Lephys

Seconded. I mean, Gandalf pulls it off pretty well, but that's kind of his splendor over-powering the crappiness of the hat design. I also hate Wizard bath robes. I don't care how many arcane symbols are on them if it looks like I just got out of the shower to answer a knock at the door, or escaped from a hospital bed. "I just draped something upon myself! Because I'm MAGIC!" I like more practical/utilitarian Wizard attire. I will say I'm a fan of the like... fingerless cloth (or even leather/other materials) gauntlet things. I don't know what they're officially called. They protect palms/forearms (even if just from the elements), yet leave fingers free for touch spells, and effects like from the Cloak of Arachnia (wall climbing a la Spiderman).

I hear ya. Maybe, at the very least, they could go with weapon skills (with actual ratings), a la Fallout. Talents (feats) could then affect various things with your weapon, rather than governing your prowess with it via a handful of tiers. Especially since all the to-hit stuff is much expanded now from the 1-20 rolls. *shrug*. Guess we'll hafta wait and learn more. I'm really hoping that, however its handled, it's kind of set up to allow for viable single-weapon specialization by offsetting a decent bit of the using-the-same-weapon-instead-of-switching detriments one might face against multiple foes. Not that you still wouldn't have to use adaptive tactics... but, the alternative to this singular focus would be spreading your points about a bit, thereby maximizing your effectiveness against multiple armor/defense types, at the cost of some prowess/effectiveness with any single weapon. In other words, I hope 5 points spent specializing in swords isn't inherently/globally worse than 2 points spend in hammers and 3 in swords, if that makes any sense. I have faith, though. The unknown always raises possible concerns.

^ This most likely warrants a whole 'nother thread, but... what if, instead of (or in addition to) the typical sort of "how much they like you" system with your companions, you earned "I owe you one"-type points with them? So, in some situation in which you could REALLY use a good lie to get past some door guard, you can get your (for example) pious, ultra-Charismatic Priest to do this for you by spending one of those points? So, kind of Favor Points. The more you do for your companions and the better you treat them, the more Favors they owe you. Instead of just "No, I typically wouldn't do that, and therefore I refuse," or "I'll do it, but now I don't like you." This could come into play for Hormalakh's idea of simply requesting that your other party members perform certain checks/attempts at things, even when they maybe sometimes wouldn't be ultra-inclined to do so.

... Was someone asking for quasi-permanent summons? If they were, I missed it. Is that what Tsuga's post was about,too? Quasi-permanent summons and their folly? In the interest of clarification (of my posts, at least) I was simply referring to summons that you can summon again. Not summons that are incapable of dying. But, specifically stating "perma"death, as opposed to mere death, seemed to suggest "this is completely and utterly obliterated, and you can never summon it again." Which would be a bit silly for, say, a Wizard's Summon Celestial Wolf spell. At what point would you ever be incapable of summoning a Celestial Wolf? Or a Necromancer animating corpses. Clearly, for the Wizard's Summon Celestial Wolf or the Necromancer's Animate Corpse ability to cease functioning would be a bit silly. That isn't to say you couldn't have anything summonable that could perma-die, but at that point, the importance of it would have to be such that you'd actually care about whether or not it was gone, meaning it would be much more like a pet or character than a simple summoned ally. If it IS that important, then losing it is incredibly detrimental to your repertoire of abilities. And, either way, the threat of perma-death will have you second-guessing when to use it, and over-carefully pulling it from combat at half-health, thereby diluting its usefulness even more.

Yeah, sorry... I just had to edit mine like 50 times to get it the way I meant. I was just wondering if you happen to go the "left-side-right-side" route, if simply right-justifying the right-side people's text works better, or if maybe simply indenting the left margin for it all works better. Just a meager suggestion/exploration.

I sadly cannot actually view the mock-up (its source is blocked here at work). But, if your complaint, Osvir, is simply that it's sloppily staggered, it might not be so bad if the text attributed to speakers on the right side were still all aligned along the left edge, but simply indented out further? As in: ================================================================================= Osmaer | "Blargity blargity blargle bla-blarg!" | | | | "Buh-LARG?! Blarg-BLARGUM blargy blargle! Blar-GULLL! | Squeeble | Blargle bleeg blugle bliggity blurgy blagh." | | | Osmaer | "Blargle-blar-BLARGY-blargum..." | | | | "BLUMMITY-BLUG!" | | | | "Blarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... -____-" | Squeeble ================================================================================= Meh? I mean, maybe it's not enough. But, I think as long as the "right text" were simply aligned to a different margin, it would fix most of that problem. Maybe the descriptive text could be centered, with margin indentions on both sides? *le shrug*

Are you saying that it is inherently the sole role of summoned creatures to be consumable allies-in-a-bottle, to be used for a quick boost like potions, and that it's somehow preposterous for even a single core ability (optional or not) of a class that gets used throughout the game?

Sorry. Didn't realize the full extent of your suggestion. *thumbs up*

Indeed. And, regarding Osvir's idea, I rather like the way many JRPGs handled the "who's currently speaking" emphasis, with both portrait emphasis and/or slideshow-type animation (i.e. single-image changes to show the mood of the person currently speaking). Not that it needs to be anime-style reflections of moods and such, but, it's quite nice when the portraits actually give you an idea of the reactions of a character. A good example of the effect of the lack of this is when a character has a smiling face, yet becomes quite angry with you in dialogue. You're reading angry words from a happy-go-lucky smiling kind-hearted person. It's pretty great when they at least appear to be angry while speaking the angry words (again mainly in reaction to things... not necessarily a new portrait every single time they start a new sentence). Of course, this takes a LOT more resources to produce all those portrait versions. But, IF it could be done, it'd be pretty great.

I think we might be hitting a contextual disconnect here. Perhaps a better analogy would've been arrows. I'm thinking of each summon as a recurring summon, not a one-time thing (as a type of arrow, rather than an individual arrow). I just gathered that's the kind of summons we were talking about, since we're discussing summoning them a bunch of times (much like firing a bunch of arrows), unless they die. So, imagine using Ice arrows (your means of attack with your bow, just a summon is kind of like ammo for your... figurative summoning-bow), only, they die. Now you can't ever use Ice arrows again. How many total types of arrows can there possibly be in the game, before you're arrow-less? If there are 752 different summons, and they all simply replace one another (Oh, can't summon the Demon Cat Jargeth? Just summon the Celestial Cat Grisboth!), then that seems like an awful lot of work on the summoning system, for what amounts to mainly flavorful benefit. And, again, you could still let 710 of them die, and be extremely limited in your summoning capabilities. Or, if we're talking about a reasonable number of summons, and one, among them, that's very powerful, then either its death SEVERELY detriments your summoning potency overall, OR its continued life makes it essentially over-powered (if you can get along JUST fine without it). And, if we're going to limit the death-ability of summons to only the ones that can be easily gone without, then what's the point? I gathered the point of the suggestion being "you've gotta protect the weapons that are precious to you, because if you use them carelessly, they're gone." So, I'm thinking that, who's gonna want to play the rest of the game (or even be able to) without such a precious weapon? Again, why I equated it to a Fighter losing an entire weapon type. Sure, he can use a different weapon, but if he's just going to grab another hammer, then why do we care whether or not that first hammer could break?

I just want to add that, if you wanted to have some potions be a bit less rare and more situationally useful, you could, at the very least, convert the time-based duration to a charge-based duration. "Your next 5 attacks will gain an additional +2 Strength bonus." Depending on the effect, it might even only count when you hit. However, maybe you could only have a single potion effect in effect at any given time (unlike some typical implementations with their "Stoneskin, Bull's Strength, AND invisibility at the same time!" stuff). So, you then have to choose between useful effects, rather than simply being limited purely by their rarity/availability.

The P:E system pretty much addresses this in the same way you're suggesting. Not quite exactly the same, down to the detail, but, still... "current-level"/taxing spells are on a per-day cycle. Less-challenging/"lower-level" spells are on a per-encounter cycle (not quite mana, but still coinciding a good bit with the allowances of mana versus the allowances of pure Vancian per-day spells). Relatively easy spells will be unlimited-cast. I mean, an experienced Wizard can probably light virtually infinite candles in a given day, without running out of juice, so to speak. Or, in the case of actual combat functionality, tossing smaller spells, much like crossbow bolts, shouldn't really wear you completely out given the feasible amount of times you're going to need to do that in a day. Anywho, the only problem I have with mana is that it provides an unnecessary ability to simply override quantity limitations. If mana recharges slowly (and/or there are time-based cooldowns or what-have-you), then you can simply burst-fire all your mana away, then retreat from combat (or do whatever you need to do to take on the fewest opponents at a time), wait for things to recharge, then re-engage. Or, if you've got mana potions and the like thrown into the mix, then you've basically introduced a "you are limited by mana, unless of course you have plenty of money with which to override that limitation most of the time" mechanic. Maybe you limit mana potions by making them very expensive or rare, but then, now you're simply back to the "you can only have so much mana (including replenishment) in a given encounter/cast so many spells in a given duration" limitation, only much more convoluted. Do you expect mana potions to be used, and balance the challenge of things against 1.5x characters' total mana pools? If so, what happens when someone blows all their money on some potions, and very inefficiently uses up all their mana replenishment in a single fight, and now can't cast spells anymore, even though there's lots of combat left and their spell-casters yet live? Okay, so maybe you balance the challenge against just the typical/average mana pool. Well, now potions added in makes everything super easy. It's just a bit self-defeating in the face of the initial limitation. Anywho, I think having the three tiers, like they do, will work wonderfully, and will pretty much handle any major problems with the typical systems (both mana AND pure Vancian). I mean, if you use up all your per-day spells AND per-encounter spells, you still have your unlimited-cast spells. You're just dealing with a much smaller arsenal. It's kind of like using up all your arrows, and having to switch to a sling. It's good when inefficiency/carelessness results in negative consequences, and not hard disablement. Also, the transition of a given spell from per-day to per-encounter (and, subsequently, per-encounter to unlimited) conveys SUCH a feeling of power progression in your caster.

I don't like it when they're mandatory, but they DO have value as an option, when you want to kind of get some "random" character stats and build around that. Especially the ones that actually give you different total point values, like in D&D stat-rolling. It's kinda hard to just allocate the points to make a character with fewer total allocated points, and decide which things to leave low, and how low to leave them. I personally like it when a dice system takes care of that for me, again, when I'm going for a sort of sub-par, greater-roleplay-challenge character. I think this is one thing that actually does make a good option.

If there's only a finite amount of XP in the game to be had, and that acts as the sort of cap (and/or an actual hard cap is placed very, very close to that), then toggling a simple option to "disable" this cap would generate absolutely no effect. The only way in which to "disable" it at that point would be to "disable" the finiteness of XP. Meaning extra work in designing extra means of granting XP, at the very least.

Cats (felids) have the ability to protract their claws from a retracted, at-rest position. But again not this size. *shrug*. I guess I just don't see it as such a physics dilemma. It's a concept art. What was there was childish human (toes and nails), and now it's been warped, just like the rest of the figure. I can easily assume that any amount of disfigured-toenail-ground-dragging that goes on doesn't prevent the creature from running. I think you mentioned velociraptors, somewhat jokingly (or someone did, or I'm crazy)? They had VERY large foot claws, if I'm not mistaken, and yet they didn't trip all the time and/or weren't otherwise incapable of running. So, yeah, I would assume that any unwanted/non-beneficial growth of the toe nails/claws on the Wicht would simply snap off (or be torn off or something equally gruesome) as it runs and drags/scrapes them along the ground and various obstacles. OR, its foot/toe musculature has been warped in such a way as to account for the ridiculously pronounced nails/claws, much like a raptor or other natural creature that has crazy-long nails/claws and can still run. I don't really know, but I see plenty of possibilities that don't seem any less possible than "those things get in the way and it can't run." Maybe the concept artists/creature designers can provide us with an explanation of the exact lore behind the Wichts behaviors and abilities? I know it's a bit particular, but it would still be pretty interesting to know. Regarding the conversation UI, I second Hormalakh's suggestion. I'm a fan of the "one person gets the left margin, one person gets the right margin" system of dialogue. Of course, when you get to the point at which multiple people are talking in the same, er, poly-logue? It kinda falls back into just an alternating indication of a change in speaker, rather than each side specifically representing a single speaker for the duration of the conversation. Still, it's nice.

I think some manner of temporary (even if time-based) detriment might work better. Because, if they can die, then you're constantly facing down that "Hmm... should I use this summon in this fight? What if it dies and I lose it forever?" thought the whole time. Not to mention that something THAT permanent (especially if it occurs because of some silly chancical bad luck, despite your use of caution in the matter) almost begs for a reload. I mean, you're looking at either A) I make sure that thing doesn't die/reload and continue throughout the entire rest of the game with that summon ability, or B) I lack that ability for the entire rest of the game. That would be kind of like a Fighter breaking a hammer, and losing the ability to use a hammer for the rest of the game. Which brings me to the second thing: Either you're totally and utterly fine without that particular summon (which is now dead), meaning that it was pretty insignificant in the first place (you have plenty of core summon-a-bility with things that can't die, to serve as your summoning arsenal and viability throughout the game as a summoner)... OR, you needed that thing, which makes the contrast between its life and death even MORE preposterously lop-sided. Let it die and just keep playing, effectively suffering almost a loss-of-level type penalty, or reload and ensure that it lives so that you can actually make it through the rest of the game without wielding a broken weapon the rest of the way. It would be very similar to a Wizard losing the ability to cast one or more spells, permanently. Put that together with the way builds/improvement works, and you've got a potentially crippling loss. "Wait, I've been boosting my fire magic this whole time, and now I can't cast Fireball ever again?!" *shrug*. For a lot of reasons, it seems to me that a permanent loss of something is pretty extreme. But, I do think that suffering some consequences of letting your summon die (so you can't just use it as cannon-fodder and never care) is a good thing. Maybe it's that you can't summon it again for 30 minutes (so, if you lose it in the middle of a trek through some ruins, you're going to have to fight through all the rest of the stuff without it), OR maybe it just gets summoned back weaker than before, but it's weakness is on a cooldown (much like Resurrection Sickness in MMOs)? So, you CAN summon it again, immediately, but it'll be 30% weaker. Until 30 minutes have passed (just an example time, to keep in sync with the above example), at which point it will regain 100% potency. I'm sure there are even more, better ways of handling it as alternatives to perma-death, so collective brainstorming is welcome, as always.

While I get what you mean, if you're really going to go so far as to pull the "by definition" approach, then it's really not, since "leveling up" refers to the grouping of most character improvements into collective levels, achieved at incremental XP milestones. Sure, the same effects are accomplished without specifically grouping everything into levels, but that kind of runs parallel to my point. Very valid points, but there's a difference between something being "tied to" the level system, and leveling, itself, being the only thing that gets you anywhere. Yes, you need to level to acquire a higher-than-you-started-with Speech skill to be able to interrogate someone. And yet, leveling doesn't grant you the info. Interrogating the guy is still a completely separate choice/event. Also, interrogating the guy might give you info that directly benefits your ability to handle a situation, rather than giving you info that helps you level up more so that the situation becomes easier as a consequence of leveling once more. That is my point. If the direct effects of leveling up are the only thing affecting your ability to tackle things in the game, then the game's really not taking advantage of a very wide variety of mechanics and factors. And, for what it's worth, I don't think gear (or anything else) should be thought of as compensating for leveling, but it should effect things in tandem with it. Otherwise, what's the point in spending all that effort finding/restoring some legendary/unique armor/weapon/artifact, if it doesn't actually provide its own edge and "rewards" (for lack of a better word) regardless of whether or not you maxed out your level or stop a level or two short? Essentially, if you're max level AND go as out-of-your way as you can to get awesome things, you should be better off than if you JUST maxed out your level, or JUST obtained awesome things. I think if gear and such things become an alternative to leveling improvement (especially from a design standpoint), the game suffers a bit.

I knew what it was, just not that it was complete already. To my knowledge, it sorta skipped from "we're so close!" to now, at which point we're at "Oh yeah, that was already finished some time ago." No biggie. I just didn't know, heh. American basketball players tend to have very large feet. How do they run? I'm not trying to be an arse. I'm just pointing out that we should probably figure that, unlike flippers, large feet actually have frontal-foot and toe muscles. Also, the malicious entity possessing them could very well alter their musculature in addition to granting them nightmare-inducing visages. 8P In regard to the text/dialogue UI thing, I wasn't trying to say they can't use red text (obviously BG and BG2 did it, and it wasn't the end of the world). I wasn't even commenting on whether or not I liked it. I was only pointing out that the use of red on a very dark background is not readability-friendly to the human eye. Sure, you can go out of your way to ensure it's decently readable, but it's a lot harder to make readable than other colors on the same or other backgrounds. As long as it's at least as fine as BG was, it's not going to be an issue. And, for the UI/frame, I wasn't meaning to say it was bad or anything. I like it, and just so happened to also consider more organic themes in a UI/frame versus more refined/synthetic visual themes. I think when the gameplay area is often filled with at least SOME natural environment, a little natural aspect showing themselves in the UI frame helps them coexist a bit more. It was just a "this might enhance it even more" suggestion, for consideration, and not a "if you did this, it wouldn't suck anymore."

"Leeloo Dallas, multi-plat!"

For what it's worth, red-on-black is a very bad idea. I realize the text may not be just-plain-red, and the background isn't exactly black, but... well, let's just say it's awfully close to a bad idea. Of course, I can't, for the life of me, remember what color the background is for the dialogue options in BG. I played it not a week ago... And yes, for what it's worth, they were readable. I'm not saying it CAN'T be done. But, red is actually a very, surprisingly dark color. If you put all the colors on the color wheel side-by-side, then greyscale that image, red is awfully close to black in terms of value. It's a wee bit better on a glowing screen than in ink-on-paper format. But, still... I am amongst those who were clueless to this fact. Last I heard was "we're finishing up our VS right now," which I took to mean "We're working on the VS, while currently being at the tail end of its overall project duration." I didn't realize it got do'd. So... SPLENDTASTIC! ^_____^

True, but that still doesn't address the issue. If the druid dies, what reason do the wolves have to fight for the remaining people? And/or do they even act on the "Meh, unfortunately we have no more direct allies here, as we owe you nothing, non-Druids!" idea, or instead on the "OMG! YOU KILLED OUR FRIEND! YOU'LL PAY YOU SONS OF BEETCHES!" idea? Same with the alpha/sub-leader. If he dies, do the others scatter, or do they frenzy?

Agreed. Although, I think I'd like to see more natural/grown type visuals and less synthetic-styled stuff. In general... not specifically in the dialogue UI. Think tree-trunk instead of carpentered table. Or, a combo could work, I suppose. I dunno. I know it's silly, but sometimes, the excessive amount of tool-crafted look/feel kinda makes the UI feel a lot more like it's intruding in the screen. Like it doesn't really belong, but someone installed it by hand.

Maybe you'll at least have the option of interrupting/silencing them? Not that I'm saying it's stupid that they can talk or something. I just think that allows for reactive choices. I mean, I'd love for that one companion who's super emotional because their friend just died start going off on some guy in the middle of dialogue, but I'd ALSO like to at least be ABLE to tell someone else to subdue them/remove them from the scene so they can relax, given their current state. OR, you know... totally just step aside and let them go off as much as they wish, and maybe assault the person, if he really deserves it. Then again, maybe sometimes you'll be powerless to stop them from talking, while sometimes they'll happily hush, depending on the circumstances. As long as the game doesn't transform into one of those "all of life is about dancing" movies. "Hey, you can't go in there!" *Your party dances in perfect unison, with some astounding choreography* "Ohhhh, snap, sir. We're going to have to let them in, now. We just got totally served... if we can't outdance them, then we have to forfeit our jobs as guards to stand in their way."

The problem I'm wrestling with in using morale is this: Depending on the situation, an event like the Druid's (or even an alpha's) death could lead to either increased panic and desire to flee OR increased tenacity and the desire for vengeance. Seems like a morale system would have to figure out which effect to generate under which circumstances. Maybe that could be handled with a simplish system, but I'm not sure off the top of my head. And yes, just to be clear, IF you're, say, a Wizard, and you're allowed to forcibly pluck wolves from the Elemental Plane of Wolves and will them to attack something, they should probably never flee. If you direct them to jump off a cliff, they should probably do it. BUT, if the wolves aren't actually being forced to help you, then it makes perfect sense that they wouldn't jump off a cliff just because you set that goal before them.

For what it's worth, there are ways aside from providing level ups by which doing more quests can grant you an easier time of things. Quests could provide unique equipment, or narrative-specific tools/information that allow a different approach to the final portion of the game, or money (with which to buy a plethora of useful things you couldn't have otherwise afforded), or they could even provide direct stat/skill/ability ups, separate from leveling. Or, to put it another way, if the level ups are the only thing that makes a difference, then you're not really utilizing plenty of other mechanics.