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Lephys

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Everything posted by Lephys

  1. You can replace battlemage with Abjuration-like tree, still get a defensive-based wizard with lower offensive capabilities, but keep the magical theme and all the tactical nuances which are associated with playing a spellcaster (like defensive spells requiring timing and upkeep to use effectively). So, you don't actually take issue with the mechanical effects of armor and melee weapon capability (increased defense at the cost of offensive capabilities), you just want only magic to generate those effects, and never physical equipment? See, I still think that's an unnecessary restriction. But, it's a fair enough preferential stance. I mean, personally, I'd much rather have "melee" (rather short-ranged) spell options, as opposed to long-ranged spells, than more martial weapon prowess (maybe they even just rely on your minimal combat prowess with things like quarterstaves and such). I just don't see how it's in any way unreasonable to have a Wizard performing some tasks "the old fashioned way." I mean, I don't expect a Wizard, in his daily life, to not use his hands to put his shoes on, or always sleep on a hovering sheet of air, or cast fishing spells to catch fish. Sure, armor and weapons give you a static defensive and offensive capability, with no limited quantity of attacks or damage-blocks per day or per encounter. HOWEVER, they're a lot less effective than magical means, and they cost casting-speed. Honestly, a Wizard can cast "Panic Room" and build a 6-foot-thick steel box around himself and just ride out the battle for all I care. I mean, that ability would be pretty pointless design, but, as far as the "Oh no, you're getting the Wizard class out of balance" thing goes, I don't really care if he's invincible all day long if he sacrifices all his offensive abilities. That satiates my objective need for balance, regardless of how pointless it is. All anyone's advocating here is a MUCH lesser shift than an invincible steel box. Again, if the Wizard were going to be anywhere near as capable in melee combat and survivability as a Fighter, I'd be with you. But, I'm easily thinking of the conditions under which Wizard swordsmanship and armor-wearing WOULD be reasonable and acceptable, then stating them thusly, rather than thinking of ways that it might be ridiculous, then assuming it can only be ridiculous. The Wizard isn't going to gain Great Cleave and Whirlwind Strike with his weapons, and he's not going to have the same defensive capabilities as a Fighter (the Fighter surely knows stances and movements and such that leave him less open to attack/counterattack than the Wizard, etc.). Also, armor could reduce the potency of defensive magics like the arcane Veil, and any other shield spells and such. And/or the duration. So, it's still a tradeoff. And his weapon just gives him decently consistent melee damage. He'd still have to rely on spells to be offensively affective. His spells would simply most likely be more short-ranged spells. Maybe he augments his sword swing to produce an arc of fire, much like Burning Hands or something. So that while his physical swing might be ineffective, his use of Wizardry actually produced a significant effectiveness for it. You wouldn't agree that it IS possible to allow Wizards to simply be capable of utilizing martial weapons and armor and not have it be ridiculous? Objectively, now. You can easily dislike something while still objectively assessing it with the conclusion that it's okay. Well, maybe there is a nicer way to say it, but you're wrong. Ehh... I'd say those two sentences of Shadenuat's are correct, when isolated. How he's using them to imply that certain tactics, or the ability to wear armor and use weapons are unique skills is wrong, though. If that were true, then only one class should be able to wear armor and use weapons. And if the Wizard is supposed to be the ranged attacker and use only defensive magic shields (instead of armor), then no other class could have any mechanically similar ranged attacks or defensive shield abilities. Classes obviously rely upon some unique abilities and tools to remain distinct from one another, but that doesn't mean that anything they can accomplish and/or any method they can use to accomplish it should be completely isolated to only that class. How to make sure we maintain that distinction is what we should be talking about. Not "If you give a Wizard a sword, he's basically a Fighter!". If the inability to wield martial weapons and wear significant armor were the only two things distinguishing the Wizard from other classes, it'd be a piss-poor class design from the start.
  2. I agree that unlimited inventory might not be the key, and I also agree that the potential for a giant treasure room with far more stuff than you can carry with a corridor collapse upon exiting (to oversimplify the situation) is a good thing. The only thing that is bad is when every place you go has 50 more uber-valuable things than you can carry. But, obviously that's just as much the fault of the design and balance of loot-placement as it is the inventory's "inadequacy." I will say, though, that they still haven't confirmed (I don't think) whether or not it's actually going to be unlimited, or just pretty big (which, if done properly, could essentially function the same way as the shared inventory you mentioned, Shadenuat). So, hopefully they're not going to leave any holes in the system. Also, I just want to re-emphasize the possibility of (still finite) bags-of-holding-type increases to inventory space, and the fact that it would most likely be quite difficult to get exactly what you wanted out of a bag of holding (unless, maybe, you're Mary Poppins?). I mean, how do I reach into a bag that's holding 20 suits of armor, and pull out just what I want? Or is it voice-activated? You just rub the bag and what you desire pops out like a genie? *shrug*
  3. Keeping your game library in one place, play options, more established and collapse-proof business. Why would someone oppose having an option that takes no time to implement, that people would make use of, and actually saves dev time? I may be wrong... but... can't you add non-Steam installed games on your system to your Steam library at any time? You know, to simply keep them together and such? Sure, you don't get all the Steam features. But, still... *shrug*
  4. Friendly-fire warnings on AOE abilities. Very much like the military callouts for grenades, so that allies know they have approximately 4 seconds to get the hell away from an enemy cluster, and/or not to charge into one if they're already at a safe distance. Maybe if you're a Wizard casting Meteor Storm or something (in a circular area), you shout some sort of warning, and the AI of melee allies in-or-near that area can be set to have them use things like Kick and other debilitating skills to temporarily keep enemies within the blast radius of the spell. Obviously, such tactics would be subject to many, many combat factors. For example, your allies COULD get knocked down or stunned immediately after you shout the warning, but before they are able to debilitate the enemies. OR, the foes could be resistant/immune to debilitating effects (rock golems probably wouldn't be very affected by a kick, and maybe not even be able to be stunned or knocked back at all). Just as another (non-magic) example, a melee-heavy character fighting in close proximity to other party members could shout a warning before executing a cleaving attack, and the allies could duck or drop to prone. If he misses any, of course, they get the advantage of attacking a prone character who's climbing back to his feet. I'm just kind of sick of having to go so far out of my way simply to avoid friendly fire in 100% of situations. Maybe this is where traps would come in handy, too (for controlling enemy positioning). There should definitely be times when you simply can't avoid friendly fire, and have to weigh the benefits against the consequences of using that AOE ability. But it shouldn't be quite so difficult ALL the time. You know... "Well, just hope really hard that you encounter a cluster of archers, or a group of melee foes all attack the same person, and he's able to run JUST outside the radius of your spell or attack by the time you actually cast it." Like the characters are incapable of cooperation unless forced by the player at all times. 8P (Sorry, that was long...)
  5. Not a bad idea. I just think you should either be able to tetris them together, or you shouldn't, based on that skill/skills. And as far as the percentages for bad effects go, I feel the best (and maybe only feasible?) way to handle that with percentages is to use a handfull of tiers. Which is, again, why my first thought was for a simple quantity limitation for that. i.e. 2 different potions is always fine (abstracted, I know). 3 potions? 30% chance of something unexpected happening when you drink that 3rd potion (dependent upon the ingredients, which the game would check against all possible potion recipes). 4th potion? Maybe a 75 or 80% chance of something unexpected happening. 5th and on would always be 100%. Basically, as long as that was communicated to the player (the 3rd potion being risky, up to the 5th being guaranteed), I really wouldn't feel bad for any player who keeps chugging potions out the wazz 'cause they're buff-greedy, then going "Aww man, my people keep bursting into flame and dying! T_T" (I'm not saying that's the only way to do it. I just wanted to clarify WHY I thought of that, and the potential problem it addresses of having to assess 700 different potion combinations' individual percentage chances of causing bad things to happen.)
  6. Agreed. Which is why I firmly believe that a minigame-esque interface for lockpicking should only come into play for complex/difficult locks. There shouldn't ever be a non-optional lock that REQUIRES any certain amount of lockpicking skill. Otherwise, you get to it, and you need 30 lockpicking, but your highest character skill in your party is only 20. What do you do now? Reload the game from 3 hours ago and level up differently? That's terrible design. Obviously no one wants to do the same exact thing over and over again (unless it only takes like 5 seconds every time, and adds to immersion.) The problem with the hacking in Fallout 3/NV and the lockpicking in the Bethesda games is that it's too simple for how long it takes. Take Bethesda lockpicking (which I'm clearly criticizing and am in no way saying was amazing), and add in an Easiness threshold at which the lock is instantly picked by your character, and voila. How much less annoying would that be? "Oh, your skill is 70, and that's a 50-difficulty lock? *click* you win!" It works literally along the same reasoning as combat. Oh, that handfull of Goblins is 5 levels below your party? You really don't even need to target a spell or employ tactics of any sort. Have everyone run in and attack, and all the Goblins die with minimal damage to your party. Now it's just a matter of where to have such low level Goblins, and where not to. Obviously, it's more feasible to have lower-level locks (as they are a definite barrier based on a specific skill/progression-choice) than it is to have lower-level enemies about, but that's only because of different factors. Here's how I see in-depth lockpicking being implemented (that I can think of off the top of my head): 1)It's more actually-interesting puzzle than actual twitch-based event (like the Oblivion lock-picking, with the randomly bouncing tumblers...). 2)It doesn't allow player skill at a puzzle to override character skill at lockpicking; It's based on the lockpicking skill of the character in question. (i.e. You can't even attempt to pick a lock that's more than 10-or-so difficulty higher than your skill. Also, locks low enough in difficulty in comparison to the character's skill are instantly picked and bypass the "minigame.") 3)It doesn't pause the game reality, and doesn't take up the entire screen, which means that you can have tense situations in which you're trying to pick a lock to get through a door before being discovered by hostile things, etc. Also, on this note, I think it should involve cumulative progress. If it's based on tumblers, for example, then any tumblers you've secured in-place should remain that way should your lockpickist temporarily abandon the lock in order to fight some things off, or for whatever reason. 4)It's never REQUIRED simply to progress the main story, however this is achieved. As in my example above, I think it's generally poor design to have any kind of lock that requires a certain skill-level in lockpicking for the main portion of the game, because if the player doesn't have that level of skill with any characters, they are screwed and stuck and forced to reload from a much earlier time to reallocate a level-up's skill points, then make their way all the way back to the portion of the story in which that lock exists. A locked door with an procurable key that optionally CAN be picked if you have enough skill? Sure. But nothing mandatory. It's no different from the fact that you should never need a specific class just to beat the game. If anyone has anything to add to this list, that would be awesome. That includes criticisms and changes. I love constructive criticism. "Lockpicking is stupid" is not constructive criticism, for the record. "This is a problem you didn't address..." is constructive criticism.
  7. In Obsidian's defense, you won't have access to all 5,000 of those items. So, if you don't manage the readily-accessible portion of your inventory well enough, you're still screwed. Just for what it's worth... My take on this, at this point, is that they've decided to try to have an unlimited (or quite-huge) portion of the inventory that's inaccessible outside of camp/rest points, and I'm sure that simple decision is not the end of it, but rather the BEGINNING of an extensive design and balancing process. They're only going to use it if it works well. Just like they opted to include full-misses after all, in combat, they're not just deciding "the inventory will be unlimited, and that's final. We don't care what effects that has on the rest of the game, u_u..." So, other than discussing the potentiality of this decision and how it could work (since we don't know what all they're testing and deducing, at the moment), I'm simply waiting for them to provide more info, when they have it and decide to do so. I really see no point in evaluating the simple decision without first evaluating the factors and possibilities, just as Obsidian is surely doing as we speak. If we were currently beta-testing for them, or had all the specifics on the final decision for the inventory system, that would be a whole 'nother story.
  8. I believe the term "respawn" is being used rather liberally in this thread, to simply mean "things spawning in where there were previously things," and nothing more. And I second that about enemies spawning out of thin air. Dragon Age 2, FTL! Seriously, that's done in oodles of games with big spiders, though. "Oh, they were on the ceiling, and your party is incapable of looking upwards, LOL! Also, it's isometric, so you can't SEE the ceiling, LOL!" I'd much rather walk through rooms SATURATED in layers of webbing, so that any nooks and crannies are actually quite muddled into the rest of the terrain, and you simply never know where spiders CAN come out of. Not just "Oh, they were right in the middle of the room, just dangling from the ceiling, waiting to strike, but you couldn't see them! HAH!" Might as well put traps on the ceiling, too, that are never visible/targetable/disarmable. Walk through the middle of the room, and FIRE SHOOTS FROM THE CEILING, COOKING YOUR ENTIRE PARTY! Now you have to figure out why that happened. "Where is that trap? I don't see one anywhere! I keep having my Rogue search the area!" Also, on the DA2 reinforcement note, even if things don't rappel from the ceiling randomly, and they actually come from another room or corridor and make their way to you, I don't think they should instantly arrive the SECOND you kill the last thing in Group 1. That's way too scripted. If you know it's possible your foes called for help, it should take some certain amount of time for reinforcements to hear them, come running, and actually make it to the room. If you efficiently dispatch your foes, you should be able to hide and/or set up an ambush for the reinforcements. That's another time when reactive vocal cues would be handy. Maybe your person with amazing hearing/senses can distinguish running footsteps from a ways down the corridor, and say "Someone's coming...", rather than the floating-perspective player simply having to do all the work for your characters. "Crap, red circles flashed for a second in the hallway! Someone's coming! Why didn't my expert Ranger hear that? These are STONE CORRIDORS! And the enemies are wearing METAL BOOTS!"
  9. Heat-seeking arrows? Really? Did you really just suggest that? What happens when your party is in an ice cave full of ice golems? DERP. Hell, what happens when your ranger is behind your party? DERP. DERPETY DERP DERP. Yes I did, and I still think it's a good idea despite all of those examples you cited, in fact having those situations would make having magical heat seeking arrows in the game all the more interesting. Not all weapons have to be useful against all enemies and in all situations, especially if I'm an archer with access to many different arrow types, as I was suggesting. You can read that a few times to get your head around it, then maybe do us all a favor and post some actual content instead of your usual socially awkward reactionary pedantic drivel, AGX. Heh. Seriously. AGX makes really good posts sometimes. Other times, he just makes these. "Magic? SERIOUSLY?! What do you do in a cave full of magic-resistant golems? DERP DERPITY DERP!" "Swords?! SERIOUSLY?! What do you do in a cave full of skeletons that can't bleed? DERPY DERP!!!" I'm pretty sure if magic can distinguish certain temperatures in an anti-fire shield (which doesn't deflect or stop cold at all), it can probably distinguish heat signatures for the purpose of guiding arrows. Obviously you wouldn't use them against cold things, any more than you would use frost spells against cold things.
  10. Character like that could ask for double share in loot or gold (like Korgan in BG2). I remember that soldiers in first ranks like pikemen had double pay for their service. As long as they mention it up-front, I think that's pretty awesome. It then becomes a choice of "Man, this person really thinks highly of their services... of course, can I pass up their amazing combat prowess just to save some money? Hmmm..." They just definitely don't need to pull some "Hey man, I'll be your friend and let's travel together! 8D!!!" when they join you, then later, suddenly go "BLARGLE!!! THIS BLOWS AND I'M UPSET THAT YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ME DOUBLE SHARES OF LOOT THIS WHOLE TIME!" Not that you said they should. I'm simply criticizing poor implementations in existing games, 8P.
  11. Skills are your instruments of roleplay in cRPG. Without unique set of instruments, you won't have any unique roleplay. And yet even Pokemon get different skill choices for different tactical styles. Don't make Wizards lesser than Pokemon! *shakes you desperately by the shirt* Please!!! Let's say a Fighter (at a given level) can take... 12 consecutive hits (from a given enemy) before dying. Okay, a "default" (ranged spell-slinging) Wizard, at that same level, can take 4 consecutive hits (from the same enemy) before dying. It's entirely feasible for the Wizard to specialize in such a way (through whatever combination of defensive spells/equipment/stat-or-skill-progression you want to use) that he can take 6 or 7 consecutive hits from that enemy before dying, and be able to hold his own more against melee peepses, be it with a melee weapon, or with melee/short-ranged specialized magic (or a combination of both). At the same token, he should be able to specialize in such a way that he can only take maybe 2 consecutive hits from that enemy before dying, but he can take things down a lot more effectively/quickly from a range, so long as things stay at a range and don't rush in and get those 2 hits on him. Trade-off Evaluation time: The sturdier Wizard doesn't have quite as much raw spell-power, BUT, he also doesn't have to simply flee in terror in a battle in which moderately-agile melee enemies are numerous and simply keep closing in on everything in sight. So, he's more SITUATIONALLY effective, because of the style of Wizardry he's chosen, and yet the Fighter's still WAY better at wading into the fray than he is. The Wizard's not just gonna run in and slay 17 things with his greatsword and drink the blood of his enemies. He's still got to rely heavily on magic, but he can feasibly get closer, more of the time, and worry less about hiding behind a tree every time a strong breeze comes through. Inversely, the Glass-Cannon Wizard has to hide behind a tree every time that wind picks up, and he's not nearly as effective against a group of enemies that won't stay at any sort of range for a decent amount of time and/or can't be kept away by the efforts of the rest of the party while he slings his mighty, mighty spells. Simply put, if you got 8 points to spend, total, as a Wizard, and you had 2 specialty trees -- Glass Cannon, and Battlemage, each with 8 total nodes to purchase -- then more points in Battlemage equals close-range survivability at the cost of raw spellpower, and more points in Glass Cannon equals raw spellpower at the cost of close-range survivability. No one's suggesting taking a Glass Cannon Wizard and simply beefing up his defense and making him a Grandmaster Katana Wielder. Or, if they are, they are silly, silly folk. 8P
  12. Well, you've either got to keep it simple (the combat-affecting-temperament/relationship stuff), or you've got to make it abundantly complex, the latter being quite difficult and resource-demanding (which is why I'm not even sure it's feasible here. Maybe if their budget was 30-mil? *shrug*). And I'm totally with you on the "how against everything that you're doing can your party member be and still have willingly joined your party?" bit. I'm all for the how-you-handle-a-huge-event/scenario-causes-one-or-more-companions-to-react-strongtly-on-different-ends-of-the-spectrum implementations, but I hate it when (and I kinda hated this about how Dragon Age did things) EVERY single thing you do pisses someone off. Like everything's a big mutually exclusive choice. Went east instead of west first? Bob hates you now, and Sally LOVES you for it! Didn't murder that poor old woman and gut her cat? Sally hates you because she's apparently an evil **** and expects the whole party to be the same (despite knowing them well enough to know they aren't and traveling with them anyway), and Bob loves you now for what's pretty much common decency. I don't want to rack up negative points with someone for every 5 seconds we go without brutally murdering people or committing random, arbitrary crimes, and I don't want to rack up positive points with people for every 5 seconds we go WITHOUT doing so. "Oh, you petted a kitty! HOW RIGHTEOUS AND JUST! *+1 Regard with Holy Paladin Katherine*" There's a huge difference between a companion who will gladly, selfishly seek self-gain whenever he gets the chance, and one who CONSTANTLY seeks self-gain and pitches a fit whenever there isn't the chance for it. You shouldn't be traveling with 2 people who LITERALLY wish to murder each other. Maybe they just don't particularly like each other, and maybe some big event causes them to go at it, and you have to deal with it. *shrug* And maybe there's a "companion" in the game whom you don't really know is not really a "good guy." That might be interesting. He/she can join you on a specific, rather significant quest/story-segment, and it turns out they're actually basically your enemy (as in, as part of the story, they actually wish you dead, or to deliver you into a trap, etc.). Maybe with certain amounts of certain skills, you can find out ahead of time, and if you don't, you end up having to fight your way out of a very precarious situation. Or maybe they end up critically wounding another party member in a desperate effort to sabotage your endeavor before they go down in flames. *shrug* Until you found out, though, they would simply travel with you, and be quite useful. They obviously wouldn't open up to you TOO much, because the more lies you tell, the harder it is to keep up the disguise. Anywho, basically, realistic (or... verisimilitudinous?) people have a rather wide range of what they can put up with, when necessary, unless they're friggin' giant toddlers. And I don't want to travel around with giant toddlers. That guy who loves fighting should understand that we're not going to fight everything we see. That Druid needs to understand that we're going to occasionally kill wild beasts of nature. that Priest needs to understand that everyone isn't ultra-worried about holiness and righteousness by his god. Of course, if I keep letting people go who unquestionably deserved a good thrashing (basically, if I'm a selfish bastard, albeit a peaceful one), then that fighter probably needs to be cross with me, after so much of that. If I arbitrarily slaughter baby harp seals and laugh about it, then use their heads as sock puppets, then that Druid should probably be pretty upset with me. And if I encourage everyone to piss all over the statue of that Priest's god while we all stare him in the eyes, the Priest should probably try to smite us and rip out our jugulars in a fit of rage. (humorous exaggeration alert)
  13. No it isn't. People are not the same in the PE setting as they are in the real world. They are able to call upon the power of their souls to accomplish amazing(would easily be considered supernatural in real world) feats. Something can be true in the PE world without being specifically stated, because there may be no in-setting way of stating "X works differently here than in the real world" because they will have no knowledge of the real world. I believe what Trashman means is that the starting basis for a fantasy world is the real world. i.e. Here's a world, with ground and sky and people who breath air, and there's physics, etc. NOW, let's add in magic and change what needs to be. Let's make some other amendments to the nature of this world. Let's add in a race that doesn't exist (but is still based on facets of real-life humanity). Etc. I don't know of anyone who starts with 100% non-realistic stuff, then works backwards to tie it into our reality so that our realistic human brains can actually feel an affinity for it. That's pretty much the sole reason our fantasy worlds need verisimilitude. Without it, the entire world/lore would not be at all... intuitive, for lack of a better word.
  14. But, then how will my party make money on the side by creating dreamcatchers and whittling flutes, then peddling them in our downtime? o_o
  15. ^ True enough. I was actually trying to avoid the whole "potion combos" thing altogether, and stick to just an interesting quantity limiter. You know, so you don't have to balance the fact that you COULD drink 17 potions at once by making them all relatively weak. Not that it isn't a fun idea, though. I just think that would get really complicated. You'd think it'd make more sense, at that point, to simply create a different hybrid potion via Alchemy, in the first place. You know, a "Master Thief" potion, instead of trying to go around mixing an Invisibility potion and a Silent Steps potion every time you want to be stealthy. That's a few steps away from simply carrying all the ingredients around, and eating them on-demand. "Thistlebranch *nom*, Lizard heart *nom*, Buckberry sap *nom*... *invisible*... YAY!!!". Haha. But, yeah. I just personally wasn't sure how to reign that in. Also, while the EFFECTS of some potions would work great together, my point was that you really don't know what the ingredients would do when all combined together. I mean, ice cream is good, and hot tomato soup is good, but imagine combining them. o_o. Imagine that ingredient A is in the invisibility potion, and ingredient B is in the Silent Steps potion. Ingredients A and B, together, form the base of an incendiary ****tail (grenade-type item). Well, separately, they're just working with their other ingredients. But, together, they set your stomach on fire. *shrug* It would actually be pretty easy to implement, too, because you've already got all the ingredients for the various potions stored in a spreadsheet somewhere. You could even have the character take note of a bad combination after inadvertently achieving it, and/or just have the Alchemy or some form of Lore skill do so. That would help you by flagging certain potions once you had already ingested others. If you drank an Invisibility potion, then that Silent Steps potion gets a big exclamation point on it or something. Problematic potion-mixing... stealing quest-givers' hats since 2013. Also... ... Why's the hole gotta be black?! o_O.
  16. Haha. I know what you mean. "I'd just like to interrupt and say that the sound of your voice is both soothing AND informative. Now please continue, u_u..." Although, speaking of that, it would be pretty cool if there were instances when you could actually interrupt people (longwinded people, for example, who don't see anything wrong with telling you an entire story for 5 straight minutes, out of the blue). I recall a few games having NPCs who'd basically reward you (in some fashion... or the game would) for listening to their entire, lengthy bit of speech. Of course, they used the silly checkpointy ("Go on" versus "Well, that's great, but I really must be going now") system.
  17. Ahhh. I thought you were meaning that you would think the opposite would happen. I might've just read it wrong. *shrug*. My mistake, regardless.
  18. You almost have to build it like character creation. And, of course, it's really difficult to make it not just be like the Elder Scrolls version, in which all spell effects/properties in the game are simply broken apart, then allowed to be assembled in a different fashion. Without the spells feeling at all unique, you lose a lot of the appeal of a complete ground-up custom spell system. I would love to see a spell customization system with pre-designed spells, though. Change how your fireball works, etc. It would be quite similar to many games' weapon customization systems, like Dead Space 3's (most recent game I can think of). The different weapon cores do different base things (like the Tesla Core producing lightning, the Explosive Core producing grenades or grenade-like canisters, etc.), and you change that as you go. I mean, really, most of the RPG spells we see are just variants of each other. Firebolt? A simple fire projectile. Fireball? A more powerful (and costly) explosive, AOE projectile. Burning Hands? A fire spray rather than a projectile. Frostbolt? An ice projectile. Frost Nova? A radial ice wave. You're just taking a form of magical energy, and applying specific behavior to it, really.
  19. What if, instead of a hard quantity restriction, there existed the chance of horrible, horrible effects from mixing too many potions in one's system? That invisibility potion might work fine, but if you down some other potion, you're essentially mixing the ingredients from both in your stomach, right? Well, maybe if you drink more than 2 or 3 potions at one time, you have a high chance of poisoning yourself, or bursting into flame, or some other completely-unwanted-but-not-inherently-bad effect (like becoming ethereal so you can neither affect the physical plane nor be affected by it for some duration). Just make sure it's conveyed that that's how potions work, when the player is introduced to them. Something similar might even work with buffs. *shrug*
  20. It would probably be terrible to change it now, but maybe we should've done 5 l's per vote. Then, the bars would be more visually... communicative? *shrug*
  21. I'd almost rather not see a linear scale. I mean, you can fear someone and offer them a wide birth, AND you can revere someone and offer them a wide birth. Or, you can want to help someone purely because your interests align (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), or because you actually value them as an ally. So, hmmm... maybe a pie chart, with various aspects (Fear, Adoration, Intrigue, etc.)? Heh. I dunno. I'm being partially silly, but, also, I'm really wondering the best way to represent that. Annnnnnnnywho, we now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.
  22. He merely stated that the character was acting as a human shield for another, not that anyone was forcing them to do it. Really, either way, you'd probably still have some degree of a bond form. Whether you hate doing it, or love doing it, protecting someone and preserving their life on a constant basis is going to affect the regard in which they hold you. But, yes, both scenarios are possible. Hell, even while the protected person develops a fondness for the protector, the protector could become quite contempt-filled if they're constantly being ordered to fill a role they hate. My only concern with combat instances influencing character relationships is, can they really do that properly on their budget? It doesn't really seem like one of those things you could just scale down to "Oh, the more you heal that person, or kill something that was attacking them, the better they like you and such." You would almost have to factor in every little detail of every combat scenario, or none at all, it seems.
  23. I actually hate the term, as it always evokes an extremely narrow range of criteria in people's minds that causes them to adamantly insist that such a thing is impossible to use for things like lockpicking in an RPG. But, you know, everyone else is already tossing it around, so I thought it best to use the term and explain the specifics to which I was referring than to get everyone on a different page with a different term (already tried that with "interactive interface" in another thread, and it didn't work at all.) The fact remains that your description of a minigame is narrower than the actual scope of what can and cannot be a minigame. Much the same way that all horses are organisms, but not all organisms are horses. Your examples are minigames, but minigames are not restricted to only your examples. Your criteria aren't even true, for one thing. If it repeats, it sucks? Well, the SAME dice roll occurs every time you get to a lock, and you either pick it or you don't. Does that mean that minigame-less mechanic sucks? Combat repeats itself. Does it suck? And if you're going to respond to that with "But combat's different almost every time!," then I'd say "Why not lockpicking, then?". Also, requires twitchy actions to solve it? Explain how the lockpicking in Bethesda games requires twitchy actions. Please. If anything, it requires THE OPPOSITE of twitchy actions. You have to very carefully move the lockpick to locate the correct position for the lock to open. About the only thing you said that's true is "a minigame is a minigame, no matter how well-designed it is." Which is true, but isn't very useful information. Obviously, you meant it as "a minigame is still sucky no matter how well-designed it is," which is silly. You're simply jaded by ill-implemented minigame-esque things in RPGs, and you don't want to bother with even attempting to fathom how they could be done better. You're basically pulling the "I dated like 7 different people, and they all sucked. PEOPLE JUST SUCK, AND THERE ARE NO GOOD PEOPLE!" reasoning, which isn't very good reasoning at all.
  24. ^ AGX... I fail to see the point in posting in this thread simply to state that posting within that thread is pointless. Also, I seem to recall Obsidian already choosing the no-miss system. Then, after considering a topic started about it, they changed their minds on the system they had already chosen.
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