Lephys

I didn't allege that you did. I only pointed out the difference. I can understand people desiring for fulfillment to be going faster than it is. What I don't understand is people expecting it to be going faster than it is, much less to suggest it's somehow wrong of Obsidian to be taking this long. I wish P:E were complete and ready to play right now, but I don't think that it should be done by now.

Okay... new example (I promise this'll be my last attempt to explain what you're missing): I can physically take a lump of metal, and sharpen that metal into a dagger, and use my physical muscles to physically hurl that dagger at you, and it will physically damage you according to physics. OR, I can (let's say) MAGICALLY summon a dagger out of thin air (because it's made-up, remember?). At which point, I STILL have a physical dagger that's physically existing in the physical plane. It's tangible, and has weight and mass, and interacts with physics. So, no matter what affects my ability to produce that dagger, if I'm still using my muscles to hurl it at you, then the physical strength of my muscles is still a factor in the equation of how much damage it's going to produce upon your person. Now, instead of a dagger, let's say I produce some fire. I cannot physically grab that fire with my physical strength, and physically hurl it at you. Even if I could, it wouldn't hurt you any worse than if I set it upon your head as gently as possible. You would either catch ablaze, or you would not, depending on lots of flammability factors and all that jazz. Therefore, EVEN IF your muscle mass and physical potency somehow affects your magical effects (like how hot your magical fire is, or where it's created, etc.), that doesn't in any way change the fact that your muscles STILL also physically affect non-made-up stuff, like the power of a thrown dagger, and that these are two completely different things. So, what's problematic is that there would be no such thing as a physically strong, magically weak person, or vice versa. Some kid who just does pushups all day would be the greatest sorcerer in all the land, while someone who studies magic all day and never does any pushups would suck at life. Not to mention that, if such a distinction DOES exist in your game, then, at this point, you're completely neglecting to actually represent it in any way, shape, or fashion. So, saying "what if physical strength is the source of your completely-non-physical powers?" is just as silly as saying "what if your non-physical strength is the source of your physical powers?" That's a paradox. Either the physical function of my muscles is pushing a box, or some made-up mental/non-physical power is pushing the box. Even if they're used in conjunction, one isn't the other. Either your muscles are contributing, kinetically, to the pushing of the box, or your non-physical, made-up power is doing all of the box-pushing. Maybe a better way to say it is "physical force cannot forego physical effects." So, if how hard you swing a sword determines how much arcane zappiness you produce, then that's going to be on TOP of how much physical damage that sword does. Therefore, the only way to make that fair and not arbitrarily lopsided is to have non-physical force also affect physical effects, every single time. And at that point, what's the difference? Your physical and non-physical abilities have simply merged into the same thing. Everyone only has both, and both affect each other, always.

Sure, if you've just got the goods sitting there at your feet, and all you need to do is take them to a shipper and say "Hey, please deliver these," and you're simply failing to do so. When you have to produce all the goods AND get an entire site built to collect/finalize recipient data and allow for upgrades and such (necessitating even MORE production of goods), all while working on an entire video game project with a relatively small budget, I'm not really sure "taking your sweet time" is an accurate description at that point.

^ 6) The player is irrationally hoarding potions, just because, despite reasons 1-5 being absent from the game's design. I agree with your post, though, with the exception of cooldowns. I've always thought the Diablo "as long as you can click on heal potions faster than the enemy can do damage to you, you'll be immortal" approach was blatantly, blatantly ridiculous. If you're expected to be able to live for the duration of your health bar + 70-potion-refills worth of health, why not just have a giant health bar? At some point, you're still limited by the amount of total damage you can take before you die. Why convolute it into a quick-time event of healing? It's much more manageable if you can only replenish life so often, and/or so much in a given duration. Not that I think any game that's ever utilized potion cooldowns is the pinnacle of game design, or anything.

Now you're simply neglecting the difference between "the primary damage stat" and "the primary damage stat for physical combat. All Sezneg pointed out was that we don't know that Strength will be the sole damage-affecting stat of any kind in existence. And here you're acting as though someone's telling you that something other than Strength will probably affect physical combat damage.

It can. But, by definition, if your physical strength, in conjunction with physics (kinetic energy/mass/etc.), is the cause of the damage, then it's not really magical damage. If magical damage is effected by "your strength," then it's not really your physical strength. Case and point: If an enchanted sword does +2 Arcane damage (purely fictitious magical damage), then it doesn't matter what your Strength is; the +2 damage is the same no matter what. That arcane damage will never fluctuate in potency. Your physical strength, however, can still affect the damage potential of the kinetic force of the sword you're swinging. Thus, a very physically mighty person could deal 20 +2 damage with that sword, while a feeble person could deal 10 +2 damage with that sword. The second someone starts dealing 10 +30 arcane damage with that sword, they're actually amplifying the magical damage of the sword, which by definition circumvents mere physics. Hence why magical attacks still work so well against that guy with full plate and a shield. This is why P:E is set in a world in which your soul produces fictitious, additional effects (in comparison to reality), and not "the potential energy in your muscle fibers affects how well you can access and shape energies that have nothing to do with the effects of muscle fibers." Or, to put it another way, if physical strength simply produced magical results, then, effectively, everyone (physical OR mental) would essentially be wielding non-physical power only. Either that or the effects of physical strength on NON-magical power would still go unrepresented.

Does this mean that no Fallout characters are actually S.P.E.C.I.A.L., because they all are? Seriously though, the problem I have with this is: What mandates that the ability to dps, or tank, or heal is the source of a class's specialness? I'd much rather my Wizard be distinct from other classes because he does everything in a super-cool Wizardish manner, and not because he simply gets to deal 90% of the AOE damage in the game, while other classes are kept apart from Wizardry because they deal damage mainly to individual targets, or even don't deal damage at all to any great effect (buff instead, etc.). *shrug*. Just seems like pretty weak class distinction criteria, to me. If you can't give both a Fighter and a Cleric each a single-target, direct-damage ability and still have them feel like two distinct classes, you probably need to rethink your ability designs. But, things like damage, attack range, and area-of-effect are not really the best factors to use to distinguish class roles with. Not that they might not vary a bit, in overall capacity. But, just because a Rogue has the potential to be built for the highest-possible DPS doesn't mean that some other class's potential must be limited to "sucks at dps" just to be not-a-Rogue.

^ For what it's worth, there was an official statement about the fact that they pretty much only have 1 person available to work on it right now. Again, the only fault on their part, thus far, has been announcing that they'll update us "soon" on the progress of the fulfillment site... several months ago. Faulty estimation. Not ideal, but stuff happens. It's not as if they said "Yeah, we have a whole TEAM of people on it, and it's 99% done! Should be up tomorrow!", then were never heard from again.

I'm a little confused by the use of "rock-paper-scissors" to describe this whole attack-type-vs-defense-type system. In rock-paper-scissors, you know what works against what, but you don't know what your actually squaring off against. But, in a game, you typically see a golem and say "Oh, it's rock, I should use paper." If rock paper scissors is simply referring to the aspect of one attack type being better against one defense type, and one defense type being better against one attack type, etc., then I don't really know what a feasible alternative would be. Randomized effects? Imagine that game of rock-paper-scissors: "Oh, THIS round, my rock beats your paper. But, next round... WHO KNOWS!" Now, if the reference is used to suggest that the attack-vs-defense system should be more complex than just a little "I beat YOU, YOU beat HIM, and HE beats ME" triangle, then I totally agree. I'm sincerely wondering what people mean when they say this, because "rock-paper-scissors" gets referenced in almost every single discussion of attack-type-vs-defense-type that I've seen, usually by multiple people.

I'm still voting for the "it's a bag of holding, and, while it's easy to toss something INTO the bag of holding, it's actually a very complex/slow process to get something OUT of the bag of holding" explanation. Seriously... it explains how you can carry so much, AND why you can't immediately get to it at non-rest areas. Also, I believe Josh has emphasized the fact that the Deep Stash may very well not actually be "unlimited." I think the intent of it is to prevent you from having to make multiple sweeps of a given dungeon/area that you've cleared in one go, purely because you lack the capacity to carry all the things available in that area that may be valuable to you for any number of reasons. I don't think there's really a problem with the player being unable to fully loot 17 dungeons without running out of space, for example. I think he was saying that the ability to avoid multiple passes on the same area is more valuable than the minor benefits of typical carry limitations "because reality." So, there's no real worry about explaining the discrepancy between the realistic carry limitations and the abstracted ones, because it's abstraction. The reason for the abstraction is already given, and I think some eventual limitation is still maintained. Also, access variance between the stuff you put in the Deep Stash and the stuff you don't still maintains inventory management. That being said... yes, I'd like it if there was some supportive lore/reasoning behind the workings of the Deep Stash. Like a magical, space-compression bag. But, again, how do you simply reach into a bag of compressed space and pull out the one item you want out of a hundred, on-the-fly?

If they've gone sufficiently far into their collective navel as to conjure up a system in which strength is not a "damage stat", then I'd implore them to come back down to good ol' terra firma and put the bong away for a while. I believe you've neglected the immense difference between "the damage stat" and "a damage stat." Also, I was just thinking... all the classes have "Defense," but that is then sub-divided into 4 aspects, the specific values of which vary between classes. There could be something similar with Strength (or "Power" or whatever). Of course, that's almost the same thing as just having 4 different stats (it works okay for Defense, because it's more of a rating than a stat), AND it sort of restricts the separate facets (physical strength, mental strength, etc.) to classes. So... nevermind? I guess the big question is this: Is one stat actually intended to represent both physical strength AND mental strength, in the same character (regardless of class), or are the two going to be represented separately somehow? I would bet on the separately part, if I had to. But, it's just a big unknown, so it'll be nice to find out from an official update on the matter.

Agreed. I know they're kinda set up that way for reasons, but I think that's one of the biggest detriments to games like Diablo and Borderlands. You have to find about 100 weapons before you actually find one that's significantly better than the last good one you found. In Borderlands, especially, you even keep getting all these specific quest reward ones, and, in my experience, they're almost ALWAYS blatantly worse than what I've already just happened upon randomly. It just feels like you might as well simply be finding piles of money, and being rewarded for quest completions with more piles of money. Then, once every hour or two, you actually find something that's slightly better than what you had, and it ACTUALLY affects your gameplay and makes you feel like you've made progress in the equipment/loot department.

Time limits are fine, as long as the game provides periods of time limitlessness as well. I know that still doesn't make 100% perfectly realistic unabstracted sense, but it works 1,000 times better for the game. If it weren't a game (or it weren't an RPG), then you could easily have a continuous flow of time with no problems; the whole game could be time-based challenges/missions. There are plenty of games set up like that. But, again, they aren't RPGs, with branches and branches and branches of time-consuming options at every turn. Especially if the main story's time-sensitive, and it's always effectively ticking away, you're going to inevitably run into a point at which you must choose between doing cool, exploration-based optional things (that were put in the game because they're meant to be done), OR not-lose the game (a la Fallout's water chip timer). Granted, you could always just make sure the time limits are lenient enough so that you can do a bunch of extra stuff. But, then, doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of the urgency they're creating? "Well, I guess we'll sacrifice some urgency so that you can explore those ruins... So, if you DON'T explore the ruins, there's no urgency at all, and if you DO, there's a decent bit." But then, you'd have to re-structure everything so that you didn't actually KNOW the time limit for a given quest/situation until you'd already done some exploring and side stuff. Otherwise, it'd be "Oh no, in TWO WEEKS, something bad's going to happen!" That's what didn't make much sense in BG, with the whole Dynaheir rescue. Minsc's all "Guys! My sweet, sweet Dynaheir's in trouble! And I'm SO worried about her that I'm going to urge you INTENSELY to do something about it... in the next few weeks!" At that point, it's not urgency. I don't feel like she's actually in any danger. I feel like the game's just being annoying, at that point. "Well, you actually have plenty of time to do lots of other stuff, and the game even kind of expects you to level up a bit to be able to take out all the Kobolds in that stronghold. But, eventually, you're going to have to go do it, or bad things will happen!" It just feels like an arbitrary challenge, then. Like for an achievement or something. "Rescue Dynaheir in under 2 weeks! 8D!" Much more localized time limits are probably the way to go. Like "We only have until the ceremony tomorrow to figure out what's going on here," or "If the child's just gone missing, then we might be able to catch up to the kidnappers and save her, if we hurry." Things that need immediate attention. OR, things like "The church is on fire, and the townsfolk are inside! We've got to get to it as quickly as possible!", with an actual, ticking timer. That kind of thing can require urgency in combat over take-your-time tactics. Especially in a real-time game versus a turn-based. Use all your potions you've been saving, pull all the stops, and get to that church. The longer you take, the worse the situation will get, until there's no one left alive inside. It would be a little tricky to balance that time limit, sure. But, it's still do-able. That, and as I've advocated before, the time-passing-relative-to-quests/events thing. With this, yes, if you just traipse through the woods, or sleep in an inn 700 times in a row, you generate an inconsistency (because that suggests 700 nights having passed, but, in game world time, time is basically at a stand still). But, you almost have to go out of your way to do that. Besides, all "time-sensitive" stuff would pass time, whereas, as long as you didn't have an immediate time-sensitive situation (as exampled in the above paragraph), you could partake in as much non-time-sensitive exploration and such that was available to you at the time. Of course, you can still be leisurely exploring, and stumble into something that's significant enough to pass time again. It's the way it was done in the Mass Effect games. Things didn't really progress, in the world around you, until you did. Even if it wasn't in main missions, etc, and it was just side stuff... Until you actually partook in a significant enough event, you could fly around between places all day long and no time would actually pass in the game world. But, you go explore a planet and come back, and now it's assumed at least several hours (or perhaps a few days... space-travel context makes relative travel times a bit different than medieval fantasy RPG context) have passed, and people contextually speak about what has transpired either IN your exploration of that planet, or what has happened during. It pretty much feels like quite-consistent time handling, while not punishing the player for having to heal a few more times, or not undergoing travel in the most efficient manner ever just to prevent too much time from passing and content from going neglected and updating itself negatively. The significance of situations/events in an RPG lies in how you handle them with the tools at hand. So, there's not really any sense in allowing entire situations and events to be "scheduled" and missable all in the name of adhering to realistic time-passage for the duration of the game. Imagine if, in Fallout, you hadn't even been told about the water chip in the first place, but it was still going to go out shortly after you left, and the vault was still going to run out of purified water in a set amount of time. What would be the point? What good is a narrative if it's just a dice roll as to whether or not you're actually a factor in it? "Oh, you happened to stumble upon this situation not before or after, but WHILE it was underway? Great! Then you get to possibly handle it! ^_^"

I think they're setting it up pretty well for class distinction. Even two separate class abilities that produce the same effect can already provide this, because there are so many factors to the specific operation of the abilities. Fighter might have a Pommel Strike that deals minor extra damage and stuns, for example. And a Wizard could have a ranged Force Bolt that deals minor extra damage and stuns. The Fighter's is melee only (so there's engagement and all that jazz to worry about), and the Wizard's is ranged (different chances to hit, maybe it has a greater chance of being blocked by a shield? Etc.). The Fighter's targets Deflection, while the Wizard's targets Willpower. And so on. Not that I think the goal shouldn't be as-distinct-as-possible class abilities. But, there's definitely plenty of room in their current design to handle overlaps of things without classes needing to fight over who gets to do what. Side thought: I think it would be awesome if there were projectile spells (for example) that would actually be susceptible to Deflection for their actual to-hit chance (they could be blocked by a shield, etc), then made a second roll against Willpower to determine effect potency. Or, at the very least, target half Deflection and half Willpower or something, in the determination of the miss-graze-hit-crit scale for the attack roll.

That... or a prepared adventuring party. I guess if they happened to ride horses to traverse long distances, that would turn your adventuring party into cavalry?

^ True. Although, in the context of a world in which mental strength translates into the same kinetic capability, I'm not certain there's really much of a functional difference. In other words, I can't think of a Strength check, in-game, that couldn't be performed by both a Wizard's magical might AND a Fighter's honed muscles. It still bugs me, too, though, so I'm with you on that. Even if it's just on the idea. But, I'm still trying to think of ways in which it would functionally cause problems, because it seems like there should be at least something... Hmmm... How would you represent a Fighter who's physically fatigued but mentally quite alert and sharp as distinct from a Wizard who's mentally drained/groggy but is physically energetic as a puppy? I'm not sure if the game mechanics ever need to represent that, with their design, but, IF they do, then that would be an issue. "Check Strength!" Well, that's not going to get us very far. And if they have an indicator for whether it's mental or physical, based on class, then why not have 2 separate attributes? Except for the times when it DOES overlap. But then, you could just have an "or" check there. "Trying to open a door? Check Strength value OR Willpower value." And, on that note, I suppose it might even work to simply have certain classes have ONLY a mental potency attribute, while others have ONLY a physical one. Except, then you wind up with hardly any variety. How strong are Wizards? Well, according to the attribute system, they're quite mentally powerful, but physically, they're all exactly identical pansies. What happens if they, for some reason, have a damper put on their mental powers of potency? Well, apparently they can't even lift pebbles without those powers... Silence a Wizard in full plate? He drops to the ground immediately under the immense weight of his armor, which was only being supported by his constant mental effort. I hope some light is shed on this decision, and how, exactly, the distinction is going to be handled with only "Strength" to go by. If that's the case.

The most important thing in this is knowing where to draw the lines. Not whether or not to. I don't think pegging "DPS" and "Tank" as the kinds of roles we need to use for class-domain boundaries is a very good idea. Are you going to have differences between direct damage amount, support amount, and tanky damage-absorption amount? Yes. But, that's SUCH a simplistic model to use for the totality of a class system. I want a system in which both a Wizard AND a Fighter gain access to multi-target (AOE) attacks, but in which the Wizard's attacks function in one set of ways and produce one set of specifically distinct effects while the Fighter's work in entirely another and produce another range of effects. Obviously some of these will overlap. There's no reason to say "No, a FIGHTER does the stunning, and a WIZARD doesn't stun, EVER!" That's an example of a silly role boundary. A topic that always comes up is the whole "If Wizards get to wear armor and use weapons, they're encroaching on Fighters' turf!" notion. But, I like to look at it this way: Why can't a Wizard specialize in more channeled spells, or spells with longer cast times, and therefore actually benefit from the extra armor? Why should "I get to not die in 3 seconds when stuff hits me" be exclusive to the Fighter? If that's the backbone of the distinction of your Fighter class, isn't it a rather boring class? And why can't the Wizard specialize in melee-to-short-range spells, delivered with a weapon? That's not stealing any Thunder from the Fighter. The Fighter's still much better at handling incoming attacks and delivering outgoing ones. The Wizard was already hurling fireballs and hitting all those people with giant flame-splosions. Why not let him choose whether to tactically deliver those from afar and worry less about being hit, or deliver them from close range and worry MORE about being hit? Wizard lore consistently has them focusing magic through staffs/wands/foci, etc. Why not a weapon? It doesn't mean they magically gain martial prowess and simply deliver elaborate sword attacks equally as well as the Fighter. The Wizard can fire a Magic Missile, and yet no one says "HEY! You're just magically doing what an archer does! NOT COOL!" So, yeah... I'm not very fond of roles, a lot of the time, being defined primarily through mathematical relativity. "You're the Wizard because you deal the most AOE damage and have slightly different animations that look magicky, and you're the Fighter because you have the highest defense and armor capabilities, and deliver the highest direct physical attack numbers, and get the most attacks per round, etc." I think there are much cleverer ways of drawing the boundary lines.

The "snapshot of your character's 3D model face" portraits are definitely a bit lackluster. The 3D model provides little benefit to the 2D iconic quality of the portrait, and they just seem so lifeless and dull. About the only pro is that your portrait looks exactly like your in-game character model, down to all the specific customizations you made. A pro that gets drowned in all the cons, methinks.

If anything, it's pretty comforting, then, that they've prioritized actually working on the game over spending precious resources on a fulfillment site instead. I don't see it as the fulfillment site being downgraded. Or, hopefully not. It shouldn't ever be a higher priority than project progress in the first place. The only thing that I can possibly call them on is the inaccuracy of their "soon" estimation. If they weren't really sure when it was going to be done, they should've just said "We're not sure, but we'll let you know." But, that doesn't change the fact that it won't be done until it's done. And we don't know when it NEEDS to be done, because it's dependent upon the project's status and when they're able to get to it. If they don't get to the fulfillment before they fully finish the project and we're all sitting around playing P:E without any fulfillment stuff or options, THEN there'll be a problem. So long as it happens before then, I'm not seeing any issues, really. When they say they're working on it, I trust that they're not lying, even if it's not going to be as soon as they initially hoped.

If I had to guess, I'd say there won't be class-specific options, but rather, an array of options that will cover all those same sort of class-themed variations but will be available no matter what. In other words, you can make your stronghold a giant militarized fortress, OR an arcane cluster of spires and summoning circles, regardless of whether or not you're a Fighter or a Wizard. But, both options will still be available (for example... I don't know that these specific options will be available).

Methinks supposedly there was some official word about there not-being pack-animals that will travel around with you? At least, not as a controllable, interactable, able-to-die-if-you're-not-careful thing. The Deep Stash could very well be represented by some immortal pack animal(s), always stationed at every rest spot you come to.

There's nothing quite like watching your veteran mercenary-type party run around swinging sharp, metal objects every 4-5 seconds as if they've just recently discovered how to use their arms.

Simply striking with a shield, yes. But, the very fact that it's an active-use ability and that it does produce an additional effect (in games) is all the more reason to think that they're referring to a very voluntary, effort-intensive attack that you wouldn't be simply working into your swordplay "combos." Besides... striking with a gauntlet? One would thing that a striking gauntlet would contain a hand, attached to an arm, with muscles. This isn't a slap we're talking about. The initial inquiry here was "why is something like shield bash not just a passive thing?" I'm merely pointing out the probable basis for its being an active-use ability in most games. It isn't off, really. I wasn't suggesting an obstacle prevents you from attacking. I was pointing out that, if we just say "wouldn't my character do this automatically?" and go from there, what WOULDN'T our character do that would be left for the player to decide? Specifically, when would you ever have to worry about making ineffective attacks if your character just automatically adjusted to whatever factors were at play? Target's shield is raised? I'll just stop firing arrows automatically, or switch targets. Shield back down? I'll immediately switch back to that guy. Why does the player get to assign targets and time ANY abilities? Because it's a game, and part of the fun is the tactical control of combat. This I actually agree with. There are certainly things that are often active-use that can be better worked into passive/automatic triggers, and vice versa. Existing games obviously aren't the pinnacle of perfection in all things. But, at the same time, there's no point in judging specific implementations that could've been done better, then just deciding something like "there's no way an attack with a shield should even BE timed or resource-intensive, because a shield CAN be attacked-with in the regular flow of combat!" No matter what, the implementation should be decided based on a thorough evaluation, as per your quote segment.

^ That's true of some people, but not of all. Still, it's a valid point. It's one of those things that, if you can get a good bit out of very little work (i.e. villagers at least moving about and pretending to talk to one another -- if you already have those animations created -- as opposed to just standing around for eternity -- pun TOTALLY intended), then I say do it. OR, if you can afford to put in the work to make it actually significant and more than just fluff (actual "realistic" schedules for people, oodles of factors accounted for, etc.), then totally go for it. But, nothing in between. Basically... consistency. I don't need to see a wood carver utilizing the exact, actual motions of a real-life wood-carver and performing every single task, throughout his day, that a real woodcarver would do, JUST for the town to seem alive. And, if I do see that, and I don't see everything else done with the same level of detail, then that's going to spotlight an inconsistency, whether I voluntarily focus on finding it or not. I don't mind such things being called "fluff," I suppose, but it seems like people sometimes use that word in almost a mocking/belittling fashion, as if it's completely meaningless. Go play a game with absolutely no townsfolk animations whatsoever, or ambient noises, or music, or detail in any processes, and then say that those things are merely fluff. Obviously it's not all-or-nothing. But like I said, I think the important thing is consistency. IF you've got the resources, then cool. But keep the same level of detail across the board. And don't go beyond a certain amount unless the mechanics and gameplay actually support it (e.g. in the TES games, the fact that they "so realistically" move about and perform daily life tasks pretty much just makes people HARDER to find, and it's still not quite detailed enough for it to really have the effect of feeling like the townsfolk are real people, so they probably could've dropped their goal down a peg and just polished off the system with a bit more abstraction in mind, while supporting the gameplay more.)

They're onto me! *smoke bomb*... *Flees in a manner befitting an impostor* Whoa... *hazily regains consciousness*. What happened, guys? So, what was I saying? Oh yes... PARAGRAPH PARAGRAPH PARAGRAPH PARAGRAPH PARAGRAPH...