Lephys

Explanation when prompted is lecturing now, is it? I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

You have quoted me as if I was directly addressing your intentions. I fear you misunderstood the context and intention of my words. I was only briefly addressing the notion of degenerate design in regard to the effects of XP-producing combat in a concentrated chunk (such as a multi-level "dungeon") on narrative/progression pacing. I apologize for the misunderstanding, but I meant no suggestion of problems P:E was going to definitely suffer based on its designs, or of my words being in direct opposition to what other people were definitely claiming. You are quite correct in that, deaths not mandating XP gain, P:E could have no issues allowing the entire dungeon to be completed in one go. And, like you said, as long as it's made available at an appropriate time (as one would think you'd have something to gain from 15 levels of dungeon content, be it money/loot/reputation, etc.; XP is not the only thing that affects progression/pacing). It's definitely not preposterous to think it could be done all the way through in one go, under the proper circumstances, though.

I too was slightly hoping for Monocles of Magic Resistance +1, and the Cane-Sword of Charisma +2. Maybe a Tophat of Torchlight. Seriously, though, this (the actual thread/post) is an excellent means by which to introduce variety and tactical dynamics into the choice of weapons. Also, you could, potentially, work in some sort of bonus for matching cultural background to cultural weapon type. Betrayal at Krondor did this quite rudimentarily (it was basically racial matching, at that point). If a Human used a Human type sword, they got a bonus. Of course, it was a straight numbers bonus, and, again, it was tied specifically to race, rather than culture. So, if you were a Human from the south, and you used a Human-made sword from some northern region, you still got the bonus, even if there were actual cultural variants of Human swords. 8P Anywho, cultural equipment variant possibilities, FTW! 8D

Maybe if you had something like a stat effect difference between classes, then that potion could simply affect that stat, which already generates different specific effects for different characters? Of course, that would mean you're limited to just stat-affecting potions (for the desired affect), which isn't exactly an appealing limitation. I dunno... I kind of think a redesign on the typical potions thing would be good. What if, instead of potions, you still had consumables, but they were simply toggled things? So, instead of a potion that boosts your attack speed for 20 seconds, you could have some trinket or jewel or something that you could activate to boost your attack speed, then deactivate after so many seconds (probably some sort of minimum... maybe 3 or 5 seconds or something). But, that way, you've still got 15 seconds of use left in it, whenever you'd like to activate it again. OR, you can just use the whole 20 seconds in one go (just like a potion), if you need to. Also, while the expense balancing of potions is good for some factors (a la BG), the problem I run into with that is that it both amplifies my "Hmmm... maybe I should wait to use this when I REALLLY need it" sense of caution, AND encourages me to utilize potions mainly to sell rather than to actually drink. Maybe that's just me, though. There's just something about the valuableness-to-finiteness/temporariness ratio that makes potions kinda fit in weirdly in a CRPG. And I'm not sure exactly how to address that.

I agree regarding the main plot, but I do feel like it's never a bad idea to have them connected to something else in the world/lore/circumstances in some (even tiny) way. I mean, one could argue that "you got this piece of loot you wouldn't have had if you didn't do this side content" affects how you get through the main plot. And that's true. But, wouldn't it still be nice if that affected more than just the direct benefit of the player's toolset? Maybe some people notice that piece of loot and react slightly differently than if you didn't have it. Or maybe people react to news of your efforts in that side quest. Maybe you run into someone somewhere else who's a relative of that person you did the quest for, and their personal reputation with you is changed now, upon hearing about your deeds from the quest-giver. Even if that relative isn't directly affiliated with the main plot. I guess it's just nice when something other than your party's equipment and stats actually acknowledges the fact that you did something, as opposed to not doing it. In whatever way. Or, to put it another way, the effects of your actions should almost always be evident in something beyond for-the-player's-eyes-only stuff. Take the typical "kill 10 rats" quest. Obviously someone will pay you if you kill 10 rats. But, what if there was actually SOME effect from the absence of the rats, beyond just "well, someone said they'd pay you if you killed the rats, and you did, so money"? Even it was just people mentioning how rat-free the place was, or the person giving their cat to some little girl in town because they didn't need a rat-hunter anymore. *shrug* Without that, it kinda just feels like "there was absolutely no point in this at all, except to appease this person, and there was no point in appeasing the person except to get gold." The actual effects of your actions in undertaking a quest should not always stop at the mere happiness level of the quest-giver.

No no, not at all. I apologize. I was only trying to contribute to what I thought was a valuable breakdown, but I wasn't fully clear on exactly what you meant by your specific terminology. For example, I think I understand you clearly now, but I've always seen "channeled" to represent something that is actively cast, but must be maintained in order for the effect to be maintained. You know, like "This fires a stream of lightning for up to 5 seconds, dealing 10 damage per second." It may even have a cast time before it actually fires, but AFTER it fires, your caster is standing there, maintaining a stream of lightning from his/her hand. So, if 1 second passes, and it strikes an enemy for 10 damage, then you click a button to cast something else, the stream stops (the channeling stops) and the spell's effect is over, since you failed to maintain it for 4 more seconds. Or, basically, the cast time and the spell's effect duration are one in the same. But, as I said, I now know what you mean by "channeled." Sorry about that. Regarding set abilities, I think that's one reason I liked the Dragon Age games' Tactics settings so much. I just wish they weren't as lacking as they had been. When you're controlling a whole party, everything definitely should not come down to manual-control click-timing. "Wait for that guy to get really close to you, then use Shield Bash!" Both the timing and the amount of expected manual-control effort are a bit unreasonable, all to get one effective ability use. I very much like the idea of set abilities. I do think there should probably be some sort of trade-off to setting them, though. I mean, if your character's going to instantly shield bash or perform some maneuver on someone as soon as they get within range/attack/do something to trigger it, perhaps your character who's waiting for that trigger loses a little bit of offensive capability in order to focus on effectively timing/using that set ability? *shrug*. Or, maybe if a character can only set one ability at a time, that might be perfectly sufficient without any trade-off being in effect for the duration that it's set.

^ VERY much agreed. Clunkiness, for lack of a better term, in a game's control-and-response can sometimes make or break a game, as it is so heavily prevalent throughout the gameplay duration. I've played a lot of games and thought, "This is about 6/10 quality, but if the control-and-response simply felt better, it would easily be an 8 or 9 out of 10."

Negative. "I'd like the color of stop signs better if they were blue." -- Subjective value of the color of a stop sign. "The red of a stop sign provides great contrast with the typical surroundings of a stop sign, so that it is more easily noticed and can better do its job." -- Objective value of the color of a stop sign. Both are co-existing peacefully. So, the quality (or lack thereof) of a stop sign's color is BOTH subjective AND objective. If they were mutually exclusive, it could only be one or the other. In the case of this thread, "best" applies equally to both subjective ratings of companion properties AND objective ones. If you just want to know what people like about companions, for kicks, you don't ask "what makes them good?" If it was purely subjective, then the answer would be "Everything." The fact that they're literally useless in combat, even though you need combat effectiveness to make it through the game? Good. The fact that they're a talking belt? Totally good. The fact that they're a bad companion? You know what, since it's subjective, I'm gonna go with good, and it's correct, because subjectivity. So, yes, dropping "this is all just subjective anyway" in a discussion in which people have already proposed objective evaluations is like saying "that's great, but you're actually wrong and what you've pointed out is actually quite useless." It'd be like telling someone that a stop sign's ability to be seen actually has no bearing on the usefulness of a stop sign, but that hearing their opinion on the matter was lovely. It's just silly, to be honest. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter, since it's really not that complicated, and I'll not have people provoke clarification after clarification, then accuse me of somehow making a big deal out of this and derailing a thread when all I did was state a simple notion, then get antagonized about it. I wasn't judging anyone or criticizing anyone. I was quite simply pointing the existence of objective value in such a discussion as this one.

I see many "if"s flying at me. Notice that my post, too, bore an "if." I didn't say "games that let you do full dungeons early bear degenerate design." The point is simply that, even in a non-linear game, there's some expected progression slope, as controlled by, at the very least, the availability of XP. If you have to go through some Level 10 Ogres to fight more things in this direction, and you're only level 4, then that's done that way for a reason. Even if you could, technically, defeat the Ogres, one by one, slowly but surely, you've got to put forth that much more effort by straying from the norm. If you were supposed to have access to all things from the get-go, then there wouldn't be levels. Either you'd already be more capable, or enemies would be less challenging. Progression pacing isn't in these games purely for progression's sake (so that we can go "Yay!!! Progression!". It affects all manner of things when you throw pacing to the wind. "Oh, these are fearsome beasts, and even give trouble to quite experienced folk." But then, you just run through a dungeon that's basically a 1 hour montage to take you from noob to expert, and now you can just run around tackling anything. "Oh no, at this part of the narrative, assassins were sent after me, but they're only level 2 and I'm level 10! Why oh why would someone who took the time to send assassins after me not actually evaluate my capabilities beforehand?!" When Frodo can take down the Balrog with no trouble because he went through that dungeon first, I think it's obvious the narrative has suffered. That's one of the reasons for things like level-scaling. But, pacing, in general. Even if you don't have a level cap, you've only got so many abilities and such that you can code into the game for each class. You don't want your players to gain 50% of their abilities 10% of the way through the game, then be bored out of their minds for the rest of their character's progressive lives. Is it the player's fault for simply playing the game? Nope. It's the design's fault. Hence, degenerate design. If your game doesn't use any pacing, then so be it. But, again, that all but defeats the purpose of levels.

True. Not necessarily a bad thing, though. Even if it doesn't handle all facets of consumables, it would, at the very least, be quite nice to have a reason to use them other than "I happen to possess potions, and a bonus would be better than no bonus right now." I mean, there're already different circumstances that affect just how effective the bonus will be, but it's always a bonus. Use the wrong weapon type against the wrong armor type, and it loses effectiveness, rather than just gaining less effectiveness. So, there are times when it's actually a BAD idea to attack with a sword, rather than just "not quite as good of an idea to attack with a sword." Sort of. I really should think of a better example, but they're all escaping me at the moment.

Speaking of perplexing faces... What if a failure to pickpocket could result in not the discovery that you were, in fact, attempting to steal from someone, but a confrontation nonetheless? You know, "What ARE you touching me for?! Guards! Pervert!"? Just a simple thing. A chance to either recover from your mistake, or suffer a temporary negative reputation in the area (now everyone's watching out for Mr. Grabby Hands, until they forget about it in a day or so). Or maybe failure to recover just leads to extra caution from that particular person, meaning stealing from them, now will either be impossible, or much trickier. It could still be temporary. I can't see "that rude guy who was possibly trying to grope me and at the very least quite rude" being something you burn into your memory for months to come. I would think if it were that serious, the guards would be sent after you, and you'd be thrown in prison. *shrug* I just think maybe failure should matter within the lockpicking system, but not be so devastating as to prompt extreme outcomes for a simple skill use (almost as extreme as if you just blatantly stabbed someone or something) and/or encourage reloading and retrying umpteen times for every little person you'd like to pilfer from. Maybe factored directly into the skill check is the fact that your character isn't going to knowingly cause a scene. Kind of like how you might send someone who can't swim to cross a river, and they might wade into it a bit, then stop when the water gets above their chest. For pickpocketing, this would result in "I obviously alerted them to my presence, but they don't know for sure I was stealing, because I didn't get that far" as the worst-case scenario. Again, resulting in some kind of modifier to your ability to pickpocket in that area, perhaps, but preventing overly extreme outcomes. I mean, you know when you've bumped into someone or something. You're not just going to keep going. So, while it's still a bit of an abstract exaggeration for you to never actually full-on get caught, I don't think it's too much of a stretch.

I likes. ^_^ I'd just like to pitch this into the mix: Starting back at standard potions as a basis, what if they actually shifted your capabilities rather than just boosting a single thing? I mean, a Potion of Extra Armor is NEVER a bad thing. The only bad thing is that you don't have infinite potions, basically. So, what if it magically boosted your armor while lowering your magic resistance? Or if a Potion of Truesight boosted your accuracy while lowering your attack speed? It would almost be like temporary modals. Converting one thing into another. This way, it's not ALWAYS a good thing. More armor is good, but less magic resistance is not good, especially in a fight with magicky folk. Of course, that potion could STILL be useful, in such a fight, so long as there was at least one combatant against which extra armor would be useful, and you could keep the magicky folk distracted with other targets to keep their fire off the potion-user. *shrug* I like how well this coincides with the recent suggestion in the Wands and Scrolls thread,

^ I dare say something between "set" and "instant" might be needed to describe abilities which are instantly begun, but that require a casting time of sorts. Unless that's what you meant to cover with "charged up/channeled," in which case, my apologies. I agree with you about typically active abilities such as Shield Bash, btw, and how they should be "set" abilities, as you call them. I've always found it a bit strange that you could typically have JUST swung your sword (via auto-attack that's pretty standard in RPGs), and, mere milliseconds afterward, pommel strike someone. I think Dragon Age actually kind of did the set abilities thing with this, although it STILL wasn't extremely well-executed, mainly just because of the timing between attacks (you sort of had that "swing, then stand about for a couple of seconds, even after the animation has you being fully recovered from the swing and back into your stance, then finally perform another action). Anywho, it might also be interesting if such things were potentially treated as counters. A minor difference, I know, but it could be a significant distinction, depending on the specifics of combat flow/mechanics in P:E. As just a "wait until you can actually effectively attack again" ability, you don't necessarily wait for any specific action on the enemy's part. You just don't magically insta-attack in the middle of whatever movement you're already performing. But then, with a counter, you'd actually wait for something specific (be it an attack, a certain type of swing, a stance change, movement, a miss, etc.). I believe the Rogue's Reversal ability in P:E will function as a prepared/counter ability, though I don't know if your Rogue will simply stand there waiting until the next attack from his foe, or if he'll keep auto-attacking (or whathaveyou) until the next attack, at which point the ability will activate regardless of whether or not the Rogue's mid-swing or mid-dodge or what. *shrug* Also, very good point about the enemy changing tactics in response to combat factors. As long as it's not the DA2 thing where commander-type enemies downed essentially Potions of Full Health whenever they got a bit low, up to about 4 or 5 times in a single battle. Not that P:E will have those types of potions, I don't think,

That's exactly what I was suggesting, though admittedly in perhaps more detail than was necessary. And, to be clear, when they overlap, you're detected, but not quite fully;evidence of your presence is noticed in some way (the detector goes into investigation mode, but not alerted mode). Then, when they overlap enough (and/or if they overlap again with someone who's already investigating), you're fully detected. And yes, I need to work on my wordiness. 8P

Splendid idea!

Mr. Magniloquent... while what you say has merit, I dare say you hold to a very strict definition of the word "summon," as if any other does not exist. There are plenty of instances of summoning in plenty of RPGs in which the caster simply conjures an entity into existence (or, if you wanna get extra technical, converts energy/material into an animated or even "living" entity). Look at the Diablo 2 example of the Necromancer. You don't call skeletons from the plain of Skeleton Minions and dominate their will to your bidding. You literally animate a physically existing corpse under your own power as a Necromancer. In other games, a Wizard may summon a wolf made of pure mana/energy, which disperses after its allotted "lifespan." In this way, josan motierre's golem example was rather effective. Granted, this doesn't mean that SOME forms of summoning aren't the forceful teleportation and domination of an already-existing creature/entity from another realm (or even the dominion of an entity in the same realm/environment). But, there's hardly any reason to dismiss animated things and constructs, and hardly any reason to allow them, but insist that they must come from a different plane where they frolic in their own ecosystem and possess wills of their own. I don't think it quite achieves the effect you describe. If that fireball always dealt 15% damage to the caster, at the cost of dealing lots of fire-splosion damage to your enemies, THEN you'd seriously contemplate using the spell and treat it as a weighty decision, every single time. When it simply has a chance to produce only a positive effect, and a chance to produce only a negative effect, there isn't really much to consider. All that's really left is hope and finger-crossing. I dare say percentages and chance are not the best means of balancing a creature's potency and semi-permanent existence. Oh! Josan: What if, in regard to your "Other" category above (the wolves simply being called as allies), such allies were subject to some kind of morale system? If you wait 'til the battle's looking dire, they come in with full morale, but a smaller pool. And/or maybe if one or more of them die, wolves are less likely to come to your aid soon after (extended cooldown or some similar effect)? Also, it might be interesting if you could convey general intent to such creatures (tell them when to attack, or fall back, or defend, and maybe indicate targets), but you couldn't actually control their individual actions and attack timings? I mean, wolves, for example, wouldn't be Pokemon. So you wouldn't really be able to be all "Now, use BITESTORM!!!" . That's what could differentiate such allies from actual animal companions and familiars and the like. *shrug*

Leveling up and gaining improved equipment and increasing static values (such as damage/accuracy) is great and all, but I think the majority of combat depth comes from a great effect of your ability to adapt the dynamics. In other words, if having that 50-damage sword is always perfectly sufficient in taking things down, then it doesn't really matter how effectively you're applying the attributes of that sword to the challenge at hand. Maybe it has a higher chance of causing bleeding wounds under certain circumstances, and a greater chance of doing significantly less damage in some circumstances, etc. Maybe you can change your attack speed by switching stances, at the cost of something else. I guess to put it overly simply, it comes down to adaptation. If you're not provided with dynamic challenges to which to adapt, combat is just a big batch of attrition. "Having some trouble? Go do more mundane things until you save up more gold and increase your damage and attack speed and HP and armor more, then come back and when with arithmetic!" From what we've heard so far, it sounds like we'll have plenty of tactical dynamics in the mix, ^_^ Also, naturally, with the decrease in difficulty (setting; Easy, Hard, etc.), the thresholds for failure and for the benefits of efficiency/exemplary adaptation shrink. And with an increase, they swell.

Thanks. I'll have to get around to it, when I can. I played a bit of the original campaign for NWN2, and I know of at least a few times when you were prompted to encourage/allow a companion into the dialogue action. The same thing was done in the DA games (I think 2, most notably?). But, in both (although, granted, I didn't play too much of NWN2), while nicer than none, they just seemed FAR too sparse. I think in the DA games, that I recall, you could do it like 3-or-so times throughout the entire game. And it was usually with very specific things, like "Let such-and-such, who severely hates this person, yell at them/kill them, rather than doing all the talking." So, like I said, I'll have to check out SoZ.

Fair enough. But, I do have to say that it seems like someone traipsing around in purely "I clearly blend in with the shadows and do sneaky things" garb all the time would convey just that. You'd either have to avoid any well-lit scenarios (that rules out daylight), change clothes during the day to blend in with normalcy, or blatantly appear to be a sneaky bugger. So it seems to me, at least. Don't get me wrong; I, too, love the stealthy/sleek/non-mish-mashed aesthetic style for rogues. I just also see the value in the sort of mishmash look that says "Hello, I'm just another man of practicality and utility." What's very interesting to me is the character Thom Merrilin, in The Wheel of Time book series. He's a Gleeman (kind of like a bard mashed together with a juggler/magician/circus performer), so he wears a brilliantly colored patchy cloak and is pretty much always the center of attention. Yet, in essence, he's a Rogue when it comes down to it (as far as his approach to handling situations goes). But it works. Why? No one expects the old guy in a brightly-colored cloak singing fanciful tales and juggling things to make children laugh of being deadly with the 12 daggers hidden about on his person, and agile to boot. So, he's actually most stealthy by drawing attention to himself. He hides himself with himself. Anywho... That's way too many words from me, and no cool pictures of things. Carry on!

And they'd be accurate, minus the single quotes. If the game is designed to challenge you (be it Easily, Normally, or Hardly) on a gradual curve, and you're allowed to clear an entire dungeon's worth of XP to progress wildly outside of that curve, then the game has literally defeated its own design. Whether it's that the curve was set wrong, or that XP allowance was too great, take your pick. An extreme points it out more clearly. If, in a "cutscene" 10 minutes into the game, the main villain is there, and you can somehow kill him, that literally breaks the narrative, since the narrative is designed specifically to last much longer than a 10-minute prologue. People would say "If he's got finite hitpoints, and I can figure out how to kill him and accomplish it, then how is that degenerate?" It isn't. The self-defeating design is degenerate. The fact that you're simply doing what you're supposed to do (using the resources the game provides, within the rules it provides, to take down your foes) literally results in something that, by design, isn't supposed to happen and actually denies the player the rest of the narrative is degenerate. I love how that word just gets tossed around like it doesn't mean anything specific. "Ohh, some people said that character's armor should be blue, and that painting it red is wrong. The devs probably thing choosing the wrong color is 'degenerate'." And, of course, the best part is that it always gets quotation-marked, like its mere existence is alleged.

- Nobody said "let's go all objective." - I find it hard to believe that the most value in this thread/poll is simply to crown some sort of victor, rather than to collaborate in the evaluation of RPG companions of old in the interest of applying something useful from such an evaluation to as-yet-implemented companions (such as those in P:E). - For what it's worth, I also never said subjectivity was useless. Only that it wasn't the only force in existence in the evaluation of video game companions, among other things. Regarding voice acting and the other factors of companion implementation, I find it more interesting to explore what full voice acting brought to the table in a given game/implementation, and why it brought what it did, in the interest of figuring out how to better use it in the future (or whether or not to use it). I think "which is better?" is secondary in usefulness to "what's objectively useful/beneficial about each?"

*blink blink*... o_o I'm fairly certain that its involvement with racial reactivity in conjunction with the thread's title being "Racial Reactivity" quite literally makes it at least partially on-topic. The reason I apologized for "pseudo-off-topic" is because I paired it with additional ideas that weren't specifically confined to the topic, since you could have the proposed dialogue system stuff without having any racial reactivity at all (with other forms of reactivity). And I in no way suggested all companion should become fully realized player characters. I'm somewhat sure I comprehend how you arrived at that, and it was an overshoot of my actual idea. There have already been games with dialogue systems that allowed companion characters to "take the reigns," so to speak, of dialogue, without having their own entire dialogue sets for the entirety of gameplay as separate from the main character's. All I'm suggesting is the utilization of differences in character-to-character reactivity (including racial) in dialogue. If you're trying to get information from someone who hates Elves but worships godlike, why would you have your godlike stand around kicking pebbles and in NO WAY directly contribute that reaction while you have your Elf stand there and beat his head against a brick wall of dialogue, just because "He's the speaker, o_o..."? I guess that's not at all absurd.

Umm... Sorry? o_O I believe there's been a misunderstanding, since I was in no way attacking you. I was merely pointing out that the reason you presented still doesn't justify the throwing out of the "everything's just subjective anyway" card. It's kind of a slap in the face, really. People in the thread have obviously suggested an interest in the value of the objective factors of the implementations and designs of characters in different games, and then someone just comes in and says "Lols, you're just imagining things." It's a tiny bit like saying "You're not right, because everyone's wrong, 8D!". If it's purely subjective, then it's not really a "discussion." It's just a communal sharing of opinions to satiate curiosities.

^ Yes! A) I love Betrayal at Krondor. B) Shadowrun: Returns did a similar thing with AOE spells and grenades, even. They were ground-targeted, and they had an AOE radius, but you had a percentage chance of actually striking the spot you were aiming for. So, much like Betrayal at Krondor, even if you "missed," you still hit nearby. So, as long as you struck something, the spell still detonated out into its AOE radius. Of course, in Betrayal at Krondor, something like a Fireball could simply miss (as a forward moving projectile) and never strike anything. Whereas, in Shadowrun, the stuff was, as I said, ground-targeted, but still had a chance to strike the ground inaccurately, basically. It was pretty neat. Simple, but I haven't seen a lot of games do that.

...if that is not criticism of a point (albeit one, despite your introduction, that I did not make), then I have missed a meeting. At any rate, since any continuation of this might be suggestive of either a reasonable debate or spam, I'm leaving it there. If you say so. I won't say a continuation of this would be pointless, but this definitely wouldn't be the place to do it. It would yield only a personal understanding to either of us, unrelated to the topic at hand.