Lephys

Yup. There was that one time, when some developers said a game was gonna come out on a specific date (that's even more specific than "soon"), and then it actually came out later than that. Therefore, I now don't even believe that a game will EVER launch at all, until it actually does. The fact that things don't always go according to plan or that estimates aren't always accurate obviously means that words are worth nothing, and we should just assume we can't believe anything anyone from Obsidian says, ever. I don't even believe P:E isn't actually the next Call of Duty title, until it releases, u_u. Because, you know, they said it was gonna be an IE-esque RPG... But what do we really know?! o_O

I like the idea Shadowrun: Returns went with; Basically making a single portrait, then "re-doing" it to make a bunch of different variants. Basically, you get more variants with less overall time spent (same face and "model" onto which to apply differing details). Of course, they ended up with fewer total portraits than I'd've liked, ideally. But, you know... budgets. 8P. I don't fault them for that. But, yeah, instead of having to choose between THIS particular person portrait, or this OTHER com-PLETELY different person portrait who's more the style I'd want (facial hair, scar, earring perhaps, etc.), it could potentially just be a variant of the same "person," even though it's a different portrait. Think driver's license photo from 10 years ago, versus driver's license photo today. Or... a bunch of portraits of someone's repertoire of elaborate diguises, . Also, I don't like having the companion portraits in the mix, either. But, I'd say as long as that's togglable or something -- or, more importantly, as long as the player KNOWS he/she is choosing a portrait that does belong to another character already coded into the game, and they're going to be duplicates, then I say why prevent people from choosing duplicate portraits if that's what they want to do? Doesn't really hurt anything. It's when you start the game and say "Oooh, I LOVE this portrait!", and you pick it, and 10 hours later, you run into your doppleganger... That's when it's bad.

I'm gonna go ahead and call that "Pinkle." Trademark pending...

I'm very curious now... Do you find the damage to be comparable to the two-handed cat? Do you need to take some Talents to get your off-handed cat effectiveness up to 100%? What kind of penalties do you suffer in rain? Do you use items such as Catnip Grenades?

I don't get why thread "necromancy" gets such a negative connotation. If someone simply makes a new thread about the topic, they're barraged with "OMG, we discussed this all a bunch already in THIS (link) thread! Go read all that first!". But, if they read a thread and feel like continuing the discussion on the topic in that thread (where all the previous discussion conveniently resides for reference), suddenly it's "Way to necro, bro...". Is it that one shouldn't be allowed to further discuss a topic once that topic has already been discussed, then happenstancically experienced a lull in discussion? Or is it, perhaps, perfectly fine that discussion of the topic be stricken up once more, so long as people must actually locate and read a separate thread in order to catch up and avoid chastisement?

They appear to be fists. Mittens would be so much cooler, though.

I meant to add "and isn't self-defeating," but forgot to. In other words, if you say "Hey, we're not gonna have 2 stats, but instead, just ONE! 8D!", then you have to implement additional stats/skills/measures to allow for physical strength to be separated from non-physical strength, then what was the point of combining them in the first place? Ahh, but if physical strength begets magic power, then we're back at "you can either be physically AND magically powerful, or physically AND magically feeble, but never physically feeble and magically powerful or magically feeble and physically powerful." In other words, there would be no functional distinction in the game's design, even if all characters still technically possessed individual physical capabilities AND magical capabilities. Imagine if you combined, say, Strength and Agility. Well, even with any amount of Stre-gility, you'd still have the ability to knock a door down as separate from the ability to deftly perform a backflip. However, you can now ONLY have a character who can either do both, or none. If you JUST want to be able to do a backflip, you have to be a powerhouse, too. And vice versa. It's just... a strange, seemingly arbitrary mish-mash. Especially when a staple of RPGing is being able to have distinctly unique combinations of the various character properties between individual characters. *shrug*. I think a Strength attribute and a Vigor attribute (or something) might work well. Basically, Vigor would represent all things non-physical. So, a Warrior's (for example) soul-powered damaging abilities might draw their value from Vigor-only, while standard "I swing this weapon with my arm muscle and strike you" attacks would draw their value purely from Strength. If you used a soul-based ability that had a weapon-swingy attack as a base, then the two would stack. But, that wouldn't have to be true of every single ability, and the Warrior wouldn't have to have the same number of Vigor-based abilities as another class. Everyone will have soul-"magic" abilities, regardless of class, so Vigor will always be useful. You healing with your soul? You heal more potently. You creating a shockwave with your soul? You create a bigger, badder shockwave. Yet, your Strength will still be separate. Kind of soul-fatigued right now? Well, you can still use conventional attacks to great effect if you've got high Strength. But, this seems to go against the expressed idea of "one stat for damage/potency for all classes." Hence the question marks that remain. *shrug*. This is all just a bunch of speculation. I mean, I value speculation, and discussion and exploration of possibilities. Very much so. But, at the same time, I'm sure Obsidian has this worked out (or is working it out) far better than we are here, thus far. So, as far as finalized P:E goes, I'm content with waiting and simply finding out what's what. In the meantime, it's simply fun to discuss and possibly hit on interesting gems of analysis that maybe even the devs can benefit from. If not, at least we each get to benefit from them in our own personal evaluation of attributes and how they could work and the effects of their implementation, etc.

I can't go into all of the details, but once everything is ready we will present to the public fairly quickly. No worries. Haters gonna hate, and waiters gonna wait.

It's hardly rude to kind of expect/hope for something. It's rude to suggest someone's at fault for not meeting your expectations/hopes. Then to suggest that a Q&A with "some bloke" Kaz is, in and of itself, somehow worthless, rather than simply expressing your personal lack of interest in the topic of individual developer personal Q&A's, and your increased interest in other aspects of the project. It's called etiquette. It's not that you can't voice your opinions on the matter. It's just that, there are ways to do it without being rude or mildly insulting. It's like if someone took the time to prepare a meal for you, and you were kind of craving something else... the difference between "Ahh, I have this crazy craving today for pizza, but thank you for this meal you've prepared me" and slapping the tray out of their hands and saying "Where's some friggin' PIZZA?! GYAH!" The fact that you expected to get pizza in no way lessens the value of their effort and offering of the meal they made you.

I agree that it shouldn't be purely impossible for anyone under any circumstances to down a potion in the midst of combat, but I will say that it's all-but impossible for, say, the Warrior who's currently engaged in melee combat with an opponent to simply stop what he's doing, pull out a potion, and drink it. He'd have to either drop his sword/weapon, or sheathe it, then retrieve the potion using his hand, uncork it or whatever, then pour it into his mouth and swallow, THEN re-wield his weapon. Not without getting hit, but without the enemy simply going "Umm... no," and slapping the crap out of your glass potion bottle with his weapon, or simply crushing it against your body by ramming into you with his shoulder or shield. Pulling out a fragile item and ingesting it in the middle of combat is pretty highly infeasible. Sure, in the abstraction of combat actions in an RPG, it's not that crazy to suspend disbelief for. It's not that big of a deal. But then, we've been sort of arbitrarily using potions as THE consumable magic item for so long now. Why NOT explore other things that might work better? And, as for the restrictions, it's just sort of "why make this a drinkable liquid in a fragile glass bottle that requires so much infeasible effort to effectively use mid-combat, then allow it to be freely used mid-combat?" That, plus the fact that it's usually an almost-instantaneous thing, so, even from a functionality/gameplay standpoint, the lore of it being a drinkable liquid doesn't really do anything to support the fact that you just magically ingest it in a half-a-second while swinging a sword about, and you don't get hit any WORSE while taking the time to drink it and completely ignore your current melee engagement. It's deprived of even being a strategic decision. As was mentioned, it pretty much becomes "Oh, well, I can't heal that person in time, but luckily I bought a little consumable version of that healing spell that even my non-healer -- the character who needs healing -- can use on himself." It's just pretty rudimentary as a system goes, is all. The "how hard is it to drink that while fighting?" is just something worth considering, among other things.

Alright, but... A character with max Power and 0 Strike still isn't at the bottom of the spectrum for physical, striking power. They're at 50%. They'd have to have low Power AND low Strike. Versus the typical DnD system, for example, with 3 STR and 18 INT generating the minimum/maximum for both qualities, independently. By splitting it into a stat and individual skills, you're functionally reducing the problem's prevalence by 50%, since half the effectiveness of your character (via skills) is handled separately. But, the other half is still handled by a single stat. Right? So, if you had a physical strength check like... say, an arm-wrestling challenge. How would you handle that? If you check Power, then a supposedly-physically-weak character with maximum Power would still do pretty well, even with 0 Strike. If you don't check Power, and just check Strike, then what's the point in Power? What is Power actually representing at that point? Does that make any sense? I'm wondering if it's possible to use a single stat to represent both physical and non-physical "strength," while still allowing for situations and checks to only physical strength or only non-physical strength. Maybe we just don't worry about that sort of thing, and we just convert all such checks to Power checks? Or we just do Power + appropriate-skill, and don't worry about the fact that all characters share the same contribution from Power to both physical and non-physical feats of force? I dunno... just seems like the game would suffer a bit for that. It's a pretty big distinction (applied to skill checks and such, typically, in a variety of situations) to just shrug off is all.

Not that it isn't possible, but where did he say anything about there being absolutely no selection whatsoever involved in the gaining of abilities as one's character levels up?

Thanks for the amazingful Q&A, Kaz! I feel like you're now one of my good acquaintances... while I remain a random stranger to you... which makes me feel a bit creepy. Don't worry, I didn't see that crazy-awesome doodle you made on that napkin at that food-staraunt last Thursday... *creepy smile*. Haha. Really, though. I live in Mississippi, so no worries. We haven't even invented shoes yet, much less cars. Everyone knows this. But seriously, splendid Q&A, and it's good to know that a lot of the art is being performed by someone who's not only a BAMF at artistry, but also is a BAMF at nerd-sonality.

^ I think the short answer is "it depends on what you're representing." It's kind of like asking, "Which is better; graphite, or ink?" If you're trying to draw a shaded sphere, graphite's probably going to work best. If you're trying to draw a sharp silhouette against a bright light, ink's going to work really well there. Text will generally represent considerable/interpretable things much better than audio-visuals will. But simulationy, realistic audio-visuals will represent visceral things much better. The look of anger on someone's face, for example, is better represented with an actual depiction. You don't really study that with much thought. It just visually registers. But, someone's inner turmoil in making a decision would come across much more weakly in only visuals than it would with their actual thoughts in text form. Textual descriptive presentation allows us to connect with the mind of another thinking being in experiencing something, while audio-visuals simply present us with raw stimulus and let our own brain go from there. Sometimes, the raw stimulus is much more potent/effective than any amount of thought-time on the matter, and sometimes a paragraph of text is far more beneficial than even realer-than-life graphics and sound could ever be. It really depends on the situation/goal at any given time. Imagine if, in the BG games, instead of attack animations, text merely described each of your attacks while you stared at a lifeless figure on-screen. That would be less efficient at representing the sheer motion involved with an attack (and registering what's going on) than even the most rudimentary attack animations. Or, the critical hit animations in Fallout. When someone's arm explodes, you're well aware of the full extent of your hit, in relation to lesser hits. Of course, these are still supported by text, in these examples. But, I was using them to make the point of the comparison between hypothetically doing the same thing but only using one or the other. Also, you've got things like the Bastion narration. It's voice, but it's functionally the same thing as descriptive text. It's intangible thoughts and notions BEHIND what's going on on in "reality" (of the game world), being conveyed to the player as the action is actually taking place, so that he can understand things about the events and situation that would go otherwise missed.

It's almost like a trope that everyone just liked. "OBVIOUSLY, magical effects come in ingestible liquid form! What OTHER form would they come in?!" Sure, it's nostalgic and fun, but, it's just so easy to come up with something else. I mean, how about a charm bracelet (just off the top of my head)? You activate a little gemstone-esque charm with a word, and it evanesces into its magical energy form, doing what it does to you. Or, heck... like materia in FF7. You socket things into your weapon hilt, armor, etc., and tap into it when you need to. You could make them consumable (figuratively) instead of re-usable. Boom. Non-potion consumables. Not to mention, how many actions in combat would result in the crushing of your fragile, glass-bottled potions. "Where are you keeping those 15 healing potions that they didn't just get crushed when that Ogre hurled you into that tree?!" Of course, I still wouldn't be big on having a bracelet with 700 charms on it, and just using them one after another after another. I just... I don't think combat needs to even support THAT much replenishment in a single battle. And, as we've discussed in many a potion thread, I think there can be a good bit more tactics involved in a "potion" (consumable) system than just "if you use this, you get a boost, and it's different from other things because its temporary." There's usually not much making a potion anything different from either a bottled healing spell, or a bottled buff. "Don't want to actually use the class that generates this effect? JUST PAY MONEY! 8D!" Annnnywho... I digress.

This is a fair point against the quoted section specifically regarding the water chip stuff, but, for what it's worth, I actually was trying to make this very same point when talking about the Dynaheir quest in BG. . (I was making a very specific different point when citing the water chip chest timer... sorry for the confusion). I think if a time limit's that broad, it doesn't really generate urgency. And, since everything in the game is created from nothing, you end up making sure that you set the time limit far enough to be able to do whatever you want. But then, people who drag their feet a bit, for whatever reason (maybe, despite their best efforts, they simply aren't as efficient at completing all the tasks and stuff as other people?) get screwed a bit. Whereas, if you tell someone, short-term, when it's relevant, "Hey, we probably really need to do something about THIS situation right now, or it's going to worsen or progress without our intervention to whatever end," they feel the weight of a decision of urgency. OR, like I said, if someone says "They're not going to last very long in that church! Haste is our priority!," then actually have a time limit for when people holed up in the church of this assaulted settlement start dying, you've also got urgency. (Granted, you've got to make it pretty clear, however you do it, that "We can't dilly around here!" isn't just flavor text, and that time is ACTUALLY functionally passing, as far as the situation's outcome is concerned). But, I think there's almost no reason for over-arching "You literally only have this much time, as a resource in the game world, for a whole playthrough, and it's constantly ticking," because it almost never works like you want it to. Again, in a book or a story, purely, it works, but then... the whole thing's written to only go one way, and the time limit always affects things in precisely the way you want it to.

My question remains simply this: IF you use something like "Power" to simply represent power, then how are physical power and non-physical power represented as separate from one another? What I mean is, how do you enter some cave with soul-magic disrupting devices all around, and have one character says "Agh! My power is effectively NIL right now!" while another declares "Worry not, for these are not MUSCLE disruptors!" and smashes the enemies in the room to bits to get to the disruptors and deactivate/destroy them? And IF the answer is "Meh, we just won't ever represent the difference in the type of power," then how will the game consequently suffer? In other words, it's totally fine for a single thing, like Power, to be a stat that affects sheer damage output. But, I'd still value a representation of physique/physical strength, even if it gets overruled by Power in terms of damage effects. I mean, if one stat is going to represent Accuracy for everyone, you'd think something would still represent Agility, right? Or would everyone who's super accurate, offensively, simply be really, really agile, too? There's no huge bulky guy who just has really steady aim with a bow. He's got to also be a master of parkour and yoga? I guess it just seems weird to me if these things are no longer available as individual effects for skill checks and such in different sets of circumstances.

*Listens*... It did? Hmm... *shrug* You didn't really answer my question. I figured providing a menagerie of examples and re-iterations would provide as much clarity as possible in what it is I'm wondering. What dictates where the "not specialized enough" and "too specialized" lines lie? If it's factors as simple as "you're capable at melee range," or "you have 90% more AOE-targeted abilities than other classes," then why? If not, then I fail to comprehend what's problematic about the idea of typical facets of class restriction being handled differently in P:E.

They could provide information that then sparks a jumble of unnecessary assumptions and blatant word-spinnings until hysterical chaos ensues... Oh wait. "Health will be limited? Great, that automatically means there won't be enough to get us between rest spots!" "I'm not limited to the choice of either boosting ONLY a select few stats or rendering my character obsolete? Welp, that obviously means that all allocations produce the same results, instead of the amount of viable results being increased to provide more viable stat allocations." "I won't get XP every time I kill something? Great, I'm NEVER going to get XP for killing anything, so killing things serves no purpose, because obviously that's quite literally the only reason the mortality of living entities was ever even implemented into RPGs in the first place..." Seriously, it's totally people's prerogative to consider potential concerns, but what good does it do to sit around worrying about purely assumed details and specifics that are more speculated possibilities? Josh is awesome enough to take time out of his day and hop from thread to thread, answering all our little questions. I think the least we could do is not make slap-in-the-face assumptions every time we only have SOME info on something. "Foliage?! There's going to be FOLIAGE in the game?! I don't think your art team is smart enough not to cover the entire foreground in foliage, so we can't see our characters! Maybe if someone comes along and tells me that won't be the case, I MIGHT think about the possibility of it not being the case, u_u..."

Ooh! As a supplement to this, what about your Ranger (for example) finding traversable paths through sections of otherwise unpassable terrain? You know, very rocky/thicketed terrain that typically just puts up an invisible wall on the game map, so that you've got to go around it. But, a knowledgeable enough Ranger-type could find a valid path through it, allowing you to emerge in a unique spot on the unsuspecting foes in the clearing on the other side. Without that knowledge (whether it's specific to the Ranger class, or just a skill they get a boost in), your party would just say "Well, obviously we can't go THAT way... there're no footings." etc. Oh, AND/OR the skill could allow you to alter fast-travel times, in certain areas. Going from this ruin site on the world map back to your stronghold? Well, it just so happens that, based on what you now know of the surrounding area, your Ranger has found a shorter way. Or, if there are random encounters during world-map travel (a la BG), maybe your Ranger can sometimes give you a heads up about them, or allow you to avoid them, or at least negate their advantage of ambush, or even ambush them in return.

*slow clap* I'm not sure why people keep acting as though this whole health limitation thing is some alien new concept designed to torture us for all eternity. Pun intended. I get the concern for balancing, but it's like there's concern for whether or not the devs are even concerned about balancing. Which just seems naive. You'd think these guys have never made a solid, quality RPG before or something. I encourage those in a state of worry about such things to give the dev team more credit.

"What's all this?" "Oh, this room is where I keep my collection. You know... bits of shelves, burned pieces of those awesome rsideways-rolling ladders, dehumidifiers... I collect pieces of library, and I've amassed quite a collection. I've almost got a whole library now! 8D!" (Seriously though... amassing a library = awesome).

The simple answers, but not the specifics/methods. Granted, I think some people get a little overly worried about a sheer lack of specificity in answers, and start making unnecessary assumptions regarding the truth of the simple answers in the first place. You know, like "Wait, my Wizard won't be prevented from possessing some basic training with a sword? OMG, MY WIZARD'S GONNA BE ABLE TO BE A WARRIOR -- THE CLASS, SPECIFICALLY!" Really, it almost seems like just telling the dev team "You're telling me what your goal is, but I only believe you'll make terrible decisions and fail at that goal, because possibility."

No worries. I ONLY know English, so I'm hardly prepared to fault you for a few slip ups in an otherwise pretty excellent use of a language that isn't even your first. 1) That's fine. And it does make some amount of sense that improving a skill would actually affect your physical or mental power, just as solving a bunch of puzzles over and over again will hone your mind, or bench-pressing 250lbs over and over again will hone your body. I'm not trying to shoot down the idea of that skill at all. But, it's a matter of asking "what exactly is representing what, here?" I would say that systems that already just have an attribute, and then appropriate specific weapon/ability skills (swords, spellcasting, etc.) are already representing the effects of the skill aspect of strength/power. That's why your strength is merely a modifier to your overall damage, and it typically doesn't improve (unless your Strength improves via gained attribute points in a given game, which is slightly beside the immediate point I'm making). But, your damage DOES improve as you improve your abilities with a given weapon. The only real disconnect there is that having 100 Swords skill (for example) doesn't provide you with any effective power bonuses to, say, wielding a mace. So, *shrug*... You also tend to get feats and such, as you progress, that seem to signify an improvement in strength. I think that makes a lot more sense. Between that and RARE attribute point gains (which I think should be contextual, and not just "You gained a magical point that can improve anything you choose!"). I just... the more you can alter stats throughout the game, the more watered-down the purpose of stats gets. When you roll a character in DnD or whatever ruleset, and you have 18 Strength, it's assumed that that's factoring in whatever you do for a living or have done in the past (before the point at which your adult-or-close-to-adult character starts his or her adventures). It doesn't mean you just sit around on a couch eating potato chips all day, and have done that for the past 17 years (Human character example), and now, suddenly, you've got the ability to just go from there. And most of the ways in which you gain Strength are via magic/enchanted equipment, etc. Even the attribute point gains are pretty much a weird, magical abstraction of sort of innate heroicness boosting your abilities, partially just for the progression aspect of gaming that's fun to players, and not so much for some kind of believable lore consistency. Again, not trying to shoot down your idea. Just investigating its surroundings, is all. 2) That could work. It's still a bit convoluted, though. That's one of the reasons things get abstracted. Stats are what you are, so they affect other things. Like... Intelligence typically affects how you gain knowledge. You can still gain a boatload of knowledge with a lower Intelligence, but you have tougher skill checks and slower rates of gaining that knowledge. If you read every single book on a given library shelf, with 10 Intelligence, and someone with 18 Intelligence comes along and reads the same books, they're going to understand more than you did. You can read MORE than they read, and end up understanding more than they do, total. But, all other things the same, the stat/attribute rating represents your inherent capacity in some specific regard (mental processing power, physical strength, etc.). The reason being so that you don't ever have to look back and go "Hmm... well, I've read a bunch of books now. How is my Intelligence affected?" Well, it shouldn't be, really, since it's your inherent capacity to take in and comprehend information and knowledge. The only thing that still doesn't quite make sense in that abstraction, regarding physical strength, is that a fully grown adult with only 5-out-of-18 Strength would probably be able to work out a bit and pretty easily burn some fat and gain some muscle, etc., and improve their strength. But, then again, he's not limited to some piddly amount of effectiveness with a physical weapon, either. It's not like the strong guy can deal 100 damage with a weapon at his peak, and the most you can ever hope to deal as a weak guy is 10. But, the thing is... in the DnD system, your Strength directly calculates your chance to hit with a melee weapon. That's the type of thing Obsidian is trying to "fix" in P:E. The difference in one warrior's strength and another warrior's strength shouldn't DIRECTLY translate into a difference in accuracy, as well. Just for example. So, they want us to be able to have a weaker character who's still very accurate with a blade, and thus more frequently makes much more effective/well-aimed slices and thrusts to let the blade do all the work, rather than relying as much on force to MAKE less-precise attacks more effectively damaging. But, it being a game, it's all about balance. When you let a stat determine, say, a Wizard's potency at both non-physical capability AND physical capability, then all those spells-per-day limitations and such you've implemented to balance things out go out the window when he's 50% awesome with melee weapons just for having maxed out Resolve at character creation. "Oh, I'm out of spells? Well, it's a good thing there's not much of a trade-off for taking that stat that boosts my spell potency." That's the issue being evaluated here. Based on the speculation/possibility that one stat will determine essentially your Power in P:E, physical AND non-physical power... So, again, your proposal really only halfway handles that particular concern. It's got good ideas and makes sense in a lot of ways, but I'm still questioning potential problems that it may not actually tackle.

Here: There are plenty of things that are old and dilapidated. Doesn't mean they're not being currently "run" by someone. Just means things are bad. Local economy sucks, or there's a resource shortage, or the people running the show aren't really doing what they need to be doing, or some combination of the above. The point isn't that we should all assume it's totally fully populated and owned by someone already. The point is merely that there's no reason to assume it's a completely unoccupied ruin, and you just move in, level it, build a strip mall, add in a house, and send out Facebook friend invites for people to come live there. That could be the case, and then problems could arise from that being the case. Or, maybe that's the case and Obsidian's clever enough to make it all make sense anyway. *shrug*. I trust them. The assumptive responses in this thread seem to suggest they're some kind of imbeciles who don't really comprehend how to evaluate all this, or like they haven't spent about 5 months of pre-production thinking about all this before they even said anything about the details. It's not that you're wrong, or somehow bringing up things that aren't possible at all. There's just no need to somehow make this a probability war of possibilities, or go off on the obviousness of a problem that stems from a mere possibility. Unless they are SEVERELY lacking in any kind of infrastructure or resources, and you come set things up for them. You're arbitrarily oversimplifying the situation in the stronghold. If it's inhabited, and it's not fixed up nice, then obviously either they lack the ability to fix it up nice and maintain it, or they're deciding not to for whatever reasons. Regardless, it's clear that non-crumbling defensive walls and functional wells and food supplies and such are far better for everyone than the state things are in. So, EVEN IF you just waltz in there and declare yourself the lord-ruler of the place (which is only one possibility of so many methods by which you might come to be responsible for the entire stronghold as a land/property), as long as you do it properly, it would work just fine. If the current ruler had an army at his disposal and could afford to outfit them and feed them and keep them loyal, why would he let everything wear down to a dismal state around him? Even if certain people living there were oppressed, you'd think at the very least the stronghold itself would be maintained. And if they weren't paying any taxes, it's probably because the economy's so bad they don't have any money. Or, if they have money and resources, the current "leader" is so terrible that he thinks its nicer to let everything go to crap and let people keep all their money than to require some manner of progress/maintenance be made, at the cost of money and resources. Either way, I'm not gonna sit here and try to come up with the specific story. Obsidian's on that already, I'm sure, and they're going to blow away anything I come up with. I'm aware of the possibilities available to them, though, at least in the basic structure of the situation. There are COUNTLESS suggestions listed throughout this thread for the plethora of specific existing states of the stronghold when you get to take it over, as well as the specific manner by which it may be taken over. These all seem to contradict the idea that. The validity of your deductions relies on the idea of your nonsensically walking in and taking over a dilapidated stronghold that had no reason to either be dilapidated OR be populated in the first place is the only possibility. Which is odd, because you say you realize that other things are possible. But then you point out an extremely narrow-focus scenario, then act as if its improbability shoots down all possibilities but "It's clearly an unoccupied ruin that you can take over." I dunno... Your grandfather used to be the liege of the place, and everyone loved him because the place rocked while he ruled, and he died, and since then it's been run by some rather crappy, selfish people, and/or gone to crap, and it is discovered that you're actually in his bloodline, and therefore hold a right to claim the place as your own. Thus, people attribute the memories of your grandfather's ultra-sweet lord-dom to your bloodline/family name, and feel that you're inherently going to do a better job of things than whoever's half-assedly running the show right now. *shrug* Again, Obsidian will do a much better job than I can, but the possibility is easy to think up. Again, you're thinking of sheerly possible situations that don't even fit with the announced, intended design of the stronghold, as if the situation, itself isn't designed by the dev team. "What if it's inhabited by demon anarchists, and makes no sense for them to succumb to your command?" Well, then, either Obsidian's got some really clever way of designing our takeover of this place from them that makes sense, or that's probably not a scenario they're going to use, since they have no reason to implement stronghold circumstances that completely oppose their intended design of your sensical ability to take ownership of a stronghold in their game. See Josh Sawyer quote above. There's also this, which was posted earlier in this thread. The source of it is apparently SomethingAwful: So, either your companions are all going to choose to live in/hang-out-in an uninhabited pile of rubble, in which you also decide to build and upgrade your very own player house (which is totally possible, by the way), OR, maybe more likely (maybe), there's actually existing stuff there that gives you a reason to meet up there and/or live there. As in more than just rubble. I'll do you one further than that... if it IS an uninhabited pile of rubble, is it more likely that you go from that, to population, to taxed population? Than going from population that you weren't taxing to population that you're now taxing because of however you acquired ownership of this place? Is it really more likely that we're going to single-handedly rebuild an entire pile-of-rubble stronghold, then get a bunch of people all to move in there (all with just adventuring money, and no tax money or resources being generated by the stronghold as it exists, whatsoever, until it eventually gets built up and populated), and get them to start paying us taxes? "Move-in special! Only 90% taxes! I have like no money, and all this place has is like, a 5-foot section of wall, and my dilapidated-yet-still-in-tact personal house! I can kill a lot of bandits and take their stolen money, but I can't kill THAT many! Who wants to move into a place and completely start from scratch, but also pay me enough money to get this place up-and-running?! 8D!" That would be an awesome poster. @Kgambit: Nice work! Didn't even catch that verification in the update itself, of the stronghold's functionality/populace from the get-go. So much for all those paragraphs I just typed while you were posting that, in an effort to thoroughly evaluate the possibility when we had proof/verification this whole time. Heh... Silly me.