Lephys

I don't understand... if the inventory model is a paperdoll, then won't we need to be careful about checking our inventory while it's raining in the game world, or while our characters are swimming, so the inventory model doesn't disintegrate? Seriously though, thanks for the update, AND for the model-use clarification, ^_^

^ Yeah, I mean, healing isn't just plain bad. But, when it factors too heavily into combat (i.e. you're dependant upon at least one dedicated healer just to match up properly against the game's hostiles), it becomes a bit moot compared to a system that uses it more strategically. There are more interesting ways to manage health (or, in this case, stamina) than to basically deal negative damage in the middle of combat. It's sort of like saying "Each party member has 100 hit points, but you're going to need to convert THIS person's mana into negative damage constantly throughout the fight so that they can last through the 500 damage they'll take because we've balanced the game for healing, or you lose." It's more of a speed bump to the flow of combat. If you just take a game that's already built around that mechanic and simply remove the dedicated healing, then yes, the game loses a bit of depth. BUT, if you replace the system all together, you gain the time no longer spent reversing damage AND the tactical variance that comes from combat built around a different, less attrition-based health management system. And I understand the concerns about his comments about the speech skills, but I think they're misunderstood to a degree. It might not seem to make much sense without a lot of details, but I think he wants dialogue choices and effects to be more varied and meaningful than with many traditional implementations of a single Speech skill, in which your Speech skill simply accomplishes things for you. It's almost like a Jedi mind trick. "You do not want to fight us anymore." "... Man, let's get out of here. I've spent my whole life as a Bandit, but this guy makes a good point about Banditry being bad." So, to add variety and depth to that system, it makes more sense to split the skill check into its various affecting factors (such as attributes, and the effects of various choices in a reputation system, etc.) rather than to simply keep the single Speech skill and have it provide 7 different dialogue options when it's at 70 instead of 2. Really, how you say something is only a small part of how you affect people. So, there may even be a Speech skill, still, in P:E, or maybe a few skills that make it up. They just won't be deciding all the outcomes of dialogue by themselves if they are in the game.

You make a very good example. Obviously certain people are still gonna save-scum, purely because they want to circumvent the ambushes. But, the point isn't to make sure no one can do so, and the only solution would be to remove any chance whatsoever from the game (including evasion, card/dice gambling, etc.), even when it would provide some manner of benefit and enhance the experience for the players not trying to circumvent it. That's exactly why I don't really see why those who are pro-save-scum are worried about the health/stamina/resting system. If you don't want to deal with the span between safe spots, you can still save anywhere you want and retry fights with enemy location/group-makeup data to ensure that you keep plenty of health to make it to the next safe spot. Acknowledging that some people are always going to save-scum doesn't necessarily mean catering to the save-scummers. If the sheer possibility of having to return to a previous rest spot to regain health is providing a valid reason to save-scum, then the existence of health in any form (and thus the possibility of dying and having to re-fight the battle) is as well.

^The fact that you didn't even address your own paradox is what saddens me the most. You're more comfortable pretending that bit you just quoted me on merely says "... I like firewood... *picks nose*..." Yeah. Actual discussion on a discussion forum IS pretty important to me. Obviously we don't share that. I don't know what you're giving me and anyone else in this (and other) discussion(s) other than a complete lack of respect and an absolute disregard for reason or consistency, but... thanks? o_O Yeah. I guess it's sort of assumed that, even though the shield/barrier is magically generated, it's still affecting the laws of physics, and its source can only be SO strong (or the Mage's power levels would be over 9,000, and the world would explode when they sneezed), so the extremely concentrated force of a gunshot at close range can pierce them (as even a ridiculously buff Barbarian cannot generate such force with a weapon swing). And magi-tech would be an interesting development in the lore. I agree that they'll probably need to play around with your suggestions (some of them have come up already in some fashion) a bit and find the right balance, but the system itself has plenty of merit. I think combat will definitely feel more... tactile? YES! The possibilities are awesome, aren't they? 8D. None of that "You fidgeted behind my counter a few millimeters... THE WORLD IS NOW YOUR ARCHNEMESIS!" Haha. You definitely see a lot more short-term effects (Yay! You resolved this conflict in a different manner) that don't have much bearing on the rest of the game than you do long-term effects in a lot of other games. I'm confident the dialogue will be handled in quite a more interesting fashion with P:E.

So, what you meant was, "Adding another resource to this system for the sole purpose of having to manage it is the definition of adding complexity for no reason... Unless it's healing. If it's healing, it adds depth, for a very good reason. But if it's anything else, it only adds complexity instead of depth, and for absolutely no reason, because I said so." So far, you haven't pointed out any difference other than the fact that you believe the added complexity of healing also adds depth. And what is depth? Well... Oh, so added complexity doesn't automatically equal more depth? But wait, I'm confused... I see... so the complexity added by the healer is automatically depth. Do you see why your arguments seem to float upon the raft of Opinion? I'm failing to see consistency here. It isn't mathematically any different, but how you arrive at the mathematical result and what you get to do along the way is different.That's literally what I said about dedicated healing versus the Sawyer-system several posts up. In multiple paragraphs of extremely detailed explanation. No matter how it's done, so long as your health (or stamina, in this case) is finite and can be lost and gained in some established fashion, you are required to manage your health. As long as you are actively controlling your party, and your actions affect the amount of damage they take and the rate at which they take it, you've got "active health management." You brought up the regenerating health in shooters, supposedly just to point out the flaws of regenerating health, but then, when it was pointed out that the specifics of shooter gameplay weren't relevant to stamina regen in P:E -- an RPG and not a shooter -- you said: Once again, convenient that something can be applicable when you want it to be, but then it magically isn't when you decide you don't want it to be. I don't understand why you can't simply explain to people, using their own examples and context, the flaws in what they've said.

Thank you for plucking an observable fact about save-scumming completely out of the rest of the conversation, then "giving me" that fact -- as if I hand-crafted it in my fact workshop rather than simply observed it -- whilst simultaneously pointing out just how blatantly true it is, as if I suggested my noticing it was a significant accomplishment. That was very kind of you. And yes, Karkarov did, indeed, say it very well. Which is why you obviously don't implement limitations completely at random and fail to test and balance them. You make sure they aren't overly frustrating. However, a challenge, by definition, is an action performed within AT LEAST ONE limitation. Otherwise existing would be a challenge. And limitations, by their very nature, prevent you from doing certain things. Thus far, pretty much any argument I've seen from you has been "This is a limitation, and therefore is bad because it produces the negative effect of not-letting you do something." Obviously, all challenges aren't stupid and bad. So, there MUST be another reason than "because it limits the player" for something to be a bad idea. This isn't me trying to beat you at forums. I couldn't care less whose post is better. This is myself and various others trying to discuss the pros and cons of a proposed system and you constantly jumping in with "I don't like the cons, and therefore the pros don't exist." You're not even reasonably suggesting that the cons outweigh the pros. You're simply telling everyone that every single crumb of reason they're pointing out is, in fact, complete nonsense, and that you're correct because of your opinion. Disagreement isn't detrimental to a discussion. In some ways, it's actually an important part of discussion. But, disregarding everything that doesn't support your opinion doesn't contribute anything to the discussion.

^ I like your transfer idea. Which made me think of another possibility; What if you could spend mana to restore stamina (or give a short-term burst to the regeneration rate) like normal, but after any heal like that you suffered stamina fatigue? i.e. You hit your warrior with a "heal," and for the next 8 seconds his stamina regen goes from 2/sec to 10/sec. But, after that, he doesn't regen any Stamina for... I dunno, 10 seconds (arbitrary example number). I think the Barbarian description so far talks about how they have to manage their level of aggression so as not to suffer a form of fatigue. Similar idea as a cost to stamina heals. *shrug*

Would having to deal with darkness really be such... *applies shades to face*... torch-ture? . I had to... My alignment is LOLful Good. Vote for torches! (This message was brought to you by the Foundation for the Advocacy of Dynamic Lighting And Torches [FADLAT])

@Dream, regarding health management, I think I'll let you do all the talking: I'm just the messenger... u_u

I think save-scumming related to resting, health, and stamina. Then we got a little too focused on it. Sorry about that. If someone takes an exit onto a frontage road in a discussion, I tend to follow them and ride parallel until we eventually get back onto the highway. 8P That master's in Fictitious Existence was TOTALLY worth all those loans! 8D My point, Dream, was only that people who decide to steal money from banks THINK it should be easier to get to, or think they have the right to get it, just because they're capable of doing so. The morality of it or the number of people it affects is not even relevant. What's relevant is that the only way to "not allow" people to steal money from banks is to prevent anyone from accessing the money in banks. But, since people need to be able to use banks to deposit and withdraw money (or banks exist for no reason), they have to allow people who want to go through the trouble of avoiding the "time sink" that is actually earning their money to be capable of getting to the money and stealing it. Much in the same way that the ONLY reason anyone can even save scum is that the developers of games allow you to save anywhere, PURELY because not being able to save anywhere sucks worse for many other reasons. No developer sat down and thought "You know... these saving checkpoints REALLY cause problems for people who view entire game systems as time sinks and therefore wish to circumvent them... they keep having to play through 30 minutes at a time to bypass the entire point of that dice game which they hate the very idea of but still want the reward from... we should do something about that to make it easier." Annnnd that relates to health and resting because the proposed resting limitations are there for a reason, because if you're against limitation in general (namely because it allows the possibility of failure and longer durations/greater numbers of attempts for completing tasks), you're essentially against challenge. Save-scumming is taking the easier way purely because it's easier. If people wanna do it, that's fine. I'm not disputing the fact that lots of people want to do that and consider lots of things to simply be slowing them down from getting their reward or desired outcome. But it's one thing to accept that and call it what it is, and another thing entirely to blame the very idea of resting limitations and the availability of anytime-saving as the purely detrimental cause of the allegedly mandatory status of save scumming. I'm not about to try to rationally explain why I hate spiders, or why I like the color blue more than other colors. I'm going to pick blue things and stay away from spiders, but there's no reason for me to try to debate whether or not other people should, or say that something is logically causing me to do so.

Maybe because they've yet to hear a fantastic enough story from an enchanting, soul-powered gleeman.

So, conclusion: Regenerating mathematical representation of mortality: inherently bad and provides nothing but tactical black hole. The ability to reverse damage: Literally the thriving home planet to the people known as Tactics. Obviously breaking down the effects of both the traditional, healing-dependent system and Sawyer's proposed system was completely unreasonable and provided absolutely no valid points.

They should have Chanting Autotune, so EVERYone can be a master Chanter. "Awww man... the ambient souls are responding to that Warrior's tales, too, and he's doesn't even actually know any ancient words!"

I didn't hear any objection to "that literally defeats the purpose of the minigame" there, so I'll assume my point was taken. Optional or not, if something's intended to be random, something's intended to be random. You may not like that you only win money SOMEtimes in the dice game, but you want to play the dice game. No, you just want guaranteed money. Why? Because you don't like the item system that limits what equipment you can by based on the amount of money you have? So, then you're going to complain because you have to reload 30 times just to accumulate enough illigimate gold to buy some awesome equipment? The developers were kind enough to allow you save anywhere, even though they knew you could do stuff like that with it. And your response is "people wouldn't save scum if they didn't have to"? That's like saying "People wouldn't commit armed robbery if banks didn't lock their vaults and try to call the police whenever they came in to take all the money." I think the fact that people actually play all the way through games without doing it (and that people go through life without robbing banks) is proof enough that they didn't "have to." The existence of randomization doesn't mandate that people play the game despite hating any and all unfavored outcomes, and therefore does not mandate save scumming. The misuse of randomization is the only case where your point applies. If the game let you create a character, then supplied you with a randomly-generated character, despite whatever you picked at character creation, then yes... you would essentially have to keep creating characters until you got the one you wanted. The difference is that you're SUPPOSED to be able to customize your character. You're not supposed to be able to customize your dice game outcome, or the challenges presented to you in an RPG story. Back to the topic at hand, I'd like to point out that, as far as I know, Josh has yet to say what our ratio of health to stamina will be able to be. He only stated that the damage taken will apply to both in a ratio of 1:4 (at the current phase in design). So, that's something else to consider in this discussion. Perhaps that's how he meant it, but he has yet to specify.

I love that. Managing your health somehow gets the adverb "actively," as opposed to the complete passiveness of combat positioning and strategic efforts to avoid damage. But, that's okay, 'cause you've got an infinite supply of healing! That is, until you fail avoid taking more than 3 consecutive bullets in the span of about 15 seconds. In which case you die. But, it's not like that fact encourages you to use good tactics or anything. Being able to take 2 bullets, then have your friend (who could've simply shot your opponent before you took the third bullet) restore 2 bullets worth of health to you before that third bullet hits, allowing YOU to successfully kill your opponent without a care in the world about trying to get NOT-shot... that's definitely mandating the crap out of some tactics. Splendid! Yes! Since two systems mathematically achieve the same end, it logically follows that all aspects of variance are pointless. That's what one system being compared to one other system proves. I'm really glad you caught that. I was worried for a minute, to be honest. Let's add in some more tactical depth, shall we? Let's have a THIRD type of person (other than healer and non-healer) called the Manacaller, who gets a bunch of abilities that actively restore mana. That way, we have so much more tactical depth, because limiting just ONE pool of points that is expected to be "actively" restored constantly throughout a conflict scenario isn't redundant enough. Or, better yet, we could implement a system of UN-healing for yet another layer of depth. Characters could cast spells that caused damage equal to the amount of healing enemies received, thereby allowing for the tactical management of damage-undoing-undoing versus damage output. Combine that with the mana healing (which would, I suppose, cost health), and you've got a veritable smorgasbord of tactics! Or, I guess we could just add in a tug-of-war minigame.

True 'dat. It might actually be prudent to have those be set as behaviors, and have them initiate along with combat. It's somewhat like initating a stance, or the Human Torch from the Fantastic 4 going all "FLAME ON!", or the Hulk hulking out. That would really depend on how all the other combat factor specifics work, though. In some ways, it's better to have to pick your targets and which buffs to use each time, rather than having them be pre-pickable. That's kind of the idea, really. If combat is dynamic enough, you don't really automatically know that your battle with these 5 goblins is going to go exactly like your battle with those 5 goblins earlier in the cave. I think that if the buff ability allows for the quite-good strategy of putting it on the same person multiple times in a row, then that tells you that either the buff is too generic and math-boosty and could be improved with a utilitarian purpose, or the combat could easily be more dynamic.

So wait... what you're suggesting that having to remove yourself from the direct line of incoming damage -- under whatever conditions, by whatever means necessary -- in order to heal (as in a shooter) is not inherently more tactical than simply standing in the plain line of fire all day long because you can use health packs or some healing-class character to reverse the damage faster than your opponent can dish it out? I'm not seeing it. If you can point out how, I'd be happy to know. Seriously. To say a class fills the role of "healer" does not mean they do nothing else. but, if other classes cannot do what they do (heal on a constant basis in the midst of combat) -- no matter what else all the classes can do -- then you've got a role restriction. Which is exactly what you have with healers. The fact remains that healing someone until you kill the thing that's harming them is mathematically the EXACT same thing as helping kill that thing more quickly. Pretend you have a character with 10HP who deals 1 damage every second, and he's engaging a goblin with 13HP who also deals 1 damage every second. If you were going to have 1 extra character to help that first guy out, then why should he stand around healing the main character for 1HP every 3 seconds when he could've just run in and helped kill the goblin? How is letting the damage occur (in a system that is man-made, entirely out of mathematical code, mind you) and action-reversing it, mid-combat, in any way better than actually combatting the foe in a way such that you slay it before it slays you? What if competitive sports had a player on each team whose job it was to UN-score points for the opposing team? Are competitive sports less tactical without that? Combat-healing is something almost entirely (if not entirely) imagined up for early RPGs with hit-point systems. When's the last time you read an awesome fantasy novel in which a healer sustained someone in combat whilst they fought? Sure, sometimes someone gets hurled across the room, into a column, and the "healer" might make sure their bleeding stops or something so that they don't die before they can be gotten out of harms way (after the fight's done and the danger's passed) and to a place to be fully healed. I don't think it would be a very exciting tale if someone kept healing every single cut that another character took. "He fought valiantly against the evil lord Melavath, who kept wounding him and wounding him. But, lo, the healer Azreiar did keep undoing that which the evil lord had done, immediately after each blow had been dealt. But would her mana pool last longer than the dark lord's health pool? The tension was menacingly thick!" The only tactical consideration that provides is "Take out the healer first!" for the attackers, and "protect the healer or we're all dead!" for the defenders. That's really about as silly as "Keep the Warrior healed, or we'll lose our damage dealer!" So, "Have our knight run over there to shield block that axe blow" or "Have our healer undo the hit point loss from that axe blow regardless of how we worry about dealing with it!"... which is a more tactical decision, I ask.

It's funny that you mention that, because I was JUST thinking about that about an hour ago while reading some of these posts. I don't remember if 2 did it nor not, but, if I recall correctly, in one of the games (if not both), your passive "buffs" actually weren't active until combat. Maybe you still suffered the mana/stamina cap, though (which, for all practical purposes, would just leave an aesthetic difference.) At the very least, though, that definitely would've solved the "everyone's got a giant, shimmering, refractive bubble around them" problem in NWN2. Haha. Also... not at all a fan of the Chanters just being "the buffers." MAYBE if buffs have utility differences instead of purely having mathematical differences (aka, are done well)... MAYbe... u_u

I expect... CHANTMENT! I'm sorry, but SOMEone had to make that terrible, terrible Dragon Age joke. Seriously, though, I don't see them as being limited to buffs. In fact, I sincerely hope NO class is simply "a buffer." That, of course, is a bit of a different topic... But, I'll just say that, if Skyrim did one valuable thing, it showed how awesome vocal-based abilities can be. From the description we have so far, it sounds like they're kind of... a summoner... of souls in the soulstream, or whatever it's called (I can't recall if it's called anything yet). They don't necessarily summon souls, though, as in "this is the creature/entity you've summoned, and it has now manifested itself and will do battle." Although, they COULD... technically, the souls could do ANYthing. What I'm getting at, though, is that they chant, but not like a bard, really. They sing ancient music to those souls not currently inhabiting bodies, and the souls respond to it. It seems like it sort of... gives them direction. Sort of like creating wind for a group of children with kites, and saying "Hey, look at this awesome wind!". The children will now excitedly go fly their kites. That is how they will respond. So, maybe they have a lot of short-duration, sustained effects, amongst other things? For example, they could chant about city defense and stone materials or something, and the souls/spirits who react would be masons. As long as the Chanter's chanting and keeping that direction going, those souls build an ethereal wall that stops enemies and projectiles from passing through. I don't know exactly how all the mechanics are going to work, and the abilities wouldn't necessarily just be summoned things that real, ordinary people could do in life (like constructing a wall), but I see the potential for a pretty cool class style that we probably wouldn't even think to compare to the bards of previous games. *shrug*

Indeed. Which never really existed until someone decided it was a good idea to oversimplify everything down to classifications based on a handful of mathematical character attributes. 8P. But I digress... That is a perfectly valid point. However, it does not change the fact that healing is a very, very simple mechanic to base an entire class role around. I'm not saying it's stupid and completely pointless. It's obviously a functional mechanic, and has been around for a while. But, I believe it's a bit outdated, and there are more interesting ways of handling things than to make someone be a walking damage un-doer. Despite your point about GW2's differences from a single-player party-based game, the reason for updating healing mechanics are the same. Time spent not-taking damage (including time spent preventing the enemy from even attacking, or killing the enemy quickly enough so that damage is no longer a concern while you heal back up) is far more exciting combat time than time spent undoing damage taken. At the very least, if a character/class is going to have to spend their time casting a spell, better that it's a sustained barrier that PREVENTS incoming damage to the party than a damage-undoing middle-man. Methods of preventing/avoiding damage would never have made their way into games in the first place if healing was so much more interesting. There'd be no evasion, or barriers, or armor, or resistances, or stuns, etc. Combat would just be a math battle. "This enemy deals 57 damage every 2.1 seconds, and I have a maximum health pool of 412HP. If my healer can heal for 100HP every 12 seconds... *whips out calculator*... yep, the overall ratio of my damage output to his, factoring in the healing, is good. I can win this." That's pretty much what it got down to in MMOs, even though single-player games are typically a bit more interesting than that. But, it isn't at all necessary to have an entire class role that is healing. The same exact effect can be achieved through more interesting means. I think that's a valid basis for the proposed system.

I'll just put here what I said in another thread, although this is only the buff-related portion:

On Speech: The "Speech" skill that just assumes your character's gonna say "the right thing" to get the "best outcome" is merely an oversimplification of Speech. If you want it, then cool. If you don't, then cool. But it is much simpler than most of the other systems in the game (imagine a "Combat" skill that, if high enough, allows you to instantly defeat your foe, with some cool animation being the equivalent of whatever-it-is-your-character-happens-to-say in the Speech skill realm.) Character skill/progression is an integral part of the RPG experience, but it is only that. A part. Obviously that part serves no purpose if the player isn't given the option of how to use those character skills as tools. It would be Character Progressor 5: Advancement Afoot! The goal would simply be to allocate points in skills efficiently enough for your characters to play through a mildly-interactive story. There's no reason those playing the game shouldn't get a system with depth that requires actual effort in dialogue to affect certain outcomes, with character stats/skills as a support, simply because some want their dialogue handled completely by their character. I'm not trying to be snide here. That's the argument, boiled down, because the difference between the two is the effort involved. On the Staminealth system: I'd just like to point out (because I don't think it has been yet, and if it has, I apologize) that there's been no mention of the limititations on your characters health or stamina pools. Josh only mentioned that the damage ratio they're starting with (based on what data they have so far, obviously, and will most likely test and tweak) will be 1-health:4-stamina. So, all we know is that, when you lose 4 stamina, you lose 1 health. How do we know that we won't have 1,000 health and 50 stamina? We don't. And, once again, the baselessness of hard-number examples being used to express concerns rears its ugly head. Seriously, people, they're still very much developing the game. It's not as if they're almost done. There's absolutely no point in worrying so much over a system that is perfectly balanceable. We might as well express our concerns about the class system because all the classes could have the exact same skills. That possibility says nothing of a flaw in the class system itself. It would simply be a bad implementation. Nothing inherently makes the proposed system a flawed system. It's all in the balancing, just as it is with any of the game's mechanics.

I get that, and I'm in favor of the possibility of your stamina having to drop a certain point before health is affected. And I understand what you mean about the "when you have low health" situation. But, as far as your ability to die is concerned, that's no different from being injured in a different game, in an area you cannot rest, and having run out of potions. The "health" bar in this system is still basically a limiter on how much of your stamina bar (in this case, about 400%) you can lose and replace before having to go out of your way to be able to do it some more. Again, I do advocate the "health only drops below a certain stamina threshold" system and I think the ability to alter the ratio would be a good addition, as well. Not to mention the fact that the ratio might need to be tweaked as it stands, regardless of whether or not it can be changed in-game by anything the player does. I just don't think the system itself is shattering any worlds here. It's just a different way of getting to that "Agh, I've actually got to go get some more supplies" point, and I'd agree that it does encourage the player to think about what they're doing in combat, instead of simply having everyone "ATTACK, ALL THE THINGS!". I also don't think we're looking at the final system details, here. I'm confident they'll figure it all out before launch.

^ Definitely. It's not too hard, though, to have decently complex mathematical relationships going on between your stats and all other aspects of your character and present it to the player in a quite simple fashion. Also, Pokemon (at least the ealier ones I played) didn't involve building your pokefolk from scratch. It was, instead, like having a boatload of presets. I realize that your point wasn't "Pokemon and cRPGs are the SAME!", heh, but I just wanted to point out that it gets to do things quite differently since the player isn't in charge of allocating all the stats and dealing with the consequences across billions of skill systems.

I was only asking. And, while I will admit that the misuse of RNG systems can require it, the sheer existence of a chance roll doesn't require it. That would be saying that a tavern game of dice REQUIRES you to save-scum. Which is absurd, of course, because the game is quite literally a game of chance.