Lephys

I dunno... based on the wording of the initial suggestions, I got the idea it was more of just a fleeting, visual effect tied directly to active spell visuals. Not like "omg, you cast lots of magic and now the kingdom is devoid of color!" Just an "instead of this spellbolt generating a purple glow to signify how mysteriously arcane in nature it is, how about having it simply generating a "glow" of desaturation right around it as it is formed, leaves your caster's hand, travels to its target, and strikes?" kind of thing. *shrug*

^ I don't know for sure that they've specifically confirmed his companion-ness, but... http://eternity.gamepedia.com/Forton

Si, si. Those little ehh... can't think of the phrase... text-based, scripted event things they've teased us with would even make a pretty cool implementation to resting.

They're not remaking BG. They're making a game that draws its general design inspiration (spirit) from BG and other IE games. Whether or not this game is a spiritual successor to BG does not hinge solely upon how close to 15 companion characters they get. Factor in that they're simultaneously working with fewer resources (money AND people) AND putting in way more stuff/quality/improvement than BG had, and you've got yourself a perfectly reasonable fewer-character design.

Yeah! Just take a bunch of DEX at the cost of INT, so that you can actually hit things with your crossbow at the cost of even more magical effectiveness. Maybe take some ranged weapon feats instead of magic feats. There ya go! Problem solved! 8D You can be a magic-based class and still do JUST as many things per-combat as a Ranger! All you have to do is mimic the Ranger, only worse! 8D! Context, people... context. We were talking about early game stuff, specifically. How, even at Level 1, your Warrior can deliver 7,000 "class-based" (weapon) attacks per day, whereas with a Wizard, it's "well, after you summon that one magic missile for 4 damage, you'll have to rely on all those things the other classes focus on, instead of what your class focuses on, and just suck way worse at all of it until you get your magics back. Basically, the Wizard/caster gets to use magic or fall back on a weapon (which generally is not supported in any way, shape, or fashion by their class), while the non-Wizard/caster gets to use a weapon spiffily, or fall back on using a weapon less spiffily. There typically is no "Use magic less-spiffily" in the majority of D&D based (prevalent) RPGs. Thankfully, in P:E, this will not be the case. If I want to be a Wizard, all the things I do can be Wizardly, as opposed to being forced to rely upon non-magical weapon attacks in all my downtime. And yet, if I want to make a Wizard who DOES focus at least partly on non-magical physical weapon competency, I still have that option. Also, I in no way condone the whole "If you're a Wizard, you get to move entire mountains later in the game, when a Warrior can only still kill a single powerful foe at the height of his abilities." I don't think being magical should make you inherently BETTER than everyone else at high levels, but rather should make you DIFFERENT. You can do a lot with magic that the Warrior can't do with Warriorness, and vice-versa. Not "I destroy dragons when I sneeze, but you get a lot of hitpoints and armor. *shrug*" Just for what it's worth.

You're absolutely right. Whether or not they bolster their greed could... *puts on shades* hinge upon my discretion.

I don't think I claimed you said it. I merely claimed its truth. I'm sorry if it seemed like an inferral. 'Twas not my intent. I really have nothing to oppose you in here. I'm just a robot-dude, and can't help but touch on the finer details of a discussion and its contextual elements. So, to hopefully clarify any misunderstanding, I merely meant that, while it is indeed silly to nitpick about immersion, it should still be kept in consideration. That's all. I apologize if I seemed to be suggesting that your stance was wrong, or that you had stated the exact polar opposite of what I was saying.

Yeah, I mean, there's some flexibility there, obviously, but, in short, the ability to start as a weak person and end as a strong person (or dumb-smart person, etc.) kind of defeats the whole purpose of there being a distinction between weak and strong and dumb and smart at character creation. You get better with a sword, and perfect techniques, and maybe you learn to juggle, and accumulate knowledge, etc. But it is to a MUCH lesser degree that you actually gain Dexterity itself, for example. Getting better with a Bow is a skill improvement, not an improvement to your actual precision-based capability. I have good eyesight, but it's not because I looked at things really hard all my life. It's sort of a got-it-or-don't think, and that's mostly what stats are. That being said, I do understand the gamey aspect of stat progression. And some things (like Strength) are actually vulnerable to variation. But, (and there's been discussion about this in this very thread), it seems like even Strength is suggesting your potential, rather than your physical amount of muscle mass at a given point in time. Otherwise, if you made a Wizard with 20 Strength, and never did anything the whole time, he should really LOSE Strength as he goes, for failing to maintain all that Hulk bulk. *shrug* I just think there are PLENTY of things to increase and progress without having to take away the "these are your characters distinctive strengths and weaknesses, as separate from any other given character's" aspect of attributes.

Well, 99.99999% of the stuff people cite as unimmersive, or detrimental to immersion, in a fantasy world involves inconsistency. So not "Hey, magic wouldn't be able to do that, 'cause it doesn't do that in REAL life!", but rather, "Wait... if magic can do that, then why don't people use it to do THIS all the time? Everyone just happens to not use it that way, conveniently, so it doesn't cause any problems?" I simply fail to see the point in the "this isn't actually reality, therefore we have absolutely no basis for emulating anything at all in the entire fantasy world" argument. We do have a basis for some of it, and it is sometimes quite constructive to actually consider immersion. That's just a simple truth. And, again, you happening to shrug inconsistency off as "bumps in the road" doesn't automatically overrule others' lack of ability to do so, any more than others' ability to shrug something off would overrule your being extremely bothered by it. If everyone in P:E has rocket feet, maybe that's just bumps in the road for some people, but that doesn't mean everyone else should just put up with it, and we should all just laugh and dance about and say "Ohhh subjectiveness... nothing's correct, and EVERYTHING'S correct! Hahahahah!" So, unless you're arguing that immersion is ridiculous and doesn't matter at all, I don't even see the conflict here that my words have caused. I'm even in agreement with you that the negative reactions to the OP's suggestion were probably over-reaction, so we're not even disagreeing on specifically the extent to which immersion matters, or where we should draw the line. I've simply supported the idea that people aren't stupid for worrying about immersion and considering the effects of design decisions upon it, and you seem to be against me in some way I cannot conceive.

Wow... so not only would it be imprudent to actually make boring things interestingly interactive (rather than more lengthily UN-teractive), but it would actually be hellishly imprudent. My god... I apologize. I had no idea. o_o By all means, implement it, post-haste! Could we also have some of those 15-second cinematics every single time we drink a potion, or use an item, perhaps? Maybe when we open the map. A 15-second map-opening cinematic would be pretty sweet.

It's simply two ways to handle the exact same thing. "Hmmm, maybe every class should have access to that ability." Well, if it's restricted to a class, and you can multi-class to some extent, then you gain access to that ability (while still remaining different from other classes, since you only get access to a limited quantity/subset of other classes' abilities). If you put all those abilities into their own non-restricted-by-class group, then everyone has access to them. It's not like we're choosing between "Should everyone get allabilities?" and "Should people only get certain abilities?". Look at the Godlike. "OMG, MULTI-RACING!" No, it's simply an additional aspect to race. Just like multi-classing is simply an additional aspect to class building. There are OODLES of ways in which to do it. They're not all inherently terrible, obviously-stupid ideas. A better way to look at it would be to say they were considering class flexibility, and found out that they could accomplish their goal, in the context of the rest of their game design, without actually providing "select multiple classes" mechanics. I don't think they thought about multi-classing and individual class flexibility in two completely separate brain sessions.

I didn't say they should never increase. The key aspect of my question was the words "that much" at the end. Sheikh suggested that gaining 1 stat point per level would be a good idea. But, if you put all those into the same stat (or even just most of them), that's like 10 Strength you could gain over the course of the game, regardless of whatever your starting Strength was. Unless the stat range goes from like 1-100, that's like 5-10% of your overall Strength per point. So, if you make a Fighter at the beginning of the game, and he starts with 17 Strength, then he's already pretty strong. That means that all the stuff he already did/does, to get to where he's a capable, albeit novice, Fighter, have already resulted in him being that strong. So, why, after a year or two of adventuring, should he have 25 Strength, when other people who've been soldiers their entire lives still only have like 18 or 19 (because that's a ridiculously strong person, as set forth by the abstraction of the entire range of the Strengths of existing peoples)? That's what I'm getting at. Your stats already sort of more permanently define your character's capabilities, as opposed to another character. If you can just make a Wizard with maxed-out INT and WIS and DEX, then increase your Constitution by 1 every level until you have as many hitpoints as a same-level Fighter, then what was the point in you being a low-CON Wizard instead of a high-CON one? "I started the game as an imbecile, but NOW I'm one of the kingdom's leading minds! 8D!" That just doesn't seem very feasible, unless everyone in the world goes through that kind of change in the same amount of time. In which case... man, the world would be insane. To put it another way: If you can start with 17 Strength at age... ohh, whatever makes you an adult (18... 20?), and gain 10 points of Strength over the next couple of years, then why did it take you 18-20 years just to get 17 Strength? Surely body-builders would have like 947 Strength at that point, because handling some quests and performing some feats increases your Strength by 5-10% of your current value. When you can already get better weapons, and increase your skill and effectiveness with weapons, there's no need for you to be able to transform from an average person into the Incredible Hulk, purely over the course of your travels.

What if you summon them from the lungs of your foes, where gaseous particles are more concentrated? (even though I don't really have any evidence to support that being the case)

*shrug*. Seems like not giving any consideration to the possibility of multi-classing mechanics until AFTER you've built all your class mechanics would guarantee a terrible multi-classing implementation as the only option, other than no-multi-classing, even when it was viable for the given system. Like I said, it is probably via their consideration for multi-classing that they guaranteed a system in which it would be both unnecessary AND go un-missed. I'm simply glad they actually come to such design conclusions through consideration, and not assumption.

It actually does, since the fantasy world's makeup isn't entirely exclusive to the fantasy world and separate from reality. There are still things you can improperly simulate. Especially when the game world tells you how they work, then inconsistently doesn't have it work that way. Anywho, I really don't have anything against the OP's notion. I just obviously wouldn't the game to be completely riddled with "Hey, did we mention you're actually just sitting at a keyboard and screen" tidbits, throughout. But, I also wouldn't want the ability to have 732 people in my party. All things in moderation, , so that doesn't really have anything specifically to do with breaking the 4th wall (or at least doing similar things).

Are you specifically referring to trousers, or is "trousers!" just one of your own personal forms of excited/astonished outburst? You know, like "Croikey!", or "By the Power of GREYskull...!" OMG! That Dwarf's (I'm assuming it's a Dwarf) hand TOTALLY isn't even clasped around that axe shaft! How do I cancel my Kickstarter funding in over-reaction?! I kid. It's just like... combo-funny that that's both amazing that you can see that because of the level of detail, AND that some people actually freak out about such things in friggin' pre-production screenshots. ^_^

^ Fair enough. I wasn't criticizing your take on it, or suggesting that "No, dude... multiclassing is GOOD!" I'd just rather them (figuratively) call to see if the store's closed, rather than just assuming it's closed and failing to make use of it for the day. I trust them not to spend 7 straight months of development resources, just to fiddle around with the idea of multi-classing. They were probably done considering it like a week after that "under consideration" was posted. My point is just that, no matter how much it seems so obvious that multi-classing couldn't work in any way, shape, or fashion, it's pretty silly not to even give it so much as a quick glance when: A) You're dealing with your very own new "ruleset," built exactly how you want it, and B) It's unlikely that every possible prototype of a multi-class system has been attempted, even under well-established rulesets. It's kind of like that whole "Umm... that city's impenetrable. Everyone and their mother has tried to invade it, and haven't even made ANY progress" scenario. If no one, at that point, ever considered trying to figure out a way to take that city, then those cities pretty much would've never fallen in history, ever. And yet they always do, . But, yeah, for what it's worth, I definitely don't want to see D&D multiclassing tacked onto the P:E mechanics. I think the reason they're most likely not going to do straight-up "multiclassing" is that they've already sort of spread out the overly-restrictive things about classes so that they're no longer class-restricted. So, now, you don't have that quite-reasonable desire to take a level of Rogue/Thief, just so you can pick locks, etc. So, I would say that their consideration of multi-classing was most useful in P:E's design, even though they didn't end up actually including it, technically. They opted to go ahead and make it obsolete.

*shrug*. It just seems like that doesn't really fix the problem. "This is still boring, but now it lasts 5 times as long." Seems like the root of the problem is the boringness. Maybe it would be more prudent to make boring things less boring? *shrug again*

There's just as much reason to forbid pink and purple from being used in magical lighting effects as there is to mandate the use of pink and purple in all magical lighting effects: None. The reason these colors are used, as others have mentioned, is that hardly anything (if anything does) naturally produces pink/purple light. Therefore, it holds to the theme of magic being sort of separate-yet-part-of the natural world that it would produce light in "unnatural" colors. The reason these colors are overly used is that people who make a lot of games (and/or the publishers who override all their good decisions) have no idea what the hell moderation is. "OBVIOUSLY PINK/PURPLE MAGIC LIGHT = GOOD! MORE PINK/PURPLE MAGIC LIGHT = BETTER! 8D!!!!!" I, too, would love to see the variance of many different aspects of the visuals (such as saturation, focus, gamma, color inversion, etc.) in spell/ability effects. But I have no desire to exclude pink and purple from ever being in a spell effect.

You should totally put that in this thread. ^_^

*Giggles*. Hehe, nah, just to clarify, I wasn't even commenting on anyone immediately on this thread page, about the quotes thing. I've just read oodles of threads on here, and there are people that seem to think immersion isn't even an actually-existent thing, just because it's heavily subjective. As for the gorillas, I understand completely. All I meant was, you can objectively say, with certainty, that gorillas have nothing to do with flying a plane. They are not an inherent part of plane-flying. And, since a flight simulator is literally trying to immerse you in the act/environment of flying a plane, then things that do that are contributive to the immersion, and things that don't do that are not. The complex thing is "how immersive do we need to worry about going?", and then the whole subjective bit about "what things can immersion do without, and what things CAN'T immersion do without?". Obviously people's answers to those questions are different, and therefore, the subjective element is readily apparent. However, if you say "dude, random gorilla photos actually help this game simulate the aircraft flight experience," I shall call your lie, factually. It's one thing for them to simply not break your immersion, but that doesn't automatically mean they're immersive, or that they aren't even detrimental to immersion. The very fact that they're something you must react to and, subsequently, ignore, means that they are objectively outside the realm of immersing you in the simulation of aircraft flight. In general. Maybe every time you've ever flown, you were transporting gorillas. That's different, though. That's circumstantial. The game isn't trying to simulate everything that circumstantially makes you think of flying, based on your specific empirical experiences and memories, so gorillas aren't an inherent part of the flying process (as plenty of people fly all over the place and have never even seen gorillas, ever). Annnnnnnywho...

One reason I kinda hate the whole "omg! Magic is ONLY super rare and taxing" approach to casters in RPGs. Wizard: "I'm only level 1, so I can only summon a walnut and launch it at your face for 1 damage. And I can only do that ONCE PER DAYYYYYY, for it is such a MOMENTOUS FEAT!" Ranger: "Really? I'm only level 1, but I can put about twenty 6-8 dmg arrows through things faces throughout an entire encounter, for as long as I have arrows. And Steve over there, the Fighter, he can swing his sword for 7 damage EVERY SINGLE TURN. AND he gets lots of HP and defenses." Wizard: "Yeah... if I wear good armor, I have a 40% chance of failing to summon that amazing walnut and hurl it at your face." That's why I really like P:E's approach, of some stuff being basically infini-cast (but still only so powerful per cast), and then refreshing per-encounter one tier above that, then per-rest one tier above that. SOME things should only be able to be done once per day. Others should be able to be done as often as anyone else can perform a simple task. The Warrior isn't limited in how many times he can swing his weapon or wear cool armor in a day. Why should the core ability of my class (arcane magic) be SO limited? How is my being able to fire off 30 wussy attack spells in a row any different from my ability to use a sling and fling 30 bullets per day? "But Magic Missile doesn't miss, so that would be OP," you say? Then why can't I cast a spell that DOES miss? That seems less complicated than one that always "heat-seeks" its target. *shrug* I REALLY like one thing that Betrayal at Krondor did: when casting most spells (some were just a static cost and static "amount" of effect), you could actually choose how potent to make the spell. There was a fireball spell, for example, called "Flamecast." Your Stamina/Health, in that game (Stamina first, and then Health once Stamina was depleted) served as your "mana." So, when you selected Flamecast from your spell-casting list, you THEN selected the potency of it. So, you could cast like 50 1-point fireballs (which were, admittedly, very weak), or like 3 20-point fireballs. ALSO, it cost your friggin' health, so that kinda balanced out the potency of it. But, that's beside the point. That's one flaw with static-spell systems. That's great that Fireball now does 50 damage and has a radius of 10m, now that I'm level 5, instead of the 30 damage and 6m radius it had when I was level 2, but why can't I STILL create a smaller Fireball? It's obviously POSSIBLE, since I created a smaller one when I was unable to create a larger one. Now that I CAN create a larger one, I can ONLY create a larger one? Wizards just put as much effort into each spell as they can, with reckless abandon? That's what dictates the rating of their spells? "Well, I tried casting one that did fifty-one damage, and had a radius of ten-point-one meters, and I blacked out for three days. 50 and 10 it is! ^_^" I've always hated that a Fighter does pretty much whatever they want, all with the same weapon, yet a Wizard/caster typically just has a kit of very specific weapons that you have to keep switching between. "Well, there are only like 3 enemies, but you can either cast that 70-meter-radius Ice Storm, or you can use a single-target Frostbolt. Obviously, you have the power to kill 3 things, but unfortunately you have absolutely no control over your magic." I just imagine running into a house painter or something, and asking him to paint your house. "Nope... sorry sir, but I can only paint a 10-square-foot wall, or a 50-square-foot-wall. Anything in between, and I can't paint it."

*Nod*. Signs of life are a part of the atmosphere, just like the complete absence of such ambient signs of life is a huge part of the atmosphere of a game like Fallout.

Immershun is entirely subjective of course, but I wouldn't have a problem with that specific example as it's strictly ingame information. Your character knows when he's trying to be suave and convincing (or puts that much more effort into it). I really wouldn't even say immersion is "entirely subjective," as a flight sim that randomly displays photos of gorillas would in no way be fortifying the idea that you're really in airspace, controlling an airplane, as gorillas objectively have absolutely nothing to do with the simulated process/environment of aircraft flight. Just for what it's worth. (It kinda makes me giggle when I see people put the word in quotes every single time they use it, as though it only even allegedly exists.) Anywho, ALSO for what it's worth, I have a feeling that, in the case of "Persuasion," they're not going to have a skill like that. They're going to break it down into "what criteria needs to be met in order to give this person an incentive to do something they currently don't want to do?" To put it simply, think of it as giving someone a gift. If you give them something they love, it might work as a bribe. If you give them a free cat, and they're allergic to cats, not only are they NOT going to consider it a valid bribe, but they're going to react NEGATIVELY, at the very least because they now have to put up with inflammation/sneezing/itching, etc. So, actually persuading someone is kind of like giving them the right gift. And there doesn't really need to be a skill that automatically tells you which gift to give someone. Maybe you're better at acquiring gifts, but you still have to figure out which one you need. When it works along those lines, Having the "gift" in parentheses, beside the line of dialogue (as opposed to "(This Option Will Convince This Person To Tell You Things)," aka "(Persuade)" ) won't really be a problem. At least, not in that way.

Methinks you might've missed le following, from Update #43: No worries. It happens. You are no less awesome, ^_^ And now you know. And knowing is half the battle. NOW, if we could just get our hands on some blue-and-red laser bullets, we'd have the other half covered. In a related note, even if they aren't actually a "subrace," per se, in the actual race selection at character creation, you've got to have SOME control over what kind of "spark" manifestation your character gets, as a godlike. Well, you don't have to, but I'm pretty sure Josh said something about this almost obvious thing, and how something like that wouldn't be randomly applied to your character. (I can try to find that quote, since I'm not 100% certain without it as evidence). But, the point being that, as long as you can be more than 1 type of godlike (a whatever-race-you-were-plus-horns, or a whatever-race-you-were-plus-fiery eyes, etc.), and you can pick that, AND race, then the spark manifestation can be at least logistically thought of as a "subrace," with your race being "Orlan Godlike" or whatever. Technically, it would be a sub-sub-race, since it's a subset of a variant of an existing race, heh. But... anywho. I'm fairly certain that the "subrace" aspect most people are referring to is that aspect. Like I said, it might not actually be a "sub-sub-race" option in character creation. It might just be a different set of aesthetic options when "Godlike" is selected. *shrug*. Either way, it's still kind of a subset within "Godlike." "What kind of Godlike?," to put it simply.