Lephys

I'm not sure if there'll be a specialization that's just purely about shape-changing, but it would seem from the official info that the Druid class in P:E will, indeed, possess a good bit of shape-changing capability. I believe it's called "spiritshifting"? And, from a strictly physical-form-description aspect, it's more of a hybrid form; instead of simply taking a bear's form, you'll take a bear-like form (if bear is an option, for example). I don't know how helpful that is to you, but definitely check out the threads on druids, if you haven't already.

I'm a bit curious here: If you were designing a game in which leveling/progression wasn't ever going to result in the increase of HP pools, what on earth would compel you to start with "this is only this low because the game's designed for it to increase as you go" HP values?

True. You just wouldn't be incapable of comprehending how you should attempt to adapt. You'd obviously be less effective with the katana than even an amateur who was familiar with the katana (be it due to occasional lapses/instinctive responses that don't match the weapon, etc.). But, you'd be much more effective with a katana than you would with, say... a chakram, or a nunchaku. Definitely not like RuneQuest. "Where's my longsword? THIS IS A DIFFERENT SWORD! I don't even know how to BLOCK anymore, 'cause this isn't my longsword!" Heh. Like glasses. "I'm legally devoid of skill without my prescription sword."

Youuuuu take the haiiii-ku and I'lllll take the lowwww-ku and I'lllll be the firrrst ta' get ta' Jaaaaaa-pannnnnn.

^ So... seeing what people who just happened to take a stab at modding can do with the game will somehow make people say "Man... you know what I'm totally uninterested in now? Seeing what the people who originally produced all this in the first place can do on a second run."? I would agree that the focus of the devs shouldn't be on mod-ability, so much so that the initial quality of the game should suffer with "don't worry, lots of awesome mods will make up for that suffering" in mind. But, I'd hardly say that the game's mod-friendliness discourages anything other than a lack of creative progress, from both the community AND the developers.

Good heavens... *facepalm*. I literally read your response, then my brain just switched to "Yeah, so about the effects of pausing... which is TOTALLY WHAT YOU JUST READ! Nope! Don't double-check! Just quote and type!" Hahaha. I'm sorry about that, truly. Looks like it's to the closet with me, for a diagnostic. *plugs into diagnostic station... makes shutdown noise*... x___x Can I mulligan? MULLIGAN: Yeah, you wouldn't want a situation in which you were fighting a single, potent enemy (like a boss) and it was all but immune to several of your characters' main means of combat effectiveness. That's always highly annoying. It's on up there with those "Only ONE type of damage can hurt this guy!" bosses/foes. But, what I was getting at was that, maybe he's resistant to, say... bleeding. Well, if the two potential effects you can cause with longsword-spec'd characters are bleeding (damage over time) and wounding (slowed movement/action speed... purely for example), then you simply can't rely on the oodles of damage over time from bleeding cuts that you might normally have used quite often. But you can still utilize specialized effects of the longsword (delaying the enemy's actions), and still deal damage. And yes, you could think of that as "well, now I can only do 1 effect instead of both." But, just because the longsword can produce 2 effects, in this example, does not mean that the norm of the game is a bunch of enemies all susceptible to both effects from longsword attacks. In other words, I think things that restrict the way in which you can use things are far better contributions to fun and interesting combat than things that just shut doors in your face. "Your sword isn't effective in the way you've been used to so far, but it's still effective in another way(s)." Really, the idea works better when expanded out to a character build, rather than just a weapon, so zooming in on the weapons/equipment like that wasn't my best example. Maybe your Fighter doesn't hit as hard against this boss, but there are more factors than damage-per-hit that determine effectiveness in combat. So, maybe you have to make better use of the other factors to make up for that partial detriment. IF you want maximum combat effectiveness, that is. It probably won't be that you can't beat the boss without employing the absolute perfect strategy against him, chocked full of micromanagement. It'll just be tougher and a closer fight, perhaps. Or maybe you just focus on the other characters a bit more, who are still quite effective against the boss (if he's got a strength, he's got to have some sort of weakness that makes other people/attacks/tactics even better against him than they usually are against general foes). *shrug*. That's the beauty of a whole party. Sometimes, the easiest effectiveness boost will simply be from swapping weapons, but plenty of times there will be alternatives, methinks.

^ The non-leveling approach is basically the Zelda approach: Link gets better and better as you progress through the game, but he never actually levels. Just two different ways of handling the same idea of progression over time, each complete with their own pros and cons. The Zelda approach is typically not used in true RPGs. Just games with sort of RPG-like characteristics and such. But, it would be interesting to see a full-on RPG designed with that kind of progression, devoid of a level system, from a "I haven't seen this before and wonder what will happen" perspective. (EDIT: I say "never"; The 2nd Zelda game, for NES -- The Legend of Zelda: The Adventures of Link -- actually DID use an XP/leveling system. 8P)

Ahh yes. Memories spring to mind of giant leaps between "use things sparingly (aka 1 out of every 10 times you actually NEEDED to use something)," and "use everything literally as often as you possibly can." Battle? INVISIBILITY POTION! "Umm... they already couldn't see you... we're behind trees... we're ambushing them..." But, you know, it could just be implemented well, instead of poorly, and is a good idea, methinks. You could probably somewhat group potions by tiers, roughly, according to their usefulness. So, when the AI checks for "Do I use something?", it has to hit a lot more red flags (enemy has craptons of HP, enemy does a billion damage, my health is low, etc.) before using, say, an invisibility potion, but much fewer to use a potion of Attack +1. You could also work in the quantity of potions currently possessed. Want Steve the Archer to use those Aim potions more often? Give him like 10 of them. The more you give him, the less he'll worry about conserving them. Of course, with the "should I use a potion?" checks, he still wouldn't see a single, mildly challenging foe and pop a potion with no questions asked. But, maybe every time you run into 6-or-more enemies, he'll pop one ('cause he has so many). But then, if he's down to 3 potions, maybe he won't use them until you run into 8 of the same challenge-level of foe, instead of 6. *Shrug* @rjshae: I think that's a pretty darned excellent idea. The more I think about it, the more-so I think that. If it were readily available information, in the heat of battle, right there next to my spell icon, that I had a potion of increased AOE range or something, the decision of whether or not to use that potion would be much better integrated with combat, itself, rather than being kind of a separate preparatory/reactive decision ("Oh no, I'm low on health... where's that Quick-Potion bar?! Okay, now which potion's the healing one and which one's the Extra Damage one?", etc.)

Well, for what it's worth, I agree with the sentiments that people "shouldn't" be pausing 90% of the time, etc. But, all things in moderation, . Really, as long as the game isn't designed such that making combat into a constant slideshow is always the best possible tactic, with no allowance for any bout of fluid combat, I think it's fine. I mean, you can't stop people from doing what they don't need to do, and someone's unnecessary over-use of pausing in their own game isn't going to harm my playthrough in the least. Also, I don't think "everyone just use cool abilities all on this one thing at a time!" should be a viable tactic, but, again, because of the design of combat challenge. If you make that the best tactic only in very specific situations, then you're not requiring anyone to rabidly pause and make sure everyone's always "cooldown spamming" their abilities on a single target, etc. Thus, there once again is no real pause problem. In short, I believe I understand your very valid concerns for the flow of the game, but I don't think the removal of pausing does anything but replace a problem with another problem. And (regarding the general discussion again), for what it's worth, there's nothing at all wrong with the idea of wanting direct control over only your main character, who acts as a sort of field commander for the rest of your party, while relying mainly on their AI "plans" instead of constantly manually issuing new orders and piecing their behavior together at every step of the combat. While I personally like to control all the characters, I honestly prefer a bit of a hybrid (which is, probably for the 5th time that I've now mentioned this somewhere on these forums, why I liked the idea of the Dragon Age AI tactics settings so much, even though they were a bit lacking in implementation).

It does make sense, I think, within the context of abstracted mathematical representation. So long as it's minor. I hate to see the "you're using a type of sword with which you're extra familiar? +7 to hit! Different type of sword that's EXTREMELY similar? Meh... just a +0 to hit, u_u." I can see that kind of a difference between, say, a two-handed sword and a short sword, or an axe and a spear. But, just a slightly differently-balanced, differently-shaped sword of approximately the same size and length? Sure, you'd be better with the one you'r more familiar with, but you shouldn't have absolutely no idea what the other one even does or how it works. I mean, if you take a knight's longsword and give him a katana, I think he's going to know not to try to cut people with the blunt side, and that it doesn't carry the swing weight and such, and that it's made more for slicing/cutting than just-plain slashing, etc. Even if he was still better with the longsword than with the katana.

Yup yup. There could very well still be plenty of optional content to do to advance your characters in many ways other than purely by XP/level increases (legendary equipment, stronghold development, etc.). But the XP and levels will be pretty well wrangled. Methinks even a mod to "allow cap-less leveling" would also need to introduce the availability of more XP-granting content.

Indeed. To put it in a sill-ily worded fashion, I'd like to see effects that affect things that affect the main story, but not necessarily effects directly linked between the side quest/content and the main story. It would be indirect stuff the vast majority of the time. Maybe at some point you have to help prepare a town to defend against that Orc army. Maybe (and this would be a pretty major indirect effect, as far as the whole scale is concerned) the outcome of a side quest earlier in the game causes Tim the Orphan to make his way to this town, rather than not-making his way to the town (whether from being dead, or from simply having other plans not involving this town until you altered some factor with your side-quest completion). So, now when you prepare the town for the orc onslaught, you've got one more person at your disposal. He doesn't introduce some crazy game-changing factor to the orc battle, but he could alter how things go down in a minor way (maybe he's really fast and good at slipping past things and in-and-out of buildings without getting seen, and he allows messages to be delivered between units/groups while the attack's underway? *shrug*). Again, Tim the Orphan's presence and contribution as the result of a side quest would be one of the more substantial effects. But, the point is, the quest that causes Tim to ultimately reside at the town in question doesn't have to have ANYTHING to do with the orc onslaught, directly. It doesn't have to be "Little Tim the Orphan wants to go to the town where the Orc Onslaught will be, but he can't leave 'cause his sister's sick. Help his sick sister so he can bolster your ranks in the Orc Onslaught!" I'd really just like a lot more minor, pleasant ripples in the fabric of the world (whether they just cover a small area of a village, or an entire village, or extend to other settlements, even) when you actually perform actions and fulfill tasks that tangibly change things. I mean, if someone wants 5 plants, and you get 5 plants. Well, you probably didn't affect anything by getting the plants. So, the only potential opportunity would be the effects of what that person actually does with the plants. They COULD brew something that affects the local clinic, or tavern or something, I suppose. That COULD even go as far as to have word spread to some group/individual who greedily wants to forcibly take that popular recipe for their own gain and make sure no one else has it, out of pure greed. *shrug*. Really depends on who lives where, and what kind of people are around, etc. But, back to the point... if a person wants you to get rid of a bandit camp in the woods, then the removal of those bandits probably DOES affect things. It wasn't just something that would please this one person who tasks you with getting rid of them, while everyone else is totally fine with the bandits. Bandits aren't herbs in the woods. They blatantly affect things. And maybe you can kill them, OR intimidate them so hard they run off (and potentially show up later in some respect), or maybe you can capture them (or subdue them and allow local authorities to capture them), and maybe that affects something somehow. Maybe there was a shortage of workers in the area, and the authorities use their new prisoners as forced laborers to do work that was going undone. *shrug*. Things like that. Everything I can think of COULD have quite minor effects, or decently major ones, so it's hard to make examples without really just brainstorming both. But, really, ANYTHING that makes a lot of the side quests more than just "Oh, you did something that is magically of NO consequence, whatsoever, except that I'm cognitively deciding to give it value!" is great, to be honest. You know, "Oh, you cleared out the mine! Great! I like that it's cleared out, 'cause I sometimes like to go in there and look at the pretty rocks, so thanks! No one else is EVER going to know the mine's cleared, or want to use the mine in any way. It's only value, cleared, is for me to be happy and give you a reward, ^_^"

I'll not deny that I overanalyze things. I tend to joke that I'm a defective android, . I appreciate the compliments, I really do. I know I can sometimes go a bit farther than necessary with a particular point before catching myself (and realizing the "discussion" has gone past reasonable clarification and into mere personal debate), but I honestly try my best, and I never have any intention of lecturing anyone. I just try to provide useful contribution to the discussion, and if people don't understand my point, the it isn't useful at all. Annnnnnywho... I'm now utilizing my Overexplanation feat. . Sorry about that.

Unless there's infinite experience to be gained, the level's capped no matter what. So, even if there was a hard cap, as long as it's in line with the amount of finite experience, everything's golden. Or, to put it another way, if toggling the cap off allowed you to reach level 21 instead of 20, and then there was no more experience to be had, then there's hardly an issue of how many levels they're depriving you of advancing by capping it. So, when it comes to wanting to toggle something off so that you can continue leveling, the question starts shifting over into "should there be infinite XP to gain, or shouldn't there?" before it falls on "should we not be prevented from theoretically infinite or significantly more numerous levels?" Seems like they were already thinking soft cap, before this discussion even began, so that's pretty good news. I do think that soft-capping is the way to go. It just kinda renders hard caps almost pointless/redundant.

For what it's worth, your English is plenty good enough that I wouldn't have guessed it wasn't your first language. . No worries. It was more of a coincidence between the P:E system's use of partial damage, and your separate use/reference to the partial damage of attacks. Not your fault,

Again, I think you mistook my meaning partially. I wasn't intending overly specific feats and build-related things (although those aren't out of the question, really), but merely physical equipment properties that are circumstantially dynamic. A sword not causing bleeding against a given target hardly makes it useless, or demands that you switch weapons. Not to mention the fact that you'll control more than one character, unless you restrict yourself to a solo playthrough. AND you'll be fighting more than one foe, typically. If your Wizard's spells are suffering in effectiveness against a magically resistant enemy, this doesn't dictate that you MUST pull out a maul and go bash its face in or you lose. You can simply target a different foe, for normal OR even increased effect (weak-to-magic enemy), and have another character who's already not-using magic target that magically resistant foe. Anywho, I was only making examples to emphasize the importance of dynamic prompting of adaptation on the player's part. The specifics can be changed any way you'd like for all manner of reasons, but if things always work the same way all the time (this attack does more damage, this attack does less, etc.), then combat is hardly taking any advantage of dynamic factors. It helps when you use factors in pairs. If a specific piece of equipment yields 2 effects rather than just 1, then when 1 effect is nullified, the other remains. Or, if a fireball deals fire damage AND explosive-force damage, then you've got the opportunity for a foe who's resistant to fire but not to force, or vice versa. Only when you have multiple options to weigh are decisions really substantial. It is like you said. If all but one option is all but ineffective against a certain challenge, then you aren't really left with a choice, now are you...

^ Ohhhhh. I understand you. See, the P:E Graze represents a fraction of the damage from a regular hit. So, if a hit does 10 damage normally, and a Graze happens to do 1/4th damage, the Graze would do 2.5 damage. I realize that you were suggesting how much damage a Graze does out of your total health. I apologize for misunderstanding. And, for what it's worth, understanding is never unimportant.

Yup. And at the point at which you can make the potion yourself, it comes down to crafting, and decisions on how to use your herbs and substances. "Do I make a stock of those goblin potions (whatever they do) for my party, or do I instead convert my finite resources into some kobold potion (that does something different from the goblin one)?" Not that all potions need to come from things like goblins and kobolds. I was main thinking of specific factions/cultural groups, and imagining little packs of things like goblins and kobolds is just easy to do, for example's sake. 8P

Regarding AI countering, even a bit of randomization in the specific going-into-battle strategy chosen by a select encounter's group of foes) would be good. Not in lieu of actual reactive adaptation or anything. But, I just mean that, every group of goblins shouldn't always attack you in the same way until you force them to adapt to provide variety. So, sometimes "arbitrary" variance in the AI is nice. Maybe these wolves are really, really hungry, so they just charge straight at you at full-sprint. Most others you've fought haven't done this (they've circled and tested defenses, etc., and even retreated), so you have to adapt to the difference from the get-go.

This seems like too much unnecessary micromanagement that would be annoying to deal with, rather than something that adds depth. I fear my words misled. What I was thinking of, specifically (and maybe should have specified via example?) was simplistic factors like armor/ability type. Sword A could cause a bleeding wound against no/light armor, but not against medium/heavy armor. And perhaps it does 2/3rds damage against heavy armor, or even against certain enemy types. And/or maybe a critical hit, or an active power attack with it causes bleeding. And with the stances thing I was thinking of the Fighter's modal Defender ability: increase your ability to engage targets (3, up from 1) at the cost of offensive capability. Maybe Sword A provides a different effect in Defender mode than Sword B, etc. I'm not really referring to anything that specifically increase the amount of micromanagement necessary. Simply things that alter your decision-making in whatever amount of micromanagement you choose to do.

I may be misunderstanding here, but, for what it's worth, I was referring to the significance of a fraction of damage such as 1/15th in the context of the P:E system as a graze hit. Meaning that, in your above example, that one that does a critical hit does 20/20ths of damage (it already killed you, with a normal hit instead of a graze) multiplied by 1.5 (critical modifier, or whatever it'll be). So, that small of a fraction of damage is fun, so long as the game artificially confines those foes to Grazes. And if you adjust the damage down so that a regular hit is 1 or 2, then they're dealing 1/20th of a point of damage per attack when they Graze. Does that make sense? Again, if there was a disconnect in the context of our examples, I apologize. But, when I initially commented on the fraction being impractically small, I was referring to the application of it to Grazes in the P:E system of hit determination. I agree regarding the situational modifiers (such as cover in SR:R). I love stuff like that, ^_^. And yes, just some form of the game telling me which factor actually affected my success/failure is quite nice.

^ I believe you may have misunderstood. That may have been the fault of my wording. Let me attempt to clarify: Being able to make decisions that actually alter the risk chance, itself, is FAR more effective than simply dealing with a static risk chance. In other words, "Oh, we're fighting around lots of flammable dried up brush in this wooded area. The offensive effects of my fireball here would definitely be beneficial to me, but at the great risk of starting fires beyond my control that might hurt me. Do I risk it in this situation, or do I express caution and use it only in less risky circumstances?" THAT'S a weighty decision. Much more so than "Every single time I try to summon this thing, no matter what, it could, purely by chance, turn on me and my allies, or at the very least be beyond my control. Should I risk casting this?" There's not really a decision to make there, beyond "Do I think this spell's even worth ever using, or do I not?" I mean, maybe you're cautious by only using it when you pretty much have no other choice? "Well, the party's about to die, so, what have I got to lose?" But then, you're still just flipping a coin and hoping. You can't mitigate your risk at all. Now, where I DO see value in this factor is in sort of capping your summoned numbers, so to speak. I don't think the sheer act of summoning a single thing should ever come with a static chance of horrible failure. But, maybe you've got 2 things summoned, and you want to summon a third, and now you start getting a chance of loss of control. You can actively choose to be careful and only summon 2 things at any given time (purely for example), or risk summoning 3 or more. I still don't quite enjoy the thought of the extremes of that, though. Through sheer luck, you could end up with 6 summoned allies, negating any and all challenge balancing at play. Also, maybe some combination would work better? Maybe you always summon successfully (so you always get the positive benefit of the summoned ally, instead of it possibly being a purely negative injection into the battlefield), yet there's a chance of suffering a negative effect? Maybe you could become stunned for 10 seconds, because you failed a Will check. Heck, maybe it even does as it pleases while your caster is stunned, but he then regains his senses and regains control of the creature, with a shorter effective duration of controlled, summoned aid? I simply don't think the pure either-or approach is a very good means of control. No one likes a 10% chance to EITHER get to play the role of summoner effectively OR accidentally slaughter their entire party, each time they consider summoning. Look at AOE friendly fire. You manage the risk. If 2 of your party mates are within the circle, maybe you still cast it because you hope the damage to your enemies better allows you to end combat quickly to make the damage to your allies worth it. Or maybe you lay down a firewall knowing that you'll have to keep your allies away from it.

I think part of the problem with consumables might be the mystery of their rarity. You find a Potion of Invisibility, and you think "Hmm... what if I don't find another one of these the entire game?" So, then you keep running into situations when it might be useful, but thinking "I'd better wait to use it in a more dire situation." Conveying their rarity, at least in the context of character knowledge, might be helpful, even if it doesn't solve everything. Just "common - frequently sold by apothecaries/carried by travelers," etc. So you don't have to guess the likelihood that more will be available, just by the potion's effect and monetary value. Maybe there are some concoctions that are pretty much only brewed by goblins. Maybe no one even knows the recipe. That way, if you're running around in goblin territory, and fighting goblins, you'll know that you can pretty much find lots of those potions on corpses and such, and that you'll probably not find many again until you run into some more goblins. I think that might help me. "Oh hey, goblins! They're likely to be carrying one or two of this such-and-such potion, so I'll feel free to utilize some of my existing stock in this fight! ^_^"

You bring up valid issues with pausing, but I dare say that things would be a bit different if you paused a movie to alter the plan/decisions of the characters frozen upon the screen, so that they reacted to your direct control and adjusted accordingly to produce wildly different outcomes to the scene. As the slow-mo has been mentioned as being in (and other games are using it), I definitely think that's a very useful tool in mitigating the unavoidable disconnect from flat-out pausing, but, as others have said, allowing the action to simply flow all the way through disconnects you from the aspect of actually controlling the party and its tactics.

"Hitting you over the head," while probably a mild exaggeration for effect on your part, indicates a MUCH stricter criteria than I'm suggesting. Example: Time. You don't do a side quest and go straight for the main storyline, the next major plot sequence takes place/begins in the afternoon. You do a side quest first, THEN go for the storyline, it now takes place as darkness is falling. That's a simple factor. You haven't altered the events/progression of main story. You've got the same people at your disposal, you're fighting the same foes, etc. You didn't remove/introduce a new character to the sequence, or alter what's going to happen, etc. You simply altered factors. Your side content affected the time of day, and the time of day affects the plot, quite minorly. I simply ask for evidence of my actions. It gets very boring when 70% of the side content alters ONLY the state of the player's controlled assets, as if the rest of the game world is simply in limbo until you're done performing completely foreign tasks. That's all.