Lephys

My mistake... I very hastily assumed that stating "I prefer," followed by something you don't want to happen, followed by examples of that happening, was some form of expression of your opinion on the matter. I shall try to avoid drawing such wild conclusions in the future. Apologies.

Ehh... I'm not trying to be pompous or anything, but I'm really not sure how it doesn't pretty much have everything to do with both what I quoted AND what I was talking about that begat your quoted response. Most specifically, it is an answer to "Why?". Do you mean you don't see the point in the rest of it because you feel I was overly elaborative, or that you, yourself, would not have typed so much? I don't understand. I'm saying, quite simply, that it would be nice to know what would be useful to Obsidian for us to discuss and what wouldn't. As much fun as it is to just discuss potential mechanics and design choices whether they're even feasible or likely to be used in P:E or not.

Ugh... I'm trying to sketch hands and arm proportions right now. I'm SO close, but it's still pretty ugly, haha. What do you mean by the hardest part being rendering it where it isn't muddy? Please elaborate, as my piddly novice-tise might be of some use.

Well, because if we're going to sit around discussing things excitedly all day, it'd be nice to know what's even feasible or isn't (according to things only Obsidian knows), or what things they're having difficulty nailing down and what they aren't. Also, it's totally at their discretion that they provide us with tidbits of their current design plan so that we may provide direct feedback (like the miss thing, etc.). I'm not demanding that everything they're designing be up for discussion/feedback, directly, here, amongst us random people who aren't game developers. Plus, I HIGHLY doubt they're just scratching their heads about everything, then seeing a few posts here in a topic, then simply saying "Oh, well, I guess we should do it like that, then" and calling it a day. I'm pretty sure all they're doing is factoring in our feedback, along with all their own expertise and trial-and-error regarding the effects of mechanics, and implementations, and the overall goals of the game they've already set out to achieve. So, I don't think this is a choice between "Should they provide guided feedback topics so that our feedback will be useful to them and just do whatever it is we say, or should they not provide us with such things and actually use their own brains and expertise to figure things out and make a good game?" I think they're fully capable of both gathering feedback on specific topics (for which feedback might be quite helpful to clear some design snags) AND simultaneously use their own brains and expertise on the matter. The feedback is supplementary, not an override. It's also evaluated. If a bunch of people say "Hitpoints are stupid!", I have no worries that they'll remove hitpoints. I think if even one person somehow came up with a very reasonable case as for why hitpoints should be altered, they'd probably then consider it, since it's an actually a very reasonable and valuable bit of information they maybe hadn't considered yet. Annnnywho. I just think it would help us be more helpful in our random, excited forum speculation and discussion. As it stands now, we mostly read about a few tidbits of "this is pretty much how things are gonna be unless we just happen to change our minds further down the design pipeline" in the updates, then start throwing out a bunch of "What ifs" across like 17 different threads. That's one thing I think the Uservoice voting/suggestion system does very well, methinks. It shows, in general, what ideas are most important/favored by the player/backer-base, not so much so that the devs can just go "800 votes? Putting that in," but so they can prioritize and organize the ideas and suggestions that the backers are presenting. It organizes the feedback to a useful purpose. Also, it lets the backers know when an idea has been read or not, without having to find a developer's post in page 5 of an 11-page topic. *shrug*. Just my thoughts on the matter is all.

I think I disarmed it first. But, I can't remember the details now well enough to really verify the scripting of the situation. 8P I just recall it being one of those "Why won't the game allow me to employ caution here" situations. I mean, the sherriff goes in there (if I'm not mistaken) without his gun drawn or ANYthing, to talk to a guy who tried to hire someone to destroy an entire town. The SHERRIFF'S entire town! He's just all "Hey, excuse me, but I'm not happy with your bullcrap, and, if it pleases you, I'd like it if you perhaps left town. And also please don't pull a weapon out and shoot me right now." I think I actually had to stand in the right spot so as to prevent the bullet from hitting the Sherriff. And, it's funny, 'cause the game's actually scripted with "Oh, thanks for saving my life" stuff, but hardly any at all. Like it was an afterthought because you're not "supposed" to have enough time/be able to stop that one-shot-kill bullet (from a gun that doesn't even do that much damage) to take down the Sheriff in a "surprise attack" (Now that I think about it, I think he does it after the Sheriff stupidly turns his back to stroll out of the saloon). Again, it seems a bit silly and restrictive to provide absolutely no options for "WAIT, HE'S GOT A GUN!". Or "I wouldn't trust this guy... better keep an eye on him until he leaves, at least." Etc.

I like what Josh Sawyer said about it. Obviously, the goal isn't always specifically to make things as true to life as possible. So, the only question left is really how best to evaluate whether or not realism, in some specific aspect, provides enough use or not for the game's needs and goals. This is almost always going to step on people's preference-toes. It's not that a game developer ever WANTS something to specifically be unrealistic, I don't think, so much as it is "Crap... I kinda need to make this less realistic, lest something circumstantially more important than realism/verisimilitude suffer in this case." The whole "Shouldn't this be realistic?" question is always going to need to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, since there is no absolute answer unless your game is a simulator.

I think it would be interesting if you got to pick, somehow. Like, some deity or ancient people designed something to be found by a clever enough person, but they knew not in which particular way that person would be clever, so they made a visual/spatial puzzle, an audible puzzle, AND a mental-acuity puzzle. So, maybe solving "the puzzle" is necessary to get somewhere, but you don't HAVE to have awesome hearing, or awesome eyesight, or be quite clever with word meanings/riddles, etc. You get to pick, though. *shrug*

An excellent question.

You're arbitrarily giving food mechanics a negative connotation, without viewing the potential of nourishment-representing mechanics without bias. Sure, if you look at the ways to do it crappily (just make it something else you have to keep track of in the game, that's highly intrusive and, all by itself, requires you to do twice as much backtracking and micromanagement throughout the entire game), it's always going to look bad. Hell, if it's done like that, I hate it too. So, I don't blame you for that. But, why not try to constructively criticize the ways you've seen it done poorly, and try to collaborate with others here to try and figure out how it might be done in such a way that it isn't purely a chore and also provides ineresting and useful gameplay dynamics? Where's the fun in saying "Well, some people failed to make it fun, so now I have no interest in it ever being fun." What if the first people to make RPGs had made really poorly-designed RPGs, and we all just said "Oh well, this type of game's been terrible with several attempts from other people, so we'd better not try to make a good one. u_u"? Where would we be, then?

I've gotta say that I also don't much care for the discussion aspect of the Uservoice page inXile is using. However, I DO like the voting capabilities. While these forums have plenty of discussion going on, we often have no idea at all what might or might not be being currently considered by Obsidian for the game. I think it might be nice if they tossed us out some guided discussion topics with the updates or something, or maybe just started some official polls along with a discussion thread. *shrug* There's just only so much speculation you can do before it feels like there's nothing to do but wait around because you don't even know if your speculation is useful anymore.

I'd just like to add that, regarding the whole "Who's to say how big cities should be?" debate, Fallout is set in a friggin' post-apocalyptic world in which the vast majority of people died, and it still sometimes had more structures and people in its cities than some other games in which there are supposed to be thousands of people living in a given region. Like, how does the King of Skyrim have an army to fight against these takeover attempts and whatnot if its main city has 30 people in it? Then, you go attack Whiterun, and like 50 guards try to stop you. Where were those guards?! Did they live in burrows underground? Are they mole-people? Where were their wives and children? Even then, that's STILL not enough people to support the idea that this isn't a post-nuclear world. If the population of Skyrim is like 1,000, how do they have enough infrastructure to actually have armies and fight other regions? I mean, the Imperial city in Oblivion was about the size of all of Skyrim's "cities," combined. If you show me that the populous of your cities seems to fit a post-apocalyptic world like Fallout, then you suggest that these are supposed to actually be major cities and not just makeshift towns with a few farmers in them (even if they're smaller than other cities), then it becomes difficult to believe that the world is as populous as you say it is.

I'm pretty sure I remember that part, or one almost exactly like it, at least. It was in Megaton. Some guy was sitting in the saloon, waiting for someone else to walk in, and after some scripted timer, he stands up and initiates combat, and it seems as though his shots are turned into insta-kills. BUT, if you attack the guy before he makes a move on the person he's trying to kill, everyone turns hostile on you (which makes sense, I suppose, but it seems like you should've been able to warn someone or bring it up somehow without resorting to "either kill him and have everyone think you're crazy, or just stand there while he kills the guy you know he's going to kill." I actually retried that like 15 times, and finally managed to time things JUST right (I was a melee specialist, and I finally initiated VATS the very INSTANT he began drawing his weapon, and disarmed him before he could get a shot off). I think it was supposed to be that he definitely, without fail, kills that guy, as the outcome of however you handled that situation. Which, A) shouldn't have been the case if it's reasonable that you could know about it ahead of time (you should be able to at least ATTEMPT to do something about it before it goes down), and B) I shouldn't have been able to stop it if it was going to be inevitable, and C) If I was able to stop it, it shouldn't have required such extreme meta-gamey micromanagement and tweaking to "trick" the game into letting me stop it.

Figured it might've been, but didn't know that it was for sure (could've just been inspired by bat physiology, as well, or by the Skuldr concept, itself). But, it's definitely good stuff, 8D. I'm kinda trying to hone my drawing skills at the moment. Workin' my way up to stuff like that, hopefully. So, kudos. ^_^

I thought it did, but I can't remember (been a while since I played). 8P However, it's more like the opposite of eliminating time-outs. It would be like unlimiting time-outs. Except, time-outs don't actually abstractly represent hours worth of ability-replenishing rest and recovery like in an RPG, so it's not even really like that. If you remove resting limitations all-together, then you might as well remove ammo limits, HP limits, pickpocket retry limits, etc.

Because it conflicts with the rest of the game's design. The only reason that feature was implemented was to give you a reason NOT TO rest all the time, and yet people used it as a reason TO rest all the time. It's not wrong that they decided to play the game that way. It's wrong that the game was designed so. Because, saying "Ohh, you're limited to 7 spells for today," then allowing you to literally rest and regain those spells every 5 seconds is self-defeating. Again... it's a self-defeating design that makes no sense. If people want games with nonsensical designs, then that's fine. But that doesn't change the fact that a game being made by a team who is trying to make a game with a sensible design is failing if their design becomes nonsensical and incoherent. Also, you're supposed to be adventurers in this at-least-somewhat immersive world, yet you make friggin' camp every 10 minutes, every time someone takes out a rat. That's pretty silly. And the rest of the world doesn't care that you spent 17 weeks in a cave just outside of town. Obviously a little time abstraction is in order in an RPG (we don't need something tallying exactly how many minutes our people have rested, and how healed each cut is, and how tired they are based on some complex math, and how long each individual member of the party is capable of resting based on current tiredness levels, etc.), but that doesn't mean "Just throw sense out the window and don't even have any checks against over-abstraction! 8D" What Hormalakh said. If you put fewer opponents on a soccer field to make the game Easy mode, or change their skill level, that's one thing. You take away one of the goals, or eliminate the field boundaries, and that's something else entirely.

Nice sketch! 8D. I like the line quality. I have trouble sketching, as my brain thinks my arm is just a machine, and wants it to make super-robotic lines, heh. Kinda looks like it resembles a Skuldr,

It might matter to some people that everything in the game isn't blue and sparkly. But that doesn't make sense to base game design upon. That's why we don't debate subjective perspectives. Is someone wrong for wanting a game in which everything is blue and sparkly? No. Nor is the developer wrong for not making a game that caters to that player's subjective preference. This little tidbit right here is why I can't continue this little debate with you, because you're just preventing it from accomplishing anything at all. I say "it doesn't matter," and you say "Maybe it does!". No, the mattering I'm talking about is objective. I already told you that. The reason it doesn't matter if you stray 15% from a realistic breastplate design is because, in the game world, the shape of the breastplate model doesn't beget the properties of the breastplate. So, it quite literally doesn't matter what the breastplate is shaped like, objectively and truthfully, in the way that it does in real life. In real life, if you could build whatever breastplate you wanted (with dragons and concavities abounding) and it wouldn't be any less effective than any other breastplate, wouldn't you do it if you were a rich lordling knight and loved dragons and imaginative designs? Yes, OF COURSE you would. You wouldn't go "Nope... better keep it plain, for no reason at all." That said, we go back to the subjective. Which is more correct? To design into the game a semblence of realism, or to just give everyone crazy ridiculous dragon-plate with boob-cones and armor that doesn't even cover 70% of the body, yet still protects really well? Well, obviously the developers would like to go with the realistic approach. So, naturally, some people aren't going to be happy with that, but it's not wrong to do so.. But, guess what? If one of their artists fails to model a breastplate EXACTLY like a real breastplate, it doesn't lose effectiveness. The world spins on, and everyone's fine. Not to mention all the differences in the world (Magic, soul-powers, mythical creatures and fictitious substances, completely imagined cultural differences and technologies, etc.). There are SO MANY things supporting a mild difference in armor production and design from perfect realism that it's not even funny. And, I'm sorry, but your PC doesn't bark orders at the other "NPCs" in your party. You, the player, literally control them, on-the-fly. I can't even begin to fathom why you would attempt to argue that party members/companions are actually NPCs. Why would your main character be your "main" character if there weren't non-main characters that were also your characters? We'd just call the main character "The PC" at that point. I'll tell ya what... after P:E comes out, you play the game, with a group of 6 Humans -- 3 male, and 3 female -- and do battle with a group of 10 Human guards -- 5 male and 5 female -- with everyone wearing the same type of plate armor (which actually makes sense, because they're all uniformed guards, and maybe your party of Fighters/warrior-types just recently obtained some plate). Then, have fun with the real-time combat, and tell me you don't have to pause it 18 times throughout to tactically manage the combat whilst keeping track of who goes where. Tell me that's fun, and quantifiably non-problematic in the least. Then we'll talk. Is it the end of the world if it's not like that? For the seven-hundredth time, no. Is it nice to inherently be able to tell the difference between people you could already tell the difference between, even after they both happen to don some plate? Yes. Does it objectively hurt anything to have such a subtle difference? No. No it doesn't. Is Obsidian already doing this? Yes, which is pretty much the only reason I bothered to even get in on this thread and point out that it's not really hurting anything, because it's already being done, and arguing subjective matters is completely and utterly pointless. So, I dug into the objective nature of the decision as best I could. So, if you feel the need to say "Omg, this is the dumbest debate ever" one more time, then just remember one more time that you could've said "Yeah, you're right that there are some objective reasons for the decision, but I still would simply rather it not have been made." Then, we could've merrily gone our separate ways. But, every time you question the legitimacy of everything I'm saying, I'm going to answer. Because, again, I have to assume someone posting on a discussion forum is interested in discussing and understanding the things that are posted.

You do have to give Skyrim credit for their external world, even if some of the cities still felt a little strangely small (such as Whiterun, in which it seemed only 20 people lived). The world actually felt like a world, and it felt pretty huge.

What if... the summoned creature could only act while the Wizard channeled? I mean, the Wizard could break channeling to move about, and/or cast other spells, etc, but in this fashion, summoning would almost be like a Druid's animal form, only different (you'd summon completely different things than the animal forms, and you'd have the extra utility of being able to switch back to control of your Wizard, at a completely different location, at any time). Granted, the summoned thing would still have a duration and all that. And your Wizard would, naturally, be much more vulnerable when standing there channeling. Another idea is that summoned creatures could spring forth with only a certain number of actions before their link to the current plane weakened and they dissipated/returned to whence they came. Rather than only being here for 5 minutes, they'd be here for 15 actions or something.

On the topic, I'm actually playing through Arcanum right now, and it allows you to initiate conversations from anywhere within about a 25-foot radius (it would seem) of the target person. Seems like a fundamentally better approach, already, than the "you must walk ALL the way up to the person's face" or "you teleport to them and congregate around them with your party" approaches, and Arcanum's like 80 years old.

Most definitely. I don't think the problem lies within number balancing, but in the actual lack of complexity in the system. All you need, at the very least, is ONE more variable thrown in there to provide a way in which the dagger CAN be better than the 2-handed hammer. See, the whole "Oh, well let's balance it out so that none of them are different" still doesn't even address the problem, much less solve it, . But, I guess some people try it, in case it does or something. Heh. The point being that, in an RPG, the general idea is that, if you're "bad," you get to do stuff and get more "rewards" (loot, basically), all the time, and it's absolutely better. However, that doesn't have to be the case. Maybe at EVERY single instance you're able, you take advantage of someone else, and get 50 more gold pieces as compared to a completely neutral playthrough (or even "good" one). The game can easily be complex enough that you suffer various other consequences and actually miss out on a lot of stuff that another player wouldn't, in exchange for your extra coins all along the road through the game. Logically and realistically so. If you kill and loot EVERYone you come across after you've pretended to have no intentions of the sort, then eventually, someone's going to find out you're doing this, and they're going to have credibility, and you're going to be screwed the next time you try to even get anywhere with anyone (to "use them up" before killing and looting them). Whereas, the other player would have full access to that place/those people, because they didn't go around doing something that people would very much like to know about so that they can shun you for it.

^ Yay! 8D. Well, my friend kinda wanted the Numenera rulebook, anyway, heh. I don't feel bad supporting people I believe are passionate about the game they're making (and won'd be hindered by a big publisher). Thanks for the info, though. I upgraded the day after they said they had about $100,000 to go, and I couldn't find any other updates as to the Paypal totals since then. So, thanks again!

Oh, yes. Sorry. I'm fairly certain it was most recently confirmed in the one of the last updates that it will, indeed, be real-time-with-pause (and slow-mo... "half-pause," I'll call it).

Ehh, there's some informative tidbits from Josh Sawyer, somewhere around here, regarding weapon speed. Then there was the so-far-designed affects of heavier armor upon... action speed? I can't remember the specifics. I think he said it wouldn't affect move speed, because that's lame, but it would affect spell-casting time and/or attack speed, etc? Maybe just ability use. I really should find it... Yeah, all I could find was that armor's "speed penalty" will affect the speed of actions, rather than movement. And that weapon speed will not differ drastically like in D&D rules (where you end up going from 1 attack per round to like 5+ attacks per round). Not sure about any other details yet. I could've missed something, though.

True, but that's why you put in realistic risks/consequences, such as your party frowning heavily upon your douchebaggery, or personalized items of value (you find Glarka's silver necklace, and you take it to the next town to sell it, but the merchant says "Hey, wait a minute... I recognize that necklace! Glarka was a traveling peddler, and he used to come here all the time! Where did you get that?!"). You don't get so heavy-handed with such implementations that you PREVENT players from being Chaotic Douchebags, but, it should be a trade-off, at some level. You can't just plain get more than everyone else throughout the entire game and never suffer any consequences, or risk of over-use. In certain situations, using up NPCs, then killing and looting them should be perfectly get-away-with-able, and not provide as many consequences. But, then, unbeknownst to the player beforehand, SOME situations should be about 80% consequences and 20% reward (you actually would've ended up with more in your greedy hands had you not killed and looted those people). Stuff like that. That's why I hate games that reduce all of weapon effectiveness to DPS. "Well, this 2-handed hammer is much slower, but does way more damage than this faster dagger." But, you look at DPS ratings, and the hammer is sitting at 20, while the dagger's at 17. Welp. 2-handed hammer it is! Why? Because there's nothing else to the combat system that would make you want to use a dagger instead of a hammer, because higher damage is always better, and that's all there is to it.