this is what the finished game should look like" when they haven't at all stated such, isn't it.

It was an exaggeration, the "super paranoid" bit. It's a simple question of "why go into combat with fatigue penalties when you could EASILY go into combat without them?" You see, you might go into combat without full health or something, because you had to progress through a series of encounters in order to become injured. SO, in the case of P:E, maybe you don't want to backtrack to a campsite JUST to be at 100% health instead of 70, at the point you've progressed to. Whereas, in BG and such, you just had a "be 100% again" button. With the only detriment being "you might get attacked if you try this on-the-fly." But, with fatigue, you just become fatigued "because time." So, specifically in BG, you became fatigued after a specific amount of time had passed since you last rested. You'd ENTER an area fatigued. So, my question there was, why would you just shrug that off and not rest BEFORE even doing anything significant? It doesn't make any sense to just roll with it at that point, because it doesn't make any sense for you to arbitrarily march all the way to some location to the point of depriving yourself of sleep/rest. Yes, that's going a bit deep into the system. Simply knowing how long you've been awake is not the same thing as somehow innately knowing how far poison is progressing in your system. In BG, the game already kept up with the progression of fatigue. It simply did not show the player. Are you cool with the game keeping up with such a thing in such a fashion, but adamantly against the player having any knowledge of how tired their characters are (or how tired X hours of traveling is going to make them)? And if so, why? If not, please explain. Whether or not someone clicks "rest for 8 hours" or not is not the question here. Whether or not they should have more options than that, or be limited to that as an option, is the question. Where did I say people could blame someone for willingly choosing to spend an extra 8 hours on a trip when they're in a hurry (for game world reasons)? And how do you not see the problem I'm pointing out? If you have 12 hours (in-game hours) before something happens, and it takes 7 hours to travel to where it's going to happen (to stop it, for example), but you've already not-rested for, I dunno... 12 hours (due to circumstances beyond your control), so that that 7 hours of travel is going to result in your whole party being fatigued, then why wouldn't you want to have the option of spending 7 hours traveling, but rest for 3-or-4 hours (specifically so that you're not tired, +7 more hours of tired)? And, since when was the ability to sleep/rest for not-an-extremely-specific-amount-of-time, ONLY, some kind of complex realism simulation aspect? Plenty of games have had "choose how long you want to rest" interface options, AND had time-limits in-game. Fallout, for example. Was Fallout some overboard reality simulation? Also, I don't know... would 1 hour restore all spells? Maybe it wouldn't. What does that have to do with whether or not an hour of rest would make you less tired, as opposed to non-stop travel/"adventuring" without even that one hour of downtime? "Why would we even want a variable rest-timer?"? I dunno. Why would you want a variable ANYTHING? Do you want to cast ALL your spells, or just one of them? Do you want to wait 'til morning, or just wait in fixed segments until you get really close to morning, then manually sit around and actually wait for 2 more in-game hours until a certain time when something happens? The better question is: "If time is of any importance, and you have the option to pass more or less of it with an action, why WOULDN'T you want it to be variable?"

Haha, they're not crazy. And yes, I agree that there's a very big "balance" (for lack of a better word) element to it. It's not as simple as "well, if there's a beneficial effect you COULD have, but it's in any way temporary, then it's just a chore because you're always going to want it as opposed to not-having it!" Hmm... another thing that could be done would be to sort of merge the idea of durability with the idea of "buff" (in this case, item status) duration. You sharpen your sword, and instead of just de-sharpening on its own, the "buff" doesn't wear off until its used. Basically, you'd have a certain number of charges (to use common video game terms) of Keen Edge (like... 100?). That way, that's probably going to last you a while, so it's not "Omg, has it been 15 minutes? Better re-buff my stuff!", but, at the same time, it functions like a buff, so it's not REALLY durability, per se. It's just a different way of handling the temporaryness of the buff-effect duration. Honestly, I prefer the charge-based thing for almost any temporary effect (almost), even if there's still reason for time to eventually cause it to wear off, as well (like a spell shield... that's probably going to fade after 8 hours or something, if you don't get hit 5 times, or however many times it'll protect you). But, I digress... I think two things are key: 1) Don't make it a chore via frequency of necessity. 2) Don't make it so readily available that you feel like you're being lazy if you DON'T constantly maintain the effect. So, there's got to be some kind of limitation in place for using it to be a significant decision. Either you only have so many whetstones (or uses, rather) that get consumed as they're used, or you can only use the whetstone so often (if it doesn't get used up when you use it, because it abstractly lasts for eternity). And/or, you can only stop and sharpen your sword when you rest or something (because you can't sit there and give it 100 strokes on each side of the blade with a whetsone while you're trekking around where hostile things lurk, etc.). It's all a little abstracted, because video game mechanics. But, I think those things are key, however such a thing is handled. PS. I REALLY like durability, and I'm admittedly trying to sort of work it into the game without actually putting it in the game (a la "Awwww, my sword died!"). Oooh! You could even use chance. Keen Edge on that blade? +10% chance of causing the Bleeding effect -- 100 charges. Maybe when it gets down to 80 charges, the chance drops to 8%. 60, 6%. 40, 4%, and so on, and so forth. But then, if you re-sharpen it at 40 charges, it goes back to 100, so you're only getting 60 charges out of that limited (in whatever way) whetstone use, however much it cost you. So, what's more important right now: that extra chance of bleed effects? Or not-spending that whetstone right now (so that you don't have to buy another one, or you have it for later, etc.)? That sort of decision. Those numbers could be COMPLETELY changed. It was just an example of how chance could be used, AND how the diminishing nature of durability could be applied to things like sharpening (functionally implemented as item buffs rather than character buffs). Annnnnywho. I could be crazy, and I have no excuse.

@JFSOCC: I think my words overshot their meaning, according to your "but...", because I fully agree with there being many a reason to have prolonged quest effects/consequences. I was only calling out "to prevent save scumming" as not really being one of them, all things considered. @Hassat: Exactly my sentiments. I feel really silly when I even think of clarifying/explaining such things, thinking "Surely no one would suggest we should just arbitrarily change short-term quests into long-term ones JUST to deter save scumming," but then I realize that I can't really assume that. So, yeah, again, there are more people reading this stuff than just those of us immediately posting in a given thread, so it's more of a "just-in-case" elaboration on our given topic of discussion. @teknoman2: I understood what you meant, and didn't mean to imply confusion on my part. Like I said, it pleases me that not-seeing significant effects of your decisions until hours later all but prevents people from reloading to pick the choice that gets them the results they want, and I realize that you probably didn't mean it that way (and by your further comments, you clearly didn't mean it that way). But, I just wouldn't call it a reason to prolong quest/choice effects/consequences, as I can't think of any time I'd do that without one or more other reasons to do so. Like you said, when it IS done (for reasons other than just to prevent save scumming), save scumming is pretty much prevented, as a beneficial side effect.

True of many games, but in P:E, I think they're more part of the class, itself, and less your +1 on your RSVP. 8P "Go for the optics, Chiktikka! Go for the optics!" I think it's the Rangers, themselves, that generate the DPS, whether or not they happen to be using a given bow. A Navy SEAL has much higher DPS with a butter knife than I do with a military-grade combat knife.

What if there was an intermediate stage? You know, "You're not really a pro at trap-finding, but you're being cautious enough to notice evidence of traps, so you can't actually find/disarm them, but you get a defense-roll bonus against any of those traps in this immediate area" kind of thing? That might be neat. "I know there's a trap here, but I'm not really sure where it is, exactly." *shrug* Or something of that nature.

That just got me thinking... I know they've said that "godlike" will basically be a subrace option for any character creation races, but... will we bump into godlike humanoid (or even non-humanoid?) creatures out in the world? I mean, if Trolls are intelligent, why would all of the gods completely refrain from affecting anyone but the character-creation races?

I think this is basically a separate website where you can upgrade your pledge. Don't know why everyone is so excited about it. I thought it was like a town portal, only it took us to Obsidian's offices, so that we can all become unpaid interns for the dev team if we so choose. Hmm... so it's a website?

Suffice it to say you were... oblivious... to the existence of that typo?

^ It looks to me like the main problem with the shadows, in that particular screenshot, is simply that they don't appear to affect the trolls' feet, thus, the feet appear to be above (in front of) the shadows, even when one troll is casting a shadow onto another troll. Other than that, they're not bad, really. Although, I'm sure this isn't meant to be a "this is exactly how everything'll look finalized" shot, and I join in Sensuki's curiosity, now that he's asked that specific question.

Well, at the cost of sounding overly technical, teknoman described long-term (as opposed to short-term) consequences as "an easy way to avoid the latter" (save scumming). So, while it is true that a beneficial result of long-term effects of choices would be that it's all but impossible to save-scum 3 hours of gameplay to redo a choice, I wouldn't really call it a "way to avoid" save scumming, since you're not really ever implementing a long-term choice specifically for that reason. You're never just going to take a quest you've already designed, that had short-term consequences, and override the other reasons for its design by giving it long-term consequences instead, as a method of preventing save scumming. So, yeah, even though it's a beneficial side effect, it's not really a good reason, as it is nullified by pretty much any other reason for quest-consequence design. I realize teknoman may not have intended that meaning, specifically, but when I'm uncertain, I just-in-case clarify.

Not the first time I've seen that typo.

They could call those guards "valkyries." The woods are many years after their burning by the drakes. Burnt wood would have disappeared log ago. Yeah, I think the little "drakes burned this place" lore lesson was to explain the sparseness/shortness of all the flora in that area, to avoid any "Hey, that's not an accurate representation of a wilderness! Stuff would be grown up WAY farther than that!"

I don't understand. You want the game to tell you when you're injured, right? So, why not when you're tired? Do your characters not realize they're growing weary, hour-by-hour, then, suddenly, they suffer -2 to all stats in a spontaneous fit of fatigue? Besides, you say seeing it would cause everyone to just rest at 90%, and the mechanic would be pointless. But, if you don't show it, you think people aren't just going to paranoidly rest whenever they get the chance (basically at 50%, etc.) and err on the side of caution? Who's just going to go "Well, I can't see the gauge, but I can pretty much rest at a bunch of opportunities... You know what? Let's just keep going and see what happens, 8D!" Besides, I'd like to see it be more of a gradual penalty than a "you're fine... NOW YOU'RE SUPER FATIGUED!" penalty. If it's in. This is all built upon itself. IF you can rest while traveling, then it should add to travel time. If travel time matters, then you should be able to choose to not-rest while traveling. So, if you can choose, then you should probably be able to choose some manner of variable time, so you don't run into situations in which you hit the "need to rest during this trip" by 1 hour, only to tack on 8 hours of sleep to a 7-hour trip (more than doubling the initial trip time, when time is of the essence). IF all this stuff is in place, then you should probably get to see how tired you are when choosing these things, so you're not just blindly guessing. If you can't see how far from fatigue, say, 3 hours of rest is going to put you, then why should you see how it's going to affect the trip length in relation to some urgent matter you're dealing with? So, again, if's. If there's not really a way to feasibly incorporate a weariness mechanic (say, because you'll be resting so often that it won't matter anyway), then maybe it shouldn't even be a thing. *shrug* We started this line of thinking with the example of your characters arriving at a place exhausted, like in BG. Thus, the basis for all this was the already-existing implementation of time-based fatigue. If the fatigue would be rendered moot by the ease of options to rest to avoid it, then maybe it shouldn't exist in the first place. I don't think "let's just remove the characters' awareness of their own tiredness so that the mechanic will be applicable" is a very wise decision.

*shrug*. I think the P:E trolls are pretty great. I've always like the very nature-y troll concept much more than the "this is basically a bigger orc-type-thing, usually with horns and/or tusks." I'm not sure, but I think troll-type creatures are in oodles of cultures' legends and folklore, and they're usually more affiliated with nature. The ones from the Witcher 2 are really good examples, as well as the troll from the Snow White and the Huntsman film. I realize that's a lot of subjectivity at play, but I personally think the "big greenskinned orc-like variants" idea is overdone by games, and I prefer the more nature-entity trolls.

No worries. I wasn't trying to fault you for its being in there or anything. Like I said, a very good system for just being thrown together pretty quickly. I personally rather enjoy exploring implementations of durability, but I just figured that since P:E won't be using it, that we should "remove" it and explore alternatives. Or just to put it simply, to do all our system speculation for a system that doesn't use actual equipment degradation, per se. The only concern with the "take a whetstone to your weapons for a bonus" thing is that it'll become one of those chore buffs. Basically, you'll just stock up on whetstones, and sharpen your swords every in-game couple of hours. It's like all the tedium of actual durability, without the depth of actual durability. *shrug*. But then, that can be said of any system that allows for one state that's better than another (whether it's 100/100 durability versus 30/100 durability, or keen edge "buff" versus no keen edge buff). *shrug*... I think maybe the trick with things like that is to make the feasibility range lower (non-keen edge is the norm against which the difficulty baseline is established, but having a keen edge still provides benefits when you DO have it), then make it a rarer thing (you can only sharpen your weapons back at town, or so often, etc.). So that it's basically not feasible to try and sharpen your weapons every single fight, etc. (Kind of like what P:E's doing with Health/Stamina and restricted resting, versus rest-wherever). Or, you could have something like "keen edge" provide some circumstantial benefit. You know, "extra damage against such-and-such armor type," or "extra bleed chance against enemies that bleed." Etc. So that it's not just universally "this sword does more damage, no matter what," and it's less of a "every second I spend with an unsharpened blade is damage I'm missing out on" situation. Sorry... I know you were just using the Witcher as an example/reference. I just... analyze things. *beep boop blip*

Totally. I'm so much more worried about the character intra-actions.

Those aren't "bushes" (except maybe at the campsite... maybe)... They're weeds. Poofy weeds. Notice how they don't actually grow out of the dirt/wheel-rut areas of the road/path, but instead from the little spots in between. Weeds/plants like that can shoot up to that height/size in a matter of about a week. Also notice how that path (in the first shot) kind of just ends, as though it was ONCE traveled heavily enough to have made a good dirt road there, but has now been mostly neglected for some time. Unless wagons were rolling over those plants every hour or something, they're going to just keep growing and spreading out atop the dirt road. There are bushy plants like that that grow in the flowerbeds right outside my apartment, and they extend across half-or-more of the sidewalk running in front of them, even though they aren't growing out of the sidewalk. And, having grown up in the Boy Scouts, I can say I've been to many a campsite where weeds and plants have grown up INSIDE the circle-of-stones built around campfire sites to prevent the spread of fire. There's often a good foot-or-so of space between the stones and the actual burny stuff (when a fire IS going), so that stuff starts growing there very shortly after the campfire is dormant. Maybe you wouldn't want to start a fire there... until you very quickly-and-easily pull up or cut that little plant out of the way. But, nature is nature, man. What can I say... Between that and the whole "that probably still needs to be finalized by the paintover stage," I don't see anything really being a silly design choice. Oh, and, sorry, but I'm required to make this joke: Major update? This was more like a Private First Class update! I jest, of course. "Awwww" to the delay of the more major stuff, but, understandable. Thanks for the awesome artwork show, and I hope you all (the team) have a splendid Thanksgiving! ^_^