Lephys

That's... quite literally my point. I'm sorry, as it isn't my intention here to imply a basis of intelligence difference or anything like that, but I really, truly, don't comprehend how you take the meanings you do from what I say, and miss the ones I intend. It could completely be my own fault. For realsies. Unfortunately, it confuses me, and all I know to do is to attempt clarification, which apparently leads to more unintended-meaning fuel. *shrug* My point wasn't that you can't make changes, or that the devs brains never went through an iterative process with the design. Since we don't know the finalized details of this game to simply toss out here in discussion and suggest direct changes/balances to, we're using hypothetical examples. So, in the hypothetical example of "You have an RPG with enchantments, and you have to balance the mechanics with every possible combination of to-hit modifiers in mind," all I'm trying to say is, it might be more prudent to make more efficient mechanic changes (such as limiting the number of different systems that can provide to-hit bonuses in your game) that don't then require changes to the lore (that MIGHT then require further changes to other bits of lore and/or mechanics). It's just as you said... the vision of the game is the root of both the mechanics AND the lore. The decisions for both are tied directly together. So, if the ONLY reason you have to go against the core vision of your game world is because you need a mechanical balance tweak, then I think it might be best to explore some other potential balance tweaks. In the case of our ongoing enchantment example, IF you haven't already dreamt up a world in which enchantments that affect people's skills/capabilities are more difficult than and not as potent as other enchantments, then suddenly changing that purely because the mechanics you're currently using would benefit from it is a bit silly, since the mechanics are supposed to be based upon your vision. Not vice-versa. Direct P:E example: If team Obsidian suddenly said "Hmmm... with our current damage numbers and hit-point values, I think we're gonna need healing to be a lot more prominent. Change of plans! The world DOES have oodles of magical healing in it! 8D," I would call that a pretty terribly-made decision. All mechanics do is quantify an otherwise-unquantified world (the lore). So, if you as me, there's never a reason to change your lore for anything shy of hardware/software limitations. If you literally cannot produce mechanics that would in any way accurately represent what you had envisioned, then you might need to change that.

Maybe it was a typo for "Debutting." Maybe they're shedding all of the project's metaphorical butts? *shrug*

In a way, I think "good" and "evil" are a bit logical. I mean, they pertain directly to sentience. A thornbush can't be evil, no matter how much blood it draws from someone who falls into it. It cannot desire to harm something, nor can it decide to harm something, or even alter its ability or effectiveness at harming things. Good and evil are two things relative to the same mean, which is nothing. No change. Evil seeks to push things backward, toward nothing, and good seeks to push things forward, toward something. That's why it is often perceived as evil to kill for no reason, yet it is sometimes perceived as good to kill, if there is a "good enough" reason. Evil seeks not only a lack of reasonable moderation or order, but also the complete opposite of reasonable moderation or order. And good seeks reasonable moderation and order. I know it's all "up for interpretation," but there are absolutes in this world, and I believe they are at the root of all such pondrances. They're simply not what we tend to think they are. We like to know things, and we arrive at our conclusions before we get to the actual absolute. But, like I said, in a way... It is a very complicated thing. There aren't really good words for conveying such ideas. If we all had telepathy, this topic would probably be a lot easier to "discuss,"

Okay, obviously creating magic rules that fit your mechanics can be silly/bad. Therefore, all I'm getting at is that you need to keep it reasonable. You have to establish SOME world/lore/setting that goes hand-in-hand with the mechanics, like you said. But, they also both have to make sense, individually. The lore/world has to be a quality, interesting world. AND, the mechanics have to be functional and complexly interesting. AND, the two have to work together. ALL I'm saying is, you can't take 2 out of three. You can't go with a crap lore decision just so that your mechanics can be good, and your lore and mechanics can work well together. Well, you CAN, but it weakens the game. The same goes for sacrificing mechanics for lore. OR, sacrificing their support for each other simply because your mechanics are really cool on their own and your lore is really awesome on its own. Throw a pebble in a pond, and the ripples go all the way to the edges. At the end of the day, you've gotta be happy with that whole pond. I'm not talking about coming up with lore. I'm talking about finalizing everything. In a further attempt at clarification... The decision to make some enchantments more difficult than others should come from the fact that you want your world to have to do without those things, rather than simply that it helps support a mechanic detail you didn't want to be questionable. Look at P:E, with healing. They're going to have SEVERELY LIMITED magical healing, and the entire world's built around that. So are the mechanics. Both are built around the very same core decision. They didn't establish a world with oodles of healing, then go "Hmm... with our current mechanics, it looks like healing's overpowered. Let's decrease its effectiveness by 95%, then change the lore to support this decision. Why is healing so weak? Uhhhh... because! Yeah!" That's like taking a wheel off your truck to fix the trailer it's pulling. They're both necessary, side-by-side, to get the job done, so why would you sacrifice one for the other? The goal should be to tweak them both in unison. Not tweak one simply to fix the hole you just made in the other.

That's super dandy and all, increasing the enemy reaction possibilities by 50%, to 3. But, it should really probably be a bit deeper than that. How 'bout a "the closer you get to me, the faster I run" mode, for example? Who decided that there's always SOME amount of distance at which people and things automatically go berzerk and start attacking with wild abandon? Not to mention, it's always SO unnatural. You're just trotting along, guessing at the "aggro" distance. "Oh, it seems at 15 feet, where they can clearly see me, these wolves were fine. But at 14.3 feet, THEY ARE HUNTING ME FOREVER!" Also, while we're on the animal topic... what's with wolves just "running" up to you in these games, then standing there and biting at you in a nice, rhythmic fashion?! Can I get some actual, constantly-moving-so-I'm-hard-to-hit-then-flank-strike-tackle-you-and-try-to-rip-out-your-jugular-with-my-mouth wolf behavior, please? Sure, it's pretty easy to kill a wolf, but it's also pretty difficult to prevent a wolf from harming you. Full plate? That'll probly do it, but the thing could still leap upon your face/chest. EVEN IF it dies in the process, how do you stop it from taking you to the ground? It's not gonna stand there, for one, and it's certainly not going to pit its teeth and claws against your sword in an epic struggle while a latin choir floods the scene with drama. And, @Trashman: LOLCANO!!! ^_^

I don't either. But I do see why your effectiveness with them should. Unless, of course, you think an archer should go through the entire game with naught but his standard attack. Especially in a world of superhuman soul powers, I would think your abilities would take the effectiveness of your arrows SOMEWHERE beyond the effectiveness at which you started. But maybe that's just crazy talk. *shrug*

I beg to differ. In the "game" (aka combat, being abstracted, maybe even turn-based, etc.), you don't go around getting perfectly clean sword stabs to the gut. The HP/damage system's sole purpose is to abstractly quantify the effectiveness of concrete actions and details in your game world. So, yes, the world doesn't have HP, but it has single sword stabs to the gut that kill men. Therefore, for your "game" to be suggesting you're stabbing a guy in the gut with a sword, and he's simply not dying, when he would have in the "world," would mean that the game is simultaneously tallying 100% of his health as damage from the sword attack AND less-than-100% damage from the sword attack. I'm sorry, but a game whose "world" has Person A taking a sword through the gut and being verisimilitudinously slain, and whose combat (aka "game") has an actual attack/maneuver that's represented by the ramming of one's sword through Person A's gut while leaving person A completely alive and only mildly maimed... that's a game with terrible design. You might as well have the attack "Behead" deal only 1 damage to something with 100HP. What's stopping you from making that some easily-more-accurately-representative-yet-still-abstracted attack, like "prick" or "cut"? What's the point in numbers if you're going to contradict them, arbitrarily? Bear in mind, that's completely different from ramming your sword through someone/something's gut that, in your lore, can actually survive that. Same with beheading. There's a layer of logic to the game's design, no matter what you do, and how imaginative/creative you get. It's not even super complex, really. Just don't contradict yourself, and offer reasonable explanations (within the context of your lore) as to why things are the way they are if you don't want weak lore. To summarize my original point in all this... Simply changing the lore to justify the mechanics is never the best option. I recognize, and do not dispute, that all changes to lore are not overly simple and bad. But, the ones that are, are.

While that's true to an extent, and while I wouldn't expect the two to run in parallel the whole game with absolutely no fluctuation, the amount of damage you can inflict with the exact "same" arrow (same model or type, not necessarily the same individual arrow) should increase as the HP of foes increases. Not to mention, if you've got different arrow types, one would think that that would be the whole point of those; to more effectively damage those foes who are no longer being effectively damaged by standard arrows. Couple that with partial arrow retrieval and you've got yourself one problem slain. 8D

... Truly? 'Cause, you know, they kinda already react like that to completed quests and stuff. I wouldn't think it'd be very troublesome to put in some optional achievement-type factors that warrant a change in NPC behavior/dialogue/your character's reputation. Maybe that's just me, though. *shrug*

... Ranged attack it is! Hey... if you used a magical jet of air with which to propel said Fighter, would that make him... ... ... a jet fighter? (I had to... and yes, I did get what you actually meant, I believe. Literal humor is just too much fun, and I got the mental image of a Wizard literally striking an enemy by using the party's Fighter as a weapon with which to strike.)

^ True that, Trashman. Animal example of the OP's human example? Would a group of wolves really charge at a summoned Flame Elemental (who's literally comprised of burning) and try to bite it? Many RPGs have, to an extent, been reduced to some semblence of "Oh, a thing. Time for the two of us to fight, thing!" No matter what that thing is. Provoking it usually only requires walking near it. A single wolf trying to find its way back to its pack? There are 73 people in your party, trompsing through the woods? Get within 15 feet of that wolf, and it'll attack you. Otherwise, it'll just stand there/wander aimlessly. That wolf doesn't care HOW many people are coming toward it. It's an insane wolf with no survival instincts. Maybe that's what fantasy evil does? It drains the world of survival instincts? That would be a pretty ingenious way to take over things, actually. *chin stroke*...

I know whatcha mean, Pintash. Of course, ever since voice-acted video games (and the extreme cost in resources for voice acting), we RPG-lovers have gotten pretty used to the partial voice acting that we all know and... think things about. P:E is going to be doing this, if I'm not mistaken. So, one could always provide lorestuffs in the form of optional, text-only dialogue options (when it makes sense), AND in books and things, AND/OR in the form of "automagically" recorded information. i.e. "*The man tells you everything he knows about the fallen kingdom*," or "*after a couple of hours, you've copied down all the script carved into the stone throughout this chamber*," etc. Now, you have that info. Here's where it gets tricky, though... I really think we (the players) should be told it's purely lore, somehow. And before you get out the pitchforches (those are combo pitchfork/torch weapons for the efficient angry peasant in YOU! 8D): 1) That doesn't mean lore can't be pertinent to actual stuff in the game (help you solve a riddle more easily, or locate a secret room, or figure out additional paths in a quest, etc.). 2) That doesn't mean all the non-"lore"-marked options/texts are GUARANTEED to automatically accomplish something or pertain directly to a quest/objective/game-ity-thingie. Basically, it would ONLY be a distinction between things that are necessary for SOMEthing, and things that aren't necessary but could still be useful. It's kind of like the concept of a quest item. Sometimes, you have no idea if something's useful or not, and you just hang onto it for eternity. It may even have a sell-price, and be fully sellable, and you'll think "Oh, then that's what I should do, since I can't equip it, or craft with it, or use it in any way that I know of, and I've spoken to everyone, and no one's even mentioned anything about this at all." Then, 30 minutes later, "Hey, I'm searching for my long lost (insert item-you-recently-sold-off's name here). Have you seen it?". You: "... *siiiiiiiiiiigh*..." Granted, there are probably more elegant ways of indicating things than plastering "quest item" or "[lore]" on things. But, I really don't see any harm in it. Some would say "But that's detracting from the effort of finding out whether or not it's a quest item!" But... not really. I mean, even if you know something's a quest item, you STILL have to figure out how, where, and why. That's like saying "If you tell people someone was murdered, that'll ruin the mystery of who did it and how! They should have to figure OUT there's a murder to solve!" If some information is literally just for poops and giggles, there's absolutely no need for everyone playing the game to read it just in case it isn't, simply because they do not have any indication of whether or not the information is even important (and not simply interesting to the curious player).

Didn't say anything about swinging. I am not a swinger. Ahhh, so you're going to thrust your Fighter at him, for piercing damage? OR, maybe you're going to launch your Fighter from a distance, to score a ranged hit? I'm still not sure a Wizard should ever be strong enough to hit an enemy with a Fighter.

It's great that the information is available to you (when it makes sense to be), but trivia-knowledge doesn't need to be integrated into the core game. I'm not even one of the "Quantity of words I have to read = directly inversely proportionate to my enjoyment of the game" people, but I don't need some guy I ask a question to say "In the year 503ZF, on the 12th day of the month of Svelleth, when the two suns were at exactly a 35-degree angle from one another, King Argonius IV -- who, of course, was a direct descendent of Emperor Thirgonius, also known as the Threll Lord -- issued the Decree of Coramarr. At precisely three hours past noon that same day, the Mergorian Council held session in order to address this decree, which increased the taxes in the regions of Thessen, Forig, and Malium by precisely 3.7 percent. You see, the taxes were already extremely high, having been raised by Emperor Thirgonius just 173 days and 4.7 hours before that. In fact, many factions at the time..." Ohhh my crap... I don't NEED to know the exact amounts of time, and everyone's names, and everything about everything that's mentioned, unless it's directly pertinent to what you're telling me. That information is nice, when I'm reading about all those individual things in detail in an encyclopedia or historical book of lore because I happen to be super interested in such info. Otherwise, just tell me "He was a great king, about fifty years ago. Probably one of the only kings who kept this land from war. Didn't always treat everyone very well, though. That led to him having a lot of enemies, including some members of the Mergorian Council, the kingdom's advisors. This guy you've been seeing around town? His grandfather was one of those councilors." Ahhhh... Now I know kind of who the king is, and how the council relates to him, and that they sort of didn't like him, AND that some guy pertinent to the present is actually relevant to the motives of the council. Or, possibly. Maybe something else has to do with the king's lineage. *shrug*. If I want to ask more info, I can. But, some random guy just filling me in shouldn't quote history text just because I've never heard of someone. Heh. Granted, I can't really think of many games that do that to quite that degree. Well, also, my example was a little exaggerated, for equal parts humor and emphasis. 8P

As long as the character was restricted to female instead of male, it's not sexist. I'm pretty sure that's how it works. (I jest at the extremists' expense. If there's ANY customization allowed, gender should be the first thing on the list, honestly. It's just plain reasonable.)

I believe it is the mystical portal via which all backers of a minimum backing tier or higher shall make their way to the Obsidian headquarters for hands-on alpha-testing of the game, as well as Super Smash Brothers sessions with the P:E team. I have been known to be horribly mistaken, though. u_u

I just watched my roommate play the new Sim City a bit. It made me thing, "There's a perfect example of a game in which achievements seem to fit right in." The game is sort of already about "See what kind of stuff you can do." So, rewarding you for creatively doing all kinds of stuff makes sense. The only other kind I don't mind are the Xbox Live ones that you get at certain milestones through a game, as those kind of tell other people viewing your profile how far through that game you got. Of course, the points quantities don't always make sense (some games have like 85% of the achievement points, out of 1,000, in multiplayer, even when the game isn't a multiplayer-centric game). But, *shrug*

Strangely enough, MaleShep's voice, though not really... bad, was a bit... emotionally monotone? He kinda just sounded like he was in a museum through all three games, asking terminals about exhibits. Hehe. For what it's worth, I actually recommend playing through 2 and 3, IF you like the gameplay. And though they could've been pushed a lot farther and done a lot better, overall, the continuous branches throughout all three games gave a nice effect. It was almost like quest customization. You know, "Oh, I put that handle on this quest, and made it long range, at the cost of attack speed." Heh... But, yeah. I really enjoyed the third one the most, honestly, right up 'til the last 10 minutes (quite literally the last 10 minutes). I can't say it ruins the whole rest of the game for me, but it does for some people, I suppose. I actually really like the multiplayer, too. But I hate how they rammed the "necessity" for that into the singleplayer campaign. Basically, I'd say they're good games, but wrapped in typical EA bullshyte. Granted, there are much better RPGs out there. I wouldn't really put the ME games in the RPG display case, despite the fact that their great-grandparents were full-blooded RPGs, heh.

An opinion is only as strong as the opposition with which it is tempered. u_u How do you know a tool is durable enough for the job unless you test it? If it breaks, you gain the knowledge of its weakness, and you mend it stronger still. It is the nature of opinion to evolve. Otherwise, what makes it any better than a random thought? "I wonder if penguins are actually dragons... MY OPINION IS NOW THAT PENGUINS ARE ACTUALLY DRAGONS, AND I DON'T CARE IF ANYONE THINKS IT'S FLAWED, BECAUSE ALL OPINIONS ARE EQUAL!" That would be silly, now wouldn't it?

It is no different from the appeal of some non-"weird" change of location. Ooooh, a forest! Or a cave! Or some castle we haven't been inside! Look, varied architecture and gameplay factors! I don't see the mysterious lack of appeal in locations that are dimensionally parallel to our own. It's like a really, really interesting locked door or hard-to-reach cavern. Granted, it can be done poorly. It sounds as if you've been rubbed the wrong way by not-so-awesomely designed content that just so happened to involve "weird" locations and other planes. *shrug*

I found a typo... In all seriousness, though, Madae, I would say you have a ****tail of both the reasonable and the unreasonable going on right now. Maybe they're absolutely planning on "opening it back up," but they're just sooooo busy working on P:E right now, in an ever diligent fashion, that they are a little slow getting the fulfillment site up and setting up collector's edition pre-orders and such. Maybe you're simply being impatient, and you don't yet know it? I don't think it's fair to criticize the Kickstarter model -- the incentive-based, time-sensitive fundraiser, essentially -- just because you want a golden goose egg, and you want one now. That being said, it sucks really bad that your house flooded and you lost things that were dear to you, and it also sucks a bit that you wish Obsidian would just shutup and take your money right now (Fry meme, in case someone thought I was suggesting Madae was just being mean here) in exchange for some goods, yet they refuse to do so at the moment. However, they've got a lot going on. So, maybe cut 'em some slack? We didn't buy them as slaves by supporting their game, and, as uncool as your current predicament is, they don't inherently owe you anything. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm just trying to be the voice of reason here. Like I said, they probably should allow people such as yourself to buy in on some stuff, even if not quite with the exact same incentives as the initial backers (as was mentioned above, greater risk = greater reward. A lot of people didn't even know all the stuff they were going to get when they funded early, because some of the rewards weren't set 'til later). But, we don't have any proof that they're NOT planning/doing that as we speak. So, at this point, it just becomes impatience. The human urge to dispel unknowns and wait times alike.

What if achievements and trophies were worked into the actual game? You know... after you kill 100 Thingamajiggers, you actually happen to find a rare, Albino Thingamajigger (or one with a huge fang), and you loot something trophy-like off of it (or... you can, if you so choose. Maybe it's indicated that it's a trophy? *shrug*), and you can then display this at your stronghold somewhere. And, maybe achievements could be worked into the reputation system. You know, you pickpocket 1,000 gold, total, off of people, and some Thievish faction recognizes your character's actual achievement, in the game world. A little more care than usual would probably have to be taken with the achievements, so that every little thing you could possibly do wouldn't be one. And I'm fully behind the "no silly make-you-feel-like-a-trooper popups" thing. Achievements should be things you know you did. Some of them could even be listed as challenges from various factions. Perhaps once you've gotten in with them well enough. I mean, if you manage to sneak through an entire dungeon (actual dungeon) to rescue someone without letting a single guard call out, word of that would probably get out. From a gameplay standpoint, that's an achievement-esque challenge, and from a lore/story standpoint, that's quite a feat. Why shouldn't they simply be one in the same? You didn't HAVE to do it. You could've just run through slaughtering folk, or at least taken a little less care and attracted attention once or twice on your way through. But you didn't. Maybe the Thieves' faction respects you more for it. Maybe someone in your party is happy you didn't have to kill all the guards who were just doing their jobs (maybe it was some conspiracy going on, and they didn't know the person above them was holding a particular person prisoner for nefarious reasons, *shrug*), etc. I don't see why they need to be a separate, outside-the-game-world thing that pops up on your screen and simply gets tracked by Steam and stat boards.

I'd like if some of it (obviously not things like "highest damage dealt") was kinda worked into the game world, rather than just plastered on a stats screen. Like "toughest enemy killed." Maybe you can bring heads back or something, and you can check with bards/gleemen in taverns, or just listen to gossip in the market to hear what people have to say about the knowledge of what all you've killed (sort of ties into reputation).

You're right that this isn't directly related to the topic, so I'll attempt to clarify one last time (in as concise a manner as possible). Everything in lore, when isolated, is arbitrary. But lore is both the sum of all invented truths in your world and the cohesion of their intermingling. Example Time: If you make a game based on reality (bear with me), so that it's fictional, but only because the exact events didn't actually occur, and it's a modern military setting, and your mechanics dictated that AOE explosion damage would either be too powerful, OR, it would be underpowered (if "nerfed") to the point of pointless clutter in your game, OR, you just want the game to focus on firearms and melee combat, *Shrug*... Whatever the reason, you're making that game, and your mechanics require you to balance the effects/advantage of explosives. So, you just say "There aren't any explosives in my game." Boom. You now have an arbitrary lore inconsistency. Are there explosives in the world? Yes. Are they available in the settings in which your characters are fighting? Yes. But they're just not there. It's your fiction... you can say there aren't grenades. But, you haven't said there aren't grenades in the world. There just arbitrarily aren't any in the game. So, you could correct that inconsistency by saying "Okay, the world I made just doesn't HAVE grenades. They haven't invented them." Okay, now, how have they invented tiny, controlled-explosion-propelled capsules that are bullets, but they can't just make a big hand-held thing that explodes, however effective? Are there not materials that explode in your world? Has anything ever exploded in your world? Did you have anything in your story that involved artillery, or nukes, or aerial bombs? Well, now you don't. Unless you keep changing the lore. Obviously, that's more involved than "Attack Bonus enchantments are harder to do," but the purpose of the example was to point out that something more than just the simple decision itself is arbitrary. All the decisions have to make sense together. You can't just say "Orcs have different biology... they don't have blood or breathe air," without then inventing some explanation of how their cells live and get energy. Does every player wonder how the biology behind that works? No. But that doesn't change the fact that, if it cannot be explained in your lore (for those who seek the explanation), it is arbitrarily inconsistent with the rest of the lore. So, yes, I'm going to have to say that "because my mechanics needed it" is not an actual reason, within the lore, for something to be the way it is. And "Orcs can't be healed because they're just different" is the same thing as saying "because I said so." And I can say plenty of things that don't follow a lick of reason, so, obviously the quality of lore isn't inherent to whether or not someone thought it up. Obviously the worst lore you've ever read was arbitrarily invented, AS was the best lore you've ever read. So, there must be something beyond the sheer invention of lore details that makes it strong or weak. I believe part of that is consistency and reason. That is all.

New equipment attribute: Awe. You could wear the 12-defense, 1-awe armor, or you could wear the 12-awe 1-defense armor (Arbitrary numbers alert! You probably shouldn't actually have 1-defense-quality armor that's that awe-inspiring... *shrug*... probably...). Some foes would be more susceptible to Awe. Some foes would be largely unaffected by it. You could even wear low-awe armor/equipment whilst being an ultra-death-machine, and maybe (if your reputation hadn't spread to these foes, or you didn't have a potent reputation) potential combatants WOULD charge in, recklessly. *shrug*. OR maybe it's just a number/factor that contributes to a larger, encompassing thing, such as reputation or Intimidation. Or, maybe it's even more complex than that, and there are various different aspects. Some equipment would make you more intimidating, some would make you more noble-looking, some would make you look inviting and innocent, etc. Almost like... an Aesthetics modifier to your reputation/skill checks/dialogue options.