Lephys

Also, since the game is still in early development and we don't know what all the over-arching game mechanics will be, there are certain things in the list that we can't really decide. Kind of like deciding "There should be a breath meter" as opposed to "You should be able to hold your breath indefinitely" when it turns out that the game won't even allow any characters to travel beneath the surface of water. It's for that reason I believe several of the threads could use more discussion and less decision-making. You know... start with a sketch and work towards the details. We're supposed to be collaborating on figuring out what possibilities there are for Project Eternity, not simply deciding what exactly should be copied and pasted from previous games to make up this game. Not that previous games' systems are NOT possibilities, but the list goes so far beyond that.

I think it'll only mean something pertinent once we know the full details of the class mechanics the developers decide to implement, as everyone's working off of what they think of when they hear the classes' names. It's kinda like betting at this point, heh. It is interesting, though.

^^Then why isn't dialogue stale? It isn't instantaneous. You don't just click on people and get quests. You talk to them, and you engage in the dialogue, and choose which response to make, and what questions to ask. There are many games with dynamic dialogue in them, and it's not stale. To whatever degree you do it, let's say you implement locked and unlocked things, and certain characters can unlock locked things. If they are successful every single time (there's no skill or lock difficulty range, you just either have the skill or you don't), that's about the most boring you could possibly make the lockpicking "system" at that point without it being useless. If you applaud this system, then, frankly, I don't comprehend why you even care whether or not lockpicking is in the game or not, especially in a party-based game. Everyone would just make sure they have a Rogue to not miss out on any stuff. Restriction bypassed. So maybe you put in a skill range, and difficulty on the locks, and an effectiveness check (sometimes you roll a +1 to your skill base, and sometimes you add a +10, for example). Okay, now you're at the slightly-deeper-yet-ultra-repetitive point I was referring to earlier. Whatever the math, you get to a lock that CAN be picked, but your bonus has to land on the maximum number for it to happen. So, you either come back to it (which you sometimes can't do for story reasons) when you have a higher skill, or you sit there and click "pick lock" over and over and over and over and over until you finally get it opened. Annnnd that's about as exciting as that gets, as compared to the always-succeed method, or no lockpicking at all. Okay, now suppose that, instead, there's some sort of mechanic that incorporates player... I won't even say "skill" here; we'll go with "competency" or "effort." Well, if done right, then the difficult lock would simply require some extra care on the player's part to open. Which might take a little bit of time, but would be directly affected by the player's effort, therefore alleviating some of the time wasted by waiting on chance to make the numbers match up. Take the Skyrim lockpicking, PURELY for example on this one point. If you had an easy lock, you could pretty much rotate the pick to a few random spots and shove without really any care as to what you're doing or why, and you're statistically going to snap off no more than a handful of picks before unlocking it. Pretty much takes no more time than the "I need to roll a 3 or higher" approach taking a few clicks of "pick lock" to get the job done. But, if you run into an extremely DIFFICULT lock (i.e. there's a 5% chance I'll automatically pick this lock in a dice roll system), you're going to be either standing there for up to 5 minutes (or until you break all your lockpicks, if they're breakable) clicking and waiting... clicking and waiting. If that's not the definition of a chore in a video game, I don't know what is. Whereas, in the Skyrim system (simply the fact that it's interactive and has depth beyond a boolean dice roll), you could be more careful with a difficult lock, moving the pick little increments at a time and giving a tiny nudge instead of forcing the pick into snapping. Sure, it may take a couple of minutes still, but that isn't any different from the other system. The only difference is that you got to do something about whether or not the lock was picked, rather than simply choosing whether or not it should be ATTEMPTED to be picked. Keep in mind that I have many a problem with Skyrim's system, like the fact that you could pick a master lock at 15 lockpicking skill if you were careful enough. But that doesn't mean that our options are Skyrim's exact system or none at all. So, I still don't have anyone giving me a reason why a dynamic, engaging lockpicking system isn't better than a wait-for-some-math system, or how being able to affect the lockpicking process isn't deeper than rolling dice or insta-picking no matter what. If "it takes too long" is your reason, then you just want instant lockpicking no matter what, because any chance system at all is going to cause relatively difficult locks to take time to pick. So that's not exclusive to the "minigame" approach. Repetitiveness is also not exclusive to the minigame approach, as it is equally as repetitive (and technically less so, since you actually technically deal with a slightly different puzzle every time, as opposed to clicking the exact same "attempt" button over and over) than the non-minigame approach. If you want to make pudding, then you want to put forth SOME amount of effort. Because making pudding inherently requires effort. If you want pudding to appear on the table, then you don't want to MAKE pudding. You just want to acquire pudding. So, if you simply wish for locks to be unlocked, then you don't really want them to be locked in the first place. If you want to unlock them, how can you want it to NOT take any effort? Again, that's VERY much like saying "I want to be able to talk to NPCs, but I don't want to have to read text or listen to words. That just gets so tedious, 'cause you're going to be talking to a lot of NPCs throughout the game." Exact same logic, yet I don't see anyone arguing that conversations should just be based on a skill check. "Oh, you have 18 Charisma? Yep, you completed the quest, and the bandits let the hostages go." "But I don't even know what the quest WAS!" I know my posts keep being super long, and I apologize, but I've shown my work. If I'm wrong, I just want someone to point it out to me, so that I can understand in what way I'm wrong. Not be told "You're totally wrong" and that's it.

I think that's kind of a case of getting a few factors wrong. You can actually have a pretty good system that's like 15% defective, and the rest of it won't work in the game. Think of it like a new vehicle design, but with square wheels. There's nothing wrong with the rest of the vehicle, or the engine, or transmission to the wheels. It could all be amazingly aerodynamic, economical to manufacture, and perfectly capable. But it's still not going to go anywhere very well at all with those wheels. This is something that pertains to a lot of threads in this sub-forum. It needs to fit, but it can't be mandatory. BUT, it has to be significant on its own. Whatever your crafting system, if it's not unique (if you can pretty much get all the craftables from other means, or if all the craftables are relatively useless or arbitrary compared to the otherwise-obtained items), it's not going to work well. Or, at the very least, it's a waste of development resources. I think a lot of games run into that. They kinda mess it up on both counts. They make their game, with all the item and equipment lists, then they say "Hey, wouldn't it be fun if the player could craft some stuff?" And they toss in a crafting system. It basically exists for the sake of having it exist. OR, they work it into the game pretty well, but they focus way too hard on the "what if people don't want to craft" bit, so they basically just make it an optional chore to obtain all the same (or equivalent, or better) stuff that one can already get via any other means in the game. And sure, that means it's something not every player is going to experience. But the same goes for branching quests, and dialogue, and class mechanics. When you ensure that everyone who plays your RPG experiences all the content, you essentially break your game, unless you're just some kind of genius designer and figure out how to make the One Game to Rule Them All.

Okay, first of all, I've pretty much put quotes around every usage of the word "minigame" in all my posts in this thread. What makes dialogue not a minigame? You'd probably call it a mechanic or system. But, when you initiate a conversation with someone in an RPG, moving around and casting spells and interacting with objects is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is dialogue. Therefore, some form of module must now run that differs from the stuff you're doing when you AREN'T in dialogue. Is this a minigame? I don't know. Call it what you will. I don't care what it's called. So, the fact that I'm referencing it with "minigame" does not mean that you get to bestow upon my words a ludicrously specific meaning. I never said "It should be like Bioshock's hacking," or "It should be like Mario Party." So, rather than telling me I'm wrong because super-specific examples of minigames you can list sucked, it might be more constructive to explore the actual possibilities within the broader realm to which I'm actually referring. Secondly, "10 seconds" was an example of how long it might take to pick a simple lock in an unspecified lockpick mechanic as compared directly to simply opening locks with the standard approach as suggested by the thread's anti-minigame crowd. If your Thief is a master lockpicker, and the lock is a simple house lock, then the ideal "minigame" would appropriately be far easier. Of course, some would say "well, if it's only going to take 10 seconds, then why not just get rid of that whole bit and let me click 'lockpick' on the door and instantly unlock it?". Well, again I turn to the combat system as an example. There are going to be some enemies that are stupidly easy to dispatch. Does logic dictate that, since SOMEtimes enemies will be super easy, why not just not have a combat system? Should we simply be allow the player to click "kill" on the enemy, and it dies? Save all those skill selections and combat animations? No. The same system is still in place... there are just things called factors that alter the duration of combat. So, if that's not a good reason to do it for combat, why would it be a good reason for lockpicking? Lastly, IF I find the alternative repetitive? By definition, it IS repetitive. You literally repeat the same thing over and over again. It's binary. You're either attempting a lockpick and some math runs, or you're not and it doesn't. A 0 or a 1. Even if you put in a lockpicking system involving an old NES controller interface, with only the 4 cardinal directions as choices to turn the lockpick, and one of them was randomly the correct one each time, that would be adding depth to a simple "I'm either trying or I'm not, and number A is either higher than number B or it isn't" system. That is not my opinion. That is a fact. It is quantifiable. Would that "minigame" be fun? Probably not so much. Which is why we have more advanced systems of code and graphics now, and brains, so that we CAN make it fun. So, here's the question I ask, as maybe the terminology works better for you: If you want lockpicking in the game, then why shouldn't it be deeper than a simple, repetitive dice roll? If you're going to repeat it (open more than one lock, and, in the case of an RPG, most likely MANY, many locks, not to mention all the different attempts you might have to make on each one), then why shouldn't it be more engaging and dynamic than "Let's see if it works this time... let's see if it works this time... let's see if it works this time..."? How is "Try or don't" not repetitive? And how is any attempt at something deeper than that automatically a bad choice? Again, it might be more constructive to the discussion if you attempt to work the equation and show me evidence that it's unsolvable, rather than looking at it and saying "There's no way to solve that equation. Might as well not work it."

Neither would an invisible pink unicorn. Which is exactly what I'd say to someone who insisted that having invisible pink unicorns in the game would be terrible. Minigames existed before the Infinity Engine games. Minigames aren't progress, they're a regress. I'm open to the possibility of minigames being a regress, even though I don't believe that to be a fact. Perhaps you could provide some reasoning and explanation as to how you've decided this? I find myself unable to fill in the gaps, it would seem.

True, to a degree. It doesn't really support innovative, Leonardo Da Vinci type crafting. However, the medieval fantasy setting ensconces (that word popped into my head and I'm totally using it mostly because it's probably the only time I'll ever use it, heh) people who's expertise at artisanry (artisanship?) is almost directly tied to their success/status in life. Steve the Master Swordsman isn't using a sword he picked up on aisle 5 at SwordCo 20 years ago. He's most likely learned a lot about what makes a good sword (not just the fact that it's made out of mithril instead of iron), and even if he doesn't forge his weapon himself, he certainly comprehends how it is forged, and what to tell a blacksmith when he needs it reforged or needs a new sword. Any accomplished archer almost ALWAYS knows how to take care of his bow and bowstring, and what makes a good bowstring, and what makes the best arrows, etc. I would say that crafstmanship is what basically separates the "adventurer" types from the peasant folk. If you don't know how to produce a product, you perform menial labor for someone who does. But, almost anyone had a "trade." So, I wouldn't say that crafting, itself, is not supported by the medieval fantasy setting. I understand that technological innovation isn't exactly nurtured by it. But, you've got limited resources, and everyone's responsible for their own survival, be it banded together in a village or on their own. You learn things. You use your resources wisely. You might have 50 different healers in a big city selling salves, but maybe 47 of them are all generic "I'm simply meeting demand from people who know nothing about making salves" potions, and 3 are actually significantly different. Varying effectivenesses, varying side effects. I think it's that idea that everyone's surviving, and some people are doing it REALLY really well, that drives crafting in the medieval fantasy setting. Also, of course, the fantastical. The "It was very, very difficult, but, over the last year of travels, I found this crystal shard, this dragon claw, and this chunk of golem. Ralphonso the Legendary Craftsman claims he can fashion these into a weapon that hasn't been seen for 1,000 years" crafting. So, while combining things into entirely innovative things probably shouldn't be 90% of the crafting system, I believe the prospect of honing your ability to manufacture something with much skill and care while wisely making things out of what you can get your hands on is a good one. From a game terminology standpoint, the crafting system in medieval fantasy should probably be much more customization heavy and less invention heavy. That, of course, doesn't mean that invention and innovation are prohibited from having any part in a medieval fantasy world. Just, the typical world doesn't inherently include it.

Ahh, Dragon Age 2... Not Bioware's shiniest beacon of hope for the gamer masses, haha. I'm not so sure about this "breaking spell targeting" mechanic you're suggesting, as I just don't know where it really fits in with stats, saving throws, and skills like Dodge. However, I WOULD like to see an improved Dodge mechanic that maybe actually has your characters side-step things that they're dodging, and maybe a very simplistic behavior setting to have them either focus on dodging (at the cost of delaying their next attack and whathaveyou) or not focusing on dodging (more aggressive combat against their immediate target, at the cost of fewer dodges of arrows being hurled from across the room and/or foes who are otherwise flanking). I think the spells-that-never-miss and spells-that-DO-miss takes care of the spell targeting mechanic. As long as they don't ALL always hit, we're cool, I think. It's just a matter, now, of how you handle misses and hits, and what all can affect that.

Yeah, I wasn't trying to blame you for them or anything, haha. It's just a shame that they exist at all, much less are so common. I still got what you meant, though, about the versatility of classes, and it made me happy inside.

This is actually an area where using mini-games can bail you out. If you design the special encounters as individual mini-games, you don't have to worry (too much) about trying to apply universal rules to your entire game world. So you can focus on the universal stuff that gives you the most bang for your buck. True, true. However, going that route, you have one of two options: A), make epic quest 1 a super-cool, in-depth minigame with awesomely unique mechanics that make everything seem extremely dynamic, then make the rest of the game (that isn't coded with minigame mechanics) comparatively bland (i.e. only a couple of outcomes and choices to affect things) OR B) Decide you want the majority of the game to feel as dynamic, and program every single in-depth quest with its own minigame-esque mechanics. Which probably wouldn't really save you much time or many resources as compared to simply coding the game mechanics to provide such dynamicism all the time. I guess my point is that, if you agree that such a level of dynamicism in quest-tackling is amazing, but you only put it into a couple of parts of the game, that's only going to emphasize how absent it is from the rest of the game. Sure, I suppose it's better than its absence from the entire game. But, you're going to have all those people wondering why all the other quests weren't that awesome.

Despite the fact that I hate that the idea of roles has become simplified to choices such as "DPS" and "tank" and "crowd control," it's excellent that PE's classes won't be confined to these roles. ^_^

I will say that, even though it wasn't the best, Skyrim's lockpicking "minigame" actually hit on a good note: It combined player skill with character skill. That Expert lock had a pickable threshold of about 1mm when your character's skill was at 15, but get it up to 75 or so and there was a much wider arc tolerance on the sweet spot. ALSO, you didn't break your picks as quickly. I absolutely LOVE the attempt to combine player skill with character skill, because most people don't even consider that an option. If you base it purely on player skill, then that aspect of the game is COMPLETELY cut off from character progression. Whereas if you base it purely on character skill, it's pretty boring, really. Does it NEED to be less boring? No. But I'd say, ideally, everything in the game should be fun. "Ideally" being the key word. So, I'm in favor of attempts towards the ideal. We may not get there, but, I think saying "no other game has done it well so far, so I vote on the boring system rather than an attempt at something new" is kind of like giving up. Also, I'm sorry, but every single thing you do multiple times in the game is "repetitive" by definition, so I don't think "minigames are repetitive" is a very solid argument, either. Yes, if it takes 12 minutes to pick a lock, or it's otherwise overly complicated, that would suck EVERY time you have to pick a lock. But, you know what else is repetitive? Having to right-click on every single locked thing in the entire game with your Rogue and selecting "Pick lock," then waiting to see if the mystery number of the lock's difficulty is higher or lower than your character's skill number. OR, better yet, in the randomized system in which you get a skill check roll added on, you get to do that about 15 times in a row because, mathematically, you CAN technically pick that lock with your character's current skill value... he just needs to roll a 20, so to speak. How is that at all engaging? What choice are you given? "Try to pick the lock until you pick it, or don't try to pick the lock until you pick it." Unless you go through a giant labyrinth MADE out of locked doors, a 10-second, engaging minigame that's done well isn't going to hurt anyone. Don't check Facebook one day out of the week. Boom... you just freed up enough time for all the locks you'll ever pick in the entire game. Besides, as someone pointed out, it takes more than 3 milliseconds for someone to pick a lock. So having it take more than 3 milliseconds (and yet still not anywhere near the amount of time it might take in real life) is more immersive. Hey, combat's repetitive. Is it tedious? Should we get rid of the combat minigame and just let you roll a d20 for victory? "You failed. Again?" Oh hey, your combat skill's high enough! All the enemies just turned into loot. But then, picking up all the loot is repetitive, too. You're going to pick it up anyway, right? So it's just automatically in your inventory now. There, the game is no longer tedious. That totally didn't cost the game any quality, did it? Of course it did. That would be a terrible idea. You don't see anyone petitioning for combat to be replaced with insta-fights. Yet, heaven forbid we try to add any depth to a lock-picking system. I know my text here is suggesting more of a hostile tone than I intend. I only intend to use my sarcasm to reinforce my points. I simply wish to know how the non-"minigame" system is less tedious than actually getting to say "Oh, this lock is pickable, but REALLY hard to pick? Well, *rubs hands together*, I'll just have to give it my best, then." The growing trend seems to be wanting to be able to accomplish things and reap rewards for these accomplishments, while simultaneously wanting the accomplishment to require minimal time and effort.

Your note about Fallout 3 makes a good point: The balance of gathering and crafting is relative. Well, in a way, at least. Obviously you could just go crazily overboard, putting 7,000 components in the game and making crafting take 15 minutes for a simple healing potion. BUT, assuming you don't go blatantly ridiculous with it, the only reason something becomes "too much" a lot of times is that whatever is supposed to counter balance it is not heavy enough, so to speak. You've got one side of a scale for Gathering Difficulty (this includes inventory space, finding the items, getting them to where you need, etc.), and you've got one for Crafting Enjoyment/Reward. Once you've decided that each thing is individually within reason, you weigh them against each other. The Gathering Difficulty could be almost nill. Gathered components could be easy as pie and plentiful as potatoes, and if you craft some healing items, only to find that the only one that's better than things you've already found (or can buy very cheaply) is only about 10% better, then, is it really worth it? And if the crafting isn't worth it, then the system's still defective. The systems you've pointed out are very effective ones. And, you're right, they are very simple. I don't think they're at the threshold of complexity or anything. BUT, it was difficult and cost precious inventory space to gather components in DeadRising 2, but it was balanced by the value of the weapons you could make (extra EXP gain from using them, utility in combat, sheer fun of playing around with things like the drill bucket.) It wasn't "Craft this bat, and it's 10% better than your other bat!". No, they did things that other weapons you found didn't do. And they were damned useful. No one in that game just said "Meh... I'm just not gonna make anything." Or, if they did, they were simply lazy and/or just didn't like the game, or were going for some sort of challenge. When your crafting system is pretty simple like that, it's not too difficult to do, really. Not from a design standpoint, anyway. Make some things combine into useful things. No big deal. But, when you get a bit more complex, it starts to get more difficult to balance it, AND to keep all the factors balanced against other aspects of the game, and effective. For example, you're the ONLY person who can craft things in DeadRising 2. There aren't towns and artisans anywhere, so you have to make player-character crafting work with such a factor (as has come up in this thread). Also, since you're basically MacGuyvering stuff together, it makes sense within the context of the survival story of the game. Of course, I think such factors can be addressed in PE, or any game, really, to make an awesome crafting system, the likes of which has never before been seen. I just hope they do something pretty interesting with it, even if it's not perfect. I don't like it when crafting feels like an unnecessary hoop to jump through to acquire a generic range of things resting comfortably on a spreadsheet. Again, I say that if combat was like that, everyone would complain to no end. "Oh, let's see... you've got Power Attack, Dodge, and a Steel Longsword +1? Those seem to be the proper things you need to defeat this group of enemies. If you'll drag those items into these battle slots, then click this 'Combine' button real quick, you'll have made a COMBAT VICTORY! 8D" I realize how silly that sounds, haha, but that's basically what we get with crafting in almost every RPG. Heaven forbid it be dynamic or engaging. Recipes and components? Check. Welp, there's our crafting system. *dusts hands together*

YES! I had no idea there was a flash game! But yes, the mechanics of that are EXACTLY what I was talking about! And see? That's pretty darned fun. And it's not twitch-timing based. It's a simple system that rewards the amount of effort and care you put into the crafting process by improving the quality of the weapon. The other beauty of that system is that you can work the weapon customization directly into the crafting system! You could either use completely different blade molds when forging a sword, for example, OR simply replace hilts and pommels, etc. I think that, at the very least, whatever system is implemented should allow you to make your equipment your own. Since many have agreed that you shouldn't be able to craft uber dragonscale flaming ressurective equipment (only master smiths should get you all the best stuff), maybe the amount of a typical crafting system that WOULD have gone to all that highest-quality equipment should go, instead, to customization. Maybe you make your Iron Longsword with a design that's lighter than the usual, allowing you to attack once more per "round" (still not entirely sure on how the combat system will be in P:E, but they've stated it won't really be turn-based, hence the quotey marks) at the cost of losting cutting/knockback power. I mean, the strongest guy in the world would have trouble knocking you down with a funoodle. Or, you put a better hilt/guard on there, allowing for better parrying. OR, your pommel is different, allowing for more useful melee striking with the pommel in combat. Of course, worked in with that would be aesthetic changes. You just don't want too many purely aesthetic customization options. But the aesthetic differences are very nice.

I think that the limited active skills idea is a pretty good one. I'm going to reference Guild Wars 2's skill system as a good example. I realize it's an MMO, and P:E is a cRPG, but, I'm simply pointing out that, within the context of a given RPG sub-genre, I think the fewer-yet-more-significant-skills thing really works quite well. In Guild Wars 2, your combat skills are derived directly from your weapon. You basically get 5 weapon skills. That's it. Period. No more, ever. What do you imagine the initial reaction to this news was? "OMG, that's ridiculous! All the PREVIOUS MMOs have had like 50 skills! I need more than that! Automatically not even interested in it, u_u". Yup. But, that's simply all the skills you have access to with a single weapon. So, a different weapon gives you a different 5. And each class has access to about 4-6 different weapons. AND, each class except for the Elementalist (reasoning in a moment) gets 2 "weapon sets" that can be swapped between in-combat. So, that gives you 10 weapon skills within the confines of a single bout of combat (though only 5 at once between each 15-second weapon-swap cooldown.) Outside of combat, you can happily swap to any other weapons you wish. The reason Elementalists don't get to swap weapons is because they possess attunements (Earth, Fire, Water, Air), each providing a different set of 5 skills for the same weapon. Outside of that, you get 1 healing skill (class/race-based pool of options) for which generally do much more than heal, and heal in very different manners), 3 utility skills (also class/race-based pool of options), and an elite skill (once again, class/race-based pool... you see the pattern.) The weapon skills are all completely different for each class. A Thief with a dagger and an Elementalist with a dagger play COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY! And this is one of the biggest positive things about this skill system. The thief does entirely shady, stealthy, stabbity things with the dagger. He doesn't just do slightly differently-animated things that do differing amounts of damage. He actually uses the dagger as a dexterous, stealthy Thief would. One skill quickly rolls 180-degrees around the target, then delivers a backstab. One ability allows you to shadowstep to your target and attack (no backstab, just standard attack). However, the location from which you shadowstepped is now marked, and can be shadowstepped BACK to within 10-or-so seconds of the first use of the skill. Therefore, it can be strategically used (in the context of GW2's active, fast-paced combat system.) Meanwhile, the Elementalist doesn't simply throw a few fireballs AND have a dagger in his hand, with which he runs about trying to poke a few things that have 100 health for 3 damage whilst possessing absolutely no combat skills whatsoever outside of his magic. He uses the dagger as you would expect a phenomenally powerful master-of-the-elements would. When attuned to fire, your standard attack is called something like "Dragon's claw," wherein your dagger slashes produce 3 slicing blades of fire in direction of the swing, spreading a bit as they go. It's a rather short-ranged attack, as the dagger is a very close-quarters weapon. So, even though the Elementalist doesn't actually strike people WITH the dagger, he uses his magic through it with the same mentality. If you're fighting a single foe, you can keep yourself at very close range, where the spread of the "claws" is minimal, striking the foe with all three for maximum damage. Or, if you're fighting several foes, you can maintain your distance a bit, striking at them when the "claws" are most spread. Another fire ability (we'll just stick with fire, for simplicity) allows you to dash about 15 feet in the direction you choose, leaving a burning trail in your wake and a small, bursting flame nova (that sets enemies ablaze) at your destination. Within the context of the system, this can be used so many different ways. A) The trail causes a fire-combo to any projectile-based attacks that travel through it (including those from other people, naturally, as it is Massively Multiplayer for a reason). B) This dash can either close distance or expand distance from you to your target, OR dodge incoming targeted attacks, all based on which direction you choose to dash and the timing of the skill. C) The fireburst at the end of the attack causes the "burning" status, increasing the damage from other fire-based attacks while it lasts, AND can strike multiple foes. These are very, very simple abilities in an active combat system, but they not only add great amounts of depth and strategy to MMO combat, but also emphasize class distinction. I'm not suggesting "Hey, Project Eternity should have Guild Wars 2's combat system!". Haha. Again, it was a very wise choice, I think, within the context of THAT game. But it is the thinking behind that idea, for that game, that I think is most important. They took their classes, and they said "What is this class going to be about?". Then, they made mechanics for each class, and made those mechanics an INTEGRAL part of basically everything that class does. You can still specialize within the classes, and there is some overlap, but they still FEEL distinctly different. So, I'm not trying to make any point, really, beyond the fact that making classes too similar, or making the differences simple math (i.e. "This class gets more damage reduction, this class deals more DPS, this class has a higher dodge, etc.") is always going to produce a more lackluster class system than one in which the classes are distinctive. I have no problem whatsoever with Monks being their own class, so long as they aren't Warriors who happen to get about 2 different core abilities and also happen to just use their hands to basically do all the same stuff Warriors do with not-their-hands. And, as I've said before, IF you offer Monks and Paladins and such as their own classes in your class system, then there really probably shouldn't be a standard "Warrior" choice unless it's completely different from the others. Take a car and compare it to a truck, or a van. They've all got 4 wheels and an engine and doors and seating, and cargo space. All that's really different is the math. The equation's the same. Now throw a motorcycle out there. That's pretty different. Different frame, different mechanical design, moves differently. Sure, it still uses an engine to drive wheels to roll it forward, but there's your overlap. Maybe the motorcyle is a Rogue. Maybe the Mage is a helicopter. But, you can't simply make them all different styles of cars, and give one an awesome sound system, and one big mud tires, and one a really fast engine. Classes need to behave in inherently different manners. Just like guns need to in first-person shooters... Just like levels need to in puzzle games. Just like characters need to in fighting games.

I'd like to clarify, to those worried about some of the statements regarding certain "classes" really being sub-classes, that no one here (unless I'm mistaken) is suggesting that we simply do away with Barbarians and Monks and Paladins. I know I certainly wasn't. I think all that's been suggested, so far, is that their existence does not constitute an entirely separate class boundary, and, therefore, they should probably really be a sub-class in some form or fashion. I'm not even saying "Do not, under ANY circumstances, let someone pick 'Barbarian' at character creation!". That would be where the lore and your character's backstory and customization come into play more so than class mechanics, though. You would still be a specialization of a warrior, really. *Epiphany*... I guess what I just realized I'm trying to say is that, logistically, "Warrior" should be the only fighter-type class to pick, and you'd then specialize your character as you go, OR, you should simply have all the sub-classes available for choosing at the beginning and no plain ole' "Warrior." UNLESS you've designed the classes to be so distinct as to have a Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, and Warrior play COMPLETELY differently (rather than being distinguishable by a few stat-equation differences and a handful of feats and abilities, as well as their aesthetics), there's no point in offering BOTH a vanilla Warrior, who can access abilities and attributes across the spectrum of specializations AND each of these specializations (who, adversely, have access to a majority of standard Warrior abilities and traits.) It's redundant. It'd be like having a Mage, then having a Lightning Mage, then having a Fire Mage, then an Ice Mage, then an Earth Mage, then a Spirit Mage, then an Illusion Mage. But, using that example, in the DnD ruleset, you can specialize in a school of magic (which then gives you both some added bonuses as well as some few restrictions to balance it out), which makes a LOT more sense from a design standpoint. If you HAVE somehow designed the specializations to have drastically different gameplay mechanics from the standard class archetype, then, by all means, offer all of them as choices. As I stated before, I'm not directly criticizing the as-yet announced class listing from Project Eternity. I'm merely discussing what we've seen implemented in games thus far. Also, while it's good to have class roles overlap a bit, it is never prudent to have this overlap founded on the idea of elimination boundaries and restrictions. You don't want to run into the thought that "Man, it's really fun to cast all kinds of awesome spells. You know, Warriors should really get to do most of the stuff Mages do." No, no they shouldn't. Should they be allowed to use some magic? Sure. I'm fine with that. But it should make sense and be designed in a reasonable manner that still supports the fact that Warriors are NOT Mages. To spend time making the classes distinctive, then turn around and intentionally blur those distinctions is counter-productive, and produces that "why should I even choose one class as opposed to another?" attitude. Kind of like in our favorite reference game, Skyrim. Every single Dovahkin could get all the shouts, no matter what path you took through the skills, and all the shouts pretty much did everything that all the spells did. Not quite everything, but pretty close to it... So, my choice to be a Mage really didn't matter. And choices that don't matter are no choices at all.

Wow. Some amazetastic ideas being tossed around in here, . Umberlin, I really like your spell-crafting system. I've always found the spell variety a bit lacking in RPGs. Sometimes it's really good, but not often. Still, though, it always feels like there should at LEAST be some degree of customization. I always enjoy trying to figure out a spell-crafting system, . After all, you're basically shaping mana or some manner of magic-inducing energy drawn from SOMEthing into a particular form. So why isn't it more malleable? So the only other alternative to a full-on spellcrafting system I've thought of is a... well... a mana forming system? I don't know what to call it... *ponders* Think of it like singing. You have many different types of sounds at your disposal, and you can combine them in any order, at any volume (that you're capable of producing)... They can convey words, or they can simply be melodious. etc. etc... Well, why not with spells? Why must you only be able to create a ball of fire that can be hurled? You can literally ignite the air itself, but only in the form of a ball that gets thrown like a projectile, then explodes? And why is it always the same size, and uses the same amount of mana? If you need to, you should be able to charge it up, Kamehameha style, and put all your mana into it, if you so choose. Just like shouting while singing uses up your lungs' oxygen supply faster. So, I'm in favor of the possibility of basically wielding magic like a sword: Each time you swing, you decide how hard to swing, where to swing, whether to slash or to thrust or to pommel strike, etc. I know it would have to be simple enough to do in mid-combat (or... mid-whenever-you-need-to-cast-a-spell). Perhaps, if it's still as complex of a system, you could do both? Save spells as you go, but still adjust them to a lesser degree when you cast? (change how many targets they strike, or how potent they are, or whether or not they travel between targets, or simply explode, etc.)?

Well, I'm not suggesting a quest board and no people. And I'm not saying that if you don't have NPCs who sleep at night, then you might as well just not have them at all. I was only saying that, if the only purpose you're worried about your NPCs serving is giving quests and selling things, there's not much point in suggesting that they're people. "Well, they have a model, so TECHNICALLY they're people." Think of it like this: What if you had detailed weapon models that were different for each weapon, but then, there were no attack animations? Just your character model, standing there with a pretty weapon, and your enemy gets damaged and dies. After all, you just want to be able to kill things, right? Who cares how the weapon behaves?

Okay, first of all, I'm just curious why there have been so many worries expressed over the fact that one couldn't POSSIBLY become a skilled craftsman without spending decades practicing, day in and day out, YET everyone seems to be entirely fine with the idea of a Level 1 (which pretty much literally means your character is a trained nooblet) adventurer can, in the span of a single game, progressing enough in his combat abilities to take on ANCIENT LICHES AND LEGENDARY WARRIORS AND ENTIRE BANDIT CAMPS? "Well, a couple months ago, it was difficult just to slay a goblin. But with RPG90X, after just 90 days of experience-gaining, I can single-handedly dispatch no fewer than 3 trolls and 7 orcs, simultaneously! THANKS RPG90X!" Haha. In all seriousness, though, my only point is that, we only want as much realism as is reasonable for a game, the purpose of which is enjoyment. We don't want our character to ACTUALLY require 30 years of played experience just to be as good as some notorious villain. Sure, it doesn't quite make sense, realistically, but it's just a bit of exaggeration. You get better as you go along, and the more effort you put into the things, the more quickly you progress (in general). Therefore, since we have limited amounts of time to play video games, we accept a degree of hyperbolic progress. Getting back to crafting, while I definitely believe that the best possible equipment relative to whatever's available (through any method of procurement) at a given point in the game should not be player crafted (as I agree that you would never be THE single most skilled craftsman who ever lived), I ALSO believe that crafting has a definite place in a single-player RPG. Which, of course, brings me to the question "Well then how should it be done?" Well, to answer that ideally, I ask you this: Why isn't combat a chore? If you look at it from the right angle, all you're really doing is grinding your way through hostile creatures in order to reap rewards in the form of loot and skill advancement/experience points, right? Yeah, but it's engaging and enjoyable, right? If it isn't, your RPG's probably a failure... Heh. So, what makes combat fundamentally different from crafting, in almost every game? Well, going back to the "from a certain angle, combat is a chore" idea, what if, instead of actively fighting battles, you simply collected enemies? What if you just carried around 5 goblins, and you had to gather up 5 iron short swords and 3 healing potions (because that's what it took you to deal enough damage through combat whilst keeping your peeps alive), then you clicked a button, and an invisible, magical equation ran, simulated the entire battle without providing you with any information save for the outcome? You automatically won or lost, then looted everything. Voila. Not too much fun, is it? So, if it's unacceptable for combat to be reduced to a simple collect-and-click (and maybe pretend?) interface, why is it pretty much the norm to do crafting like that? Why can't it be active and immersive? Whenever I ask that, it always comes up that "You don't want it to take 30 seconds to make a sword." But, I say to that, "That's because you're still thinking about mundanely combining ingredients into a sword 50 times a minute to mass produce them for no other purpose than to make money or improve your crafting skill, like in current, boring, mundane crafting systems." Now, there's nothing wrong with "here are some materials... oh good, you made them into a cool piece of armor for me, Mr. Blacksmith NPC!" crafting. But, people are right when it comes to the fact that having to go try and scrounge up everything on a shopping list, all to come back to an anvil, click and drag everything to yet another interface box for no apparent reason, then click the "I'll take the item that this stuff comprises, now, please" button is nothing but a chore. I mean, the immersion level of you having to have those materials and get them to an anvil, and "actively" click a button to craft them is about .07%. So, chore-to-immersion ratio is pretty horrendous. At this point, you might as well just have the materials magically fuse together into a sword/breastplate/amulet whenever they all reside in your inventory, like in DOTA. Heh. But, anywho... why not make it some sort of mini-game-type interface (for lack of a better generalized description)? You've got... iron, say. So maybe it takes 3 bars of iron to get a bar that can be forged into a blade. So... Step 1: You stoke the forge to get the right level of heat. This would only take 5-10 seconds, really. It starts at a low temperature, and rises with each bellows pump. Easy to do, but difficult to do perfectly. Basically, there would be a sweet spot, and an element of randomness to the starting factors (and perhaps the stoking amount of each pump), so that it would feel dynamic each time. There wouldn't be any equation for the perfect iron sword, i.e. "pump the billows 3.5 times for an iron sword"). The closer you get to it, the closer you get to making a "perfect" (though still basic) iron sword, in the end. Maybe it's got higher durability, or a greater amount of armor piercing chance, or chance to cause bleed. Whatever weapon facets are in the game, you'd get a little boost to them for doing well. An incentive to go for the "perfect." Step 2: You heat the bar of metal. For simplicity's sake, we skip to the part where you've heated the proper quantity of metal together into a bar so that you can make a sword blade out of it. All that would just be busy work, and not really contribute to the "engaging" factor of the crafting. So, with this step, you get a little bit more active (Still pretty simple, but, in theory, it could get as complex as you want it to). You've got an indicator for the sweet spot on the heat of the bar, and you can hold the bar further in, or further out, trying to keep the heat at the proper spot. This would also take only about 10 seconds, tops. Long enough to not be rushed. Step 3: You've heated the bar, and now you've got to hammer it into a sword. So you hold it against the anvil (automatic), and you have to hammer it in the proper spots (indicated by different levels of heat glow across the surface). Point-and-click, you hammer where you click. Again, the closer you hit to all the right spots before the metal cools too much (and the step ends), the better the end product. Disclaimer: You're going to be capable of crafting a sword that is better than random, low-quality, dull bandit swords you keep finding lying about, but isn't as good as the Ridiculously-Skillfully-Created Sword that the blacksmith nearest you will make for you. BUT, it also costs a good bit less than what's offered by the blacksmith. It therefore becomes a DIFFERENT way of better equipping your party. I just want to emphasize that the above example is PURELY to illustrate how an active crafting system COULD work. I am, in no way, claiming that the above is a fully-hashed out system. So, if you've got thoughts on it, please feel free to criticize that TYPE of system, rather than that specific system (please don't go telling me that it should probably be 7 seconds instead of 10, or that swords shouldn't have armor-piercing. I will not even be arguing against you in the first place.)

Ahh, sorry. Looking back at my post, I realize I was very vague when I said "the best design decision would be to put those classes together." I meant "Just have a Warrior 'class,' then allow Warriors to become/play-as Barbarians, Monks, or Paladins." I really did not make that very clear. I apologize. My brain kind of jumped ahead to the math thing. I shall THROW IT IN THE DUNGEON for a fortnight as punishment! u_u True. I mean, it is great to have variety, even within a class. Variety is, after all, the spice of virtual life. . But really, it's good that Monks and Barbarians exist, they just probably don't need to be organized as completely separate, choosable-at-the-beginning-of-the-game-as-distinct-options classes. I mean, if you make a Human, you can have a male human, or a female human... a tall human, a lithe human, high charisma, low intelligence, low charisma, high intelligence... but those are all still just variants of a Human. You can't be all of them at once, but they are all variant options available to a racially human character. And, again, I'm talking here about the traditional Barbarians and Monks and such. As long as your game's Barbarian or Monk goes about things exactly like a Warrior does, yet simply with more specificity (does things in a reckless and feral manner whilst clad only in crude armor, or does things with ultra-precise unarmed combat and a very focused and spiritual demeanor), they should simply be facets of the Warrior class. I do not know a lot of details regarding Project Eternity's class mechanics. If they've designed a Monk to be distinguishable enough from a basic Warrior, then, by all means, make it a class. I'm not saying it's impossible for them not to be a subclass.

There are ways around this. The interface could keep track of the number of bodies/containers that are lootable, FOR you, rather than relying purely on camera-line-of-sight clicking to determine what you loot and what you don't. Perhaps whenever things are overlapping (or even too close for comfort), you could be provided with loot options (corpse A, corpse B, corpse C) and or simply color-code the various lootables in the list(pouch, pouch, pouch). Although, you'd run into unnecessary issues with colorblind folk, so maybe the lettering is best. Or, you could always simply implement a "drag-a-lootable" feature. Or a "scatter this pile of lootables" option that causes your character to go ahead and separate them enough to all be easily looted (rather than having you manually drag each thing.) Or have some kind of simplistic corpse-collision, so they don't all occupy the same space when they fall, and containers and such that drop to the ground and land upon other things would slide off to the side. I don't even care if it's perfectly realistic or not if it works, doesn't really cause any issues, and alleviates the lootable-overlapping problem. OR, just show a loot list for everything that's overlapping, with indication at the top that the current list is from multiple lootables, and what those lootables are. Etc.

The traditional Barbarian, Monk, and Paladin classes are definitely subclasses, any way you look at it. The terminology used might be different, but they are not actually separate classes by any stretch of the definition. Do they technically work okay in a game when listed as separate class choices? Yes. If the game separates them based on their skillsets and all the math, then sure. They technically work. They don't cause the universe to implode or anything, but they're not very exciting. When you think of classes, imagine you're choosing a sport. Imagine, for example, that a Wizard (Mage, whatever term you want to use... the main, overarching elemental magic-wielding class) is a soccer player. Well, if you were to have, say, the DnD Sorcerer class, that would ALSO be a soccer player. He might be a defenseman or the goalie, figuratively speaking, as opposed to the offenseman that the Wizard is. They do things differently, but they're both playing the same sport. Now, if you were to look at a Warrior, then perhaps he plays football. A Barbarian might be a defensive lineman, and a Monk might be a running back, but they are all still playing the same sport. So, really, yes, I believe that the best design decision would be to put such classes together. Can you still have a Monk? Sure. But they are not a fundamentally significant root. I also agree that, if you let it, an RPG can very much dissolve into a bunch of math. "Well, which armor will give me the biggest number bonus? How can I do the most damage?" I hate that DPS has become such a huge deal now, and that MMORPGs have separated everything into overly simplistic roles based upon simple game math. If you ask me, the best RPG is the one that best hides the math. Obviously, you need SOME math, for referencing, measuring, and relating things in the game world. However, when everything's just a bunch of numbers, and when you allow the class differences to dissolve into slight variants to an equation (armor bonuses, damage, attack speed, etc.), the game becomes quite dull compared to what it could be. If I'm a character whose skills are based upon Dexterity, I don't simply want to have Dexterity, as opposed to Strength, determine my damage and hits, all while using the exact same skills and combat animations as a Strength-based person. I want to actually fight in a dexterous manner. And the Strength-based person should knock people around a bit more, for example, but not move as much. And a Mage's spells shouldn't just have a cool animation that isn't a sword-swinging, then tick some damage off. As the player, I should FEEL like my spell acted in a different manner than a sword or arrow striking someone. Maybe a Druid's barkskin-type-spell ACTUALLY has their skin behave like thick tree-bark. Rather than simply adding some number to your armor (just like actual armor, itself, or a Wizard's shielding spell, or a Dexterity AC bonus), perhaps a foe's weapon could get stuck in your "skin" as a blade can in a log or a tree of they used a strong attack. Just an example of ability differentiation.

Be wary of too much reductionism. Just because you decide against fully elevating a given feature, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to completely eliminate it. It is a complex interlocking system of tradeoffs, not an either/or reduction. Otherwise, you'll wind up saying things like "if you're not going to pursue the latest and best nth-degree bling-mapping for graphics, just make the game text-based". Mmmm . . . no. That's not what I was getting at at all. I just meant that, if the only reason you have NPCs is so that you can get and turn in quests, and they never actually "behave" in any fashion whatsoever, then there's literally no reason for them to be people. It's the same reasoning as the "if whether it's night or day literally doesn't affect anything, it doesn't really serve a purpose" argument. I'm not suggesting that we don't have humanoid NPCs in the game, or that, if you don't want them to sleep then you don't even want them to exist. UpGrayeDD was essentially inferring that, since NPCs wouldn't be available while they slept, they therefore should not sleep. Not to mention that, if NPCs weren't available at night time, there literally wouldn't be any reason at all to play the game at night time. I'm merely suggesting that if you place the importance of convenience over the importance of immersion no matter what, then you might as well not worry about ANY immersion. Also, I suggested that NPCs be available for quest turning-inning whilst they are asleep, so I'm confused as to how their being asleep would turn the game into such a chore.

I might be mistaken, but, for what it's worth, I think you could actually grab bodies by their limbs with the "pick up item in a literal sense, not the add-to-inventory sense" button and drag them off of each other to get to loot. Also, I apologize if there was confusion, but I was actually stating that some kind of complex corpse-removal system is entirely unnecessary and not worth the coding time. I was trying to say that, since there are a bajillion factors that contribute to a body not just lying around as-is for weeks on end, the best thing would probably be to just simplify it and have the body vanish after a certain amount of game time (maybe a day at the longest). I don't think it should be just after leaving the area, because if you take 3 steps, then come right back because you forgot to check something, there should be no reason those dead bandits aren't still there. Literally like 10 minutes has passed. I was only suggesting the possibility of some corpse remnants that would amount to scenery (bone bits, like you always see in animal lairs and caves in RPGs, maybe some blood and a couple of tattered garment/backpack remains) if there was a particularly large battle somewhere. Like, if you annihilate an entire bandit outpost, and you come back to it a week later, and it's still uninhabited, there should probably be maybe some evidence that 50 people died in that 70x70 foot area. After that one day period, though (or maybe less? Whatever you want to set it to, really), the corpses are either gone as if they were never there, OR you have some remains dotting the ground now. It would be pretty simple, really.

Unless the entirity of the game's gameplay involves NPCs in towns being awake for you to interact with, I think no one was suggesting a game in which you do nothing for 14 hours. And why 14-hour sleep times? As much immersion as is reasonably possible should always be the goal. Just like you don't want enemies' "AI" in combat to amount to some silly dodge-attack-runaway pattern that just loops over and over and over, you don't want everyone in a town to just stand around in the same spot all the time as if they aren't even REMOTELY real people. If you don't care about them behaving like people at all, then you might as well just have a Borderlands bountyboard in the middle of town where you arbitrarily consolidate all the quests in the game and can turn them in whenever, and just don't even have visible NPCs anywhere in the game who aren't combatants.