Lephys

Why not crafted by order and specificity, and garnished/seasoned with randomness?

I'm disappointed in your lack of disappointment. I think something needs to be altered in the design, then announced, such that you, TOO, shall share in the sigh-worthy, doomsaying nitpickery! 0_0... Onnnne offf US! Onnne offf US! Onnnne offf US! *shambles creepily towards Calmar* Seriously though, ... Why not spend all that imagination energy INSTEAD imagining a game in which Candlekeep chores are not even xp-worthy quests? I'm sincerely asking. In conjunction with your clever and diligent utilization of your characters and their skills and abilities (and those stats), yes. And if it's less random, then wouldn't there be FAR worse odds of you managing to make your way through an entire dungeon without having a pretty good idea of your capability of facing what's to come? You may have heard that, but that's not very accurate. Think of it this way: Up there, you just dreaded having to do all the chores in Candlekeep just to get enough XP to not fall behind in progression. Well, imagine, instead, that you had to KILL everyone in Candlekeep, just to do so. That's one of the reasons they're doing it this way. Besides, just like I said, you shouldn't HAVE to do either. So, they've simply decided that, only certain things are going to give you XP, and certain other things aren't. And, obviously, if you made it to the end of the game, then you accomplished all the stuff before that to get that far, right? So, why not base xp-rewards around accomplishment? Also, there's absolutely no functional difference between saying "everything you kill gives you XP... EXCEPT this guy and this guy, and this thing after you've turned in a quest, etc." and simply saying "Only things that are considered progress objectives, in some form, and labeled thusly in the game code give you XP," then not-labeling killing that guy after the quest has been turned in as any sort of progress. And the latter is much easier to organize, as it pretty much covers anything you'd ever want to do. Why label an entire category of stuff as XP-worthy, then hand-pick out all the stuff you don't want, then label lots of other types of things as XP-worthy, too, when you could simply hand-pick all the stuff you want to be XP-worthy, and leave out the stuff you don't? You hear a lot of bits and pieces, . I think the mechanic design has undergone some changes since you read that. I'm not sure if it's finalized, though. But, either way, the very REASON it's not already finalized is because Josh tests things to make sure they don't just work and sound nice in theory, but in actual application. That's why he wanted to get rid of misses (his hypothesis was that the game would be better without them), then, through actual scientific method, he decided that it's best if they were diminished a bit as compared to the old IE games, but not diminished out of existence. So, the very fact that they're so concerned with making sure there's interesting damage-type-versus-armor-type mechanics WITHOUT making this a huge chore that screws you over if you don't constantly switch weapons every 3 seconds is a pretty big reason to NOT worry, if you ask me. You're perfectly welcome to your opinion and all, but I just hate to see people worry SO much over something they COULD be quite excited about, instead (minus the worry, even if they're currently worried AND excited in equal parts), especially when there's nothing specifically to worry that much about. It's one thing to have a cut and say "I'm worried this won't quit bleeding," and another thing to say "I heard there are going to be sharp things in existence, and therefore I'm ultra worried that I'm going to get a cut, AND that it won't stop bleeding." You're worrying about things that aren't even designed the way you think they are, to be honest. As are a lot of other people. I would just save all that concern until one of the updates is "We really liked the Candlekeep chore quests, and we hope to fill the game with quests just like those. Also, we don't want killing anything to EVER be a part of any kind of XP gains. Also, we want you to switch weapons all the time or die. We're even going to put in Resident-Evil-style quick-time events JUST for switching weapons, so that if you hit plate armor with a dagger, you not only fail to do damage, but you INSTANTLY DIE AND LOSE! 8D!" Okay, I'm being a little silly, but, really, they've simply announced vague systems that COULD be horribly, horribly implemented. But ANY system could be horribly implemented. They could turn around and say "We're putting kill XP back in, and ONLY kill XP," and that would be just as bad. No quest XP, ever. Only slaughtering stuff gets you XP. But, if were going for kill XP, I wouldn't be in here talking about how worried I am that they're going to go that far with it, because the extreme has nothing to do with the method. Anything can be taken to the extreme. And I don't want all armor and weapons to do the same bland damge just because allowing them to deal/absorb differing damages in different circumstances COULD be really stupidly implemented so as to become really annoying, because... so could one damage type and one armor type. That could be horribly imbalanced, and have you wishing you had a weapon that did extra damage against heavily armored foes, because you're running around doing 3 damage to some 45-armor enemy with your 35-damage weapon.

The update is actually just going to be that they're announcing the official initialization of Skynet. Seriously, though... that's a good idea. I would love to see gameplay footage with someone who can actually show off all the features and specifics doing the piloting.

Well, for one thing, the forced perspective fully supports the tactical nature of combat, as everything is always designed with the same camera angle in mind. There's never even the potential for you to have the camera in a bad spot and simply miss what's going on in some kind of ambush or something. I'm not going to say you can't have tactical combat in a game that ISN'T isometric, but, admittedly, employing tactics in a game like Dragon Age is a bit trickier. Granted, you could always have the majority of the game be 3D 3rd-or-1st-person, then cut to a fixed perspective once combat begins, if you wanted "the best of both worlds." But, alas, there are several other areas in which isometric excels for this type of game. I don't think trying to pick one over the other (fully 3D or isometric) is really all that valuable, as that's like trying to decide whether or not steel-toed boots or athletic shoes are the best shoes to always wear. It really depends on what you're trying to do, and I'd see an industry in which we get to safely work in a rough environment without smashing our feet AND get to maintain good foot support and grip when playing tennis, than one in which we just try to smash all that together.

What about "Distillers of Nocturnity"? "Spillers of Discernity?". Oww... I think I just strained some ligaments with that reach. I'm fairly certain those aren't even words.

But how much "well"? Tell me how do you feel if you ate too much - fancy fighting monsters? I would consider not-well-fed to be "I had some trail mix so I wouldn't collapse and die from burning 1,500 calories a day keeping things from killing me whilst I trekked from that city 73 miles away to this one with limited rations," and well-fed to be "I actually got to sit down and have a proper meal, with variety and nutrients and whatnot, so that I'll not suffer fatigue in the next 12-16 hours from a severe lack of the things my body needs to keep me energized and/or rebuild and repair after a long day of surviving bandit attacks and there's no telling what else." And yes, I realize it's a little abstracted, but there is a decent overall difference between just stuffing some quick calories in you and actually getting to eat proper food, in the ongoing efforts of your body to keep up with prolonged exertion from things like "adventuring." Also, that's why I think it would make more sense to be an augmentation for a rest bonus; you're well-fed, and then you rested, so your body actually processed that food. Not "Okay, we just had a huge feast... NOW LET'S GO RUN SOME LAPS AND SLAY SOME DRAGONS! 8D!"

Failion makes a good point, though. You just have to make sure you're only allowed to be A bad guy, and not THE bad guy. If you're allowed to be THE bad guy, it just clashes with the rest of the setup. You can't be allowed to become a bigger priority threat than whatever craziness is threatening the world, or it's no longer any semblence of a specific narrative, and is now a stronghold simulator, in which you just kind of do what you want, and the rest of the world exists only to react satisfyingly to your choices (almost like a god sim). There's nothing wrong with a game like that, but it can't be that AND a deliberate narrative. It's just one of those fine lines: at what point do you go from unpleasant-but-effective to seemingly-unstoppable-evil-tyrant-with-God-knows-what-goals-in-mind? I don't care how badly you still want to prevent some huge threat/problem from devastating the entire realm, and how much help you're offering with that; if you walk into someone's house and tear their child in half, then say "Sorry, I just like doing that. Okay, so come help me get rid of this bad guy, alright, 8D?!", they're just going to try and kill you. I can assure you that, at that point, their fear and loathing of you is far more powerful than their cares about the state of the world. Not saying you're suggesting tearing people's children in half, then asking them for favors, specifically. I just want to make a point about levels of evil.

If only there were Bards... Then, I'd have their instrument strings critically fail in the same manner. Suddenly, that song isn't inspiring quite as much courage as it previously was.

At what point does it become forced, though? I mean, if you're going to give them the means of firing multiple arrows at once, accurately enough to not completely nullify the effectiveness of arrows, then why not simply grant that person the ability to throw arrows and skip the bow altogether? Or, better yet, generate arrows and hurl them at people magically? I mean, at that point, it's just a flavor. "Well, this bow and these arrows are just as feasible as those awesome magical spells you've got there, but only because we completely abandoned any integrity of the actual usage and effectiveness of a bow and arrow." At that point, it's almost just a magic spell with a bow-and-arrow-firing animation tied to it. Granted, I'm all for making sure bows, in general, can compete against other similar standard attacks, and giving people special abilities specific to bows/arrows, even magical abilities and such. But, there's no need to just force a bow to be as effective as something else if it simply isn't, is all I'm getting at.

I would think so. At least in certain circumstances. There's a difference between obfuscating the workings of the system, and simply limiting the player's/characters' knowledge. You may come upon some creature, and not know how many hitpoints it has (how much punishment it takes before it dies). Kind of like in the Baldur's gate games (or, I think Fallout did the same thing?), in which you didn't necessarily know something's total HP, but you could gauge how its current health compared to its total (wounded, badly wounded, almost dead, etc.). That being said, concealing certain factors somewhat counteracts the transparency you had. Take damage-dealt, for example. Doesn't do much good to understand how everything works if you have to constantly calculate your damage because the game won't tell you how effective your hits are. Even though that's a little abstract; you probably wouldn't know EXACTLY how much damage you'd dealt to a living being with a given sword blow, shy of "that obviously hurt it pretty badly" or "that clearly barely scraped it." But, with DC and AC ratings and such, that's not quite the case. And, of course, if you just want to be super hardcore, I think that should be an option. The "Don't ever show me anything because I want to have to figure it all out" option. It would be a simple "show this or don't show it" toggle. But, aside from that, I think the best way to handle it is to have clearly defined circumstances under which such ratings are understandably unknown to the player, and clearly defined methods of discovering the rating values.

Yeah, the main point is just that, if the only factor in someone's reaction is how high a stat is, then it's always going to be a lame, "More stat = success, less stat = fail" system. And yeah, a lot of games always SAY "Oh, you're going to still have to choose the right line," then give you the worst multiple choice quiz ever, with the most obvious answer in existence. But, that's not because intelligent answers can't be written. It's because the system's typically already too simple. If someone's trying to convince you of something, there's typically a range of ways in which they can do it. They could say that one thing that makes perfect sense to you, perhaps, and causes you to completely shift your perspective on things. OR, they could say something that has you considering what they're saying, but still uncertain, and they need to keep going. Eventually, if they say something that barely has any effect on you, you're going to become frustrated and just give up on it, and maintain your resolve. It's not a simple "the wrong thing... the wrong thing... the wrong thing... THE PERFECT ANSWER!" list. And, when it is, you've still got that one-dimensional scale of bad to good -- low stat to high stat -- with a thinly-veiled disguise. In combat, you might have a giant fireball spell that does 1,000 fire damage, which is awesome, unless someone's really resistant to fire. In which case, that spell may only end up doing 100 damage, and some other attack might actually do 2-300, easily. And while it's not exactly ultra simply and quick or anything, I don't know that you'd necessarily have to come up with some elaborate reputation system that sorts it all out on its own, since you're hand-designing the NPCs and dialogue trees yourself. You decide what the options are, and how that person will react to a given option. Of course, you do want them to all make sense together, as people do share traits. So, if one person is "highly resistant" to intelligent explanation, then another, somewhere in the world, probably should react similarly. If every single NPC in the world reacts COMPLETELY differently to the same dialogue tactics (for lack of a better term), then there's not much intuitiveness for the player. Everything becomes a bit of a wild card. Anywho, I think it can be done, and I'd love to see it done like that. I have high hopes, as they've talked about how they don't want to be frought with simple "win" options in a sea of non-win options. And they definitely don't want more stat to always equal dialogue win.

You could also play around with the duration of these on-rest bonuses (whether from am inn, or the stronghold and its enigmatic shrubbery layouts, etc.). So maybe something could allow your bonuses to last through multiple rests instead of just one. Perhaps, if a bonus does so, it diminishes some (if it's large enough -- I wouldn't want to take a +1 to Stealth down to +.5 to Stealth, really). Maybe food plays a part in this. *shrug*. "Well-fed" is a common state for bonuses in many a game. But, this way, if food DOES affect such things, then, instead of having it simply ALSO provide bonuses of its own (which it could still do, obviously), it could simply be the duration factor. Or both. It could provide bonuses separate from the from-resting bonuses, and/or affect the duration of bonuses through additional rests. Just a thought.

The same can be said of combat. No matter how fun it is, there's always going to be an element of "I'm repeating some things that are relatively simple yet tedious at this point." But there's always plenty else to make up for it. Which I think is the source of the problem. Maybe the point should be something else. Look at Facebook games. The whole point of the ENTIRE GAMES is "time sink," and look at their stuff as compared to full-fledged RPGs. Facebook games have combat. And it's obviously just meant to pass the time. Imagine if cRPG combat was designed like that. And we wonder why crafting seems so grindy. The games practically say "Want that item that merchant sells, but a little low on gold at the moment? Spend SANITY, not currency! 8D!"

I do LOVE the "move around and bump into things on a macro level" style of map. BUT, at the same time, I don't think the "only move between known destinations" style is inherently inferior or anything, and it can be used quite well in capable hands. So, I'm hopeful that it'll be pretty exciting, and that it's more than just a purely functional thing that let's you choose which area to load. I like for the world map to at least represent some semblance of exploration/discovery, even if you can't move freely to any point you wish. Maybe scripted events sprinkled in as random encounters, with (just as a basic example) some kind of survival/orienteering/tracking check that has you either failing and going back to your main path, or discovering a new route/destination (even if what's at the end is unknown). Whether it's finding an actual path/trail, or simply tracking a living thing to its den, or to some otherwise discreet location.

Look at it like something common from other games: that ability that does less total damage but pierces armor a lot more (or that ammo that does so, or what-have-you). If you run into some enemies, are you gonna go "YEAH! SWITCH TO MY ARMOR-PIERCING ABILITY/WEAPON/AMMO!"? No. Because it's actually only producing a detriment for you under the given circumstances. But then, on occasion, you're going to run into that heavily armored foe, against which most of your attacks are doing piddly amounts of damage. So now, in that situation, using an ability that does a maximum of 8 damage instead of 12 but actually gets through up to 10 points of armor (so it's not doing like 1 and 2 damage every time against the armor) is extremely valuable. Like Teknoman said, I think it's much more like the ability to convert miss chance into graze chance, and half damage is INFINITELY better than no damage. Indeed. And, perhaps even more importantly, intuitively grasp the relationship between that number and the factors/choices that affect it. If you're presented with two different armor values on two different pieces of armor at a merchant's stall, it shouldn't require a notepad and a calculator to get a pretty good idea of what kind of effects the difference in those values is going to have on your combat experience over time. Of course, then you have those games in which the system is consistent, but the actual encounter/content design/balance is not. So you take that +10 damage ability over that +5 accuracy ability, and it works well for a little bit, then, an hour later, and for the entire rest of the game, damage is almost meaningless, and accuracy is everything. Different problem, but same resulting confusion.

You say that, but you haven't actually heard it. Do you know how hard it is to sing something with TEXT?

The legendary Chain Mail of Eleven... once owned by a party of great bards known collectively as Spinal Tap. Until the creation of this set of armors, it was thought that the highest armor value of chain that could be produced was ten.

That, sir... is brilliant. Clicking "like" with exceptional vigor sadly produced no added effect.

SHHH... some wise guy at Obsidian might just send everyone a pencil and packet of graph paper. Hey now... what better graphics system exists than the human imagination!? 8D Also, I don't think the OP is trolling one bit, and he has every right to his opinion. However, I don't see much point in this thread. It's a bit like posting on the Call of Duty: (insert new thing here every 6 months) forum and saying "This game is cool and all, but I'm kind of disappointed that it has guns."

... such as? No disrespect, as I understand what you're getting at. The desire for it to just REALLY shine as a game name, like an amazing fireworks show versus a merely-good one. But, can we really act as though there are a plethora of "more appropriate word"s floating around, just waiting to be plucked and inserted into the name, if we can't actually come up with any ourselves?

I propose a motto: "If you lack the coin, you cannot join!"

Yes, they last until the next time you rest. This issss Mayyy-juh TOM tooo Rest Con-trollllll! I'm LY-inggg onnn the flooo-OOO-oo-ohhhh... Annnd I'm slee-ping inn A most a-pe-cul-IAR WAA-HAyyyyy... and my stats look ve-RY di-FER-rent... to-DAAAA-AAA-aaa-aayyyyyy... (Translation: 9 out of 10 Lephyses approve of the effects of this design choice.)

Some of you seem genuinely disappointed by the name. I didn't realize Obsidian was an entrant in the World Series of Naming. 8P I'm not trying to suggest the name is of no consequence, but is the exact degree of uniqueness/perfection THAT important? For all you know, after playing through the whole narrative, we could look back on the chosen name and think "Wow, that really hit the nail on the head!" What are we, name hipsters? "I'm gonna use a different syllable from each existing language in the world, because that'll totally set the game's name apart from all the other super lame, been-done-before ones." Give it a chance, will ya?

That at least gives me an idea of causes/rarity. Thanks, ^_^

Nay. Not a permanent stat point. A rest bonus. "Rest" as in, "We're here leisurely doing as we please." So, if your people spend some free time at the stronghold, and they have a hedge maze at their disposal, they can basically practice getting through a series of corridors and such without being spotted and whatnot. You know, like how Ninja Warrior participants often build those obstacle courses in their backyards to practice for the real thing. So, you stay there, then, for the next however-many hours, you get an abstracted bonus to one of your capabilities and/or skills. Not "You built a thing... now you're really smart, always."