Lephys

You do have a limited supply, with the per-encounter recovery method suggested. You don't just magically spawn arrows. You only get arrows back from the ones you already bought and had and fired. This could easily be adjustable on a scale, for progression's sake. Maybe a starting Ranger/archer only recovers 30% of his arrows after a combat encounter, and as you go, base level-up bonuses and/or talents taken (and maybe the effects/modifiers of perception-affecting stats?) increase this amount. Basically, you've got to buy 50 arrows or whatever, but, if you only fire 15 in a combat engagement, you might recover all of them. And if you fire 40, you might only recover 15, giving you 25 for the next engagement, instead of 50. Makes perfectly, tactically-deep sense to me. *shrug* Now, as was mentioned, bullets? Probably should just be non-recoverable. But, they'd be cheaper and more easily managed. But, it's ridiculous to have to buy 250 arrows just to go investigate a cave. ALSO, you could have certain enemies/enemy-types against which arrows (or certain types of arrows) were more likely to be unrecoverable (or were just-plain unrecoverable). This would basically reduce the Recovered Arrow "roll" or value (however you handle the details of that) by a counter generated by hits on that enemy/type. Just food for thought. Not a complete idea meal. 8P

Negatory, Ghost Rider. What you have explained are reasons why specific implementations of more-complex-than-a-single-click lockpicking are flawed, and how certain facets of them don't make sense. Case and point: I already stated that lockpicking should be limited by character skill (i.e. if your character skill is 40, you can't attempt locks beyond 50, etc.), and that the minigame should only represent relatively difficult locks (i.e. if your character skill is 40, there is no minigame for locks of difficulty 40 and below... you simply pick them). Even though I've been ignored (literally), apparently, by Umberlin, maybe some other naysayer will see this and actually realize the fact that the system has potential beyond what specific implementations have already been made in other games. *shrug*

How about the fact that it would probably be about as good of an idea as trying to slap the electrode stick off an active arc-welder, or the lightning rod off the roof of a skyscraper in the middle of an electrical storm? "That magical tome seems to be a conduit through which that Wizard is channeling fiery black liquid death... QUICK! GO TOUCH IT!" Also, even easier than knocking a Wizard's grimoire from his hand would be for a Wizard to disarm all melee opponents wielding metal weapons in the vicinity by super-heating them all. Hell, that's probably as easy as boiling water for his morning tea.

In the interest of informing, I'm fairly certain that, if he Ignored you, he didn't see (and never will see) that final retort. So... hopefully it was therapeutic to type? *shrug*

Mmm... nope. It's any combatant with a melee weapon. This. I like the exploratory nature of your idea, maggotheart, but a ranged form of the engagement mechanic would be really tricky. I mean, what if you go behind a tree and break line of sight? Do you automatically take a negative-disengagement attack from the ranged creature? Or, what if you step out of the creature's range? It hits you no matter what? And, in that case, just keep everyone inside its range (which is probably pretty far, like an archer or something, so that doesn't really present much of an "Oh no, make sure you don't disengage passively!" challenge.)

I would assume because you don't know them that godo early on and neither do they know you. It takes time to get to know a person, and sometimes it may look like you and someone else will get along perfectly...yet you end up hating eachothers guts. True. But, if that's really the case, then they should really not get very far with you before they decide to leave. None of this "Well, really, they're designed to just not really be for your party if you play a certain way, but then, you probably need the manpower, gameplay-wise, so we're just gonna contradict ourselves here by having them not decide to leave, but hating your guts all the while."

I don't think they should be opposed, but I think it makes sense that they fill somewhat separate roles (as I described in my previous post.) I think having a +5 familiarity sword, with 5 enchantments on it that gave you a +5 to hit would result in breaking the "overpowered" threshold. Or, quite potentially. If you allow enchantments to handle damage/effect bonuses (fire, stunning, lifesteal, etc.), and you allow Familiarity to handle anything that isn't directly damage or effect bonuses (weapon handling, attack modifiers, etc.), I think there's merit in that. Basically, I can see why you wouldn't want them to overlap. If you got Familiar with a longsword, and you got a +3 to hit because of that, THEN, you found a Magical Longsword of Flame, and you gained +3 fire damage and a Burn DOT and/or the ability to ignite things for combo effects (explosions, fire-effect spreading to multiple targets, etc), then cool. You get Familiar with it, it's easier to hit with. BUT, if that Magical Longsword of Flame gave you a +4 to hit because of enchantments, well, now when you get fully acquainted with it, you went from a +3 to hit to a +7 to hit. Things could get pretty ridiculous with that, unless you intentionally left the +attack modifiers off of enchanted things with too many other effects, but then that's loads of overlapping balancing work. "Wait, do I give this an attack modifier? Wait, I have to factor in the potential familiarity bonus. Ahh crap... maybe I change the familiarity bonus, just for this weapon?". Etc. So, then, since that leaves us with "But familiarity takes time, so if I get that new sword of awesome effectiveness, I can just never get a boost to my attack rolls with it, without using it for like 2 hours?", that's where I thought the actual weapon customizations would come in (hilts, blade shape, weight/balance, etc.). Got 700 gold lying around? Maybe you can give that weapon a +3 attack modifier by customizing it, rather than having to just get used to its current shape/weight/feel for the next 100 kills or whatever. Essentially, instead of molding yourself to it, you mold it to yourself (Like Needle, little Arya Stark's sword in A Song of Ice and Fire.) PLUS, you could have talents (who were, until recently, called "feats") that could give you permanent attack bonuses with a given weapon/weapon-type. Of course, like I said, you'd probably want the talents AND customizations AND familiarity to all be governed by some common limitation. Otherwise, again, at the end of the game, you'd have +4 to attack from customizations, +3 from familiarity, and +5 from feats. Just THINKING about hitting things would cause critical hits. 8P Granted, maybe one of the three (like the talents, for example) could NOT be under the same limitation, since it's directly related to character build, so that you could build characters who, despite their familiarity with their weapon and the customizations it has, would hit more often and produce criticals more easily than other characters (at the cost of other character improvements/abilities you could've chosen via talents).

Gifted... you're using a double standard. You're applying your own meanings for things to our words, but then preventing ours from ever applying to your own (as convenience dictates). Your argument actually only applies to the 2 extremes - unlimited options, and no options (only 1 "option"). Your "I used to have the option of making 15 trips to a place and getting all the loot and selling it for maximum money, and now I don't" notion is completely boundless. You might as well be arguing that the cave should allow INFINITE trips for INFINITE loot to sell for INFINITE money, and since it doesn't... CHOICE: REMOVED! Yes. A choice is, quite literally, removed. But, that's no different from not-having that choice in the first place, and that choice isn't of very much importance. And, if we're clearly not going to have infinitesimal choices in the game, then we've got to determine the best choices to put in, right? We have to evaluate which choices are better or more significant than others, based on some criteria. Or we could not do so, and just stick them in at random, and still only have limited choices. Those are the only 2 options in handling choices in the game's design. Obviously, when we say things like "actively encourages," and "one way is superior to another," we don't mean "you get something you wouldn't have gotten if you hadn't done something" and "selling a ruby gets you more gold than selling a poop statue," respectively. We're not suggesting "ALL THINGS MUST BE EQUAL! NOTHING MUST EVER PROVIDE ANY BENEFIT OVER ANYTHING ELSE!" You can spin it however you'd like, and say that we actually just hate people, and that "degenerate design" (which you keep calling degenerate gameplay) is just some made up thing, as if reason has no bearing on game design. But that remains untrue. If you set up a soccer field, and you say "this is going to be an even challenge between two teams," and you lay down rules to make it so, then you just allow people to run around drop-kicking people's heads off and scoring goals, and say "Oh look, you won!", that's a failed design for a sports competition. It inherently defeats itself. So, if people in the world want to go around drop-kicking other people in the head, then that action, itself, isn't necessarily a problem (which is the only manner your degenerate-rights activism makes sense). BUT, once you say, "they're supposed to be playing a prolonged sports match, with even teams and all the whole time, etc.", NOW, in this context, allowing people to kick other people's heads to death results in a problem. It's not anyone's opinion of a problem. It is the universe's absolute declaration of a problem based on the very fabric of reality. The same goes with the looting system in typical RPGs. "You can only carry so much at a time, and this is all supposed to take days and days, and represent realistic fundamentals, at the very least, of an economy. But, also, you can just take as much as you want, then run back and load up some more, and do that over and over, 17 times, and just get all the money in the world, because nothing in the system is ever going to stop you from making money off of every single thing that ever exists within miles of you." That's inherently silly. Where you're wrong is in saying "That's perfectly fine, and the only factor here is player choice, and other people should just control themselves." BUT, where you're not wrong is in saying that there's probably a better way of fixing this than simply making the inventory unlimited. However, arguing that there's no such thing as degenerate designs, and that we're all just a bunch of self-control-less silly people is not only wrong, but also pointless. Arguing how better to handle the problem is quite the opposite of pointless. Just because there is a problem doesn't mean anyone who talks about the problem is correct in everything they say and can't be debated. Just as someone having a flawed idea about the problem doesn't mean the problem must not exist.

So, GS sounds like it is bit "ouchi"er than touch-type attacks. Fair enough, but my point isn't that they're literally light touches, but merely that they're not about physically battling someone with the weight/mass of a book, but, instead, about landing a magical shockwave effect from a magical book's magical soul-energy charge. Many were complaining as though Wizards would be going around crushing skulls with books or something. It's not even about an attack. It's about a defense. An effect to break engagement in a pleasant manner.

Also, I believe an escaping-magical-charge shockwave was mentioned in the Grimoire Slam description, so I'm fairly certain it's more like a touch spell and less like a STR-based physical book-to-the-head. It's more important that the book touch you than it is that it touch you with force. The only purpose of the actual swing is probably speed. They're not trying to implement book-chucks or anything. Although... sword-chucks are still entirely possible, u_u...

Still pending, I believe, but Obsidian's good people. As soon as they have news for us regarding the site's up-ness, I'm certain that news shall be liberally shouted upon mountaintops... and by mountaintops, I mean internets. If I'm not mistaken, they suggested that one of the Tuesday-evening Development Updates should have details for us on the Backer Site fairly soon. Just check these forums (specifically this announcement sub-forum) in the following weeks, and I'm sure you won't miss it. They'll probably get your inadvertent missing-shipping cost squared away once it's up.

Yep. If only they hadn't been so limited for seemingly no reason (your party member can only automatically react to FOUR different sets of factors before their brain overloads, until they gain some levels? Really...?!). Heh. AND, if they had actually provided a lot more complex and comprehensive list of options for response criteria. But, yeah, I really liked the idea. It was a good change from the simple "Aggressive, passive, defensive" options games usually give us. It just felt horribly incomplete. It's actually really useful when various abilities have several different forms of utility. For example, maybe chain lightning does the most damage, obviously, when more targets are close to one another. BUT, maybe lightning also is more effective when enemies are in a puddle, or when they're suffering some other status effect. So, you can properly set your chain-lightning-wielding companion up for whichever playstyle you're using for your party. Maybe you just want them to toss it every time enemies are clustered, for maximum per-target damage, or maybe you have your characters built to frequently use combo effects (your magic folk summon puddles, and/or bind enemies in metal wire, and/or bestow electricity-effectiveness-boosting status effects) and you want them to save their mana (or, in the case of P:E, spell "ammo") for those combo scenarios for maximum effectiveness, and completely ignore simple groupings of enemies (unless you manually direct them to cast it, then). It was a little improved in DA2 (I think they at least did away with those infernal slot limitations... mostly), but there was still room for improvement.

What about a mental-based creature with the ability to (if not resisted/saved against) cause mass hallucination in your party (maybe it's even a time-limit thing? You know... "Don't let it release those spores, which takes it a good 30 seconds to do!"), so that, to the player, on-screen, the party appears to be in a completely different setting, fighting some completely different (and far more frightening) foe. Once you defeat the foe in HallucinationLand, that breaks the trance, and you're back to reality, where you still have to finish off the actual creature. Maybe, in the Hallucination, you start with full health/stamina, and the amount of health you lose in that hallucinated battle translates into a portion of your health lost in the main fight (for example, if a character "dies" in the hallucination, but the rest of the party defeats the hallucination, then that "dead" character comes back to reality with a 30% chunk taken out of their reality health/stamina total. But, if they only got down to half health before the hallucination was defeated, they'd only suffer 15% of their total health in damage.)

Excellent stuff, Jarrakul! Maybe, to expand the complexity a bit, familiarity AND physical weapon customizations (i.e. reforging the blade a slightly different way in order to better suit the particulars of your fighting style, or customizing the grip, or the weight/balance of the weapon, etc.) would account for improvements ONLY to the effective USE of the weapon -- Potentially... attack bonus (like you said), attack speed, critical hit chance, weapon-defense bonus (parrying, etc.), etc. -- while enchantments would actually add additional effects and damage (I still hold to wanting to see a greater utility-to-numbers ratio when it comes to magic effects and damage)? In addition to this, you could, as you mentioned, have adjustments to the rate of familiarity gain (on that note, maybe customizations would simply increase familiarity in a "shortcut" fashion, up to a certain point, if you have the money/resources?). AND, you could have hard caps on the amount of usability improvements a weapon could gain, with feats (er... talents?) and such sometimes contributing to this, if you chose them. So, if you had a feat that grants you a +2 to attack rolls with longswords, then you can still only get up to a +5 (arbitrary number), total, with a weapon. So, you basically always get a headstart, by selecting those talents, to effective weapon use. At the same moment that someone without those talents got up to a +3 attack bonus with that longsword, you'd already have +5 (between whatever combination of familiarity and customizations are allowed). Alternatively, that might undervalue the talents a bit, depending on how things are designed. So, maybe you just limit the maximum familiarity bonuses, accordingly, to account for the potential choice of talent bonuses. So, maybe familiarity can only ever give you +3, total, and the talents can give you another +2. IF you take the talents, you're even better at hitting with a fully-familiar weapon (AND a brand-new, unfamiliar weapon, to an extent), at the cost of whatever else you could've spend talent "points" on. *Le shruggles*. You got my brain pistons moving, but they don't ever produce ALL the necessary details, haha.

You could also have moments when you need to "split up" to perform several tasks at once (like covering 2 different entrances on opposite ends of a courtyard, etc.), and your choice of who should pair up with whom might spark different perspectives and relationship changes in people. You know, "Wow, maybe I had underestimated you before. If I hadn't held off an entire corridor full of assailants side-by-side with you like that, I wouldn't have really noticed how disciplined your form is. *strikes up conversation when you get back to the tavern*". Not just between you and whomever you paired with, but between two companions, even. That's a pretty weak/generic example, but hopefully the point is evident.

Yes. It's like having people take all the food a city, lock it up in a single warehouse, then place armed guards all around it who don't allow anyone in. Nothing's FORCING you to attempt to break in and steal food, but not doing so results in starving. Therefore, you're encouraging people to "illegally" steal, despite the fact that you didn't invent the need to eat. THAT'S degenerate design. It's not simply a matter of "Oh, some people just randomly happen to be wanting to steal valuables from this warehouse? Hmm, we'd better just not lock them up, and instead hand out valuables for free, so that people don't have to try to control themselves." So... about those merchants and their gold... I think some combination of the following factors is best: - "Infinite" gold for merchants, but with diminishing sell prices (a nice compromise in abstraction between a hard gold limit and infinite gold with absolutely no limitations whatsoever, I think.) - Infinite gold for merchants, but with different pricing for different individual merchants (either static -- Alchemist always gives you 7 gold for an iron dagger, but the Blacksmith always gives you 12 gold -- OR fluctuating -- some days a given shop might give 12 gold for a dagger, and other days it might only give 5... This one seems to produce the most annoying back-and-forth caused by the "random" element of prices changing, with little gain in terms of immersion or complexity.) - Less frequency in found improved-quality items, with more focus on reforging/enchanting/improving the weapons you keep for longer durations, as well as on the improving capabilities of the characters comprising in the majority of weapon effectiveness (instead of finding a slightly better weapon on every 10th dead creature.) This helps out FAR more than just the merchant system/economy, and is not meant to prevent people from having to control themselves when looting (that's simply a byproduct, really, that it simply provides less incentive for the "MUST LOOT" mentality) - A greater usage of gold/small valuables (gemstones, jewelry, etc) in loot, as, if the enemies are carrying around pretty basic equipment in all but rare instances, then why would they be carrying around 7 different pieces of equipment? And non-humanoid (or... uncivilized, literally) creatures could produce hunting-style components, which, in rare instances (like a rare white-pelt on a wolf, or some other exceptional specimen) could be significantly more valuable, to mirror rare equipment and gemstone/gold drops from the civilized hostiles without prompting the "why did this puma just drop a jewel-encrusted goblet?" questions. - Alternative values (barter values... directly for other goods or services, rather than sheer monetary value) for items of all kinds. Reputation, crafting salvage, imaginative side-quest content, favors, information, etc. Take your pick.

What about bolas and such for tripping? Or Rogue's braided wire or something. Stun an enemy, tether it to his leg, then zip 20 feet away to a tree with some slack, and pull it taught to trip incoming reinforcements (AND the person who's leg is an anchor). Also... sword-breakers and such! You could totally have "hold weapon" abilities that reduced an enemy's melee engagement target limit to a single target for 10-or-so seconds, allowing people to move freely past them on the battlefield. u_u

Also, what if, in addition to key, active-use "disengage without penalty" abilities, each character had a passive disengagement ability attached to their standard attack cycle? For example, once a Fighter becomes engaged with an enemy, his 3rd standard attack will allow him to disengage without penalty (with some kind of visual mini-stun animation on the opponent, and/or other visual indicators of this). However, a Wizard would only be able to manage some sort of disengagement maneuver in standard combat attacks after, oh... 6 attacks? Maybe that's too complex for the resources/timeframe they're working with, but I think it could add in a nice buffer layer. Basically, the more adept a character is at melee combat, the more often they should be capable of voluntarily disengaging from an enemy. I think it would probably only work with single-engagements, though. Only active abilities (like the Rogue's Escape ability) should disengage you from more than one eopponent without penalty. This is akin to a "critical defense," a bit. So, maybe they could be one in the same? Maybe if your enemy misses, you get an opportunity to disengage? I dunno... like I said, it seems like melee skill should contribute somehow. I mean, the better I am at melee combat, the more easily I could strike at you/your weapon in such a way as to get away to handle a target of more strategic interest rather than dealing with you at the moment. Of course, giving Fighters 5 disengagement moves and Wizards only 1 would accomplish the same representation of melee skill affecting disengagement. *shrug*. So maybe there's absolutely no need for an extra, passive layer.

Perhaps it's time to break tradition, rather than breaking complexity for tradition's sake?

I like this idea. Alternatively, maybe the range doesn't have to be quite so small, and you simply need fewer lockpicks if you take the time to do the minigame, or more lockpicks (relative to the gap between your skill and the lock's difficulty) to "instantly" pick the lock? There was already talk of avoiding the "try to pick lock... fail... broken lockpick... try to pick lock again... fail... broken lockpick... try to pick lock again" scenario, by eliminating the time-based multiple attempts, and simply having all the rolls happen "at once" and just determine how many lockpicks it took your character to pick the lock. Well, maybe the only advantage the "minigame" gets you is that you can sometimes pick a pickable-yet-difficult lock with fewer lockpicks. Even if we do it this way, these principles remain: 1)You shouldn't be able to even attempt locks that are far enough beyond your character's skill (10 points? *shrug*). So, there's no "I'm using my player skill to do things my character can't do, LOL!" situation. 2)Locks that are at-or-below your character's current skill should be instantly pickable(or maybe 5-10 points below, depending on how you want the range to work... maybe -10 is easiest, at-skill is medium, and +10 is hardest, for lock difficulty relative to skill?). Or, in the case of the minigame-versus-number-of-lockpicks implementation, at a certain point, there would BE no need for the minigame, as it would never take more than 1 pick to pick the lock. (although, maybe people could optionally still choose to utilize the minigame, if you're going to make one for each lock anyway?) 3)The minigame shouldn't involve control over actions that your character's skill should determine the speed/deftness of. It should only involve decisions and direction of your character's actions/tools.

Keyrock totally beat me to it (with number 1 below), but I just want to emphasize 2 things: 1) Cones of engagement (once a character is already engaged with at least one target), with maybe feats for a full 360 degrees of engagement (so only melee fighters specialized in peripheral engagement could possibly engage in a full 360 degrees, and maybe their maximum number of targets-of-engagement would be limited to 2, whereas the cone-people could still hold up to 4 or 5 (Barbarians, perhaps?) in up to a 180-degree (or maybe a little smaller) cone in front of them? *shrug* 2) Click-and-drag path "drawing" for movement commands. OR, as an alternative, what if you could tether movement waypoints to enemies? Maybe click and drag a certain distance from that enemy, and that's how far away from that enemy your character will try to stay whilst moving as close to the initial waypoint (Where you released the mouse click-and-drag) as possible? It's like a restraining order for RPGs, 8D. Just some thoughts.

No, it doesn't make a lick of sense. Since I've already explained exactly how it makes sense, and you haven't explained how my explanation was flawed, other than to simply claim it was... Please forgive me for not abandoning my current understanding of the topic and adopting your claim as truth. And as this thread isn't about making sure everyone agrees what makes sense and what doesn't, I'll simply resume hashing out lockpicking ideas, I suppose.

Would the on-screen indicator for the radius of the engagement area be... the Engagement Ring?

... AND a bag o' chips. The flaw with Attacks of Opportunity is that they covered WAY too many opportunities. Sniffle a bit? AOO! Glance to the left because you heard a noise? AOO! Take a step wrong? AOO! Okay, they weren't THAT bad. But, still. I like that this defines an actual state of engagement or non-engagement, distance/actions and all. Still wondering how much positional manipulation is allowed within an engagement. Intentional repositioning (on either party's part), I should say.

^ I'm with you there! I like for things to be of situational risk/value. Like all those "berzerker" modes in games, where you both deal more damage AND take more damage. Obviously, if 72 archers are firing at you, and you're charging them with melee weapons, you're going to be taking more extra damage than you're going to be dealing (seeing as how you're not even dealing any damage yet... you're just running full-speed). Interestingly enough, Update # 44 (just recently posted) deals with positional tactics and, more specifically, melee engagement (totally pertinent to the ideas in this thread, 8D!).