Lephys

I appreciate the clarification. I think I understand you now, and I agree with your ideas, in general. There might've been a disconnect here (at least with my posts), in that the only "permanence" I'm vying for is exactly what you're referring to here. I might've had poor wording or something, but it seems that when I tried to express this very problem, people started thinking I was somehow vying for summoned creatures that could never fall in combat or go away. When I talk about permanent summons, I mean something like "Lightning Wolf." I permanently possess the ability to temporarily summon a lightning wolf, however it is formed or created or teleported in from another plane. Either there are more wolves in that plane to summon in the future, or I summon the same one because it returns when it becomes weakened rather than actually perishing. OR, I simply fashion mana or whatever into the form of an electric wolf, and it maintains that form, under my power, for a duration. When we talk about being able to be "a summoner," as tied to a class, or at least a class build, etc., you can't really have purely consumable abilities to simply add allies onto the field of combat. You have to have the means of summoning creatures to combat as a part of that class's capabilities. That's the permanence I'm referring to. Not that there HAS to be a summoner role in P:E. But, it would be nice, as it's usually glanced over in most other games.

I could be wrong, but I don't think we'll be testing anything resembling a complete game. Based on what's been said about it, I would bet they'll be presenting little scenarios to test the mechanics and whatnot. Almost like different levels in the Aperture Laboratories of Portal, . So, I'm just not sure there'll really be a kinks-worked-out, "stable" build of something as opposed to anything else. If the test scenarios aren't stable, I don't know that we'll be playing them. And, any way of crashing the game (any evidence of instability) will be what they'll want us to find, methinks, amongst lesser glitches and discrepancies in the mechanics and systems.

I respect your adoration for pointy hats and the like. I don't think they're inherently horrible or anything. It's just... as Jarmo kind of hit on, it's a bit silly for a Wizard (especially a non-master Wizard) to stroll about in "I'm clearly a Wizard, and that declaration is really all these garments do, since I can't actually maneuver alleyways or duck under things in them without removing my hat, and I'll never ever hide from a single person or go unnoticed in a crowd in my life!" attire, all the time. For what it's worth, I'm not saying Aloth's concept art is the end-all-be-all for Wizard garb. But, there is a huge difference between "looking like a Rogue" and actually dressing with some modicum of utility in-mind. Maybe uber-master Wizards could wear blatantly-Wizardish completely impractical clothing, but even then, that's a bit arrogant, is it not? "HAhaha! I'm so splendtastic, I don't even CARE who knows I'm a Wizard! I WANT my enemies to spot me from a mile away, and go ahead and prepare strategies for swiftly silencing me and/or otherwise trapping me before I can even do anything! But, I think I'm so powerful, I'll just will their plans to fail! MUAHAHAHAhahaha! Also, I never need to actually move about in a practical fashion, because I just hover everywhere and/or cast spells on my hugely bulky robes and my 7-foot tall pointy hat so that they never trip me or get in my way, or I just cast spells on cavern corridors and such so that they expand around me so as not to snag on any of my clothes! 8D!" Not that all "typical" robes and Mage attire is so preposterous or anything. But, it does tend to get pretty cliche, and tends to beg the question "why do Wizards wear that?"

Truer words were never spoken. I do believe you've somehow managed to hit my point far more precisely than even I myself had done. I mean, looking back, I can't even find a single word to quote (much less a string of words) that isn't screaming "obviously authors who don't emphasize certain words with visual means are doing it wrong." Luckily you got one of those good educations before it all went downhill, eh? Also, it goes without saying that something cannot be beneficial without being necessary. My car? Pssh... I have the capability to walk 30 miles, so I could easily get to work without it. I don't actually need my car to reach work. Therefore, we shouldn't use vehicles. I mean, people were getting by without vehicles for a long time, so that clearly means they serve absolutely no purpose. Necessity = purpose. Lack of necessity = pointless. Your understanding of things is beyond measure.

The decline of education in our schools is responsible for the awareness of the difference between claims of benefit and claims of necessity? That seems an odd truth... Also, yes... italics is totally a new thing. It was invented by robot computers, and not by typesetters hundreds of years ago. You got me.

The joke iron seems to be tainted. It's probably those cursed Amnish. u_u

You can read a book without punctuation too much of the time it's still important though a cat is quite fluffy The point being that there's a huge difference between "I never accused her of anything!" and "I never accused her of anything!". Those two sentences actually have two different meanings. One is very specifically stressing the falsehood of the action, and the other stresses the falsehood of the target of action. I.e. "I did something to her, but it certainly wasn't accusation," and "I accused someone, but it certainly wasn't her." Sure it's not necessary, but it certainly helps to represent inflection in dialogue that people actually use that would otherwise go unrepresented.

You'd... beta believe it.

In the same way that a lumber mill becomes most amusing once set ablaze. Good times, I guess.

While I very much like the idea, might I ask how this system differentiates between investigation and discovery? It seems like they're either one in the same (a guard will NEVER be prompted to change his behavior and look/move in your direction based on hearing/seeing SOMEthing that he isn't sure yet is you, until you run out of ticks and he just-plain discovers you), or investigation negates the tick-pool system (you get to a certain number of ticks, or you get within a certain range, and the enemy turns to investigate a sound/image, even if you weren't moving or doing anything out of the ordinary... even if you were behind him). Does that make sense? Simple example: If you sneak up behind a guard, then just stand still, you shouldn't actually incur ANY ticks, until he turns around. If you're being perfectly still, you're not generating any sound. Or, is the tick system intended to come into play only once you're being investigated? If that's the case, then the only problem I see is the whole "why am I ticking ever-closer to detection if I'm hidden from view and completely still/silent, but simply happen to be within a certain distance of the target?" when you're behind him or whatnot.

That example completely skirts the actual point of mine. Fire burns. If you touch it with bare flesh, it will burn your bare flesh. However, people being near fire don't necessarily stick their hands in fires. That is something you can intuitively know without any first-hand experience with fires. You are aware that you have direct control over your hands, and you know enough about fire to know it doesn't posses your mind and compel you to reach into it with your hands. Therefore, a good example would be "I knew of some people that built a fire, and then they reached into it and burned their hands. So, I think building fires just inherently results in burning your hands." To put it simply, whether or not a gameplay mechanic is fun is dependent upon MUCH more than simply the fact that it was attempted in the first place. Successful implementation is not needed to reveal the sheer possibility of its existence, just as knowing someone who built a fire and DIDN'T burn their hands isn't needed to know that one can build and light a fire without burning their hands in it.

I could've sworn that was "decrease" to attack/damage. I could very well be mistaken, though. Anywho, are you suggesting that one cannot put more effort into footings/stances that make their center of gravity much harder to overcome, at the cost of focus on actually offensively being effective? If you get hit, you just fall over? There's absolutely no such thing as taking a blow in a different way, or defensive-vs-offensive approaches to combat? Who said that's "the way you use a sword," and not simply a way that a sword can, potentially be used? Again, it's supposed to be impossible that one could possibly shift one's level of aggression in combat? That would mean that one's either already swinging as hard as possible as a default of proper form, or that swinging ANY harder than proper form dictates would instantly result in death, or in perpetu-missing. I'll give you the supernatural nature of the war cry. But, I would question a dispute that tenacity in combat doesn't affect the morale of those nearby. If I laugh while unnecessarily slicing someone in half after disarming them, I think the nearby men are going to be a bit psychologically shaken, if only for a moment. And, of course, if you were to put the knockdown effect into the context of P:E, it works fine, since P:E is based around supernatural soul powers.

The whole "Should you be doing this, or your character?" question/debate in a nutshell: You don't control your character's capabilities (not directly; you control character creation, and thus the determination of their capability values), but you control their decisions in using them. You can't actively make your character be able to swing better or do more damage, but you CAN choose the less-agile enemy or weaker enemy as a target, and let your character do the rest. You don't formulate words and decide what your character can and cannot say, but you decide what he/she DOES say. Regarding the Dragon Age activated abilities, and being a good leader or not being one: Just because your inherent ability to lead fluctuates from person to person doesn't mean there isn't a range between actively employing that ability and actively employing nothing but other abilities. For every incoming blow you expertly dodge, you weren't looking around and deciding what orders to give your party next; you were looking at the incoming blow. There actually is. Sure, it's an abstraction, so it's not literally that a Warrior is physically incapable of shield bashing again for 15 seconds. But, try shield-bashing 20 times in a row, and see how well that works. And, as for magic, all non-fictitious effort-requiring tasks require time and take a toll on a person. Why should magic be any different? Can you fire an arrow AND throw an axe AND swing a sword AND shield bash a man AND issue orders AND dodge an attack all at once? No... then why should a Mage be able to do so? If he could, then Mages would rule the world, because their limitations would be SO far beyond anyone else's. That guy can fireball you AND teleport AND shield himself AND heal himself AND summon demons AND fire magic missiles at everyone in a 3 mile radius, all at once. The idea of cooldowns is very unsilly. However, their exact durations and applications might be a little silly at times.

Yeah, I think Josan's proposal works well in that respect. Give me a consumable object that summons an ice elemental with 500HP, when I know, in context, that that'll last roughly 20 battles, and I'm not going to worry so much about using it. MAYBe when it gets down to 50HP left, I'll start saving it. But, I've already used it 15-or-so times at that point. So... there's a lot fewer eggs in a single basket. Of course, it kinda coincides with the health/stamina system of P:E. So, that 500HP ice elemental might only have 70 stamina. Run out of that, and it de-summons. Maybe you can only summon it once per encounter or something. So now you don't just have 20 battles worth of damage absorption at your disposal, on top of your party and all their abilities. Again, you still have to factor in the effects of the inclusion of disposable summons, period, on the non-disposable bits of the summoning gameplay. If you can basically build a class as a summoner, then how does the disposable summon factor in? Is its potency/limitation somehow based on the abilities of the user, or is it simply something that's the same no matter what, and that everyone can use (Fighter can just use the consumable to summon an ice elemental)? Maybe it's much weaker if summoned by a non-summoner, and much stronger if summoned by a summoner. But it affects the total number of things a summoner is allowed to control at once? Who knows. There's just a lot of stuff to consider there.

The Wheel of Time has several of those oddities. I read a decent bit before actually checking the back of the book, and never ONCE did I think to pronounce "Nynaeve" as "NIGH-neev." 8P As with the example of Morgase, though, I think most of the stuff in there was at least close enough/readable enough so as not to cause major problems. Some of the Old Tongue stuff was a bit hard to wrap my tongue around, I suppose. But that was supposed to be a bit foreign even to the characters.

Personally, I would LOVE to beta-test the game. I think as long as the testable scenarios are "encrypted," so to speak (replaced with non-final-product specifics), all will be well.

^ I was thinking very generally and did not reach the problem with backstabs yet. Point noted. Of course, there's gotta be more to the current system, or it would already fail to allow backstabs, what with radii touching/overlapping equaling investigatory status. Unless something reduced your radius to 0 temporarily to allow for backstabbing.

Well, they wouldn't want to become tainted by the systme's horrendously awful details.

We could petition for him to join the team. Even if it doesn't work, it would surely be a... Vailiant effort.

... "May." I think they're paying a lot of attention to the effects of pausing on combat, and the need to pause to assess tactics, considering the amount of effort they've mentioned putting into testing variations of the "slow-mo" pseudo-pausing. There might even be a speed adjustment on that. For what it's worth, in BG, I sometimes feel the need to pause when setting up actual tactical placement (usually for the start of a battle), so that I don't just colorspray my entire party, and ranged attackers aren't unnecessarily scrambling around to get out of people's ways, etc. But, I don't really feel the need to pause much after that, unless extreme things happen (someone dies, three people get paralyzed, etc.). Even that's mainly because it's tricky for me to re-assign targets and placement to account for some such event without wasting time making sure I, the player, don't click on the wrong thing (when, for the character, it wouldn't actually require any precision to decide which target to attack and/or which ability to use). If BG serves as any indicator of the general style of combat, I don't think ultra-precise placements and extremely well-timed spells and abilities will demand much pausing for the majority of combat. I don't think anyone will gain anything from keeping things paused 90% of the time, and making a 15-second combat take 5 minutes.

There are actually a lot of studies that suggest serif fonts are easier for the human eye to read when used in smaller-sized, larger quantities of text (blocks of font, "body" text, etc.), and that sans-serif works better for larger, shorter sections of text (headers, logos, page titles, etc.). Not that it's a difference that would be very noticeable if you directly compared two different variants of a sentence or paragraph, or something, but if you read 100 pages of text, once in serif font and once in sans-serif, you might then notice. It's more of a long-term thing, so it might be beneficial in the dialogue/descriptive text of an entire RPG. *shrug*

Call it what you will. I try to follow the Golden Rule, so I assumed you wanted me to respond with equal snarkiness. Also, being skeptical AND acknowledging the fact that pausing an entire game isn't mandatory to observe and react to the developments within that game's gameplay are not mutually exclusive. Which is exactly why your substitution of the word "pausing" into Josh's quote was utterly unnecessary, since he made it clear he's in no way advocating "reaction = pausing." Expressing your hopes that the game's design won't mandate consta-pausing just to not suffer an extreme loss of effectiveness in combat is one thing. Willing tactical reaction to inherently equal pausing and participating in the discussion as if it simply does, and pretending everyone's just meaning "pausing the game" whenever they talk about tactical reaction is another thing, entirely, and isn't very constructive. Totally your prerogative, though.

Time and possibly also distance. I'd imagine an either/or; your radii overlap for, say, more than 5 seconds, OR, your radius actually overlaps with the target, itself. Whichever comes first. It would be interesting, however, if visual and audible perception were somehow separated. It'd be nice if, for example, you could sneak within 15 feet of a sentry if his back was turned, but couldn't do the same if he was looking straight at you (you're quieter than you are invisible), in some circumstances. Of course, if it's abstracted to just collective circles, that's not the end of the world. I'm sure it'll still be handled well, and make for some interesting effects of stealth on various scenarios. Regarding the waiting 5 feet away thing, though... It makes a lot of sense that your radius might shrink when you're not moving, especially if you're hiding in a corner shadow or something, or within some cover (like a shrubbery). So, in a way, I can see you hiding 5 feet from someone and not being detected. But, I would think most forms of movement/action, at that range, would at LEAST warrant investigation. Unless, of course, they simultaneously result in the death of the potential investigator. I think the overlap of your detection radius with the target, itself, resulting in your detection would be a pretty intuitive use of the radii, though. Josh said that if your circles overlap a bit, you spark investigation but aren't actually detected yet. I wonder how large that buffer is and how that is handled, exactly (like with time/further overlap?).

You think pausing the game is required for assessment/tactical alteration to occur. I see.

Can we still sign up to actually be actual beta testers? 'Cause I'd like to actually test the game.