Lephys

^ Me too, 8D. And I didn't mean to act as though you suggested we shouldn't have awesome bonus effects or anything. Just, the mention of the typical "more damage vs." implementation got me thinking is all, heh. I just like it when they gain usefulness rather than sheer "betterness." And I sincerely hope the legendary/magnificent-quality equipment has phenomenally mind-blowingly unique attributes/effects. I want a legendary sword that "stuns" enemies, and each time two-or-more enemies are currently stunned/paralyzed by its effect, magical energy arcs between them like a tether, damaging anything that comes in contact with it (i.e. already is or tries to move between those enemies.) Not "This legendary sword looks cool in your hand, and it does like TEN more damage than other swords!", or "It has like 5 effects on it that are the same as ones you've seen on everything else, but non-legendary weapons can only have 3 effects, u_u." That's just a quickie example off the top of my head, and not a fully hashed-out concept. But, still... 8P. In epic fantasy stories, no one says "Oh, wow, this is the Blade of Barduun! This thing does like... at least THREE times the damage of regular steel! We tested it in a lab and recorded the mathematical results!" Heh. That's not really that impressive. "Ohhh, it's way better! I see.". It's always amazing things like "This can cut ethereal things that no other blade can," or "this blade produces fire when no other blade in the world does." Things that are truly rare or unique. Of course, I want spells and abilities to be that creatively designed as well. But, legendary magical items should definitely surpass all in terms of phenomenal effects and attributes.

Heh. "*fine print* This fence marks the boundary of a Force Field. Within this field, Force plants are sewn, cultivated, and harvested by Force Farmers. We apologize for the extreme amount of motion resistance that is emitted by the plants. In the event of a Force shortage... No trespassing."

^ What if things like those larvae you mentioned (or leeches and such) that attached themselves to characters required other characters to attack "that character" to get them off? You know, "Swing your sword at this thing on my back! BUT DON'T CUT MY BACK!" Dexterity/precision would be extraordinarily valuable in such times, and perhaps less-so versus other creatures who have no weakness until their shell is cracked through sheer brute force. *shrug*

See, I'd kinda like to see really interesting, unique effects attributed to weapon bonuses, in place of the typical "mathematical improvement of something against undead because this is a holy weapon" stuff. Using holy damage as an example, maybe the holiness directly attacks the reanimative "strings" of the undead "puppet," causing a reaction from the inside out. So maybe "Destroy Limbs vs. undead" would be an interesting effect? It doesn't actually take off any more health than normal, but it could have a great chance of disabling/destroying legs and arms (or parts of them). Maybe even heads. Maybe without the head, the thing goes into an attack frenzy (since it no longer has any perceptive senses anymore?), just sort of flailing about. Annnnywho, that's getting into creature behavior and out of magic weapon territory. But, I'd very much like to see magic weapons do DIFFERENT things to certain enemies, rather than improved existing effects to them (or, at least, not ONLY improved existing effects.) For one more example, maybe a water/ice-based weapon, when used against a fire creature, could reduce maximum HP X-per-hit, down to a limit (total of 15 or something?). It would kind of douse their flame, a bit, but fire can burn its way back up. So, maybe if the fiery foe had 100 HP, and you hit it a few times, it's down to 85 (or, I guess, mechanically, the bottom of its health bar would go up to 15 from 0, meaning 15 was, for all practical purposes, dead.) So, if you do 5 damage per hit, you're not going to do 10 damage per hit, BUT, you're sort of reducing the enemy's substance. This would be more situationally effective when multiple people (only one of whom was wielding a water/frost weapon) were attacking the same creature, as it's HP pool would shrink. Of course, things like armor reduction and knockback and blinding and stun could be used, also. The diminishing of total "health" or substance seemed to fit with fire. *shrug* I just like when it feels like your weapon is doing cool stuff against a foe that another weapon isn't doing. It's more immersion-boosting than adding mechanic depth, I suppose. But still a bit of both, usually.

I'd agree that there aren't any "must-have" specific creatures, but I'd say there are pretty big creature types, the absence of which would seem a bit forced/hollow? I mean, if there were NO undead at all (especially in a game all about souls cycling through life and death), or no arachnids whatsoever (or maybe just no insects? Arachnids might be too specific, maybe)... that would be pretty bland. "NO furry, four-legged creatures! Those are so cliche, u_u..." Heh. If EVERYTHING was completely original, then it would all seem extremely foreign, as there'd be no intuitive connection with things. Granted, if they want to take artistic license and break from the typical mold on every single "typical" creature, I'm all for that. 8P

*Deleted* I TOTALLY misread your post, AGX... haha. It's been a long day.

Remember all those times I advocated the ability to jump straight up in the air two feet to get to higher ground? No? Exactly. Respond unto others as you would have them respond unto you, u_u. Nothing personal. And I'm well aware that those barriers are "typically" the actual edge of the area, but sometimes they aren't. That's precisely why I was referring to the times when they weren't. If you get to the edge of a cliff, and there's another plateau at approximately the same altitude 5 feet away (which totally occurs in nature all the time due to gradual fissures in mountainous/cliff-like rock formations), I'd rather a simple, ground-targeted jump ability let some or all of my party jump across than have the level design force me to wind my way around the map just to get to the other cliff (or abitrarily rid the land of ALL easily-jumpable gaps, anywhere.) Maybe that's just me. You yourself just said climbing reasonably climbable things and jumping chasms and gaps are totally cool. I don't think either one of us wants Mirror's Edge-ternity, which is why I don't feel the need to point out obviously-terrible forms of implementation, such as "We shouldn't be able to jump over entire cities, or swing through busy streets like Spiderman" as if anyone was suggesting such things were in any way viable. *shrug*

^ Yeah, I would love as in-depth a system as possible, but what's feasible and what isn't pretty much depends on the contextual design choices. If it's between no jumping (no utility jumping, that is...) or climbing and a fairly simple jumping/climbing system, I'd be more than happy with the simple system. I just remember from my D&D days, various people in the group basically looking through handbooks and noticing various item tables and saying something like "Rope is pretty much useless," or "Who would buy rope as their starting equipment?", or "Why would a Wizard put points into climb?". To which I was all "... Challenge ACCEPTED!" Haha. I surprised people a few times with some crazy utility use for a skill. Often, they're so simple, the DM didn't even realized he had created a scenario that allowed jumping/climbing/ropery to be so useful.

... *applause* ^_^ That's getting creative with it, that is.

Yeah, the enemies in Assassin's Creed (at least starting at about Brotherhood, and lasting through to III) do this. I know it's not quite the exact same system, but they CAN carry around a variety of weapons, and you can pick up their weapon once they've dropped it. Once you kill about 6 or 7 people in a group of 10, the rest tend to either flee (permanently... none of this "I'll go 20 feet, THEN TURN AROUND AND ATTACK YOU AGAIN!" silliness) or completely surrender themselves to your mercy (dropping their weapons and basically peeing their pants in the hopes you won't kill them.)

Unless, of course, saying something IS the action. i.e. "No need to go look for your father... he was torn apart by wolves, last time I saw him." When, really, you know he's still alive somewhere. 8P Yes that makes sense, but they need to provide more choices for dialogue options rather then just "good/evil/neutral." Don't tie Every single thing to morality like Bioware games. Only direct actions and dialogue that makes sense (IE Refusing to help someone). I very much agree. If you've got a metaphorical bar for the difference in the nature of dialogue choices, then don't cut it in half and measure the distance from the center... cut it into 6 or 7 segments and simply measure which segments your choice is in, and whether or not they overlap. I've always hated the whole "witty = evil jackass" trend, as I LOVE humor and wit. Ideally, if they're going to allow for wittiness, it should be an option for pretty much any different "choice" you can make. In other words, if you can say "Yes" or "No" to something, you should be able to have an additional witty "Yes" and an additional witty "No" choice. But, you shouldn't necessarily have a witty choice for literally any different thing you can say (I don't want 17 witty choices and 17 regular ones in dialogue). Examples of things that probably don't need witty choices would be general questions, like "So where can I find this guy?". I think 7 different ways of asking where you can find someone would be a bit overboard, haha. Of course, you could always be witty in response to the answer you got. Annnnywho, that might be something for a different thread. I agree that the "good/neutral/evil" choice structure is terribly lacking.

Well, I take it that when you shapeshift, you're not actually becoming an animal, but rather magically making your form LIKE that of a bear's. So, I can your weapons and equipment somehow mimicking/"comprising" the bear-form's claws and toughness and whatnot. I could hardly bring myself to say "Pssh! InconCEIVable! A magic bear-form would have claws like the druid's sword and skin like the druid's armor? That's not how magical transformation works at all!" Haha. Also, I don't think it's so much that the class-design process in a given RPG goes as follows: "What actual, historical group should we try to make a class out of? Actual druids? Splendid... now how can we FORCIBLY make them fill a class role complete with mechanics distinct from other classes'?" I think it's more like "Hey, an extreme attunement to nature and animal attributes is a facet of mechanics/abilities we haven't built a class around yet. Okay, what could we possibly use as a basis from real life, since no one really turned into animals and made plants attack/heal people via magic?" Then, they let artistic license take it from there, and attend the needs of the fiction. *shrug*

It immediately made me think of scouting abilities. Either a limited-use (per rest, maybe) "ping" type skill (to reveal enemy minds at a decently long range), OR a potential passive skill with a much shorter range (meaning you could see enemies on the other side of walls and such, sometimes, but not entire rooms or enemies that were more distant but had line of sight). Either way, skeletons and maybe golems and such (anything that didn't possess its own mind) would remain undetected, even by the Cipher.

Well, if they DO implement multi-classing, it'll probably only be to make sure the game stays... classy.

It obviously has to be properly balanced and tuned, but I like to think of it like this: Imagine a typical RPG weight-based inventory system, but with a more realistic (smaller) weight limit. So, maybe you can take a couple sets of armor, a few weapons, but that's about it for the heavy stuff, or you're all snail crawly (or just plain can't move). Okay, but you might think "Man, this is pretty realistic, but is that really ALL I can carry? No exaggeration from reality whatsoever?". So, BOOM! You get an abstract stash. You can still take all that usable, valuable stuff that wouldn't fit in your actual representation of an inventory, but you can't use it yet. I agree that it's quite abstract, at the moment, and a better explanation/implementation might be in order. But, I'd also stress keeping in mind that the game's currently in the midst of development, and they've been so kind as to share a purely mechanical decision. It could easily be explained in some better way, ultimately, in the final game (maybe you can't carry that much weight/stuff, but you can teleport things back to your stronghold or temporary campsite?). Hell, how do you even get exactly what you want out of a bag of holding? You just think happy thoughts, reach in, and "VOILA!"? If it's got 200 things in one little bag, in some manner of other dimension or magically-compressed space, how do you get things in and out of it? Maybe getting stuff in is easy, but getting stuff out takes time (Like... an hour?) that it's assumed you "don't have" (your party is not going to sit where they are for an hour because of various understood-yet-not-individually-represented factors, like food/hydration, torchlight, sleepiness, dangers of the area, time sensitive matters they're currently dealing with, etc.). So, if it's assumed your party is basically in a hurry to press on until you're at a restable location, then that would explain why you can't just reach into a magically-compressed storage-room and pull out exactly what you want on-the-fly. *shrug* And, as Diagoras and TRX have said, your equipment/top-of-pack (traditional inventory) could still be expanded/altered/upgraded and could still produce weight limitation effects and such (although, personally, I'd only like to see movement speed reduced during combat.) All that being said, the fickleness of loot placement/availability (i.e. The Elder Scrolls games' "take this pebble, and this butter knife, and this piece of crumbley paper, and this lump of candle wax, and this insect leg, and this individual human hair!") should still be a concern to factor into the game's design and balance. Along with specific inventory segment size and weight limits and all that. It's not mutually exclusive stuff. I don't think "we now have a form of infinite storage" (if they decide it'll be infinite) automatically means "Yay! Now we can just stuff the game with loot, all willy nilly!" Bad design decisions are still bad design decisions. 8P

A valid concern, but one not needed. Combat will still reward you with XP, quite often. It's been stated that dead enemies will provide loot. AND, thusly, if you sneak past enemies (whose deaths might not happen to give you XP, maybe, perchance, in some particular instance), then you're pretty much guaranteed to miss out on SOMEthing, at least. Also, again, unless you only trudge through combat for the XP, nothing is preventing you from killing everything in an entire cave. It's not as if you LOSE XP by joyfully combating foes, exploring the areas/loot they were blocking, and taking what you can from them. So, yes, IF combat never gives you XP, and sneaking always does, and sneaking is always available, and dead enemies don't ever produce loot (when P:E's design is complete), then we'll have a problem. But, only under such conditions is there a problem. Unfortunately, I think the Doomsday Assuminators have caused an unnecessary amount of panic on these forums by suggesting that all these conditions are inevitable, an inherent part of the system or officially announced context. *sigh*. Such is internets. 8P

^ Yeah, I don't know why it's so hard to say "Valid point, there. I still don't prefer limited resting, though," instead of apparently "Oh crap! Our preferences differ, and therefore I must pretend everything is sheerly an argument about preferences!" If I hate Roman numerals, and someone tells me V plus II = VII, I'm not going to say "actually, that's wrong, because there's no reason to use Roman numerals." No preference in the world makes V plus II in Roman numerals not = VII. I don't own Roman numerals, or addition, so it doesn't matter if I'm the biggest idiot inthe world. I'm still simply pointing at something that existed on its own, and is completely and utterly true. *shrug*

I actually was, my fellow discussionian. If you interpreted it as mockery, then I apologize, because that wasn't my intention. I simply took your example (That 5-6 Lvl1, aka the-lowest-level-of-skill-any-enemies-can-have-represented-by-a-level-system, foes should be able to take out your level whatever adventurer, whom you said Aragorn would suffice in representing), distilled the reasoning behind it, and rolled with that reasoning to create an example plenty far enough toward an extreme end of the spectrum simply to show that the reasoning does not hold up. It is either incomplete, or it only applies to a smaller scope than you intended. I was in no way calling you an idiot, or attempting to mock you. And just because I find a problem with your argument doesn't automatically mean every single aspect of it is false. I'm not saying Aragorn is a TERRIBLE example. I think he's a good one, too. But he and the other heroes of Middle Earth are far more "powerfully" portrayed than you think. And I still believe there's a disconnect by what we mean by the term "power," hence all the explanation. I have 2 options: Attempt to clarify because I believe we're talking about the same thing, or simply scoff at everything you say and re-iterate my claim, suggesting that you're both crazy and incapable of comprehending my line of thinking on the matter. The latter, I believe, is completely uncalled for. Therefore, I choose to observe what I can, and try to bridge the gap via explanation and questioning. A) I never said "We should fight rats." In fact, I specifically pointed out that I wasn't necessarily even advocating rats as enemies. It is a fact that other games present rats as level 1 foes, so I used them to make an example (within the context of other games, that do that) of how silly it would be for the game to even present you with an actual combat-mechanic scenario (intended for you to fight and win) against so many level 1 foes that you have no hope of victory (replace rats with 200 farmhands with crossbows, if you'd like.) B) I don't determine what properties a mathematical system has. Logic does. If you're level 20, and an enemy is level 1, and you're not SEVERELY more capable of taking out that enemy, then what's the point in having levels beyond 4 or 5? C) Have you ever seen videos of master martial artists fighting like 50 of their students at once? They don't even get touched... These are real, actual people in the world. They don't have soul powers, and there is no magic. No fictional exaggeration. They allow dozens of at-least-partially-trained (some of them fairly well-trained) students to attack them at once, however they wish, and they simply flow through all of them. I know it's not exactly the same with weapons, but it's pretty close. Only so many people can attack you at once, and if you're skilled enough, you know how to manage all those physics at work within the limited space from which attacks can even be launched. Sure, that doesn't apply to bows and such, but, again, you either pit the character against so many bows that he can't possibly not-get feathered with arrows and die (and you have no more game), or you don't and you have the rest of a game/story. It comes back to Aragorn and the rest. How is it that all the other soldiers are falling left and right to arrows from entire groups of archers casually riding in Mumakil pavilions, yet none of the heroes of the story ever even take an arrow? You can call it luck, but then you can say that higher HP and such simply represent the same luck. There's a difference between "The main characters should be quite capable of dying" and "the main characters should have to confront things that would obviously kill them no matter what, but I still also want the story to somehow go on." You either want to present vulnerable heroes with overbearing situations and have "luck" get them through, or you want to forcibly make sure they never face more than they can take on. That's just how it is. You can't do neither. It's impossible. And it's very hard to program "luck" in so that you can actually play the game without having to retry battle 73 times before your party doesn't HAPPEN to get hit with 12 arrows in the first 30 seconds of combat (which they could do nothing about). Hence HP. Am I advocating 7,000,000 HP? No. Lots of games get ridiculous with it. But, there is a reason for it that is INHERENT to video games. That's why heroes in the Lord of the Rings books didn't have hitpoints, and you don't see how much damage enemies are doing to them. So, this isn't my opinion versus your opinion, with all completely exclusive details *rings fight bell*. This is simply me taking value in a lot of what you're saying, and simply contributing my own observations of potential inaccuracies, in the interest of determining exactly what would be the best way to represent all of the topic at hand within a cRPG. i.e. what would be of the most use to P:E's development and design. If you feel I'm wrong about something, then correct it. That's exactly what I'm doing. I never said I was god. Based on my current understanding of things, and my observation and reasoning skills, I've presented what I believe to be further evaluations and accuracies IN ADDITION to what was already accurate and useful in what you've been saying. How's about we co-op the discussion, rather than deathmatching it? Hmm? *Presents hand for handshake*

Easy. When you're claiming to know about something that no one else present does, in order to impact another's decision. Example: "Don't worry. I can create amulets that will protect us from the beast's poison." Now everyone present is reassured and maybe more people come with you to track down some poisonous beast, when they wouldn't have before. Only, until that point, it's not as if the game told you "Oh, hey, btw, just so you know, for some upcoming dialogue, there's no such thing as an enchantment that will protect you from this thing's poison." So, without an indicator, you, the player, will most likely assume that THAT choice means that you actually are making everyone amulets of poison-protection, when really you're just making glowy amulets to make everyone feel better. The game either has to tell you you're lying, or arbitrarily make sure the player is ALWAYS informed about anything they might need to lie about, ahead of time (which seems like a lot more work, if you ask me). Or, the 3rd option: Let you guess, and potentially piss you off for no reason. "Don't worry. I can create amulets that will protect us from the beast's poison. (Lie)" tells the player that his character KNOWS he cannot (or at least isn't really going to) create amulets to protect against the beast's poison, AND that any options without (lie) on them are true as far as your character knows. All with 1 simple indicator. I suppose that makes sense, and I bow to you. Assumed character knowledge, that the PC doesn't have, is always something weird. As long as there's not a dialogue option that's the same thing, but ones the truth and ones a lie, I suppose I can see the above occurring and being rather cool. Yes! I KNEW I could win! . I joke, I joke. Nah, I just try to find the potential problems with things. It's obviously not the end of the world if they don't indicate stuff. It simply might lead to unnecessary annoyances. And it would be more complex to only try to change it for a select few lies (basically have the team comb all the lie options in the game for exactly which ones to flag to avoid confusion and which ones were okay without a flag) than it would to simply always indicate. That's all. I admit it's a rather minor issue, in the grand scheme of things, but I don't think it's one of things that would save that much time and effort, really, by NOT doing it. Also, the method to use (color coding, "(Lie)" text tag, something we haven't even thought of or mentioned yet, etc.) is totally still up for evaluation, regardless. Still pretty minor compared to lots of other stuff, but, again... we've got nothing but time whilst we wait for P:E's development to complete. Might as well hash out what we can when an issue (even a minor one) pops up, eh? ^_^ I wonder if maybe something as simple as a font change would work, as long as it were noted in some minimal tutorial/getting-started tips at the beginning of the game, when you first encounter dialogue or something, that deception options will be displayed thusly *show example on-screen of font difference.* That way, you don't have a big "(Lie)" tacked on. You still ONLY have the text that's actually being spoken in that dialogue choice, but you can still distinguish it from non-deceptive lines, and you won't have any issues with any form of color-blindness. *shrug*

It might just be my failure to communicate it clearly, but you're still misunderstanding my point. You're still skirting the actual relationship. Traveling to a place where loot is available to get loot = not degenerative. Traveling to a place where healing is allowed to get healing = not degenerative. Traveling back and forth because you can't carry all the loot = degenerative. Traveling back and forth because you can't "carry" all the health (heal up to full) = degenerative. We won't have to disagree, but it's totally your prerogative. We can leave it at that, and I'll stop attempting to clear up the misunderstanding, if you'd like.

Actually, I'm simply being reasonable. It doesn't matter how much health it is. The relationship remains the same. It's a finite amount (you can't heal MORE than 100% of all your health), JUST like the amount of loot you get in a dungeon is finite. You can't obtain an item of loot until it's available, just like you can't obtain a single point of health until it's available (in P:E's case, when you get to a rest point.) The only difference is that the amount of total loot in an area is dependent upon the developers' decisions on how much loot to put in there (and what you choose to do/whether or not you can get to all of it, or some of it), and the amount of healing available at a given rest area depends upon how much health you lost on the way there. Implying that healing should be available more often is the same as implying that loot should be available more often. How much of the available loot you're capable of carrying (out of the total loot in an area) before leaving that area to sell stuff off and potentially have to return to the area to pick up more is the same as being limited by how much healing you can obtain at a rest area, and having to (for some reason) leave and come back again to heal some more, until you've successfully obtained all the healing available in that area. In other words, the healing either takes one "trip," or more than one. And the loot gathering either takes one "trip," or more than one. Whether or not we always fully heal at a rest area in P:E and how long resting takes both have nothing to do with the comparisons above. If you'd like to discuss whether or not we should heal to full, or how long it should take, we could do that.

Negatory, Ghost Rider. It would be the same as having a scenario in which you could not recover ALL of your hitpoints in one rest, then saying "Well, if I'm always going to make 5 trips to make sure I get ALL my hitpoints back and not just part of them, then I might as well be able to heal up to full when I DO rest." The problematic trips were caused by the limitation on the QUANTITY of loot you could acquire at once, out of however much was available at the time. It had nothing to do with the frequency of loot drops, so a direct resting comparison would have to do with how many missing hitpoints were available to be healed, NOT how often the act of healing was available. Your example, translated back to loot context, would be "Well, if I can't get all the loot in the cave after this first bout of combat, then the rest of the loot in the cave is just going to keep luring me further through the cave to kill all the other things, so I might as well get all the loot in the cave at any point I choose."

Easy. When you're claiming to know about something that no one else present does, in order to impact another's decision. Example: "Don't worry. I can create amulets that will protect us from the beast's poison." Now everyone present is reassured and maybe more people come with you to track down some poisonous beast, when they wouldn't have before. Only, until that point, it's not as if the game told you "Oh, hey, btw, just so you know, for some upcoming dialogue, there's no such thing as an enchantment that will protect you from this thing's poison." So, without an indicator, you, the player, will most likely assume that THAT choice means that you actually are making everyone amulets of poison-protection, when really you're just making glowy amulets to make everyone feel better. The game either has to tell you you're lying, or arbitrarily make sure the player is ALWAYS informed about anything they might need to lie about, ahead of time (which seems like a lot more work, if you ask me). Or, the 3rd option: Let you guess, and potentially piss you off for no reason. "Don't worry. I can create amulets that will protect us from the beast's poison. (Lie)" tells the player that his character KNOWS he cannot (or at least isn't really going to) create amulets to protect against the beast's poison, AND that any options without (lie) on them are true as far as your character knows. All with 1 simple indicator.

That might be a problem, since P:E won't have a moral-ometer. The game's "alignment" will really be dependent upon its choices and actions throughout its entirety. If it DECIDES to crash on you all the time, then maybe it's evil. But it could always later decide to stop crashing and begin functioning flawlessly.

While I'm with you on that time-saving intent, a portal stone or pocket dimension only makes the trips QUICKER, essentially only eliminating half the problem (now you get to still waste your time, but the total time wasted is reduced.) Hence the intent behind the "stash." The basic idea is "if all that stuff you 'couldn't' pick up is going to lure you back anyway, you might as well be able to go ahead and pick it all up." Since you didn't even have access to all the loot in the other games (and most of it served no other purpose than to be tranpsorted back to a merchant and sold), it's mildly silly to demand that our inventory access not be limited.