Lephys

I think that game would've been loads better if the aliens had been attacking 18th-century colonial America and the "marines" were just naval crewmen.

I read the Wizard Knight duology by Gene Wolfe, and I had almost no clue what was going on the entire time. Just FYI. And Junta... I'm sorry Clerics hate you so hard they glitch the game just to avoid you. 8( Ooh! OOH! It appears as though someone on the Baldur's Gate QA team made a ... ... Clerical error.

Provenance of Eternity (kinda forcibly keeping with the "PE" acronym here, just for kicks).

I would take your taking of his idea even further even further and add in some kind of chance (either based on Pickpocket, itself, or just based on your ability to remain undetected) that they know it's you even though you're not the closest person. A thought: What if, instead of having the amount of time you have to get away be the variable, you make the skill-dependent variable the minimum safe distance you must reach for that person to not pick you out of the immediate crowd? Skill of 20? You'd better put 30 feet between you and the victim as swiftly as possible (I would think things that break line-of-sight, such as corners and pillars, would work, instead of you HAVING to travel a set distance from the victim no matter what). Skill of 90? You can stroll a few feet away, and that person's not going to ever suspect you. Another alternative (along the same lines) would be to always have the same "You look suspicious!" radius around the victim, but allow the player to travel at faster speeds without drawing suspicion while fleeing that radius, as their skill increases. So, skill of 20, you move at a walk (again, meaning you'd have to pickpocket from people in strategic locations, such as near alleyways or things you could hide behind, at the very least). Skill of 90? You can move almost at a full sprint, yet so fluidly that no one really thinks much of it. Then, there's always some combination of the aforementioned ways of doing it (including the original time-limit-before-person-notices-the-theft factor). *Shrug*. Just a thought.

Well, to put it simply (but I swear I'm not trying to be a smartarse), make them different from regular weapons. . Clearly, the details of "how" are the tricky part, heh. It's like you said: in most games, the ONLY difference between conjured weapons and regular ones is that conjured ones are on a timer. Which, as long as you have the mana/resources, is about the equivalent of a physical sword that you are guaranteed to drop every 2 minutes (or however long the spell duration is on the conjured weapon), so that you must pick it back up and re-equip it every 2 minutes. Mechanically, that's hardly a difference at all, really. Well, there's that, plus the aesthetic model. I really think making them lose "durability" or integrity when used would be a start. Just from that, they already can't directly take the place of regular weapons, because making 10 physical attacks in a row (as would be commonplace for a Fighter with a physical weapon in a large-scale fight) would cause them to "dispel" or dissipate, so to speak, and they would need to be re-summoned. They could even become less effective, the closer they get to dissipation. Then, they could "regenerate" their integrity while not directly being used. Other (non-mutually-exclusive) options include: Have them function as a different attack (arcane damage as opposed to physical damage) than a regular blade, so their attacks would have differing properties, such as not producing bleed damage while physical edges did, or only being effective against certain types of enemies (whether it's 90% of enemies, or only 20% of enemies, depending on the particular effect and the balancing needed). Have them act like instant-cast spells, so that the conjured blade/weapon only actually lasts for the swing, or perhaps the simple combo, then dissipates until "cast" again. Basically, a spell-cast and an attack would be roughly the same thing, like a Fighter's "Power Attack," which the fighter happens to perform with the physical weapon he's already holding rather than conjuring one. Have them be modal/sustained abilities. You cannot cast any other spells while they are active, OR your cast times suffer a penalty of having to sustain a manifested, effective weapon while you cast. Of course, I would still say this isn't enough difference to warrant making the conjured weapon basically just a "magical" version of an actual, regular weapon. I think "make them actually different weapons" is pretty much a mandatory thing, no matter what other options you go with, lest they just feel like Bizarro weapons. "Oh, you bought that Mithril Longsword for 1,000 gold? I can just summon a weapon with the exact same attributes and functionality as an inherent, permanent ability, with minimal downsides, u_u." Have them be passively less effective than regular weapons (conjured sword does 5 damage whilst a regular sword does 10, etc.) since you're most likely going to be summoning them with a far-from-maximum-weapon-prowess class (like a Mage) anyway. BUT, have them grant you small sets of unique abilities. These are going to be generic and not-necessarily worthy examples, but things along the lines of: An Earth/Nature conjured weapon giving you some kind of short-ranged shockwave or entanglement, while a Fire blade grants you little flame whips or some kind of slicey-cleave attack that hits an arc around you, or even thin, directional ground cuts (short range, ground-targeted) that cause fire/lava walls to erupt briefly, etc. Maybe the conjured weapon has a certain amount of charges (such as 10-or-so), and each weapon-ability uses up a charge (just like your per-encounter/per-rest spell "ammo"). So, that's how they could be limited, rather than via duration or sustainment. Once the weapon was used up and dissipated, there could be a cooldown for re-conjuring a weapon (perhaps 20 seconds or so... just long enough so that you'd have to think twice before burning through all your weapon charges, thinking you could simply re-conjure the weapon when it dissipated and keep on truckin'). That's actually how Guild Wars 2 does weapons. I think it handles things pretty nicely. I think the most important thing is the approach. It's not a good idea to come up with a magical means of directly mimicking physical weapons and fightery-class prowess. Conjured/magical (literally made from magic, not simply enchanted) weaponry should function very much like the rest of magic does, rather than exchanging mana (or, in P:E's case, spell "ammo") for a Mithril Longsword replica that looks like it's made out of glowy blueness. I think they should be approached as a short-range "fighting style" for magic. Just as you can generally pick schools of magic (Illusion, Destruction, etc.), and your favorite elements (Fire, Air, Earth, etc.), and different spell types (kinda falls under the previous 2 categories). I don't see why "Conjured Stuff" shouldn't be a Mage style, and why Mages shouldn't get a short-ranged attack set. Again, I make the comparison between a sniper rifle and a shotgun. Neither make you into a melee Fighter, but they both function very differently, tactically.

I fear it was you who misunderstood me (probably my fault... I'm not being sarcastic). To clarify, I wasn't meaning to suggest you were calling for no combat in cities. I only meant to point out a point on the scale we're dealing with that we don't want to reach. Like I said, I agree with the in-game representation of the real-world practice of equipment regulation within populated areas. That was my mistake for my post seeming like a counter-argument directly to your argument.

Hehe, probably so. Yeah, I thought of that (that it was basically already handled by feats and such for weapon proficiencies, etc.). I think that's probably why I hadn't thought of doing that with familiarity way earlier. Because the back of my mind knew it was pretty much already handled. Still, I wouldn't be completely uninterested in their having a turf war, and seeing who wins. You know... in the purely conceptual phase (not actually implementing them both in the actual game and just seeing which one's better while the game sucks and is redundant). Strictly in isolation, it could be interesting if such a thing were handled by Familiarity. However, it would be ridiculously tricky to allow for BOTH Familiarity AND feat-or-otherwise-based proficiencies to affect effectiveness with entire weapon categories. *shrug*... Maybe there could be weapon styles? So, a proficiency with Longswords would make you better with all Longswords, but then, you could get familiar with Elven Longswords (racial style was the first thing that popped into my head, purely for example), so that you could STILL use new/different longswords and retain the benefits of your Familiarity bonus, but you couldn't just use ANY new/different Longsword. So, you'd have more of a layered effect. It'd be more easily manageable. I mean, in a way, you've got the same thing with buffs, or anything in which you have multiple sources of the same effect (stacks of the same bonus). A buff is balanced by the fact that it is temporary and/or lesser in effect than something that costs you more important/permanent resources, such as a feat. The same could go for Familiarity. The broader the benefit, the lesser it becomes. But, it's still enough to make nice little differences in different character builds/playthroughs. Bah... I JUST realized that I somehow missed Jarmo's post. We're touching on the same thing, methinks.

Quick! Someone host a Kickstarter for an RPG in which you're a gamer, anxiously awaiting the release of P:E and/or Wasteland 2 and/or Shadowrun:Returns, and your main quest is to locate a quality RPG to play until such time, all the while coping with everyday life! Annnnnd GO!

^ I'm really not trying to snuff out all your points or anything, because they're good, and you clearly know more than I do about actual, real-life warzones. However, I wasn't so much referring to a warzone as I was to fantasy-only things, like orcs. In reality (and often in verisimilitude), everyone is just people, so you don't know who's a hostile and who isn't. But, in a specific fantasy setting (such as one with orcs or other such threats that don't readily exist in real life), you DO know who's an orc and who isn't. The threat isn't so much concealed weapons as it is WHO is concealing them. Granted, that doesn't mean everyone can just wander around with 18 sword-chucks being flailed about in public. I agree with you on that, and believe that there should be more verisimilitudinous restrictions on such things. I mean, people still exist and the necessary organization/regulation of people still exists with them, despite whether or not orcs/kobolds/gnolls/trollocs/uruk-kai are lurking about. All I meant was that the standards would probably be a little more lax in a setting in which existed a constant, clearly-discernable threat. Just look at rural places. Everyone's got pocket knives and shotguns, for various reasons. They might live in an area populated by wolves and/or bears, and they have to look out for themselves. There aren't city walls to protect them... just their own 4 house walls. Also, there are fewer people, so everyone can get to know each other and keep an eye on each other more easily (whether intentionally or just as a side-effect). So, yeah, the more people there are (and, thus, the more organization of people, as in cities and such), the more your weapon-toting probably isn't going to be tolerated. You know, it'd be interesting if you sort of almost had licenses to cover that. Just like in real life. "Hey, you can't have that fully-automatic assau... oh, you're a mercenery, with credentials to be here? Alright, your stuff checks out. Go ahead." You know... they'd check you every time, but, after doing certain things for that city (or the City Guard faction, or some high-enough-ranking official, etc.), you pretty much get priveleges, because it's known that you're trusted to handle you and your own with care inside those guards' city. I know this was touched on by some others. I just like the idea. Because, I like the "check in your weapons at the door" thing, or maybe even peace-tying or something, but I'd hate to see "But... I saved this city from a dragon, single-handedly, using THIS very sword!" -- "Nope, rules are rules. You can never, EVER carry a weapon around in here. Basically, for you, Mr. Player, that means NO COMBAT SCENARIOS IN THE CITIES! MUAHAHAHAHA!" happen. Obviously that's the one extreme, so I don't see it quite going THAT far. But, you know, you don't want the game to feel like the world's so orderly that you just literally never, ever get to use weapons and armor inside a city without being SEVERLEY unlawful/chaotic or only in extreme circumstances (like when the City Guard Barracks is exploding in an attack...)

Soul Force Squad Team 5: Battle for Ettern. If you go ahead and slap a 5 in there, people will assume there were already 4 that did well enough to warrant a 5th sequel. Also, the world's name should totally be Ettern. 8P

"Well fought, men! It was a fine battle, but despite all odds, we conq-What's that noise? Anyone else hear tha-Oh god, worms! They're huge! They're stealing the corpses! Close call, glad they didn't grab the lot of u-OH GOD, THE LOOT! DAMNIT! NO! SOMEONE GRAB THEM! NO NO NO! Shovels! Now! We need shovels, fast! Move, you idiots, move!" Hahaha. But... who takes the corpses of the corpse-takers? o_O In their defense, that is still an alpha build, as far as I know. They commented, specifically, on all the spell effects still being "programmer art," So I would bet that corpses disappearing in that video doesn't necessarily mean that's the planned, final effect.

^ It is rather remarkable,

Granted, if downtown NYC could feasibly be attacked by orcs at any moment, it would probably be slightly more normal to carry such stuff around. In modern society, we're more worried about what that one person could do with a tank and weaponry than we are about thousands of enemy soldiers (much less creatures) pouring out of the woods and slaughtering a town.

While creatively awesome, It just doesn't seem to click very well. I mean, it doesn't seem practical enough, within the practicality needs of the game world. If a Wizard could conjure a blade, you'd think he'd just go ahead and conjure an ergonomic handle, instead of trying to swing it from his Grimoire. While we're on it, though, it would be pretty nice to have conjured weapons for melee-range stuff. They could be sort of a passive/sustained spell, and they'd grow weaker with use (hits could use up spell "stamina"/potency, and maybe too many hits/blocks in a row cause the weapon to dissipate?), while gradually recharging to full strength in their down-time (thus making them short-term-use tools rather than permanent "I HAVE A BLADE MADE OUT OF MAGIC! NONE CAN STOP ME! MUAHAHAHA!" things). That could actually be an answer to our melee-wizard debate. Those conjured weapons would cost you spell slots/points, so for every point you put into Ethereal Blade, that's one point you don't put into Long Ranged Nukey Spell. And the diminishing potency I suggested would take care of the "Wizards are now just perma-fighters" thing. You wouldn't be a full-melee machine. You'd simply be melee-capable via specialization of your magic. You could have different weapons, too, such as LIGHTNING WHIP! Words cannot stress enough just how amazing a whip made of lightning is. u_u

Ehh... in a lot of games, you can actually fail at the pickpocketing action, itself. JFSOCC is proposing that, instead of failing to pickpocket, the effects of your success are limited by your skill/stats. Most notably, even if you suck terribly at pickpocketing, you still have SOME time to take something from a target, then slip away without being chased down or arrested/attacked, even if you only have about 3 seconds to start out with. What this means is that you'll have to stick to targets that, say, hang out around or walk right past shady alleys, because you'll need to slip away quickly. And I don't believe he ever said "No one has ever thought of this idea before! 8D!", so criticizing that is utterly pointless. For what it's worth.

For what it's worth, that might've only happened in the Wasteland 2 video because it was an Alpha build. "Make sure the corpses don't vanish" isn't exactly at the top of the priority list for getting a game build to the Alpha stage. *shrug*

Methinks the point isn't whether or not they'll EVER receive extra money, but WHEN they'll receive that money. Like Junta said, if they get a bonus, after all's said and done (and they've made the quality game they promised), then I don't see a problem. The point made earlier was that, when they earn another $150,000 for the next stretch goal, they don't just hire on a person and give them THAT 150,000 dollars (or even ANY 150,000 dollars, even...). Sure, part of that money probably goes to paying that person for their 40-60 hours a week, but, unless you're suggesting they shouldn't get paid for their day job, I don't understand what the problem could be with this. "Whoa whoa WHOA! You're going to use backer money to PAY YOUR DEV TEAM?! WHAT THE EFF, MAN! THIS ISN'T A CHARITY! I EXCEPT EVERY PENNY OF THAT TO GO DIRECTLY TO SOFTWARE AND DEVELOPMENT KIT PURCHASES AND 8 1/2 X 11 PAPER! No, no you cannot pay the office's electric bill with it, either, u_u"

"Kill It With Fire" -- Earned by deactivating achievements in the Options Menu during the prologue of the game.

Yes, I can see it now... "Well, Mr. Such-and-Such, we reviewed your portfolio on your DeviantArt profile, and it is top notch. Simply stunning! But, I'm afraid, since we decided to browse the entire site and found a lot of other disturbing artists and artwork that has absolutely nothing to do with either your artwork/skill OR this position in any way, shape, or fashion, we're going to have to deny you the job, u_u..."

I remember picking up Fallout: New Vegas at midnight, from Gamestop (in a physical, collector's edition box), only to discover that Steam would not let me install it and play it until midnight PACIFIC time (2:00am in my time zone)! Seriously... what is that accomplishing besides pissing people off? But, yeah, having a physical copy of a game, and having to install/manage the game through something like Steam? Kinda sucks. I don't really hate Steam, itself, or anything. But, I dislike unnecessary crap like that. A lot of DRM is basically the game company saying "We're just going to constantly punch everyone who buys our game in the stomach... you know, to deter people from trying to pirate it." Then, people say "Hey, get rid of this horrendous DRM, please!", and they say "Hmm... we'll consider stopping the incessant stomach punches." And, the funny thing is, the people who still take the time to actually circumvent the DRM don't even have to deal with the stomach punching at all! But, meh. Like I said, Steam, itself, isn't too terrible, really. Just occasionally.

I like the idea. I will say that your use of "stats" in the thread subject, then mainly "skill" in the body is slightly confusing, in so far as the details go. I get the general idea, though, and I likes it. I likes it a lot. It got me thinking... what if you didn't really get to choose what you pickpocketed? I mean, we're talking about obviously not using the "I get to look through their entire inventory at my leisure" system, so what if you don't really know what they have, but your character can take the easiest thing he can get his hands on? Here's an example: If your skill is, say 15, then you might have to pickpocket someone 10 times in order to get some piece of jewelry off of them. And like, you said, the lower your skill, the harder it would be to pickpocket them 10 times without coming back to them later. And, if your skill is 80, maybe you take all their rings off their hand in the first go, as well as having it go unnoticed for 20 seconds instead of 4 or 5. Or maybe you easily take their whole coinpurse. Or maybe you take a dagger out of a sheath at their belt, etc. I'm just trying to play off of the whole "You always succeed at pickpocketing" thing. The alternative would be that you DO get kind of a game-pausing interface to "look through their inventory," but it would only represent the things they happen to be carrying that your character, with his given skill/stats, is capable of pickpocketing. So, if they have 100 gold coins, and a ruby, and an emerald, and a dagger, and an amulet, and your skill is low, maybe the inventory interface only lists "30 gold coins" (it can be abstractly assumed they have some coinage in one pocket, and some in a coinpurse, and some in another pouch, etc.). You could even do things like have SOME people who carry coinpurses (which are easier to take than things from pockets and sheathes, as they need only be cut free and are externally attached to the belt rather than being up against the body), and others who don't carry coinpurses. So, maybe with low skill, you could only rob people who carry coinpurses. As you work your way up, you can start filching from pockets and sheathes. Eventually, you can take bracelets from arms and rings from fingers, maybe even necklaces from necks? *shrug*. Queue balancing, heh. Oh, the possibilities. 8P

True, but so far it's only been described mainly as a means of unpenalized disengagement. I don't think you'll be able to use it every 3 seconds, or Wizards would just LOL at engagement with melee combatants.

The much more accurate term is "objectives." I mean, they could all be called "quests" in the game, but a quest is generally a goal that entails more than one objective.

An excellent post, Atreides. Your first question is one of the things we're trying to pinpoint the answer to. I think most of what has been mentioned would take care of the reloading-a-bunch-for-immediate-satisfactory-results thing. It's just a matter of making sure the familiarity progression isn't so long-term as to make it seem meaningless in the moment. You know, "I'd have to kill 500 things just to get a mild bonus? I'm not even sure I WANT to kill that many things! I don't even know how to weigh the benefits of that against the benefits of simply buying a new sword!" As to the spell thing, I DO think something of that nature would rock! Mages always get neglected, it seems, heh. "This guy is like 80 times better with his sword. But your Firebolt? Still the exact same Firebolt. But, hey, you gained Fireball, which you can replace Firebolt with, so that all your allies in the area die, unless you want to drop the difficulty to 'non-friendly-fire' easy mode. u_u" (Exaggeration for effect, ). And as for the Slippers of Sneaking? I think familiarity would only apply to something you actually wield. Passive bonuses to things you wear should probably be reserved for Talents (who until recently said "Ni!"... err, I mean, were called "feats.") That kinda gets me thinking, though (some little specific phrase or another that you said sparked this, and my brain makes no sense, so... *shrug*)... What if familiarity with weapons were spread out across weapon type? Maybe that would get rid of some of the intensity of getting a new/different weapon. So, you'd get better with longswords by continuing to use longswords, even if you keep getting new ones. MAYHAPS you even still get slight extra bonuses for keeping the exact same particular weapon (this includes all the potential mechanics we've brought up, such as soul-imbuement/"enchantment" of the weapon as you go, or support for that via price reduction or increased ceiling, etc.). Then, on top of that, you'd still have physical customizations (make the blade more balanced, or the grip slightly different for your wielding style, etc.), AND whatever you so choose to do with enchantments/magic on weapons. I definitely like the idea of some kind of familiarity/customization through use being implemented for magic (for any class whose main "weapon" will be their abilities/spells). Maybe for Mages, you could apply the familiarity thing to Grimoires? I'm not talking changing spell sets here (simply through use, however that spell-set thing is gonna work anyway...), but, just how you channel your energy through the tome in order to CAST the spells. Instead of attack speed and all that jazz, you could work with cast speed, projectile size, number of targets (weakening each "split" or separate projectile generated from a single spell that normally only produces one projectile for one target), after-effects, range, duration, etc. Maybe even spell behavior to a degree (such as "now bounces to nearby foes." This might fall under "after-effects.")

Haha. Petition to change EA's name to "ENOUGH Already!" inc.