Lephys

I know. I just... I highly encourage people to explain how and why something's annoying despite what it brings to the table, rather than stating it's annoying, as I'm sure 99.9% of people here will agree that having to manage your hitpoints (or having to manage your ammo or something) is no less fundamentally annoying than having to manage your gear's "hitpoints." "It doesn't please me to keep up with declining numbers of finite things" is clearly not at all the problem here. The game that addresses that "problem" is the game that has absolutely no limitations or obstacles in it, whatsoever, and requires absolutely no effort. And this isn't "Oh, you don't like durability? Well I do, so YOU'RE WRONG AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR LIES!" or anything. I like the idea of durability, and have an interest in figuring out the best way to implement such a thing into such a game (even if they're not going to do it in P:E; it's just plain nice to know, and enjoyable to discuss and figure out with other also-interested individuals). So, it's not that I don't want to hear people disliking durability. I just want to hear actual reasons to dislike durability, and what makes it problematic, as separate from what doesn't. "management is annoying" doesn't make it a problem, like I said, but that doesn't mean nothing makes it a problem. But, I want to actually work out what does, as accurately as possible, rather than sit around debating whether or not we should all love or hate durability. And if you're (general you, not someone specific) not interested in specifically why it's a problem or isn't a problem, and how to make it not a problem, or less of a problem, etc. (what about a specific implementation affects the rest of the game and such), then there's really nothing constructive to be gained from your adding your "I, TOO, subjectively wish ill upon the house of Durability!" to the list, as they've already made up their minds. I urge people to elaborate and actually discuss this, or say nothing at all.

Except for longbowmen. And crossbowmen - especially arbalesters - including mounted crossbowmen. And horse archers of the Steppe people - especially Mongolians. And Seljuk noble cavalry. Come on, this is a pretty broad generalization - especially considering the period P:E is emulating is the early 16th century. This is the era of arquebus and arbalest, which are both pretty good at killing people dead. I asked my expert friend because I wasn't buying it either, but it turns out he's totally right. Factor in: A) The degree of suspension of belief/exaggeration we expect from the whole "adventurer" idea, for the purposes of fun gameplay, mostly, and B) The fact that I'm not sure what a 6-man party is going to be doing against wolves and orcs and such really constitutes medieval "warfare," and I think it's not out of the question for bows to function as primary killing tools for characters in this game. It IS always nice to know the accurate historical pertinent records on the matter, though. ^_^ I think myself and another actually discussed this in another topic, though, and we came to the conclusion that the dominant design and focus of ranged weapons as used by a typical video game adventuring party would be much more like hunting weaponry (which was designed to kill single targets accurately and precisely -- you're not trying to just stave off an army of deer/elk, ) than military weaponry.

It was probably an excellently-designed, bug-free sleep disorder, though. 8D Also... MUST... NOT... CHECK... KICKSTARTER! '''>_<''' ... The power of funding COMPELS you!!! Really, though. I just bought a $1200 laptop so that I can use it as my base of operations from which to learn game development. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give it a few months of re-saving before I can hit Kickstarter again. And really the only thing that's going to stop me from funding things on Kickstarter is keeping myself completely in the dark about them.

Annoyance is a potential factor from an unbalanced system. Something's mere existence in a game (such as the management of durability) isn't inherently annoying, just because. If it was, HP would be annoying, simply because it's basically life management. But it's not annoying, because there are actually good reasons for it to be managed, and it provides the ability to fail or do better/worse in combat, allowing for tactical decisions and preparations to possess significance. So, maybe it IS annoying... that you have to manage HP. But what it provides is a lot better than the alternative: Invincible people who can't get hurt, ever. In short, there's got to be something beyond "I don't like the fact that I have to manage a finite thing, because that's annoying" in order to make the decision that a given system/implementation is without value and is simply annoying.

Yeah, it's obviously not an issue any longer. You act as though they put this in a complete, finalized game, THEN patched it out or something. It was an issue for consideration, which is why it got considered, and now it has been dropped. If you saw someone carrying around an umbrella on a cloudy day when it happened to not rain, would you say "Lolz... that umbrella's just a solution in search of a problem! The rain is a complete non-issue!"?

Yeah, I'm going to agree that the whole tying the Crafting skill directly to durability maintenance (passively) was pretty awkward. BUT, that aside, I'm very much in favor of an "inverted durability" system. It could still be affected by a crafting system, even without a direct skill tie. Well, sort of. In the loose sense... anywho, the semantics are beside the point. If you have the proper materials (and maybe even a feat or something), you could basically turn your Piddly Iron Sword into a Tip-Top-Shape Piddly Iron Sword, for a duration. However, the duration would be charge-based (number of actual weapon uses -- sword strikes [misses don't count, and grazes could count half? *shrug*] and/or arrows loosed). Therefore, the better the materials you use, the better your equipment is "honed," and/or the longer the effect lasts. This could easily provide effects minor enough to be ignored by anyone playing on Easy or Normal who puts enough effort in elsewhere, but significant enough to provide that added little "edge" (pun COMPLETELY intended) to those playing on Hard/Expert mode, etc. A potential several-point-range worth of increase to the critical hit sub-range... an added/increased chance to cause physical damage effects (bleed, cripple, etc.)... There are oodles of possibilities. Thing doing all that stuff is a bother? Then don't do it. Boom! It's already optional, because not-doing it is the norm (just like ANYTHING else in the game: using every potion you find, always utilizing super-special ammo, swapping out specific magic resistance gear -- rings, amulets, enchantments, etc. -- whenever you go into different areas of enemy-type prevalence, and so on). I know everyone's all "Oh... it's just a psychological difference..." and whatnot, but I really don't think that's the case. Think about it. In a typical durability system, the NORM is to keep your equipment in good shape, because, if you don't, its quality is TAKEN from you. Not only that, but, you're basically handed a resource -- much like Hit Points -- and told "Hey, keep this from decreasing, ideally!". But then, what decreases it? Effectively taking on the enemy. That's what. "Hey, every time you use awesome tactics and attack that Goblin, your sword's going to get worse! HAHAHA!" Armor, to a lesser degree. You can obviously be more-or-less defensive, but you still have to subject yourself to some frequency/amount of incoming blows to effectively combat an enemy. Unless of course you're a Wizard. Which brings us to another little interesting branch, here... What degrades when a Wizard casts a spell instead of thwacks something with his weapon? Nothing. What degrades when a Warrior uses one of his special abilities (his class's equivalent to the Wizard's spells)? His weapon. So, anywho, yeah, I'm with Infinitron here. I mean, what happens when you don't have your Ranger drink a Potion of Awesome Accuracy-Sight every single encounter, and your Wizard drink a Potion of Super Fast Casting, and your Rogue drink a Potion of Sneaky-Sneakyness? Well, you're just less effective than the absolute highest potential effectiveness/efficiency that can be achieved in the entire game. Plenty of people are fine with all that. No one says "Omg! I can't believe you just put an inverted worsening system in with potions! Basically, if I don't drink those potions all the time, 24/7, I suck. But if I DO drink them, I maintain my goodness!" Nope. But, imagine if a game was all "Hey, every 10 attacks you make without drinking a potion, you're going to lose 1 base damage. That's just gonna go down until you drink one of these Strength Maintenance potions." "Can I like... drink one of those to gain some boost to Strength?" "Nope... it just negates the loss of Strength you constantly suffer over time, for simply using your Strength." Wouldn't that be pretty insane? I think it would be. And yet, that's what we typically get with durability systems. I mean, I don't blame people for thinking unhappy thoughts at the mention of durability. However, as an idea, it's no different from anything else that can alter your effectiveness, except that it's the only system I know of that has you just gradually sucking until you use anti-suck techniques/resources.

Ehh... I could be mistaken, but doesn't armor affect your Deflection rating (defense -- as in #1 in your list above -- rating)? I just honestly thought there was something in the official thus-far stuff that talked about armor affecting Deflection (out of the 4 different defense ratings). I mean, it's all already abstracted. Instead of actually calculating all the given factors associated with any given attack and determining whether or not it strikes and why, it's simply represented by the range of likelihood/frequency. So, I would think a Graze, with an arrow, would be like... you were aiming for the back of his knee, and you hit a few inches away from that, so the arrow didn't really connect well, but it still cut the back of his knee (but didn't pierce directly into the intended weak spot). Or... anywho... You don't really need entirely different mechanics. Obviously, distance is going to have to have an affect on that miss-graze-hit-crit field, so why couldn't ranged weapons just have different sub-ranges than melee ones? For instance: A sword gets (a base of) 1-5 for Miss, 6-50 for Graze, 51-95 for Hit, and 96-100 for Crit. But then, a Longbow gets (again, a base of) 1-10 for Miss, 11-40 for Graze, 41-90 for Hit, and 91-100 for Crit. (Purely example numbers, just to show the kind of difference I'm referring to). Kinda like how some weapons in D&D have the 18-20 crit range, while others just have 20. Same principle. Same mechanic, different interaction with it.

Gotta love the sentiments throughout this thread. "Until I see a game that successfully implements System X in an enjoyable manner, NO game shall attempt to implement System X in an enjoyable manner! u_u" Good times.

Complete misunderstanding. The problem wasn't that you didn't need multiple crafters... it was that multiple crafters did absolutely nothing for anyone. Zilch. It was entirely redundant. While all the other skills that draw from the same pool of points were non-redundant (having 2 people who can sneak is different from having one person who can sneak, etc.) Josh broke all that down, and is in no way claiming any kind of problem in the sense that you described it. Really, just... read stuff before you go trying to shred it. An argument against what wasn't even said/claimed is about the least constructive thing, ever. The rest of your post: totally constructive.

Oh... and I just want to re-iterate my feedback on the crafting system itself (since that's still there): Make it different. Obviously not different for the sake of difference, but good different. You know, just something to make it feel like you're not just shopping at the same merchant, but using a different currency (materials/ingredients instead of gold/coins). It's fine if I can often make something that I could buy, but it'd be SO amazingly fantastic if the crafting system actually felt like a whole different animal from the shopping system. Maybe there'll be some stat tie-ins? Maybe (just as an example of a way in which to dynamicize the system) if you have Burly Bill at the anvil, and Agile Argus at the bellows/forgefire, you get different results (or even different results ranges) than if their spots are reversed, etc. Or, if you have THIS person in your party, you get access to different equipment modifications than if you have THIS person. *shrug* I think something that lets the progression choices and inherent differences of your characters affect things would be lovely. Heck, even if stuff isn't really even made completely from scratch by your party, and is, instead, made by some resident blacksmith in your stronghold, or just any blacksmiths around, maybe each blacksmith could offer different modifications/results to the same piece of equipment. They could have sort of crafting stats/ratings. And, at least with potential stronghold crafting, we could actually affect who sets up shop/moves into the stronghold (and, therefore, what kind of specific crafting options we have). Maybe one blacksmith can make anything up to steel material quality, but specializes in Elven constructions/styles, while another specializes in Dwarven. Even amongst that, one Dwarven specialist could possess greater skill (can work with "higher-tier" materials, etc, or knows a greater number of techniques/designs) than another Dwarven specialist, and some blacksmiths could specialize in multiple blacksmithing focii. Dynamics! Dynamics dynamics dynamics! Did I mention dynamics?

To be honest, I has a mild sad now. Not at your decision (I understand it), but simply at the as-fate-would-have-it results of the removed elements. But, as with others here, I just wanted to extend my gratitude and admiration of how well you guys deal with feedback tsunamis (and actually still voluntarily seek feedback in the midst of them), as well as how you utilize our feedback only in collaboration with all of your own expertise and testing. Keep up the good work, and just know that OODLES of people really, truly appreciate every ounce of effort you put into this thing. It's just hard to express that as often as it is true without flooding the forums, heh. I appreciate your response. I don't think I was entirely clear, but the bolded/italicized part of your quote, above, is kind of the point I was getting at. Many here were acting as though much of what's being discussed were merely money sinks, and nothing more. Or seemed to be, at least. I just wanted to point out that, if you're actually implementing something as purely a money sink, it probably has absolutely no business being implemented at all. For that reason even plenty of systems in plenty of games that heavily fill the role of economy-balancing moneysink still actually serve other purposes, even if they were a bit heavy-handed on the moneysinking role.

I like the idea of upkeep. Or, of that kind of streamlining, at least. If you're only going to find a forge at certain places, why not just have a sort of little "field forge" at rest spots/campsites? You know, not good enough to full-on create entirely new pieces of equipment, but good enough to do repair-work. We've already got a sense of replenishment going with resting. Why not have a repair/crafting skill check upon rest, then repair things accordingly? That plus shifting the whole thing from staving-off-a-negative mode to actual incentive mode, and you've got yourself as un-bothersome of a system as I can fathom. If you never maintain any equipment, ever, you'll never get any worse or suffer any penalties. Technically, you're already suffering the penalty of going without the bonus of well-maintained equipment. The higher your crafting/repair skill, the greater the benefits (from sharpening/oiling and/or armor repair/reinforcement) you get. It could even be relative to the type of gear, so that you're not just getting +100 sharpened damage at level 20 from having 100 crafting skill on a Wooden Sword. Instead, you get a range, from 0 effect to a maximum (but still not too crazily extreme) effect. For an Iron Sword, maybe you start getting a benefit at 5 skill, and you hit the cap at 10 or so. BUT, at 10, you can start providing maintenance benefits to a more quality tier of equipment. You've even got 2 factors on the effects of the maintenance: The extent of the bonus (is it +5% bleed chance or + 3%?), AND the duration of the bonus. Maybe once you've passed the maximum effect threshold (like 10 skill relative to an Iron Sword), the effect starts lasting longer and longer. It could even still gradually "wear" with use. So, maybe instead of sharpness lasting 25 attacks, it now lasts 50, because you're that much better at sharpening. The system could automatically (although still with a choice, much like a toggle) make such repairs on all viable equipment at resting, and/or maybe at forge use (for when you're at your stronghold crafting some stuff, and OBVIOUSLY have some time and are there at a forge, but you aren't necessarily using the "rest" system), and automatically use the materials necessary to do so. And on that note, I'm with whoever (in whatever thread) suggested an intuitive sort of "grocery list" option, so that, when you get to town, and you go to someone who sells you materials that are obviously consumable, and you're just going to be visiting them and buying them a lot, there's no need to have to individually pick out what you want. Out in the field, you should be able to say "Oh, man, I need materials A, B, and C to repair our current equipment, and I'm low on those," and set some sort of list up for "10 material A, 10 material B, and 10 material C" (or however much you'd like to have on-hand in place of 10). Then, when you get to a valid shop that has these things in-stock, simply click "Buy List." Boom. If you ave 5 left in your inventory, it will buy 5. If you have 1 left, it will buy 9. Basically, if you know what you need before you even look at the store, you should just be able to say "Here's what I need," and have the store owner/merchant efficiently fetch it for you. Not "I might have that, and I might even have the number you need, but you'll have to find it, first! MUAHAHAHA!" Not that it's super difficult to find things in a store interface in these games. It's just... not really contributing to the fun-factor, at least on "I'm going to buy this every time I come back to town, because I'm always inevitably going to run out of it" consumables, at least. I don't think there should be a "automatically buy best new equipment" option or anything. You should have to pick what you want. Mainly because equipment should have circumstantial benefits/detriments, rather than all-out better/worse ratings and nothing more. But, I digress.

Your subjective dissatisfaction with the specifics of Fallout: New Vegas in no way dictates the quality of the game's design, or of the inclusion of any given components. If you don't like inventory management, then why play a game with such a system included in its design and expect it to cater to you? If you DO like inventory management, and you simply feel that the game's implementation of it was lacking, then the solution would be for them to have implemented it better, not "just go ahead and implement things in a sub-par way while simultaneously making sure I can circumvent them specifically because they're sub-par, even though I wouldn't have to circumvent them if they weren't sub-par." That is nonsensical. Ehh... that's not really what I was getting at. If a game says "Hey, you have finite HP, so get through combat without dying!", and that's the design of combat, then there's no reason it NEEDS to include some way of bypassing the finite-ness of HP, just because you don't like having finite HP. Your not-liking finite HP does not dictate whether or not games should be made that mandate finite HP. It is in no way wrong for them to not give you potions of invulnerability at extremely cheap prices, for example. By most of the logic I've seen regarding anything even remotely like this, Puzzle-game makers are "punishing" all the people who don't want to play puzzle games, simply by making a product that doesn't meet their needs. They're suggesting you're playing the game wrong if you don't want to adhere to the rules and solve the puzzles. Anywho... as for "everyone can do everything," I think it's REALLY easy to misconstrue that statement. There's a big difference between "everyone can do anything," and "everyone can do everything." If you have 20 skill points to spend, and you can only spend them on 5 out of 10 skills, then great. Okay, now, say you can spend them on all 10 out of 10 skills. But you still only have 20 skill points. If you simply have infinite skill points, then you have Skyrim, where you can literally master everything. The problem isn't in that you have access to all potential options, but that you have no limit as to your pursuit/advancement of those options. OH NO! EVERYONE CAN TAKE LOCKPICKING! Yeah, at the cost of something else. And guess what? There are still plenty of things the Rogue can do that the Fighter or Wizard can't. A Rogue with lockpicking and a Fighter with lockpicking are still completely different things. If none of the other class distinctions matter except utilities such as lockpicking or vocal charisma (or sneakiness), then why do you need to reduce the value of a specific character to a simple tool? "OMG! My DRUID can pick locks!" Great. Now your Rogue doesn't have to. The Rogue's not forced to have 77 points in lockpicking, remember? 'Cause it's not a Rogue skill. So, you have to have the person with all the points in lockpicking to have really good lockpicking. Which just so happens to be the Druid. If that person dies or gets separated from the group, no lockpickies for you. Unless you make EVERYONE pump points into lockpicking every level, in which case you won't have anyone who spent any points on anything else. All you'll HAVE is lockpicking. For the record, I think the potential for aggregate skill checks can be a very good idea. Got two people with Crafting? Now you have more crafting options in certain situation. Got two people with really high talkative skills? Cool. In SOME situations, they'll be able to work together to more effectively convince someone of something, etc.

I don't understand why something that makes use of gold/money simply must be nothing more than a "sink." Are items' very existence in the game at shops/merchants a money sink? Or is that simply an actual use for money? Are enemies in the game simply a damage sink, or an HP sink? You can gamify anything if you focus hard enough on the fact that it's all really just a virtual simulation of a supposedly real (within the context of the game world) thing. That doesn't mean that the ability to gamify something makes it bad. Here's, I think, what makes something a sink: The fact that it doesn't really serve any other purpose than to use up money. I think people's legitimate issue with something like degradation, for example, is that it is purely an incentive to spend money. Obviously no one's going to have "damaged" weapons and armor, and decide "Hey, screw repairs! LET'S GO TAKE ON A DRAGON!" So, now you've got what essentially amounts to "I HAVE to go spend some money so that my stuff that I've already paid for doesn't suck." But then, any impact of that degradation on combat and the strategy therein is simply divided by a single, static threshold: items are either damaged because they're out of points, or they're totally fine because they still have points. So, you've got two options: have to go pay someone so that your weapons and armor don't suck (not really any amount of fun), fix it yourself (also not really contributing to the fun-factor, since it's just a different resource than money -- materials -- and the same quick button-click expenditure), or have your stuff suck (a third still not really very fun option). Basically, you're offered a choice between 3 negatives, or, at the very least, 3 neutrals. I think there simply needs to be a positive range in there, as some others have pointed out and proposed. Maybe gathering (or even buying) the necessary resources to make repairs and putting points into the skill provides actual bonuses to your items, like more armor, resistance to certain effects, etc. Anywho, with stuff like crafting/repairs, I don't think there's any need to make sure it's a money-generating thing. I think THAT'S the difference between a single-player game and a multi-player game. The important thing about a crafting system is how it supports gameplay, when opted for, and not that it serves as some additional means of income. Really the only time that ever became a concern was in the "craft-to-improve" systems of MMOs and the like. Plus the whole multi-player bit making an actual economy matter more. And as far as the "what all should cost money/how to avoid too much/too little money" thing, again, I just think other "currencies" such as skill points are a good example. Have you ever heard anyone say "Man, I've got an abundance of skill points at the end of the game, with nothing to spend them on!"? Nope. And there are plenty of things you never HAVE to spent skill points on, even though you COULD spend skill points on them. I don't see a problem with money working the same way. You find it along the way, without having to specifically go out of your way JUST to acquire money, just like you complete tasks, gain experience, and level up to obtain skill points, all without really having to go out of your way JUST for the skill points. Then, when you have them, you spend them on useful things.

But... it literally is, on a fundamental level. That's pretty much Josh's point. If they make the game a shooter, you can't play it as a city-builder, obviously. When it gets much more subtle than that, though, everyone seems to act like it's something entirely different. If you're playing Tetris, and you can just press a button to alternate between block types, then that defeats the purpose of having to adapt to whatever block type you happen to be given. As Josh said, if they design the game to let you do that, then doing that isn't wrong. Their designing the game that way was wrong. The design is literally self-defeating, as the only obstacle between you and the solution to Tetris is the fact that you can't choose which block shape you get and when. The block shapes are already designed to fit together to form a solution, ultimately, so once you can choose your blocks, the entire game is broken. Tetris is, of course, a very simple game, which is why it makes a good example. It can be compared to a mere component within a larger game (like a cRPG). The point being that, the developer is in no way obligated to design a game that grants the player the ability to break the game's own design.

I think the best focus for this is for the support of playthrough personalization. In other words, anything that makes sense to cost money, with how much money you spend, when you spend it, and HOW you spend it affecting various factors in your playthrough, whether they be sticking to your favorite style of equipment, crafting the stuff you want to craft, bribing people to get things, buying cool stuff from prestigious shops, supporting your character build/skillset, etc. I like to think of money as kind of like another progression resource. I don't think there really needs to be much worry about some kind of game world economy, at least not past a rudimentary level. The more important thing there is simply the player-to-world economic relationship, which is mainly just a balancing concern. But... it's kind of like skill points. You try to make sure that 5 skill points, spent in whatever fashion, have the same overall value as 5 skill points spent in any other fashion. It's a lot trickier with money, surely, but I think that should be the general idea. It should be a versatile tool, rather than THE means of doing a handful of things. It should be A means of doing all manner of things.

Every callable value in the entire game is pretty much a spreadsheet, and yet games don't typically feel like you're just playing through a spreadsheet. I'm not asking for over-complication. Just a healthy dose of mild, mysterious, dynamic complexity. If you have a 20% quality/effect range depending on your skill/the specifics of your exact crafting process, then you don't NEED to make every single possible result within that entire range. The best way I can think of it is similar to the effect of chance in combat. It kinda sucks when you just have static values, because there's never anything to react to/overcome/adapt to/figure out, etc. You have an attack value of 17, and that guy's defense is 16? You will hit him. Hit that guy. Don't hit the guy with an 18 defense, 'cause you won't hit him. That's why we have dice rolls. I think the reason crafting often becomes so mundane is that it's all static: You have the recipe and 25 skill? You make an iron sword. You don't have the recipe? You don't make an iron sword. You have 24 skill? You don't make an iron sword. We need some friggin' grazes and critical hits in there, instead of just static hits and misses, ya know? And no, I don't think simply tossing RNG in there solves the problem, if you're still just dealing with success/failure. I just think DEGREES of success are in order. Variation, factors, dynamics. In combat, if you miss an opponent, you don't LOSE COMBAT, so it's not a good parallel for games to say "well, you failed to properly craft this sword, so IT JUST DISSOLVED AND YOU GOT NOTHING! MUAHAHAHA!" Maybe you just make a sword that starts at 50% durability, or maybe if it's a slashing weapon, it deals less bleed damage than other "normal" swords of the same type. But then, the chances of that, as well as the extent of that, should depend upon your skill versus the challenge at hand. If it's a 20-difficulty sword, and your skill is 19, you should have a pretty good chance of making a good sword, and a pretty small chance of making a crummy sword (and only SO crummy a sword, at that... like 90% durability, minimum, instead of 50%, or maybe it can only deal 1 less bleed damage than another sword, instead of 5, etc.). Maybe the initial quality of the sword (I'm just rolling with sword examples here) dictates how easily it can be reforged/enchanted/otherwise-altered. Or maybe how many times? If you're a bamf at smithing, you can make an Iron Sword that's can be made significantly better over time. If you're a noob at smithing, you can still make a legit Iron Sword, but it's only going to be able to be reforged/honed so many times before it simply breaks or is no longer usable. I dunno. There are a billion possibilities, and all of them aren't a perfect fit for a game like P:E. But, the default RPG crafting system is DEFINITELY overdue for some innovation. The rest of the game hides the spreadsheet in the guise of actual gameplay. Why should the crafting system just "meh" it up and say "Just look for the row with your skill level on it, then cycle through the columns to see all the stuff you make at that skill level. When you improve, move on to the next row."? I don't want the whole rest of the game to have oodles of replayability, then have the crafting system be all "Oh, you're at 20 Smithing again in this new playthrough? You get to make Iron Swords again!" Seems like there can be SOMEthing that makes it more dynamic than that, so that I can feel like I'm crafting in a different way/style than in another playthrough/with another character. *Shrug* Maybe I'm just crazy.

Well... I'm already working with a suspension of disbelief, here, since we're dealing with soul powers. But, my thinking was that the ability to effectively (to use a cliche) whirlwind strike in a 360-degree arc around yourself and strike however many opponents are surrounding you does not inherently beget the ability to somehow focus a 360-degree (spatially effective) attack's power/effectiveness into some kind of 20-degree ultra beam. I don't know quite how to put my finger on it with words... the ability to hit the bulls-eye on 5 different short-range targets in a matter of seconds does not beget the ability to hit the bulls-eye on 1 target at 5 times the range or 5 times as quickly. Erm... it's not sheer power that allows for the striking of multiple opponents "at once," and therefore there's no abundance of power to compress back down into a single-opponent attack. *shrug* I can dig it.

^ This isn't Obsidian's first rodeo.

Hoorah for crafting details! I shall toss my plea at you: Please go nuts with the recipes. I realize that no matter how you do it, there's still technically an actual recipe for each and every individual crafting product, but I'd really like to see things that are somewhat dynamically affected by the specific crafting skills/skill-values you have at hand. What I mean is, maybe the same basic recipe ("Iron Broadsword") can be produced with varying durabilities, and/or varying sharpnesses, etc., based on skill levels and the specific skills/materials used. Or, even some material variance. Maybe an ingredient within a recipe for, say a hilt, is simply "cord," and maybe there are various different types of cord throughout the game, that are all blatantly identified as the same ingredient type. What I hate to see (because it's so overly done) is the entire crafting system being presented, in-game, as little more than a giant spreadsheet of recipes. It doesn't feel like you're really discovering or dynamically affecting anything at all at that point. It feels like you're making ramen noodles in the microwave. "Okay, iron noodles + water + seasoning packet + forge = BROADSWORD! 8D!" Making 50 simple Iron Broadswords that all come out a bit different would be stupendous. That would provide room for subtle customizations and such. *shrug* I just think that's something a LOT of crafting systems could use: a sense of your specific choices mattering, rather than adding pre-existing items to your shopping cart, then clicking the crafting equivalent of "check out." Recipe flexibility. That's what I'm advocating. The EXACT physical properties of the item you're creating should be able to differ, even with all the same (or functionally the same) ingredients. Blarg. I always end up with like 700 more words than intended. -___-

This is AWESOME news! It confirms that Health does not always deplete in the same direct proportion to Stamina. Which means the decision to never have any change to that is out the window. Which means there could be other effects/circumstances under which Health damage differs. 8D! For the same reason a Fighter in the Defender mode/stance doesn't just focus all that defense/engagement that he WOULD use on 3 different targets into one single defense/engagement against 1 target, or a person who can juggle 7 balls doesn't just juggle one giant ball. It's two entirely different aspects of combat. The ability to make attacks that effectively function against multiple combatants at once doesn't translate into the heightened ability to better/more powerfully take on a single opponent.

Representing mental aptitude is a dirty job... but SOMEbody's gotta do it.

"Previous"/typical system: one threshold. Above it, you hit. Below it, you miss. Then, criticals (which generally retained the same range, only varying slightly between different weapons.) P:E's system: 3 thresholds. Below the lowest one, you miss. Above that, you graze. Above that, you hit normally. Above that, you critically hit. The more precise/accurate your character is compared to your given opponent, the greater your chance to critically hit and hit, and the lesser your chance to graze and miss. A large enough difference will push the chance to miss completely off the table, leaving a graze as the worst hit you can possibly get, and will extend the range for critical hit chance. Whereas, a very small difference (or a significantly higher defense, on the opponent, than your accuracy/precision), the greater your chance to miss and graze, and the lesser your chance to hit and critically hit, with a large enough difference pushing critical hits completely off the table and leaving normal hits as your best possible outcome. Whether you like it more or dislike it, it is absolutely more in-depth. Also, they didn't put miss back in simply because enough people urged them to. Our feedback simply led them to focus more on the impact of removing full missing from the mechanics. The dev teams' own testing and evaluation of a system without missing is what caused them to put misses back in the game. You may not care about other people agreeing with you, but maybe you care whether or not your own information is accurate. *shrug*

is this true? Obsidian, i am disappoint. The main thing about IE combat that made it fun was that no fight was ever the same. This is exactly what made the IE games withstand the age of time and are still playable. If the game has only positioning puzzle then you will breeze through it the second time with ease because you know what to prepare for and there will be no fun in playing it the third time, because it will be all the same and boring. Yes maybe some things do need improvement, but this is absolutely NOT one of them. Umm... that's false. Missing is in. It's just more in-depth now. If a farmer stole his dad's crossbow to fire at you, and you're a ninja, he'll miss a lot of the time. If a ninja stole his ninja-dad's crossbow to fire at you, and you're a farmer boy, he'll probably hit you every single time (but will always have the chance to graze instead of cleanly hit).

"Usually." Without looking, it's impossible to know. That's been my point from the get-go. They're both ways of handling the exact same goal, really. They're simply differences of logistical organization. Labeling, really. "Is Stealth something that we're going to say is part of the Rogue focus set, and give other classes the ability to potentially acquire it by partially shifting focus to the Rogue class (i.e. focusing on things outside their own focus set)? Or is it something that's simply outside of ALL classes' focus sets and we're allowing all classes access to it? Or, does only one class get access to it and that's it?" I agree that multi-classing (at least how it's usually implemented) is generally the more convoluted option, but it' still not inherently crappy or pointless. Therefore, multi-classing, until it's ruled out for a specific game in favor of simply flexiblizing (that's a word now) the individual classes to allow for role/focus variety throughout, is worth considering. At the very least, such consideration provides useful information regarding which options you want which classes to have access to, and how that access will work.