Lephys

I think an important notion to take from the OP, though, is the importance of denoting the intent of a dialogue choice. "Sure, we'd be glad to help make sure no one disturbs your wagon" should allow you to choose your reasoning for doing so, right then and there. Otherwise, it's kind of like you've got Schrodinger's intent. You're both selfless AND a lying bastard, until you actually choose whether or not to go against your word. You're either want to screw someone over, or you don't. Just like how you can't start slaughtering people, then stop and say "Just kidding, I want peace and don't think hostility is a good idea, really." Mainly, though, you often run into the conflict of not really knowing if you're committing (via unseen game code) to an oath, or misleading someone, because the text conveys no tone or intent without some kind of indicator. The worst examples of this I've ever seen are the dialogue options in some games that initiate an attack, but don't say they do. "Well, I'm not so sure you will..." in response to "We should be long gone by tonight" doesn't TELL me I'm about to attack them. It only suggests that my character doubts the likelihood that they'll be long gone by tonight. Maybe I wanted to tell them about some things that might cause them delay. Why did the game assume I wanted to kill them, and not tell ME that it assumed that?!

Crap, he's left? Now how are we ever going to know how inevitably horrid P:E is going to be, as well as the extreme folly of our discussive, discussive ways? ... I'm... I think I'm going into withdrawals...! *hugs knees and rapidly rocks back and forth*... o_o... I'm starting to forget whether or not Josh Sawyer hates all the Kickstarter backers, and whether or not non-combat options are always going to be the best choice! I need a reminder, STAT! I need a fix!!!

Absolutely - the whole point of the RPG is systematization of skills into necessarily abstract mechanics. But that's disconnected from realism. And it's really tough to argue realism for the use of weapons from different centuries in the same culture/group of cultures, or the use of weapons in ways that make zero sense. I understand if you want to add weapons because they're cool - and that's fine. But if you are really trying to inject realism, it's likely to fail just due to the default assumption of the genre - small unit tactics - not existing for at least another 200 years vs. the setting. The vast majority of Medieval weapons are made to be used in formation and in specific circumstances. There are general use weapons - but not very many of them. Well, here is essentially the problem. People are saying they love Apple Jacks, and you're saying "... But they don't taste like apple!" Humor aside, what I mean is this: Most people are simply incorrectly using the word "realism" to mean "verisimilitude." I know it's incorrect, and oodles of folks do it, but that doesn't change what they mean by it. I (and I believe many others) enjoy the abstractly represented bows and weaponry in RPG combat having a strong BASIS in realistic weapons from actual reality. So, yeah, in the game, they aren't realistic any longer. But I'd rather start with a bow (something I can see and feel operating in reality, with absolutely no fictitious natural laws or abstractions acting upon it whatsoever) and then abstract it only as much as is necessary to fit it into the game, than completely make up different weapons all together. The basis in physics is the same in both worlds. The bow functions in exactly the same manner in the fantasy world, only I don't need to know the exact effects of air resistance and dropoff and veolicty and armor-piercing at various ranges, because it's all abstracted, and I don't know those exact things in reality anyway. As long as the bow doesn't work like you're Hawkeye from the recent Avengers film, I'm not going to say "WAAAAAIT a minute... my ability to believe this world is cracking, here...". That being said, what I've said before still stands. IF we can draw some value from realistic weapon functions (value towards the goal/boundaries of the game mechanics and fantasy world, even if only a tweakable foundation), then I say go for it. Things like "Your archer should lose about 50% BAMFness within a 30-ft range, however that range is represented on-screen." It's the same reason I like friendly fire with things like fireballs and frost novas. I like things that CAN be good, and simultaneously CAN be bad. Makes me think about how and when to use them. And yes, maybe, if they're basing designs and aesthetics on realistic things, they need to not copy exact military weaponry from a certain era SIMPLY because it's cool, then make it act like completely different weapon designs. Maybe just actually make it a different weapon design. (I'm just curious, here, but, would a hunting bow differ from a military bow? Because I would think they'd be designed differently. I just don't know the specifics. So, could they, for example, go with hunting-type constructions of bows as a more sensical starting point?) Another thing to consider is this: You keep talking about how things actually happened in history, and what things didn't actually happen (like weapons being designed mainly for large-scale battle, rather than individuals/small groups), which is totally fine. I mean, it's useful info, as far as any attempt at any degree of historical accuracy goes. But here's another thing fantasy does... It sort of... rewrites history. Imagine if you went back in time and effected things so that small-scale combat and individual/party-based mercenary specialist groups were FAR more common. Would the weaponry not have ended up being designed differently, to accommodate what is essentially the demand of invention at the time? I mean, even without all the magic and fiction. Just completely real-world stuff that HAPPENED to have developed a certain way. You go back and replace a certain ruler, and dictate some certain decree, and designs and various other decisions are going to follow that politically-powered decision. Right? Just an interesting notion, I thought. Of course, you sort of touched on that with your example of flying things on the battlefield and pistol use.

I appreciate the well-formed response on all that. I should've used "verisimilitude," as you said. And you have many a good point. I guess I'm just trying to say that there are understandable abstractions in RPGs. You can't show everything on the screen very well (without hitting Starcraft unit sizes and such) when you incorporate 1:1 representations of 150ft combat. So, it can be assumed that the length of your character model's forearm, across the battlefield, is not exactly 1 foot, but instead represents more distance than that (just as an example.) So now I believe it, because I understand why it's like that. If everyone had 50" monitors, maybe we could just have 100% realistic combat ranges without a hitch. And yes, I think that bows shouldn't work very well at all even within 10 or 15 exaggerated feet. I don't disagree with that at all. But, that's something I'd say could be a design goal in P:E, rather than a reason not to try an improvement simply because other games failed to. *shrug*. I understand the desire to incorporate ranged weaponry, and bows are familiar. Maybe they could tweak the bow designs a bit more (maybe the people in fictional P:E world used different materials, and different designs, for tension-based ranged weaponry) rather than straight-up copying bows for the sake of realism, then using them in non-realistic scenarios and granting them unrealistic characteristics.

I suppose I just value the representation of degradation as a factor in combat (much like status effects and attack rolls, etc.), but I don't very much value the implementation of "go out of your way and spend extra money or suffer the consequences." In the same manner, I value the representation of miles and miles of travel, but I don't want to actually have to spend 7 hours just to get from a town to a cave my party was asked to explore. It would still be cool, in a way, to actually experience perfectly realistic travel, but the time requirement of that travel does not fit with the desired goal of this type of video game. In the same manner, I value a system that abstractly accounts for the effects of food on your party members, but I don't want to spend 10 minutes controlling my characters' fork-wielding arms to make them eat a meal, and I don't need the number of calories they've taken in to be something I need to keep up with, or account for their metabolic rates, etc. It's not that they couldn't code such things. It's that they would be unnecessarily time-consuming. The same line of reasoning, I think, sort of opposes "well, in real life, it costs lots of time and money for your equipment to not fall apart." In a game that rather abstractly represents oodles of things, you put in something that far-less abstractly represents wear-and-tear, and you've got a big thorn in the player's paw.

Hehe... that reminds me of Skyrim. How it was kind of almost awesome when someone dropped their weapons and took a knee, saying "I yield, I yield! Don't kill me!", and/or fled. Then, of course, it ultimately wasn't anywhere near awesome when they INEVITABLY got back up or reversed their escape with a "Ha-HAH! PSYCH!!!". Also, the fact that letting someone live/escape basically would have served absolutely no purpose except to allow you to go "Oh, cool, they'll give up, and I can not kill them! 8D!" and miss out on XP/loot. Ahhh, Skyrim... the pinnacle of RPG perfection!

All stretch goals are BS! Also... all words are lies! u_u

No worries. I miss out on a lot of things, too, haha. I get that, and I'm not trying to attack your personal preferences regarding equipment repair/preparation, but, to be straight to the point, if I happened to enjoy/not-mind having to manage my characters' wounds, hydration, and bowel movements, I would still understand (from a purely unbiased, reasonable standpoint) why other players may not want that in the game at all. Granted, you already suggested that maybe it should be included only in expert mode, but I just wanted to clarify that I believe your argument is taking into account preference in its ratings of the system, whereas mine is attempting to leave that factor out. Poison isn't even really the best example, because engaging in combat encounters doesn't inherently increase your poison level. The usage of equipment is necessary, which is why it's somewhat mechanically silly to make its degradation a constant, and its maintenance necessary as well. It would be different if it were purely a bonus. Like... a mercenary. I could understand having to pay a mercenary for BONUS combat effectiveness, but if you don't use any equipment, you're pretty much screwed (unless, maybe, you drop it down to Easy? Either way, the balancing of combat challenges accounts for SOME amount of equipment.). So, when it comes down to it, there's no strategy or decision to be made, other than "Do I want my equipment to not-suck, or do I want it to suck?" In other words, what do you get for your extra upkeep money? You gain the absence of the loss of something. You just break even again. Anywho, as some kind of option, sure. I have nothing against the preference to play with that system. But, I definitely think it should be better moderated in Normal difficulty.

Allow me to clarify my point: "I don't like that pizza place" doesn't tell you that I hate all things inherent to pizza places. Without elaborating, you have no idea what I mean. Maybe they tried to kill me there once. Maybe they make terrible pizza. Maybe I'm extremely picky. Maybe I just like another pizza place 10% better, and therefore adhere to a strict "this is the one I like, and therefore, that one is not the one I like" policy. In other words, even if "there's not a lot he did like about BG2," you don't know WHY (or specifically what about this "lot" of generic stuff) he failed to like. Also, the fact that he was referencing very specific aspects of system implementations in the game shows that he was already evaluating systems on more of a "this had problems/this didn't have problems" basis. One final example. If you say "Do you like the current crime laws?", and I say "No, I really don't like the current crime laws," does that mean I LOVE crime and hate laws? No. Again, it could easily mean that I strongly wish they had more to them, i.e. "I don't like the current status/effectiveness of the laws." I could love every single thing that's already in them, and I'd still say "I don't really like them." Why? Because the word "like" can mean so many specific things. It's called ambiguity. That's even before we consider the fact that the term "lot" is subjective. How much of BG2 does he mean by that? Maybe we should ask him. 8P So, yes, Josh Sawyer didn't necessarily mean that he hated BG2. Nor can we really derive any useful information from that statement (such as "OMG! NOW WE KNOW THAT EVERY DETAIL OF BG2 IS THE ENEMY OF P:E's DESIGN!"), without further information. We could, I suppose. But then we'd be assuming.

^ Haha... I apologize. I say "Welp" as kind of a slang for an exasperated "Well...". I didn't mean to cause confusion. And I get what you're saying, but, here's what I'm still getting at: Let's assume your equipment gets into a bad state after 5 combats. Well, are all durations of "you can't go back to town right now" content going to last ONLY 5 combats? That seems a little unnecessarily restrictive. So, if they aren't, then what happens when one lasts 10 combats? You either start it and go through all 10 before getting to repair, or you don't. There is no "Well, I'll make sure I keep my armor repaired." The system itself allows for a problem. And, like I said, if you have repair items you can carry around and use whenever you want (except in the middle of combat), then you pretty much get to repair after every single combat, as long as you take the time to get repair items (which are always available to stock up on). And if you're going to limit repair items in some way, then you're back to essentially the exact same effect as a simple duration, only you're jumping through more hoops just to get to that. I've played oodles of games with degradation in, and I don't personally hate it or anything. I personally don't mind the detriments and such, either. But, NOR do I think we'd be losing anything by reining in the hassles a little bit. I'm simply analyzing the balance between the benefits of degradation (as it's often implemented) and the hassles of it, and it's possible they could be in better line with one another. That's all. And I don't mean that checking on the status of your gear automatically makes everything impossibly complex. But, think of the possibilities from all the factors involved. If you fight enough things/pay enough money, you can find better quality equipment that will grant you a boost to your combat effectiveness. If you continue paying money proportionate to the amount of times you use this equipment in combat, you can actually keep/maintain that boost. Various other effects and actions in combat already function to detriment you, and sometimes to directly negate the boost from your equipment (weaken, paralysis + backstab, etc.). I mean, look at any other system that functions like repair: Resting at an inn never costs money per-point-of-HP missing. Wizards don't have to pay money to replenish their combat effectiveness with their number of spells for the day. Buffs from combat wear off or can sometimes be healed. Spending money to fix your equipment doesn't promote any strategy or skill or cleverness. It's simply an additional cost. That's what makes it a chore. But, having your equipment degrade isn't a chore. It's only the out-of-balance duration and cost of fixing it that makes it a chore. This is why I believe that the most useful solution would be to make it a temporary effect. Essentially, to simply change the manner in which it gets repaired. Ultimately, when it comes to the effects of balancing, the only two factors with item degradation are "extent of penalty" and "duration of penalty." It's job is to be a variable as it relates to combat, and these are the only two aspects that affect combat. Having to go to a smith and spend money to fix things has absolutely no impact on combat. About the only positive contribution that makes is immersion. But I don't think the amount of immersion it provides outweighs the time-wasting, resource-costing detriments to the enjoyment of gameplay. It doesn't provide merely immersion. It always provides immersion AND a stomach-punch to fun. I dare say that's why poison and buffs typically aren't permanent, and the cost of resting isn't based on how many HP you're missing, and missing HP doesn't reduce your combat effectiveness, and regaining spell "ammunition" for the day/rest doesn't cost money per spell, etc. The list goes on. From a real-life standpoint, yes, it's quite interesting. From a gameplay standpoint, it's no more interesting than it is annoying. "You actually attacked that thing with your weapon? Ooooh, that's gonna cost you some repair money, u_u..." It's like a tax, really.

^ To supplement that, it might be prudent to have the multi-class spell pool be a specific sub-set of all the other classes' spell pools. In other words, if you can cast 3rd level spells, then, being not an inherent Wizard/Druid/Priest/Magic-person, you should probably be limited to only a certain subset of Wizard's 3rd-level spells, and Druid's 3rd-level spells, etc. Even if it's only that you have to pick your available spells and simply can't pick all of them. Obviously, in P:E, however grimoires work would have to be factored in (if they decide the spell sets immediately available to you, then maybe they're slightly limited in some way, or you can't use all grimoires available to the other classes, etc.)

Well, you'd think "Let's actually make the bow's minimum range serious business" would be less of a leap than "And that's why we shouldn't care about the realism of bows." *shrug* You don't go around accomodating Wizard's AoE's by making sure enemies are ALWAYS clustered together, so why is it necessary to make sure bows are always super effective? There's also the discrepancy in "realism." It could be how things actually work in reality (i.e. physics and the laws of science and all that jazz), or it could be what happens to exist and be utilized in reality. Who's to say that, in a fantasy world, people don't specifically design their bows for shorter-ranged combat, and maybe they're much less effective at longer ranges? Military folk often used bows to fire through murder holes in stairwells and corridors, did they not? They obviously functioned okay. Just because bows were engineered a certain way in reality doesn't negate all the possible manners in which bows could "realistically" be engineered. Take P:E firearms for example. It is known that they can pierce Wizard's protective barriers/veils, so you're probably going to see less attention to accuracy in a lot of them and more attention merely to power. You could easily look at a pistol and say "That's silly... no one in history ever used THAT inaccurate of a pistol. You'd have to get within about 5 feet of them!" But, no one in history had to deal with the factor that is Wizard barriers. Just something to consider.

But risk is only pertinent when there's a choice involved. If you've escaped into an underground tunnel from a collapsing structure, and the only way to get back to town is forward (through danger and darkness), then it's no longer a risk, it's purely a detriment. "Welp, since you have about an hour's worth of cave to get through, you're just going to have to put up with all that equipment breakage, I suppose." Plus, P:E's already got a health bar that actually handles that same element of risk already. Again, I think it's good to consider just how many thing you need providing that type of long-term balancing act before it's too many. And, as I said, I'm not against degradation. Just... all things in moderation. The realistic aspects of degradation, included. And @TRX, that's precisely the kind of thinking I'm advocating. All the details of degradation effects, just with a muzzle on the hassle.

The behavior you're suggesting isn't confined to combat. If someone asks you to bring them 25 herbs so they can make some potion (that they can't make with less than 25 herbs), and the player brings them 24 herbs, then abandons the quest, should they still get 90-something-% of the XP? Or, what about the possibility of a combat-only objective: "Clear out this cave of goblins." If the player kills all but 3 goblins, should they get awarded XP for part of the accomplishment of "clearing out the cave of goblins"? The goal isn't any more achieved than it was before, because there are either 0 goblins in the cave (and it's not cleared out), or there are greater than 0 goblins in the cave. Then, there's the matter of what is the XP representing. If you get XP for "Clearing out a cave," should you ALSO get XP for each goblin kill? Doesn't the last goblin kill actually accomplish both things? So, you're basically awarding XP specifically for slaying, but it's simply conditional. Slaying is the method, and clearing the cave is the goal. But no other action than slaying is required. So, when you kill the last goblin, do you get 50 goblin-kill XP, PLUS 100 objective-completion XP? If you do, aren't you getting double-XP? You're getting XP for the chosen method of completing the goal, AND for the actual completion of the goal. But, if that's fine, then what if you opt for a non-combat method? What if you travel about and acquire parts and plans to build a gas bomb, and you toss it in and gas them out? Should you get XP for each goblin you gassed out of the cave, AND for clearing the cave? If you get XP for the kills plus the goal, and you only get XP for the goal and not the gassing, then aren't you favoring one method over another? You're telling the player "the more you accomplish things without killing, the worse-off you're going to be. Meanwhile, you can always kill and abandon goals before accomplishing them, and you'll still progress."

We're not agreeing to disagree, though. And I'm sorry to say that you're still misunderstanding me, which is why it seems that I'm misunderstanding you. You're applying "XP is used to favor a choice" rationale, rather than "XP doesn't need to even be used like that" rationale that I emphasized. In no way did I express any desire to punish the slaying of random woodland creatures (which seems to be our current mechanic/gameplay sample). If you had a game that required your character to have a golden ticket to get through a toll booth at some point, then you'd have to make sure that, by the time they got to that toll booth, they can acquire a golden ticket. Therefore, maybe you have a couple of different ways they can get that ticket, but they only need one. If you say "Hey, you should be able to slaughter all the people in the town, if you want. Doesn't matter if they're innocent or you have a reason for it, you can totally do that." That's fine. But, how much sense would it make to say "You know what? Every one of them drops 100 golden tickets! 8D!" Or better example, what if everything you killed gave you +1 maximum HP? It's a conflict of interest, is what it is. You probably wouldn't want to award maximum HP for the simple action of killing a thing that had a life bar. It would be silly. Now, if you're off to go actually do something, and you happen to want to kill bears along the way, then you'll get XP because you're actually making progress toward tougher challenges, quests, and objectives, which are sequential to some degree within the overall game. And yes, if bears and squirrels are in the game, I think it should be for more than just immersion ("Oh look! They're so cute! But you can't even interact with them in any way, shape, or fashion."). I don't know how to specify the exact mentality I'm pointing out is bad. It's the difference between: "Those bears that you've already put in the game should serve a purpose, and I should be able to kill them because they're living creatures. YOU WANT TO ARBITRARILY DISCOURAGE KILLING!" and "There were only 5 bears for me to kill, and they only gave me 15 XP a piece. You should've put infinite bears there! There should be bears for me to kill and XP to gain simply because I want to kill bears and gain XP for killing bears! YOU WANT TO ARBITRARILY DISCOURAGE KILLING!" I know that's an extreme example (I'm not saying you're suggesting those exact words or anything), but I don't know how else to make sure I stressed the exact line of thinking I was trying to stress. I mean this in the most literal, precise way possible: Sometimes you should get a reward for killing things, and sometimes you shouldn't, in the exact same way that you should sometimes get a reward for not-killing things, and sometimes you shouldn't. And even when you do (with both types of action), it doesn't always need to be XP. XP serves a very specific purpose. It can partially be a reward, in a way, but it's never ONLY a reward. It is always a progression-manager, no matter what other function it ever serves. So, deciding what does and doesn't get XP is a COMPLETELY separate choice from deciding whether or not to balance the viability of stylistic/preferential/behavioral decision options available to the player. Does that make sense? More details/factors are required than "something had a heartbeat, and now it doesn't" to grant XP, because there are specific reasons to implement living entities in RPGs besides just "so that it can be killed for a reward." TL;DR version: There's a difference between penalizing a specific instance of chaotic behavior, and simply not-rewarding a specific instance of chaotic behavior. Or rather, I believe chaotic methods should be rewarded just as ordered methods are, not chaotic actions and ordered actions.

^ There's nothing inherently wrong with it, by itself, Nonek. (I loved Betrayal at Krondor, too, btw, for what it's worth.) But, the problem is this: How much trouble should it be JUST to be at "normal" combat effectiveness for combat that's still going to challenge your skill and ability even when you're at max? Even after earning improved equipment just to help keep your effectiveness at the same level as the combat challenges? Even after already having limited resources (Health, spells, abilities, etc.) between rest areas? Unless the game just adjusts for you, it's not even like the weapon-type-vs-armor-type thing. You can't just say "Oh, I'll just pick feats and abilities to offset my mangled equipment, rather than getting it repaired all the time." You either put forth the effort of fixing it, or you don't. Every single time. And it's INEVITABLY going to need fixing. So, you basically "have" to go fix it when it gets damaged, because the game is already designed with attention to equipment quality and effectiveness in mind. It's literally reverse-progression, as far as mechanics are concerned. "Yay, I got this new armor that blocks 15 damage instead of 10! Thank goodness, 'cause the baddies in this area are doing about 10 more damage per hit than in the previous area. Oh, my armor's broken... Welp, I'm back down to where I was before I bought it. All the enemies, in every combat, gain effectiveness against your character with broken armor, until you actually travel out of your way AND pay additional resources to fix it. And yeah, you could carry consumables around, alleviating the time-wasting aspect. But then, you're restricted, pretty much, to only 1 bout of combat at a time for detriments (if you're fixing stuff as often as possible), and you're still having to pay all that extra upkeep money. The only positive thing degradation adds is the possibility that sometimes, your armor or weapons could become less effective (and so could enemies', I suppose.) Sometimes. By its very nature, it's destined to be a temporary thing as far as mechanics go. It's like "slow" effects in combat. Their intended purpose is to change combat factors, temporarily, not to last until you complete an area and get back to town. That's why, if you had perma-slow debuffs in the game, and it was at all possible to prevent the spell from landing or being cast, people would probably just reload the game and redo combat so that they didn't get slowed. And I'd support them in that. Because being slowed as you simply travel around is pretty pointless. It would serve no purpose other than to annoy. "Movement takes longer, because...". You don't ever have a chance of not-getting to that chest, or not-reaching the end of this cave... it just takes longer. Same thing as with making weapons do 10 damage, and giving everyone 37,000,000 HP. There's no point in combat lasting that long. None, whatsoever. So, I'm simply observing here that the duration (and seemingly redundant detriments) are the biggest perceived problems with most degradation systems.

I like your analysis and this discussion. And yes, the player should be able to do whatever he wants, within the constraints of the initial core system (i.e. a player in a racing game shouldn't be able to go shopping for clothes at the mall, or go hunt some deer in the woods, because that obviously isn't in the interest of the game design's goal.) As long as you pay attention to the boundary between obstacle course and sandbox, everything's fine. In other words, anywhere your player is presented with a situation, and hacking people to bits would provide SOME viable outcome to that situation, the game shouldn't artificially prevent you from doing so (i.e. make the target invincible or leave off any "*attack*" option in a dialogue-controlled segment). But, that's quite different from the insistence that any situation always have a killy option available, or which specifically killy situations should be available. I mean, in Fallout 3, you could nuke a whole town. But, you couldn't just go around nuking all the towns out of existence. The game specifically set up a scenario in which there was the opportunity to nuke a town, and it didn't say "Yeah but you can only help the town, and you can't nuke it, 'cause that would be really extreme." So, to use that example, "There's a nuke in the town, and it's almost functional, and the player is capable of fixing it, so the game should take that into account," I agree with. But, "If there's a town, I should be able to nuke it, because both nukes and towns exist in this game world," I don't agree with. If that makes any sense.

With copious amounts of skill, obviously. "When you can kill the giant demon with these chopsticks, THEN... you will be ready. u_u"

I'll just say that, as far as mechanics and design go, the Wizard's familiar is being used, at least in P:E's design, to differentiate the Wizard from the other classes (among other things that also contribute to the class distinction.) So, in the context of P:E, I don't see Druids also getting Familiars. But, only because that term/creature-type has already been so specifically defined. I don't see why Druids couldn't get something at least remotely similar, though. I mean, they seem to be focusing on the Druids actually taking on animal forms more than having animal companions (again, for class distinction, methinks, as the Ranger will have animal "pets"), but that isn't to say it's impossible for Druids to have some creature companions. Also... First thing that came to mind was: "I SHALL DESTROY YOU WITH MY BEAR HANDS!" A good idea, though. Really. Creative exploration, that is.

And I get what you're saying. But what you're saying is only true in the interest of the most "realism" possible. If you really want to have actual item degradation, you'd have to completely reforge all your stuff and/or simply forge new stuff, because it would fall completely apart and would require more time and effort to "mend" than it would to simply melt it down and make a new piece. And why can't magic buffs work the same way? Magic is COMPLETELY fictitious, so what's to keep a sorcerer from hexing you permanently, until you go get it removed? "You're paralyzed, UNTIL SOMEONE FIXES YOU, EVEN OUTSIDE OF BATTLE! MUAHAHAHAHA!" Eh? I'd say it's the fact that that penalty is contrary to the purpose of the game. Past SOME temporary duration, paralysis would literally inhibit you from continuing the game. Besides... there is some permanence to it with the temporary implementation. It's just assumed that getting it fixed involves less. In typical systems, it lasts until you go fix it (it never lasts forever, it just technically has the potential to.) Well, it still does, except going and fixing it is easier. And if you don't want it to go away at the end of combat, then have it go away when you rest. Again, if we're abstractly representing equipment degradation so that it never falls apart completely, then what's so crazy about assuming that the amount of degradation/detriment represented is always within the "fixable when we get some downtime, but without going all the way to a blacksmith and paying money" range? It's up to the design team just how abstract to make the system. And how rare to make it, and just how long for it to last, and the possible extent to which it can alter your armor's stats, etc. As I said, the whole thing is quite flexible, really. We just don't see many examples of the flexibility. Why? Because most games assume, just like you, that if it's not permanent-until-fixed-by-money-and-a-smith, it's pointless to incorporate. But, really, it's still different from a buff. Buffs generally have a specific duration (so they can end mid-combat), and armor/weapon damage could only occur with physical attacks (or specific attacks). The differences can be as complex as the design team would like. As long as it's balanceable.

Well, I'm simply sharing my advice and analysis, in the interest of avoiding needless non-discussion. If you were already aware of my observances, then you obviously don't care if you're constructive or not. I just thought I'd share, in the event that you did actually care. I'm not here to make you care. I'm just here to attempt to help foster discussion. I'm glad that you're glad, though. Group morale is always important, ^_^

Ehh... I dunno about that. I mean, you go down that line of thinking, and "spells" are just really fancy arrows that don't need a bow. "Poison" damage is actually just a free extra lackey with a tiny dagger who's invisible and only lasts long enough to attack a handful of times. From a mechanics standpoint, equipment degradation is simply an added layer of depth to the physical armor/damage system. Just like weapon/armor types. So, how deep do we go? That's the good question here. BUT, do we just shrug off anything with depth because it adds complexity and potential "annoyance"? I don't think that's a very good idea. Best to explore options before deciding. I mean, finite HP brings an annoyance to the table. "Crap, I HAVE to worry about efficient combat now, or things'll kill me, and I'll have to re-load and try again." But, it's simultaneously fun, because overcoming a combat encounter with limited resources is a much greater accomplishment than doing so with infinite resources. And with depth in something like combat, it's the difference between checkers and chess. Do you just want a number of units that can all do the exact same thing versus a number of other units that can all do the exact same thing, and see who can out-exact-same-thing whom? That would be pretty boring in the context of an RPG. That's why we go with chess. With different pieces that can do different things, only you don't always fight the same groups, and you don't always HAVE the same group at your control. The only real problem I see (the key word here being "only") with your example system is that it doesn't address the chore created by permanent detriments. In that manner, I'd say that maggotheart's buff comparison is actually quite useful. With equipment, we're used to the emulation of realistic durations of things. They're physical objects, in the game world, and therefore shouldn't change status until something actively changes them. They break down, these things cost money, etc. But, with magical, fictitious buffs, we don't usually do that. We usually just have them wear off after a bit. I think back to the games in which poison didn't wear off at the end of battle (or literally lasted forever if you never spent money on an item or healer to fix it), and those games were EXPONENTIALLY more infuriating than any others. In other words, the fact that we're able to be "debuffed" (or Bizarro Buffed, if you'd like ), is okay with us. Why? Because it's just vulnerability. Either factors can be changed in combat, or they can't. We're okay with that. But, what we're not okay with (purely from a mechanics/human-being-playing-an-interactive-piece-of-software standpoint) is permanence. Upkeep for such simple things. We like the challenge it presents in combat, but we don't like that challenge PLUS "this is going to haunt you unless you pay a monthly fee or lug a bunch of extra repair items around." Dealing with the debuff-like detriments of degradation can bring fun to the table. Paying rent for your equipment pretty much never does. That's why I still say the actual problem with degradation isn't the fact that it comes with detriments, but the EXTENT of those detriments. And if you leave them permanent until fixed, then it doesn't matter if the worst you ever get is 1% loss in effectiveness. That's a negative effect that we don't want, and we have to suffer it UNTIL we go out of our way and spend money/time/effort just to fix it. If there was a die to roll for the effects of the duration of permanent equipment detriments, it would be a d-infinity. Like I said, though... while I still see that as a problem, I admire the rest of the details of your system. And I'm not at all against having limited items/spells that could mend certain amounts of degradation in the field and/or prevent/increase resistance to degradation. Maybe there'd even be certain enchantments that prevent degradation, or lower it from 3 tiers to 2, etc. (This normal armor can drop 5% up to 4 times, but this enchanted armor can only drop 5% up to twice, etc.) It's all very flexible, really. That's the beauty of mathematical systems and balancing. Of course, it typically takes a while, as our little human brains have to work through all the mathematical effects of every potential decision. 8P

No one has yet decreed "all objectives should be generated ONLY by quest-givers, u_u." Also, I don't see why random fauna should award XP any more than random fauna should drop money and weapons. Which is yet another way in which objective-base XP comes in handy. Did you run around in the forest for 6 hours and found 3 random bears catching fish by the river and slew them? Well, you don't get XP, because what challenge was a bear that has no armor or weapons of its own, was caught completely off-guard, and probably took a couple of good sword stabs or arrows before it ceased to live? Alternatively, did you find a cave in the woods in which dwelled 10 bears? Did you fight your way past them (they were desperately protecting their cavey home) to get the journal off the dead guy in the back of the cave? Congratulations! You not only overcame an actually-challenging combat scenario, but you also accomplished something else constructive toward then entire story/progress aspects of the game! 8D You get XP! Granted, I'm not against you getting SOMETHING from random fauna (like crafting components, or... whatever you can think of, really), and for it affecting reputation. Again, completely separate matters. There are hundreds-upon-hundreds of other scenarios in which you can play a murderous Mister McFightyGuy if you so choose. The question is this: IF those random forest creatures didn't give you XP, would you still even worry about killing them, ever? If they gave you nothing at all? Probably not. Would you even care if the forest was populated with random animal mobs if they didn't give you anything? No. I mean, maybe for immersion's sake, but you wouldn't really care whether or not you could fight them. Fighting them would be immersive at best, and annoying at worst. Hey, if someone wants to run amok slaying bears and squirrels, then I'm all for the game letting them. But, there's a difference between something being doable in the game, and something being a viable means of actually progressing in the game. Killing random things that happen to be alive, for absolutely no other reason (they're not in your way, they're not carrying valuables, no one sees you do it so your reputation isn't affected, etc.) simply does not need to affect your progression through the level system. That and only that. Can every single thing you're allowed to attack and kill have some kind of impact on something in the game (besides just "Yay, that happened to be fun because I prefer combat mechanics, 8D!")? Sure. But it doesn't need to be XP. You can have some group of druids hate you for killing animals (and, like I said, ideally there's some other reason for killing animals than simply pissing off druids), or you can have the druids not care one way or the other. That has nothing to do with whether or not bears and squirrels are an XP objective. No one said "only objective-based reputation!" Again, XP is not a cookie. It is directly tied to accomplishments within the game. There have always been things that you couldn't kill or that didn't give you anything (or that gave you like 7 XP when you needed 28,000 to level up, which is basically the same thing as nothing, in the grand scheme of things) throughout RPGs. But now, people are seeing "Some things won't necessarily award you XP just for killing them," and everyone keeps imagining scenarios from games specifically designed to factor in per-kill-XP, simply with all the per-kill-XP removed. P:E will be designed with their method for awarding XP in mind. Meaning, again, that if you kill a random bear in the woods, that might not be deemed an objective. But, if you encounter 5 tents and a campfire surrounded by a group of bandits, killing them all would most likely be an objective, among other things.

^ I'm truly failing to comprehend why you continuously reference things that aren't mutually exclusive to objective-based-XP. You can make the reputation system do whatever you want. You can also make XP do whatever you want. I'm not seeing the restrictions here. o_o Also, an XP "fix" mod would need to re-balance the entire game. If they want to do that, then awesome. But it's not going to "fix" anything that wasn't already imbalanced in the first place, which has nothing to do with the method of awarding XP, and everything to do with what you decide to award XP for, and what you decide not to award it for. I don't know if we'll be getting XP every time we finish a dialogue with someone in a chain of quest-related dialogues, but I'm not automatically worried that this means we'll have to go 3 hours of dialogue without getting XP, or that I simply won't be awarded an amount of XP that's proportionate to the resource requirements of my accomplishment. Since text tone is iffy, I'd just like to re-iterate that it is not my intention to simply antagonize. I just don't see how any of the referenced problems are inherent to the decision to designate tasks/accomplishments as "objectives" in order to handle the distribution of XP in an RPG.

Maybe, on a related note, there should be a way to indicate that you have no desire to kill unless it is necessary. Sheathing your weapon, for example. If someone BELIEVES you are hostile and attacks (but they're really only trying to get you before you get them), maybe you could fight them off, knock them down a bit, and once they're not immediately threatening you (lying on their arse or trying to get back up), you could say something like "Hey, there's no need for this!". It would only be applicable in situations like that, so maybe it should just be a dialogue prompt (i.e. "*continue fighting to the death*" or "*attempt to halt the conflict*". This would even cover a situation such as a gladiatorial fight, in which you could kill your opponent, or you could simply "defeat" them and call it a day. Instead of having to stand around for 15 seconds or something to indicate you don't wish to kill them and that you're done with the fight, you could actively sheathe your weapons and/or indicate in some manner (via the UI) that you have no desire to continue fighting. Could lead to some interesting occurrences and quest branches. 8P