Lephys

This is an internet forum, so clearly that is a sneaky insult, u_u. And your insistence that it wasn't was just sarcasm, to rub in the insult. /jest Yeah, I'm pretty excited myself. We're SO CLOSE! 8D

This was always an issue, though. "I want to be strong and agile, but I don't want to have no charisma, even though charisma would come at the cost of some combat-supporting attributes." *shrug*

That is true. Slowed recovery time can't be effective at preventing kiting "because engagement." That's engagement affecting kiting tactics, not slowed recovery time. I get what you're saying, but it does matter. Or rather, I could just as easily say that it doesn't matter if your speed is faster than the melee attacker or not, because the globally-slowed recovery times while moving already negates its own impact upon kiting discouragement. So, in the case of everything else being identical between the kiter and the kitee (save for the kitee wielding a melee attack instead of a ranged one), the kiter is going to be delayed exactly as much as the kitee between attacks. In fact, if the kiter were "naked," and the kitee had full plate on, the kiter would be completely uninhibited in fleeing and attacking again faster than the kitee could manage to attack again. And that's not even including engagement attacks. For what it's worth, reading some more gave me an idea for how a movement penalty could be useful: Have armor provide a smaller base recovery time modifier than it currently does (something like +.25 sec, +.5 sec, +.75 sec, +1 sec respectively for tiers of armor), then have the current values apply to recovery time slowing while moving. Wearing full plate and you want to jog around everyone all the time? You're going to be a lot more tired from doing that than that guy wearing a couple of animal skins. That would at least be a more sensical application of the idea of movement slowing you down. Of course, you could STILL just use simple stop-delays. Did you move more than like... one footstep? Okay, you can't attack again for .25 seconds. Are you trying to accurately fire a cross-bow? It'll be .75 seconds between your stopping your movement and the actual firing of your ranged weapon.

I'd so love to see a "legit" pickpocketing mechanic in a cRPG. Not necessarily one that perfectly simulated real-life pick-pocketing, but one that at least wasn't just a random-loot generator, or that didn't allow you the binary results of either failing and having everyone in the world hate you forever OR succeeding at taking a woman's baby from her very hands without her noticing. I also think it'd be cool to have Rogues do lots more Roguey things than just taking stuff. Like sleight-of-hand (which could be used for MUCH more than just taking things undetected), disguising, conning folk, etc. The Rogue class could essentially come with a "Rogue" Knowledge skill. Would be splendid... *fingersteeple*

The BB is, for all practical purposes, a completely separate game from the actual game. You will have to activate your game key for the final game separately. We're supposed to be getting those before the 26th, I'm pretty sure, so that people can preload them.

^ Well, it has no effect on the kiter that it doesn't ALSO have upon the kitee. "Hey, don't run away, THEN shoot me, because you'll take longer to shoot." "Yeah, but you'll take longer to thwack me, even if you catch me."

In all fairness, while it succeeds at inhibiting the act of freely kiting 24/7, it simultaneously inhibits all the other usages of movement that aren't targeted for purposeful inhibiting. Fighter wants to knockdown that front-line guy, then charge the mage? *whistle* PENALTY! In fact, that seems a little like it at least partially negates the inhibition of kiting, since the ranged person moving away requires that the melee "chaser" also move the same distance, thereby requiring that both their recovery times be delayed by the exact same proportion. An action delay upon stopping after movement would not do this, as melee attacks' delays could be much shorter than ranged weapons' delays. You can't really single out ranged movement.

You mean besides "be awesome"?

I apologize, as I skipped to the end of this thread after reading the first page or so (I'm pressed for time today), but... slowed recovery time while moving, on principle, seems like redundant limitation. The whole point of recovery time is that you can only act so often. All the time you spend moving is already time you cannot act, since you can't move for 3 seconds straight AND take an action in the middle of that movement. That, and you already can't move freely when engagement is involved, so you already have restricted movement options (without penalties like getting a free hit on you). I realize that, in complete isolation, slowed recovery while you're moving makes sense, and could even be an interesting abstraction for a mechanic. However, I feel that it's quite heavy-handed when placed on top of the other existing restrictions and limitations on PoE's combat. I humbly suggest an alternative, if you feel there must be an impact from movement on action frequency (beyond being unable to act again so long as you aren't stopped): A post-movement recovery time. You were jogging around just now? But you want to cast a spell? Well, once you stop, you won't be able to cast a spell until .25 seconds after you stopped. Firing a bow? You won't be able to actually aim and let loose an arrow until you stop, get your bearings for .5 seconds, THEN do so. I'm pretty sure this came up before in earlier mechanics discussions. But, in light of this thread, I just wanted to pitch it again. Recovery time is already an abstraction. Abstraction multiplied by abstraction just starts getting nonsensical.

I wasn't trying to make a point that you are specifically making a fuss. You said: Which, yes, does appear to be an amount of fuss greater than zero. But, more to the point, my response was simply meant as "feel perfectly free to make fusses. There's nothing wrong with the act of making fusses. Just make them for accurate reasons." Aka, "I don't like that this is occurring and think it's bad because (insert reasons here)", rather than "I don't like this and also it's bad because they're breaking their promise to not do this, which was implied by them not being specific about this particular thing, and myself assuming that this particular thing was what they were talking about, specifically, when they didn't specifically reference it." That's all. There've just been so many people who keep tossing out that "spiritual successor" broken promises argument, and it doesn't fly. Doesn't mean "LOLZ, YOU CAN'T DISLIKE ANYTHING FOR ANY REASONS! 8D!", or that Obsidian can do no wrong. But, they can't do any wrong by not-doing something they didn't promise to do. They simply made a new game with a collection of old games in mind. There are no criteria for exactly how they wish to allocate the similarities. It's not a blueprint. It's just an idea, "spiritual succession" is.

Wands were made two-handed in the most recent BB build, I noticed. I wonder if they just made all the things that they didn't want you to dual-wield into two-handed weapons. *Shrug*

Yeah, unfortunately, in most of the games, it was just kind of an afterthought. You might as well have had a skill called Treasure Hunting, and you could just randomly mine gold out of rocks you came upon, or dig up bits of loot here and there with a shovel. "I'm going to try and dig up THIS spot of ground! Oh, sweet! 7 silver pieces and a rusty sword!" Sure, here and there you could actually interact with a quest with it in a meaningful way, but that wasn't as a direct result of it being a "run around and click 'use Pickpocket,' then click on random targets at will" skill. As others have said, in a different game with more to specifically support it, a "pick and choose when and where you'd like to pickpocket" skill could be really awesome. But when it's just slapped into an isometric RPG as "roll to get free things... you got free things!", with the occasional "Place an important item onto this person's pants" and/or "take an important item from this person's pants" thrown in, it's hardly an integral part of the gaming experience. The Borderlands slot machines give you 90% of that, and the other 10% can be obtained without having the ability to rampantly pickpocket strangers.

I agree, but it's not really cooldowns' fault that they get used crappily. An interesting way to use cooldowns would be in conjunction with some kind of stamina/fatigue/strain mechanic. For example, imagine your characters had a stamina bar, with 10 points of stamina. Every ability you use takes up 1 point of stamina, and you regenerate 1 point of stamina back every 3 seconds. Now, at any given point in time, if you use an ability, it has a base cooldown that's really fast. It could still vary, but maybe between like 1 and 3 seconds or something, depending on what it is (it's as silly to be able to shield bash someone 7 times in one second as it is to not be able to do so for 45 seconds...). Anywho, when you use an ability, its cooldown is modified by how much missing stamina you have at the time. So, say for every point of missing stamina, the cooldown goes up 1 second. That example works more for a global cooldown (like PoE's Recovery Time) -- the cooldown between being able to act, and being able to act again, regardless of which action you choose. BUT, it could work on an individual basis. Maybe for casters. Maybe the more fire spells you cast in a short time, the more tired you become at weaving fire spells, or maybe the less fire mana there is in the area to draw from or something? Anywho, the sheer idea of cooldowns isn't bad at all. They're very useful in a plethora of ways. They just hardly ever get used in interesting ways. So, yeah, the way developers choose to use them is kind of the lazy design. Ooh! Another idea I just had is for healing. Similar thing to the above examples. Maybe every time you get healed by a spell, you get some kind of "debuff" on you that sort of acts as an effectiveness cooldown. For every point of "mending" (we'll call the debuff that -- you're currently still mending from that heal), the next heal that's cast on you gets reduced effectiveness. That sort of general idea could be kind of interesting. If that person's about to die, then obviously you have to heal them again. But, it could lend a little more thought-requirement to relying on tactics such as simply spamming heals on people, AND it would no longer require as strict of a limitation on the number of heal spells you can cast or how often you can cast them, because you're limited by simply not being able to knit people's wounds, magically, as often as you please. Pretty much anything that is feasibly affected by the passage of time can benefit in some manner by a cooldown. Just not a "let's just make it all about time, and you can't do this thing until this time, and boom!" Oooh! Another quick one with spells! Imagine the generic cooldowns we always see. You cast Fireball, and now you can't cast it again for 15 seconds. OR CAN YOU?! You can, but for every second left on the cooldown when you cast it again, you lose health or stamina or otherwise suffer some negative thing. Boom. Instant much-more-interesting-than-just-a-cooldown limitation. Sure, you can spam Fireballs all day... until you die from it.

OH MY CARP! WHAT IF YOUR DRUID COULD SHIFT INTO CENTAUR FORM?!!!!! O_______________O

Ahh. Wasn't sure before. On the note of efficiency/effectiveness, though, it's been brought up in this thread (and/or others like it before) that "combat XP represents the actual experience your characters earn from fighting!", but then, you can basically just lure a bunch of enemies over a lava geyser that vaporizes them all, and you still get XP for the mere occurrence of their deaths. So really, conceptually, a per-kill XP system already rewards you for goal-accomplishment. And you kind of get more for your dollar based on your efficiency. Of course, you've got systems like The Elder Scrolls games, in which you actually get better at swordsmanship the more you sword things, 8P. SO, if you kill something in one sword swing, you actually improve LESS than if you fight it for an hour. Anywho, if it COULD be done, it would be interesting to see these games more closely mimic DM management of the rewards/happenings.

@RussM8330, I'm all for romance, but a lack of legit "romance" does not revoke this game's spiritual succession cred.

A) That's not what "literally" means. If they meant it literally, it would be an incorporeal version of the IE games. B) They never suggested that they meant that. They mentioned much more general things that they wanted to "feel" like the IE games. By all means, make all the huge fuss you want to about whatever you want to. But, you can have a problem with something without it being Obsidian breaking their promise. You're allowed to simply dislike the dissimilarity, without "spiritual successor" meaning "Exactly like the IE games in every way that you, yourself, imagine in your mind."

Well, how much damage you take and how quickly you kill the enemy don't necessarily have a direct proportion to how effectively you take them out. You could have everyone in your party take 90% of their Health in damage, then take the enemy out by dropping a cliff onto them, for example. But, yes, as I already mentioned, it would be difficult. You'd have to have measures of the maximum amount of damage/buffing/etc. abilities could produce, then compare to that. Or something along those lines. And/or just have ways to do really cool stuff in combat, beyond straight-up ability damage. For example, I'd love to see stat/skill checks in combat in a game like this, but the combat would almost have to be turn-based. Anywho, it's just an idea. No need to "LOL" at it as if I said it'd be easy.

If it's tied to a specific timezone, it's most likely going to be Pacific (west coast).

Woot! Useful data. Thanks! ^_^

Haha. First I've actually checked out Big Head Mode. I just always thought "yeah yeah, big heads, fun times." But, I didn't realize just HOW big they were. Makes 'em look like sports mascots of PoE characters. They should patch in a secret /worm command that makes them all do the worm, (but only works in Big Head Mode). Also, wereotters are great, but you should also add wereplatypi. Complete with rear-foot poison spurs. 8D

I cannot, for the life of me, understand why so many people have decided that "spiritual" means "mechanical." Don't get me wrong... there are design decisions with PoE that I wish were different, for the sheer sake of game design and my preferences and all that. But, why does the phrase "spiritual successor" somehow disallow Obsidian from making the game mechanics as different as they so choose, so long as they're still makin a game "in the spirit of the IE games"? I can make a game "in the spirit of Tetris," and it doesn't have to involve eliminating lines, or square blocks comprising larger shapes. It could be another puzzle game that's still very similar to Tetris, but uses zero exactly-identical mechanics. I think we should make a list of all the things that are almost identical between PoE and the IE games, and then have someone find a game that they're more similar to that isn't an IE game.

You wouldn't be the first person to do that. But you'd be one of a select few. 8P

Almost any system in any game ever could use improvements. There are games I absolutely adore, but I still say "Hmmm, I would've liked it even more if such-and-such were a bit different." So, that being said, I don't think PoE is perfect in terms of XP design. But, then again, I haven't seen the final version, either. But, the thing about this whole debate is, SURE it's nice to kill a wolf and get a wolf's worth of XP, but, in the end, you can only kill so many wolves without "accomplishing something" (beyond the ending of wolves' lives). Thus, if XP is properly granted for the accomplishment of narratively-relevant things, I really don't mind how XP is granted. Because, there's no possible way in which you can accomplish something that had you kill 15 enemies and somehow not receive XP "for those enemies." Honestly, I think a really awesome system would be one which rewards you much like a DM would: for cleverness in using your classes to overcome challenges. Basically, you'd get XP for winning fights, but pretty low base XP (and probably still diminishing XP for fighting the same thing multiple times). Then, you'd actually get more XP for handling your fights in a highly effective fashion, rather than just hacking away at things until they're dead. That's just an ideal, though, as designing a system that measures how well you're using the tools at your disposal to overcome fights would be pretty nightmarish.

It's always a sad day when unarmed attacks are discriminated against in a video game. Because swinging a sword and using your fist are just the same thing minus a sword, right? I realize resource/timeframe limitations. But, still... ESPECIALLY for a monk-type class. Lacking any kind of focus on purely unarmed-style attacks, at the very least, is a hugely missed opportunity. My XCOM-style medieval fantasy game that I one day (in the distant, distant future) make will have awesome pugilists, and they will pugilize to the fullest extent of their power. With gloves, and knuckles, cestas, and probably infeasible weapons that haven't even been invented yet, u_u...