Lephys

Helm (and apparently Valorian's arbitrary cat?) are correct. Which is precisely why I hereby propose Combat XP + non-combat XP. Do away with quest XP all together. Who cares whether or not you complete so-called "objectives." All that matters is that you fight, sneak, speak, and craft. I mean, if I randomly encounter a group of orcs, tromping around in the woods, why should I sneak past them or negotiate with them if I don't gain the reward of experience? Stealth and dialogue are pointless, because people can just combat their way through the situation without even having to put points into Sneak and still get XP.

^ Agreed.

Well, there's a pretty big confusion that was caused by the titling of the two "healthbars" in the proposed P:E system, as your immediate health pool is called "Stamina" (the part we're used to worrying about healing in the midst of combat) and regenerates to some degree (probably slowly in the midst of combat, and very quickly when combat ends and time-sensitive regen-speed limitations become moot). This is also the only "health" we'll most likely be able to combat-heal (or heal at all with abilities as opposed to resting, for that matter.) So far, they've stated that your secondary health pool (actually called "Health") will: A) Always take a fraction of the damage received (although there was brief mention of the possibility of rare cases of full negation to Health damage), and B) Only be replenished via resting. Obviously they're not finished ironing out all the design details, so that isn't to say that there won't be some other means of replenishing your Health, but, what they've said so far strongly suggests that you will never be relying on the convenience of healing spells (in or out of combat) to replenish your health. There might be very rare health potions or something similar, but the intent of the design seems to be to make sure that you don't go throwing caution to the wind in combat (without the consequences of wasting all your actual Health), while still eliminating the chore of healing everyone back up to full (Stamina in this case) after every battle, because you're going to cast however many healing spells you need to, and spend money on mana potions in order to do make sure those spells are available, or buy however many health potions you need to always enough on hand to do it. The static health bar basically takes the place of your limited health potion stock in other games, as your Stamina will only automatically replenish after a battle if you still have Health. And since the Health bar is so large (relative to the damage taken in a single combat encounter) so as to limit the total amount of damage you can actually absorb before dying (between rest "checkpoints"), your Stamina pool represents the smaller, more-realistic limitation on how much damage you should be able to take within a very short timeframe in the midst of battle before you "die" for the remainder of that combat encounter. We will most likely be able to heal Stamina in combat, though the specifics haven't really been announced yet. Nor have they said whether or not we'll be able to "revive" characters from a 0-Stamina "dead" state before combat ends, or if they're just always out for the remainder of combat once they hit 0. But, it's a rather intelligently designed system so far, and we don't even have all the details yet. So, it's naturally a bit childish and silly for people to go running about shouting "Oh great, they just dumbed down healing!" Especially since healing, as we know it (even though the stuff being healed is called "Stamina," it functions almost the exact same way as typical RPG health pools) seems like it's going to still be in the game and allow for strategic death-prevention in combat. The only difference, really, is that your Health determines how long you can burn through combat sessions before having to rest, instead of a limited number of health potions and mana determining when you'd need to head back to town for more potions. Personally, I'm not going to miss the act of heading to a merchant and spending money every time I need to stockpile some more potential healing instead of simply making camp at a campsite (which, even if you have to backtrack to, is extremely likely to be closer and less costly than traveling to the nearest town and making purchases when you don't otherwise need anything from town.)

So what you're saying is... respawns?

...Then why aren't they in Grand Theft Auto?

What makes collecting unique items fine, but collecting non-unique items (such as wood) not-fine? Also, for that matter, how is collecting amounts of anything for crafting at all different from collecting amounts of gold for the purchase of new items? If collecting things, itself, is troublesome, then shouldn't we do away with loot all together?

No one's saying "make it exactly like the pipboy, without considering functional improvements to the logistics of the interface." And I totally get you on the discrepancies like "Why am I accessing this thing on my arm to change my clothes?". But, that's something that's just never going to be explained, anyway (because the need for the interface exists only outside the game world, and not inside). BUT, if you have to choose between some amount of affinity for the game world lore and absolutely none at all, I'd go with the "some amount" option. It's just a nice touch, but not a necessary one.

I honestly missed the point at which using sarcasm to illustrate a point got the name "straw man." That's not sarcasm, btw. I really did miss it, heh. I just had to look up the meaning of "straw man." 8P Anywho... Okay, without using sarcasm (you didn't post snidely, and therefore don't deserve a snide response), if you're suggesting that the proposed P:E system is "magic" and "unrealistic" nonsense because you can throw caution to the wind and be fully healed seconds after each battle, then you seem to be ignoring the fact that we have 2 "health" resources: Actual Health, and Stamina. Stamina regenerates (because it only represents your immediate ability to consciously function in combat, becoming useless upon depleting it even though you still possess Health and are not dead). Health does not. Therefore, if you throw caution to the wind, then "caution" might as well be "health," because you'll die. I'm not about to claim that healing in all other RPGs is pointless and stupid and clearly preposterous. But the opposite notion, that it is INTEGRAL to the strategic depth of combat, and that any attempt to remove it (no matter what the alternative) is so very obviously the most terrible decision in the universe, is equally as silly of a claim. Especially considering the failure to address the impact of Health in any way whatsoever.

Nope... it was equally horrible. 8P. It's like the interface logistics were the last thing on the development list, and they got TO that step, then just said "Sorry, we're out of time. Just release it like it is." Haha Annnywho... To solve the "Wait, we're carrying a mystical stone around that we look at like a pipboy?" discrepancy, what if your accessing your "character sheet/menu" just involved a sort of meditative communion with your soul? Not that the inventory/character-development UI needs a super precise explanation, but it would at least fit into the lore better than a physical object like the pipboy. It would be somewhat similar to how Skyrim basically inferred the effects of destiny by the view panning up to the constellations when you went into your level-up menu. Somewhat...

There's likely to be many features in the game that not everyone will utilize. If crafting unique items is available, then I'd like to see how far I can go with it. If players aren't too bothered by crafting, they don't have to do it. Yeah, but I am bothered by the idea. I find it silly. An adventurer being able to recognize and hack out enough ore in a few minutes... and then being able to smelt it into ingots. You know, that takes either a blast furnace, or - for lower quality results - a bloomery. In both cases a lengthy process that requires a lot of equipment. And then the adventurer is also a weapons-smith and an armourer who is able to produce legendary equipment. Sorry. I know it's a fantasy role playing game, but that just takes to much suspension of disbelief. I pray they leave out crafting. They probably won't, though. It's not like it's a choice between absolutely no crafting and the crafting of legendary equipment. I will say this, though... There's an actual forge (a nice, simple one, not a space forge with lazers and electronic blowtorches and such) pretty close to where I work, and a friend of mine went there to make some armor pieces and a helmet for his SCA stuff (Society for Contemporary Anachronism, I think?). The guy runs that forge for a living, and he let my friend basically make his helmet for a minimal fee plus the cost of materials (probably a couple-hundred dollars less than he would've charged to make the helmet FOR my friend.) He taught him some basics, and my friend made a pretty nice helmet. It isn't masterwork, but if you saw it in a museum, you'd believe it was really a helmet that belonged to some non-noble soldier in days of old. It's perfectly functional. And that was his first time ever using a forge, and he made that helmet in about a week (because of his work schedule and whatnot. A couple hours each night.) So, you might be surprised to learn that it doesn't take 17 years to be able to properly form metal into armor and weapons. Besides, your main character and all your companions aren't 13-years-old. I'm sure they didn't just learn to walk, then start "adventuring," not learning any skills whatsoever other than swords and magic and sneakiness and looting. Hell, Rangers as a class typically know as much about plants and herbs and wounds/afflictions with regard to survival as a hospital nurse today knows about drugs and wounds and medical conditions. Modern day people study martial arts until they're blackbelts, AND still have 5 other hobbies AND a full-time job AND a family. I think brains are capable of more than you think.

^ You're right... they should have a system in which you have to not only constantly cast healing spells to make it through battles (while at the same time avoiding the appropriate amount of damage, or you'll die anyway because your HP-pool-extending capability won't be sufficient), but you have to target the body part that was damaged. This way, we'll have maximum strategy. If your Warrior's right arm took a blow, your Cleric would need to cast "Heal Right Arm." Not to mention that the "auto-regenerating" health bar robs us of the ultra-strategic choice of "Do I want my characters' hitpoints to replenish, or don't I?". Not to mention tactical heal timing! I mean, if you heal them BEFORE they've taken damage, your heal is totally ineffective! You have to keep an intense eye on that health bar to notice when the opaque part shrinks, and there's always that annoying distraction of ensuring your party is effectively killing the enemies that gets completely in the way of strategically focusing on when to heal. Maybe if they'd eliminate all that silly focus on how our party is damaging the enemies and how they're damaging our party, or at least make it as simple as possible, we could more effectively focus on how and when to strategically decide which way to make the health bars go. Silly auto-regenerating "health" bar... what, like blood clots itself and flesh just regenerates over open wounds? Pssh. That's a bunch of nonsense. Everyone knows that abstracted physical damage can only be fixed by magic in real life. u_u

*Addendum to the above* Here's an even better question... If it's unfair that the sheer act of fighting doesn't reward you with XP, then is it also unfair that the sheer act of sneaking and/or pickpocketing doesn't reward you with XP (when no other objective is accomplished)? Should we be able to diplomacy our way out of a fight (XP gain), then masterfully pickpocket from every single person we could've fought (XP gain), then elaborately set up traps all over the place, then initiate combat with the people we just talked our way out of fighting, luring them into the traps and killing them? (XP gain for combat kills, XP gain for effective trap-usage)?

True, but the principle remains the same whether or not mutli-classing is in. If it is, then clearly the parameters for the bonuses would be different, but still based on the same principle of non-exclusion.

I believe you damage the target with the implement's attack itself. ^ This. I believe it is meant to extend the implement's attack to the surrounding targets. They were trying to be clear, methinks, that your target would not get hit twice from the same attack. But, in the event that the implement's attack and the Blast attack/effects differ (which it seems is at least possible), it DOES seem as though you will be incapable of affecting a single target with the Blast effect (unless you can ground target, or I'm mistaken.) Seconded. The rules of magical properties of ficticious familiar creatures don't even have any counterpart in reality for basis, so it's not as if they have a reason to say "Nooo, no, a magical bat would TOTALLY give a vision bonus, not a mana bonus, u_u... you're gonna want the cat for that. Everyone KNOWS cats are inherently mana-rich." At that point, the options are even all there already, they're just arbitrarily tethered to the mechanic choices as well. It would be like giving all the male character models the appearance of wearing chainmail, and all the female character models the appearance of wearing leather.

Set them a-PARRRT! And YOU'RRRE tooo BLAME!!! YOU GIIIIVE SKELETONS-AND-ZOHHH-ohhhmm-bies... a GOOO-ood name!!! *drums and guitars*

That's totally ridiculous! If they were levers, then they'd be activating traps and giant stone doors (the mechanical physics of which are a mystery) left and right while you were killing enemies, and enemies would have to be switches! Everyone knows levers only operate traps, doors, and switches, u_u... Gyah...

The background over race approach for most of the bonuses does make a lot more sense, but it might be good to still have some of the options based on race. Maybe each race has 3-4 different backgrounds, with some overlap between them. For example, all races might be able to choose "Soldier" as their background, but they might still get slightly different bonuses because of the specifics of soldier life within the given culture and the physiological factors that affect that race's development of specific skills. Just, if any race is going to get a bonus to a class aspect at all, such as magic, I'd like to see each race get a bonus to a different facet of magic. Then, the background thing makes sense, because if you grew up a soldier, and you're a Warrior now, why on earth would you have a greater number of spells per day? That would just be moot, within the realm of the game's mechanics, as it affects nothing either positively OR negatively. So, I would think it would be better for some racial difference to apply to an Aumaua who physically worked in the fields and joined an army and studied the sword/axe/flail since childhood than one who studied magic since childhood. That's partially a logistical dilemma, though. Even though more spells per level might be a potential bonus for a character of that race, it just happens to not apply because of class/background and, therefore, doesn't really need to be shown to players who select a different class/background. *shrug*

I definitely think the source of their animation should be much more pertinent. Maybe a Priest could have the exclusive ability to consecrate remains so that they are shielded from the touch of necromancy. This way, you'd have the option of nulling the threat of the remains (so the source could never re-animate them again), OR find/kill the source so that there's nothing TO re-animate anything. Also, if you kill the necromancer (or disable the necromantic artifact, or whatever force is neromanticizing things), all the undead "powered" by it, so to speak, should be rendered inert. This would make them a much more interesting foe, mechanically, than "Oh, look, things happen to be undead that are attacking me, so ice is useless and I should use blunt weaponry. Other than that, just another day at the office."

But a purpose of a job is to actually provide you with a resource you need. The purpose of a game is entertainment/enjoyment. The game is the sum of all its rules and mechanics, so if progress in the game requires the controlling of characters in combat, and you don't like to do that, then you don't like that game. It doesn't make any sense to want a game that combat's a huge part of because of overall design, but then want it to not actually be required. If you go back to any of the old IE games and just take combat out, parts of the game aren't going to make any sense. That's like wanting to build a fire, but not wanting the fire to be hot. The fire IS, by design (i.e. design by physics/nature in this instance) hot. If you want only one factor of fire (the light), then you find something else to provide light. You don't sit here spending your resources trying to burn wood without generating heat. It's silly. If you don't want P:E's design, then you want a different game. You can't simultaneously want P:E (which is only distinguished from any other game by the specifics of its design) AND want it to be some other design. You can WISH it was designed the way you wanted, so you wouldn't still be looking for the game you wanted to play, but you can't say it is in any way obligated to be designed in such a way that you don't 100% enjoy it. That being said, this system actually makes a lot of sense: And while it doesn't make sense in directly simulating realism not to award XP directly for the act of combat, I would have to say that it is plenty reasonable within the context of video games and their understandable abstractions of realistic principles (Like low-HP not causing you to uselessly lie on the ground, dying of internal hemorrhaging instead of still-standing, sword a-swingin'). Combat is still producing XP, just at a different rate. If you get through 3 rooms full of guards (by fighting and killing them), then escape, you're awarded XP for escaping, which you could not have done if it weren't for your combat prowess (if you weren't good enough at combat, you would've died and failed to escape.) Therefore, your actions in combat = XP. Sure, you could ALSO have snuck past all of them, if your party was skilled enough at sneaking, but when is the situation in which you simply aren't going to escape and remain in the same place forever? That would constitute a cease in gameplay progress. You would never actually play the whole game. Therefore, UNLESS you wanted to sneak instead of use combat and built your characters thusly, you would use combat as a tool to both escape (accomplishing game progress) AND obtain XP (which is necessary within the given system for character/party progress). ^ That's quite exactly what easier difficulties are for. They don't make dialogue and character control and sneaking easier. They make combat easier, mainly.

I like it. Ideally, I think if something could be a tool, it should be. I mean, you can pry things with swords, even though they weren't created for prying. You can cut ropes with them, even though you aren't fighting the ropes. The most common implementation of this I can think of in most games is via environmental interactivity. Maybe if you're fighting in the forest, your Wizard can use some Slicey Disc spell to fell a huge tree and strategically block enemy reinforcements from getting to the immediate fight, or delay them at least. Of course, you're referring to non-combat usages. Some examples come to mind. Using stealth in order to eavesdrop and gather information that might then lead to a negotiation dialogue choice rather than to directly loot or kill something, Using actual spells to intimidate someone (or at least having a scripted dialogue sequence have the option to do so based upon whether or not you've got a caster with that specific spell or spell type), or maybe you'd need a Wizard to create the proper fire needed for a master smith to properly forge a legendary-level item, etc. I definitely like to see even combat-heavy abilities be useful beyond simply directly slaying targets.

You make an excellent point, and a different handling of the stats and their affects on classes is something I'd love to see in P:E. It's come up in a lot of threads. However, he did say "-4 to the primary spellcaster stat," so he had that base covered. And most of our examples have been within the context of already-defined stat systems from previous games, rather than trying to assume whatever specific stat system P:E will use. its been done ... I SAID NO ONE! ... I kid, haha. I'm actually bad about doing things like that sometimes, just for funsies. I typically don't do entire playthroughs like that or anything, though. Heh.

*Concision edit* Quite the contrary. Logic dictates what is wrong. If you design a program intended to produce the correct mathematical answer to the problem "2+2=", and it produces 4, then it is right. Anything else would be wrong. However, if you design a program to produce the number that is 1 more than the answer to "2+2=", then "4" as a result would be wrong. i.e., right and wrong are determined by contextual factors. If there was no wrong way to play a game, then literally any action you took would be a correct way to play the game. Eating a sandwich with your computer not even powered on would be a correct way to play the game, just because you decided it was. Either something dictates what's correct and what isn't, or nothing does. You can't have both or neither.

Helm... the thing you're still arbitrarily assuming is that, for some reason, since there's no better reward for combat than their is for non-combat (in certain, occasional situations), that non-combat is somehow automatically better than combat. But, look at it like this. You're level 20, and you've gotten 50 skill points so far. To keep it simple, you've either spent them on Swordsmanship, or Sneakery. If you spent the 50 skill points on Sneakery, and you are in a cave filled with orcs, and you need to collect the 5 pieces of the Magical Thingy, then you would probably want to use your Rank 50 Sneakery to bypass all the orcs and acquire the pieces. You most likely spent 50 points in Sneakery and 0 in Swordsmanship because you aren't fond of combat (regardless of game design). It's a preference. Therefore, you succeed and get your objective reward for that. And you potentially miss out on valuable loot (the key word being "potentially." See "sidenote" below...) Okay, other possibility (again, just opposite ends of the spectrum, to keep the example to 2 simple parts, but things could obviously range anywhere in between)... You spent 50 points in swordsmanship and none in Sneakery. You get to the exact same cave, with the exact same objective/reason for even being at the cave. Well, with your Rank 1 Sneakery, you're probably not going to get past the orcs without a fight, and you, again, most likely knew this when you built your character that way, because you simply enjoy the combat (again, regardless of the game design. It has both Sneakery and Combat, and you prefer the combat build because it's more fun to you than Sneakery.) So, you kill all the orcs, and you STILL fetch all 5 pieces of the Magical Thingy for your quest reward. And you potentially gain some loot from the orcs that you couldn't get off of them via Sneaking past them. Sidenote: I didn't see anywhere that you weren't going to get loot from combat ever. I think Josh specifically cited a situation in which, if you had enough combat prowess and felt it would be not-impossible for your party, you could opt to take on some scary group of foes, and you'd get the super spiffy weapon the leader of the group was blatantly wielding. The point? There's absolutely no need to assume you'll never get loot as a reward for combat, based on what's been said officially so far. So, how is the above example unfair to the combat people? Is the above example impossible? If it is, I really want to know. I'm not omniscient. But, I'm fully capable of evaluating things pretty well, and I have yet to discover any problems with it. So, if there's a flaw in my reasoning, please let me know. But please do it reasonably, and don't just re-emphasize an assumption. Explain how Sneakery is always better than combat (especially considering the loot thing. I really don't know how it got decided that combat never awarded loot.) Also, on the note of loot rewards, non-combat options like Sneakery and Lockpicking and Diplomacy might often produce exclusive rewards (i.e. "Thank you for not harming those plague victims, even though they were hostile and out of their minds with fever. Here, take this nice thing that I wouldn't have desired to reward you with if you had ignored my pleas and slaughtered them because it was easier," or "You know what, since I wasn't slain by you and we were able to work this out, I'm going to order you something nice from my merchant connections, which you wouldn't have gotten if I were dead, because YOU don't have my merchant connections.") This directly counter-balances the fact that people who are built more around combat choices at the forks in the road will gain some nice items from the corpses of their foes (that the non-combat people wouldn't have gotten because it's hard to loot a Magic Sword from a live person and remain undetected.) In other words, various choices will be available to allow you to get past the same obstacles, but that doesn't mean nothing different happens. You end up at the same point, but not with the same switches and factors in the same positions. And you're not going to automatically be a master of both non-combat AND combat, so your non-combat is only going to be amazing at the cost of your combat skills, and vice versa. So, again I ask, if you consider all that, how is the system inherently unfair to people who like combat?

Power is just one factor within the borders of "capability." I'm perfectly with you on the "We don't need to gain 3,000 dmg and 10,000 HP to be better" notion. But, going with what ReyVagaBond said about his martial arts instructor, people who train (and get first-hand experience from fighting) THAT much with their weapon/style are going to become profoundly better at both effectively attacking AND decreasing the effectiveness of others' attacks. That's not even taking into account that some people have a talent for it (the way their brain works just processes the fast-paced factors within combat better than others and flows from move to move, allowing them to develop their fighting prowess more than twice as quickly as many others.) So, it's not unheard of or ridiculous for a handful of people to take on 3 times their numbers in melee combat. Like you said, though, more than that, and you're starting to push it. Or, if you're surrounded by 18 crossbowmen, you're probably not going to somehow dodge everything. Your party might be able to take them down, but it's gonna be close and difficult. Of course, I don't think, within the level-rating system, that those crossbowmen would be rated THAT much lower than you. If they were a bunch of scared peasants who'd never really used crossbows beyond fending off wolves from their farmland or something, I think you'd make pretty easy work of them (they'd be much more prone to miss and use tactics that didn't come close to matching your own.) What if you encounter a dragon already in an enclosed space? You aren't necessarily ONLY going to be mindlessly charging a flying dragon. Also, you should either be able to take it on, or you shouldn't. At some point, your team of 6 should be able to take on a foe like that. No one said "directly because they do so much damage." Tactics and capability, again, are not mutually exclusive. You should be powerful enough to be able to damage the dragon, if you use the right tactics, not powerful enough to easily kill it. You're very right that dragons have become pansified in a great many other RPGs. They should be a very big deal. Also, I know you don't like the whole soul power thing, but all I was getting at with that is that, with soul power, you should be at least as "powerful" and capable as a real-life human in a medieval setting could be, PLUS some amount of power/capability from your soul power. I didn't mean we should be able to throw boulders or single-handedly cleave mountains in twain simply because we have souls. In other words, obviously the extra power from your soul should be intelligently limited in scope. But, if you've got a Wizard who can't do much more than a swordsman can (against the standard of human physiological capabilities with weapons and such), you've again got a bland fantasy, fictional world. You can't just set a really low ceiling and call it a day. It's based on how the rest of the world's designed. The "too much" limitation is set by context, not some absolute number. It's quite relative. I just think that, if they do it right, you might end up with a party with a greater sense of power than you had expected and still quite enjoy the game. Nothing. I only meant there's a bit of a problem with having to only fight small groups of fewer enemies, and always only winning because you have a horde of your own (of allies). I'm not saying that the existence of allies in big fights or smaller groups of foes at a time, anywhere in the game, are inherently bad. Which is again why I stress the importance of design context. The number of enemies we should be able to take on at once to not feel like there's a power imbalance can change depending on other factors, so it's one of those limits that we can't really make a very accurate educated guess about until we have more solid info about other aspects of the game. I acknowledge that you are concerned about unnecessary character power, but I urge you to keep an open mind until we know more, and to just discuss possibilities with hypothetical situations, rather than to decide what one tiny detail would proabably ruin the game for you and what wouldn't.

Hells yeah! Tali was my favorite in the Mass Effect trilogy, despite the fact that Miranda was practically wearing body paint. Of course, she was genetically bread to be perfect, and was a biotic (so she cared more about mobility than armor). But, yeah, Tali was fully covered all the time. She wore a helmet 24/7, for heaven's sake. But she used shotguns, AND tech abilities, and her culture was interesting, etc. Alas, poorly-designed games with sexualized females might offer nothing more than the aesthetics of sexualized females, and maybe a bunch of immature kiddies (for whom the ratings system was specifically created, yet you still see parents buying their 10-year-olds Grand Theft Auto 4 and DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball) can't tell the difference between the usefulness of characters and their character models' clothing, but the argument that sexism can be blamed on the existence of female sexualized portrayals in video games is like saying serial killing can be blamed on the existence and availability of people. It's... it's kind of like the arbitrary racism card. Some person who happens to be of a certain race rams their car into someone else's car, and you say "Man... what an idiot... should've been paying attention..." And then someone chimes in with "YOU JUST THINK THAT PERSON'S AN IDIOT BECAUSE THEY'RE (insert ethnicity here)!". I'm thinking, "Erm... I think they're an idiot because they were texting AND spreading jam on a bagel while trying to make a u-turn and rammed into that other car... you're the one who just connected their ethnicity to their competency." You think "This female character happens to have an awesome backstory and very tactically-useful combat abilities. You're the one who suggested she was just eye-candy when you called me sexist for liking her." Annnnnywho. Off-topic again. Sorry.