Lephys

DON'T GO INTO THE LIGHT! FOLLOW MY VOICE, MESSIER, AND I SHALL LEAD YOU TO THE BACK BUTTON!

So many infos! . I love it! Is there anything you can tell us about the factors we can expect to affect the (typically fixed) 1:4 Health:Stamina damage ratio?

I think essentially, the best thing to do is to have the AI basically calculate, objectively, the best choices it can take. But then, throw in a slight dynamic element to its choosing so that sometimes it pulls one of those "no one would try this because it would incur such a disadvantage, so I'm not even going to prepare to defend against that" moves that catches you off guard. It needs to be challenging, so the AI needs to not run around doing stupid stuff all the time, like letting you easily kite it, or always charging even super-speedy characters, etc. So, it needs to be efficient and tough in its decisions. But then, you don't want it to be SO predictable that you can basically juke it every time. So, while you can't make it actually THINK and consider things, like "Wait, even though this is the most sound tactical option, perhaps this is a trap...", you CAN at least simulate that by tossing in a bit of randomness to its decision-making process. That way, you don't actually know what it's going to do, exactly, until it does it, so you're required to watch and react to it as opposed to setting up the same trap every single time, etc. Now, as to how to technically produce that, I dunno. But, I've seen PLENTY of the Skynet "we always pick the best choice, no matter what" AIs in games, so, I would think it wouldn't be too big of a leap to simply have a controlled chance of it NOT always picking the best choice, and/or sometimes picking one of a handful of good choices that result in differing circumstances for the player to deal with.

Agreed, noting that there's a difference between taking any given class system and simply toggling the allowance of multiclassing, and actually "fitting multiclassing into the system." If they're designing it without the option to multiclass in mind, and they do it right, then I have no qualms about it, as it's just a different way of achieving almost the same results. If they were to design it WITH mutliclassing in mind, from the ground up, then I'd have no qualms with the multiclassing. The only thing I'd hate is for the decision to simply toss in multiclassing to be flippantly made, just because some people think multiclassing can do no wrong and ALWAYS improves the game, regardless of the game's design particulars.

And I bet the majority of the bow-wielding populous laughs in a perplexed manner at anyone running amok with a gun. "You'd rather trust a hand-held explosion to propel a piece of shrapnel into your target from a distance than you would the strength and steadiness of your own arm and bow? HAH!" I imagine a lot of piratey-type fighting (even if the piratey-type fighting I'm referencing is mostly Hollywood stuff and not historically accurate), in which you you'd take advantage of an opening and basically draw your pistol and fire it at point-blank range (or very short range) to make accuracy not such an issue. More of a charged-up punch with a bit of range than something you'd just run about firing at people with, or sniping with from atop a wall/tower/tree. Which, honestly, for video games, is a pretty interesting role for guns.

You know, it's just a tweak away from "Neverending Pillllllll-illl-arrrrrrssss, ahhh-ahh-ahhh-AHHHHHhhhhh-ahh-ahh-AHHHhhh-ahhh-ahh-ahhhhhhhhhhh-ahh-ahh... Yeah! FALCOR!" There could be Fortune Dragons, and an Adolescent-Like Empress. Maybe a Calcium Tower. We don't wanna break any copyrights. 8P

I think it'd be neat if, in a forest area with a tall, thick canopy, the player camera was actually BENEATH the canopy. So, instead of just limbs and leaves covering your view of the entire field (generally resulting in the game resorting to that x-ray vision mode throughout the whole forest, so you're ALWAYS looking through semi-transparent foliage), you'd only see some lower limbs and foliage here and there, but maybe there'd be a relatively elaborate layer of canopy foliage shadows across the environment.

Heh. I found myself compelled to ask something very similar (what if we could upgrade certain areas into completely different things, or swap structure locations, etc.), in initial response to the update, and suddenly thought, "Oh, wait... this is all just an elaborate illusion. I forgot about that..."

Most possibly. 8P

Whatever helps you sleep at night, Hiro. Have a good one. *tips hat*

That's fine, really. The only only annoying times are the BLATANT extremes. Those games that typically say "Hey, this weapon has a minimum damage of 1 instead of 8 or 10, but it's maximum is a lot higher, too!" (common thing that I've seen amongst even-pseudo-RPGs), but it's as if they forgot about crits. So then you end up with your crit-spec'd character (Rogue or what-have-you), running about doing 4-8 damage on crits, while everyone else with "normal" weaponry is doing 8-12 damage regularly.

^ That makes splendid sense. Thank you very much, Josh. ^_^

Holy carp. I completely missed that! Thanks for pointing it out, ^_^ Indeed, it does seem like the game's name, then.

Okay, I'm sorry, Admiral Knowledgepants. If I take some box to UPS right now to be shipped to The Netherlands, and some completely other person who has no affiliation with me takes some box up to that same store to be shipped to The Netherlands, in the same day, then UPS (the shipping company) is going to take those two packages and place them EACH on their VERY own jet to the Netherlands? The actual cost, to them, of shipping things to the netherlands is basically the maintenance and fuel for a jet flight to the Netherlands (or closest distribution center), correct? I mean, they're gonna fill that thing up as best they can, and putting another 10lb box on a cargo jet doesn't significantly increase the cost of the flight to wherever stuff is going. If you're going to condescendingly mock someone, at least make sure you're using knowledge stores that don't completely overshoot the fundamental nature of the person's point. Oh, and... you're right. SORT 10,000 orders?!!! Man, that would be IMPOSSIBLE! They're just going to shrug at them like cavemen, and dump them all at a shipping facility without even attaching names or addresses to them. I mean, MAYBE if we had some sort of electronic machine that could somehow gather all that info from people and sort it in seconds... we could call it, the "computer." Yes. That's it. It would compute vast amounts of data far faster than the human brain ever could. *sigh*... Oh well. ... Is there an echo in here? I'm not. Why are you pretending I'm going on about specifics? Exhibit A: my paragraph above, about how two different people's packages would probably be logistically loaded onto a single vehicle for transport to the same general area, then distributed via truck from there. That isn't "the specifics." That's quite literally the generals. That's GENERALLY how you handle moving thousands upon thousands of individual little packages all around the world, in all different directions, at the same time. You group them logistically. So, yeah, I'm going to ask something like "If they have a big batch of products in their possession, at the same time, and they're sending them out to people at the same time, from the same place, then wouldn't they probably go out in batches, toward different regions, THEN distributed more individually from hubs?" If that's wrong, then maybe save your paragraphs and paragraphs berating my lack of knowledge that I didn't claim to not have and being unconstructively condescending, and maybe just tell me "Hey, that's wrong. Here's how it would work, since I know." Or, you know... just keep being derisive and pointing out how much more you know than other people, without actually correcting or informing, in which case... have fun talking to yourself.

Too late... I believe I already called it the ThunderMaze. Sorry, Phew. Crisis: AVERTED! Yeah. It's hardly a catastrophe or anything, but I also imagined it being a bit more, ehh... lacking in function? I mean, that one house/structure in the middle of the screenshot is basically half-gone. But then, the walls, as far as I can tell, are in perfect condition, except for the dead vines and the couple of "whoa, watch your step" holes in them. I guess I was kind of thinking you'd get the stronghold in a "Well... we can't really feasibly post archers on those walls until we get them properly repaired" state. Possibly even "we have to post guards at the gaps in the walls until we can get them repaired; they're at least preventing anyone/thing from simply waltzing into our fair little community from about 80% of approaches, but we're not exactly warranting a siege at the moment...". Of course, as you said, that's just a little piece of the stronghold there in the screenshot. And, if it stays like that, I'm already very happy with it. It just seems a little conveniently well-kept for a "ruined" stronghold, is all. Not the end of the world, and maybe the story supports it and there's a reason for it to not be ultra-ruined. Just more of a husk... NOTE: If I'm not mistaken, the "Pillars of Eternity" you're seeing on that backer portal screenshot is referring to the figurative pillars that form the foundation for the project. Like, if the development team were Meatloaf, then producing a game that ignores any of the Pillars would be the one thing they wouldn't do for love.

Yeah, I found myself trying to spot all the subtle differences. I went all "HEY, the dying brown vines on the walls are now nice and green! 8D!" Haha. Also, Hopefully the amphitheater is more than cosmetic. I hope the stronghold has as much dynamic development/restoration choice/significance as possible. All I know is... it LOOKS splendtastic.

Graze isn't any longer half the minimum damage? So 10 instead of 12. Correct. It's now half "rolled" damage (or duration). Similarly, crits are now +50% "rolled" damage (or duration). Interesting. I take it we're probably not going to be seeing crazily broad damage ranges like in many other games (i.e. 1-12, or 4-24), so that you never swing a could-do-24-regular-damage weapon and deal 8 damage on a crit? I mean, obviously if you've decided to change it, it works. Just mildly curious. I eat details for breakfast, and I missed my morning meal.

I know, right?! The stronghold screenshots look... a-maze-ing! Hedge maze hedge maze HEDGE MAZE! Hopefully, as an alternative to keeping prisoners in cells under your keep, you can just fill the hedge maze with traps and throw the prisoners in there! Maybe build a dome over it... TWO MEN ENTER... ONE MAN LEAVES! Apparently throwing women into the ThunderMaze is strictly forbidden, u_u Thanks for the update, guys! It's good to see how the portal's coming along. It looks quite lovely! As does your environment work, Hector! Yours and your team's. Keep up the good work, and thanks for taking the time to share with us! ^_^

... Unless you're a ****atrice! Or a Gorgon... or... something else that has a painfully frightening stare. As non-typical as it seems, try to think of the fact that certain enemies are going to have "super high Deflection" as their thing; their difficulty. So, even amongst higher-than-average Accuracy folk, that range is going to shift towards a lot of missing and grazing. Hell, imagine, even a 50/50 between those. (Well, 50/45/5, because of the "you can always Hit" thing). If you can increase the 45% chance to Graze to, say 75%, that pushes the miss chance down to 25% from 50. You're missing HALF as often as you were. So, as strange as it is (again) for Grazing to be your almost-best-case-scenario, it kind of is, there. Hits would sort of become your crits. Basically, think of those enemies as being "immune to crits," just like others are immune to certain damage types or elements, etc. Then it makes a little more sense, I think. It's still very much not what we're used to seeing in existing games, though. 8P

Well, see, that's another reason I like at least the approach to it in Thaumcraft. The process of researching, itself, is a lot more interactive than just choosing a thing to research and waiting, or collecting the same exact materials every playthrough and researching. It's at least a little dynamic. Also, in Thaumcraft, it uses a tree (just like Warren's describing... although more like a web, cause it kinda starts in the middle and goes in all different directions), and the tree is always shaped the same, but you sometimes come to branch hubs that reach smaller branches out to multiple things in that category (like 5 different weapon-research theories or something). So, the only research available at the moment is anything that's at the ends of all the branches, currently. BUT, you don't actually really get to pick what you want to research. In other words, consider a branch that looks like a hand, with a research discovery at the end of each finger. If they're all armor, you can research armor as opposed to... I dunno, building materials (in Minecraft context) pretty easily by researching with items that primarily possess the Armor aspect. BUT, you don't know if you're going to snag the figurative Thumb, or the Index finger, or the Middle finger, or the Ring finger, or the Pinky. So, you research, and you get one of those, and you complete the research on it and discover/acquire it. If you're rooting for something else (maybe it's something affecting a different type of armor than you wanted?), you can just continue researching (doesn't take very long, really, so it's not a huge deal, and the discovery you just made IS valuable in some capacity; it's not like it's just junk research) until you get what you want. That makes the path not the same every time (you don't always get the discoveries in the same order, but then, there's still some semblence of order; you're not going to get "DRAGON PLATE ARMOR" research as your first thing, and research 70 things before you get to "basic iron plate armor." Anywho, like I said, the way Thaumcraft does it produces some nice effects, but I'm very interested in figuring out a unique method of handling it for P:E. I'd just very much like to see P:E add something to crafting, rather than just having the same old crafting system (skeleton) that we've seen in almost every RPG for the last decade. And I like where you guys's heads are at, ^_^

I DO like the idea of a Graze dealing Stamina-only damage, or at least altering that 1:4 ratio of Health damage or something. I mean, just in theory. Mainly, it's the idea of altering that ratio in certain cirtumstances, and the idea of a Graze fits well with that, is all. What I am curious about, on that note is when/how-often that ratio will change, as you (Josh) say "(typically)." If you get the chance, Josh, could you please provide an example or two of what types of things might alter that ratio, and how prevalent they might be?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they've directed more than a few questions about getting a boxed copy and/or getting something from another tier as originally offered via the Kickstarter campaign to the yet-to-come fulfillment site. And yes, Stun... you do have to probably give the order to the production folk by a certain point in time. I'm pretty sure you can't just give it to them AFTER you need the stuff produced, or never. I'm not sure how "it's possible they haven't yet had to actually place the order for the production of boxed copies yet" is contradicting that. It baffles me how pointing out a possibility begets such hostility, especially accompanied not only by a lack of proof as to the opposite of what I've claimed, but also by the pretense that I've somehow claimed there's definitely going to be another batch of boxed copy orders for people, and that they've definitely not yet started production on any of the stuff and/or passed the deadline for giving their order to the production folk. I don't know such things, and would love to know one way or the other. Until then, when people make a post expressing worry about whether or not they'll be able to get a boxed copy, out of the three answers one can possibly give (yes, no, or maybe), I'm going to tell them what I can, even if that just results in a maybe. Why does that prompt such intense argument? And @Hiro: I didn't say "$20 totally covers all shipping ever, and I know this to be true." But, also, how do you know it doesn't? If they end up with 75 backers with Australian addresses, don't you think they'd ship those 75 together in a batch, and not just drive each one, individually, to the UPS Store and say "Hey, I wanna ship this one to Steve... and this one to Phil... and this one to Suzy..."? I'm pretty sure if you're going to be shipping upwards of 5,000 things, the shipping service works out some kind of deal with you. Not 100% sure, but, I know that sort of thing occurs. Anywho, the point of what I said was... if they KNOW it's going to cost extra to ship internationally, before they even produce the goods, then don't you think they're intelligent enough to have a plan? And don't you think the disclaimer of an additional charge for international shipping is evidence of that? Or maybe it's just a coincidence? They just arbitrarily decided to charge people outside the U.S. a random number of extra currency? I don't know the specifics, so stop challenging me on the specifics. I never claimed to know them. But, I like to think they know what they're doing, and aren't taking a giant loss on every single physical copy someone backed. Why would they even offer boxed copies in the first place if they were taking a loss on each one? And if they're taking a loss on any international orders, then it's probably not all of them. And even if it's all of them, that $20 (or however much it was on P:E's) has to help significantly. I don't think it's $84 per box to ship a friggin' game. Plus, what percentage of the boxed copies are international orders, that exceed the shipping costs of the cost of the physical copy tier PLUS the extra international charge from the Kickstarter? Maybe it's so few that they don't really care, and it wasn't worth pissing those international folk off by charging them like 40-50 bucks extra for shipping? *shrug* Again, I'm sure they've thought about it. This isn't their first rodeo. All I'm saying is that they likely know what they're doing, the specifics of which its clear NEITHER of us know. So, if you want more info/definitive proof, then feel free to investigate further by questioning the development team. I'm not worried about proving one way or another. I just made comments with the knowledge I currently possess.

^ Seconded on the Wizards and magic bit. Just the few "new" approached to Wizards I know of (how familiars can utilize auras of sorts and/or act as the aiming source of spells, for example) have gotten me a bit giddy.

I'm pretty sure that quote can no longer have puppies, so... clearly it's fixed now. u_u

I believe you misunderstand. They're simply advocating the complete freedom to craft some modicum of personality for the "custom companion" for whom you've hand-crafted everything else. As opposed to "They just are silent robots who never do anything but fight and get controlled by you," and certainly "They are super customizable, except that they come with pre-defined personalities just like the regular companions that you have no control over."