Lephys

I don't know about you, but I'm not about to play the "who's the better poster" game. This isn't a freakin' competition, it's a discussion forum. That, and every single time I've actually been concise, I get attacked for being too vague. If I'm going to be damned if I do and damned if I don't, then I'm gonna go full elaboration. I'm sorry, that's just me. That doesn't mean I go around scoffing at others and thinking "man, if only everyone had MY brain, and typed just like I did, the world would be perfect," while I polish the gold statue of myself I keep in my Me Shrine. This is just plain ridiculous. You might as well just make fun of my appearance, or anything else inherent to my being. Because it achieves the same affect. I'm not even defending me, because I'm flawed as crap. But I can't just will myself to be less flawed. I am me, and I can't be not-me. So I do what I can. I'm defending human friggin' decency. And there's absolutely no reason make it contingent upon your perceptions of the quality of someone's posting prowess. I seriously have nothing against you, Sensuki. You have tons of great posts, you know a crap ton more than I do about a lot of things, etc. I don't think I'm better than you, or anyone else. I just think I have thoughts and ideas that might be useful to a collective discussion, so I make them. If they're too long, or too disorganized, you can either ignore them and just say "sorry, but I'm not going to read all that," or actually address them and give me useful feedback. There's no reason to ridicule my posting ability. You're free to tear apart my points and arguments all you want. I didn't realize the right to discuss something was time-sensitive. My mistake. There's a history, all right, and it's of people taking my posts as direct challenges to everything that's come before them, for some reason. I think that's where the whole "late" thing comes in as irksome to people. I don't know why this is, either. Like in this topic. You seem to have decided that I've claimed all your previous posts are irrelevant, or even targeted you at all, when all I did was come in and share what I felt on the topic. I'm not even defending the developers' implementation. I'm simply observing and evaluating game design decisions. I'm honestly incredibly sorry if, for some reason, my posts come across as "Lephys rocks, and everyone should be like him, and all your posts are stupid simply because I have some different thoughts on the matter," but I have never expressly stated any of that, nor had the intention of even implying anything of the sort. And, for the record, just because I disagree with someone doesn't mean I don't think they've made good points and/or excellent posts. There's such a thing as constructive argument. I don't know why you take my "I dunno, I think this whole engagement idea can work just fine, and serves a purpose" to somehow mean "all that effort and text you've put into proposals and posts before now? It's all STUPID AND WRONG, LOLZ!" But I'm sorry, again, that it seems that way, for whatever reason. I just wish people would stop assuming my meanings, and just ask me what I meant.

Everyone should play Betrayal at Krondor. Because it's awesome. I started replaying it recently (grabbed it on GOG). I naturally dropped it halfway through and started playing something else, but MAN is it awesome, . Forgot a ton of stuff for the first bit of my playthrough. Like how clicking on enemies BEFORE starting combat allows your party to prepare for them, and possibly ambush them when you DO enter combat (based on Scouting and/or Stealth skills, I think? I don't have the skills list in front of me, so I can't remember.)

That's actually a good point. However, I urge you to consider that the usage of "supposed to" or "should" generally implies a specific reason. "You shouldn't stab yourself in the leg." Why? In order to remain wound-free and healthy. That's why. But, yeah, if someone's trying to imply that something should be a certain way, just because the universe deems it so, then it's quite true that that is not the case. In this case, I believe the reason is "if it's to meet the specified plan for the game's design style." However, there are a ton of things that person A is going to insist is necessary to make this game merely "like the IE games," while person B will insist the same things aren't necessary. Honestly, once you say "like" something, without any particular measurement or specifics, I don't think there's really any obligation to put certain qualities in as opposed to changing them. So long as your choices don't blatantly oppose the design you're trying to be similar to. And I don't think just being different is the same as directly opposing. I'm not sure the exact wording to use for this idea. Basically, "like" doesn't mean "identical to." So, having something differ doesn't necessarily make it less "like" something else, it just makes it farther from identical. At a certain point, you start failing to fulfill any similarity at all. But "like" already implies less than 100% similarity (or you would've just said "identical to"). Annnnnywho.

I'm with you, Nonek. BUT, since it is how it is, I do see the prudence in Valorian's suggestion. It's easy enough. This guy, this guy, and this guy, because of class, get different "flavor" text descriptions, simply because they don't really use "magic." Seems non-problematic.

My brother played that when I was like 4! I remember watching him play it, and I thought it was awesome, but decided it was beyond my ability to play, heh. I actually never played any of those games, ever. But, my cousin had some Freddy Farkas (spelling?) games. They were kinda halfway between King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, from what I can tell.

I don't understand why a romantic relationship is somehow outside the "vast, vast pool of interpersonal communication." It's like you're saying "They don't need to put whips in the game to have interesting weapons, as long as they put all the OTHER weapons that aren't whips into the game." I mean, it's true, but, why would we specifically want to make sure that one weapon type WASN'T in the game, in the interest of weapon variety? And, by all means, cite the crap out of Bioware. It's not as if ONE of these has to be true: A) Bioware makes the most incredibly flawless, amazing utilizations of romance in the universe. OR B) Romance is inherently stupid and only makes game characters relatively better when they already suck. @Bruce, he has every right to not be at all excited or curious to see how DA:I's romantic elements turn out, because, while not 100% bad, Bioware has had a pretty bad track record lately. I think the biggest problem is that Bioware still treats it as this hugely optional afterthought of a thing. I mean, sure, they put a lot of technical effort into it. But it always kinda feels less like a persistent character's reactivity to your decisions for your character, and more like the difference between maxing lockpick (or some equivalent) and unlocking lots of extra goodies, versus just ignoring the lockpick skill. *shrug*. Personally, I want to see a game in which romance is just a component of people in the game world, and it affects different situations and such in the actual narrative. Most games FAR too often focus on how romance options affect all your free time. "LOLZ, I give you prezentz and stoof! Lez dew eeet!" With little "Love-o-meters" and all that jazz. I mean, it's written better than that, at least (just the dialogue itself), and it's all wrapped up in a pretty package. But, at it's core, it's far too simplistic. It feels like maybe some of these games believe that "If you love me, you'll steal shyte all the time, 'cause I'm a Rogue and that's what I like!" = tough, engaging decisions and effects on the world outside your relationship with a given character. Oh, you still aren't going to steal everything? Well then... LOVE-O-METER, DECREASED! It's that simple. When everything's divided into purely positive and negative effects, you've done it wrong right off the bat. Annnnnnywho... I'm starting to ramble. We've been over this stuff before in oodles of threads, so I'll stop now, 8P

More precisely, it can do so. Whether or not it does depends on how you do it, as with anything.

YESSssssss! I do like the "fewer, but upgradeable spells" concept, so long as it's balls-to-the-wall extensive. When it's "Okay, upgrade the range, or damage, or maybe add one effect?" to each spell, I hate it.

There's a lot of not-even-addressing-any-of-my-point in that response. Yes I've read oodles of your posts. And a passive engagement mechanic is no more an "automatic mechanic that doesn't require me to do anything" than any passive bonus in the entire game. By that claim, it's folly to not remove all passive Talent bonuses in the game and replace them with active effects and bonuses. Paladin auras? Obviously people who play paladins just want everything automated. Also, how does engagement automatically take care of anything for you? "Ah-HAH! You have to actively choose to flee from me if you want to!" Oh no. Combat over. Obviously there's nothing left to do. That's the "I Win" button. Someone has to choose between giving me an advantage, or staying and fighting me and denying me that advantage. FOR SOOTH! Come on, Sensuki. I know how smart you are. I don't claim to be the most eloquent poster in the world, and I'm perfectly open to being wrong, but at least pay me the respect of actually countering my point with something substantial. See, above, I just pointed out how passive mechanics aren't evil. But I didn't dickishly respond with "clearly, you just don't want any passive anything whatsoever in the whole game," because I know that's not the case. AKA "Plenty of other real-time games completely ignore a mechanic that was built-in to the PnP ruleset upon which they were founded." Great, so those games are more fun than NWN? Obviously that's a controlled experiment, and comments upon the sheer idea of any possible representation of melee engagement. And I'm not really concerned with "stickiness." I just think that, much like the idea behind backstabbing, there should be passive rules for the status of someone's eligibility for an advantage in melee combat. Don't want to get backstabbed? Don't turn your back on someone. Decide to turn your back on someone? Have fun getting stabbed in the back for extra damage. I don't know if that's facing-stickiness or what. *shrug*

So wait, it's the truth "purely because putting God of War's combat into every RPG would be a terrible decision"? Because, if it's not, then methinks you didn't get the point. No one's arguing that romance is necessary in an RPG.

So magic in the IE games was flawless, Stun? There wasn't a SINGLE improvement you'd make to it?

You cannot input a situational advantage. You can pause all day long, and click "attack this dude who isn't even actively worrying about me," and you might just miss or graze. You can't shove him down because he's not paying attention, or murder him to death because he's not even making it hard for you to, etc. That's the whole point. And yeah, it is simple. Engagement simply begs the question "Are you going to actively ignore this combatant who is trying to do horrible things to you within arm's reach, or are you not?" Thus, once you've entered the zone o' murder, you have to actively disengage. It's the PoE version of Windows' "Are you sure you want to close this document without saving?", except it's more like "are you sure you want to let this guy rock your face?" Yes, with player input, you can use every ounce of your power to one-shot the things that run past you, I suppose, and somehow pretend that, "Yayyy! The game represented the fact that it was easier for me to kill that thing because it was ignoring me!" But that's all it would be: pretend. Simply put, and as I stated before (which you didn't address), even WITH player input, there's a gap for something beyond just the exact same actions you would normally perform that can reasonably be filled by a mechanic. Look at it this way: If your Fighter only has 3 Knockdowns per Encounter, then he can use his "player input" up to 3 times to teach people not to idiotically run within 1 foot of him whilst ignoring him. If 7 people run past him, the other 4 just LOL their way past. Okay, so let's solve the problem. Give him 10 Knockdowns. Well... now he can just jog up to even people who ARE paying attention to him and actively engaging him, and freely knock them all down. That's a bit overboard. Just running around, "THIS IS SPARTA!" kicking peeps into cisterns. So how could we possibly remedy that without having to worry about giving him too many or too few free-use "player inputs" to deal with foes nonensically jogging around, ignorant of their surroundings, without suffering for it any worse than if they were super-prepared and attentive of the Fighter? Via some other mechanic specifically designed to tackle those specific situations, and nothing more. Behold, engagement. Tweak it, change it, tune it... but removing it would just be silly. Again, that's why there are attacks of opportunity in D&D and the like (except, I think they happen every time you move more than 1 square [5 feet] within a certain distance of something.) But, there's already a "flanked" status in the game. So you're already representing the fact that someone can only actively address so many opponents at a time in combat, and that those he's not currently "engaging" should probably gain some advantage in attacking him. That, and you don't want to play "chase the foe" every single time you encounter some enemies and there's no reason for all of them not to just charge your lightly-armored back line of party folk. OR, play "use all our active abilities up just to inhibit the foe, even though really I could just hold out my sword and he'd gut himself on it because he's not even trying to go around me or attack me in any way, shape, or fashion." This is the only thing I don't agree with in your suggestions regarding engagement. The whole point of it is to make non-tactical disengagements something you DON'T want to take lightly. "Don't just turn your back on this guy, because he'll then get a worse-than-normal free attack on you!" isn't really very spooky. The fact that he's getting an attack of opportunity is that an opportunity has arisen for a free attack. It's not an attack of desperation, or an attack of "impulsively fling your weapon in that direction in the hopes that it will hit him." I realize the whole "instantaneous" aspect of these attacks isn't very realistic, and that seems to suggest they're split-second things and all, but I don't think that's the case. It's really just more that the timing of them is abstracted away, because it would be really tricky to represent with code/animations, OR would, again, render these attacks far less threatening than they're supposed to be. If you had to wait for when your character could actually take an action, then you could just freely disengage from anyone right after they've done anything, 100% of the time. "Oh, he can't swing again... so I'll just let him swing once, block it if I can, then run past." That being said, maybe they DO need to not be as involved with damage as they are now. Especially when it comes to multiple foes all making these attacks on you at the same time. BUT, they should still bestow some advantage. Increased chance to knock you down, or an increased chance of something very undesirable happening to you.

... I disagree with every fiber of my being. There's nothing wrong with your liking that kind of Wizard design, but there's nothing inherent to the idea of magic that dictates that it MUST be ultimately/supremely powerful, but also really slow/infrequent/limited as a balance. That D&D Wizards are like that is solely because that's the kind of Wizards the D&D creators liked. It's not because you can't have magical people who are much closer to on-par with other folks. Especially in a fantasy setting in which all the adventuring classes are a bit of prowess exaggerations anyway. Personally, I'm quite sick of the extreme lack of games with mages who aren't stupidly limited yet supremely powerful. I'd just like to go out there and kick stuff in the teeth just like any old Warrior, but via magical means instead of purely physical means. Very few RPGs let you do much as a mage other than be relaly, really careful, stand far away, and make all your spells count. It's one reason I love Guild Wars 2 so much. Being an Elementalist in that game is fun as crap to fight stuff. 'Course, I just wish there were a greater variety of "spells" (abilities) at your disposal at any given time. As, being an MMO, you're using the same set of stuff for nigh infinite hours of gameplay (however long you want to keep playing the game). Annnnywho. I don't think Mr. Magniloquent's changes are strictly necessary, but I also very much like the overall concepts and suggestions he's presented.

You got your physical Wasteland 2 copy already? /jealous I'm still waiting on mine.

Yeah... I mean, if they make the narrative too long, it might just dragon and on... 6_u

"Can it be good in a given RPG? Not if the romance is limited to drama-based suckerpunches." Great point. I dare argue combat is unnecessary in RPGs, purely because putting God of War's combat into every RPG would be a terrible decision. *nod nod*.

DT and Grazes co-existing isn't killing anything. In a graze-less system, you either hit, crit, or miss. So, if you do 20 damage, and the enemy has a DT of 10, you're not doing much damage against him, really (compared to your potential). Now, if you crit, for 30, now you're doing relatively better, but still only as much as a normal hit would've done if he had 0 DT. If you miss, you do 0 damage. Not even "crap" damage. Just none. So, the fact that you can graze instead of miss, and still do 4 damage... that's pretty cool. If you remove either one, alone, you solve nothing. Remove DT? Well, now the damage values will just be adjusted for its absence, so you'll just do less damage ALL the time, instead of only against higher DT targets (with the wrong attacks). Remove graze? Now you'll just be missing much more of the time. Yes! That zero damage tastes PHENOMENAL! So, no. Just because stuff isn't tuned like it should be doesn't mean some entire mechanical component is at fault. As I've said before, I think the main problem with grazes is simply that a base 50% less-than-"Hit" range on Attack Resolution might not be the optimal thing, since people consider a 50% chance to hit pretty crap to begin with. I think even dropping it 5 or 10 points would do the trick. Even if you have an average character with completely average Accuracy, and they have a 60% or 65% chance to Hit (and only a 35% chance to graze or miss) a foe with completely average defense, you've still got all the other factors, and all that variation at-play. Basically, I don't think "average" equalling "hit crappily half the time" is necessary. Nothing's mandating that you should defaultly have a 50/50 chance to hurt someone unless you pump all your character creation/progression resources into boosting that a bit. Even with higher hit chances, you've got the difference between Hits and Crits, DT, which defense you're targeting, Accuracy/Defense variation between entities, damage type, buff/debuff effects, etc. I don't think we absolutely need good/bad symmetry in base Attack Resolution.

Yeah... Because the scientific process is so preposterous... *eyeroll*. If you didn't actually compare any data, that's fine. No one tasked you with doing that. I was just asking if anyone had, perchance.

Regarding engagement: These games already have limited-use active slow/stun/snare/charm/(insert CC here) abilities. Relying on those for engagement = simply removing engagement. What engagement does is put in a standard rule/allowance for at-the-ready melee peeps who don't want to watch everyone else jog past them, LOLing all the way, just because the melee peep doesn't want to use up all his CC ammo JUST to get some kind of advantage against someone who's in no way actively defending against his attacks at all, which he really should already get. That's pretty much it. I mean, that's basically the premise of any instance of attacks of opportunity in any game/ruleset, ever. All it's trying to do is say "Umm... wouldn't you have the opportunity to attack in this situation?" And, mechanically it prevents people from simply jogging around and switching targets all willy-nilly, ignoring people actively attempting to tackle them whilst twirling sword-chucks about. So, yeah, like Kjaamor said (I think? Man, losing track of all the responses I just caught up on), it doesn't even HAVE to be direct extra damage. It could be a chance to trip, slow, stun, knockdown, etc the foe who's attempting to ignore you. And, coinciding with what Sensuki's been saying, CC effects would suffice. However, they'd need to be separate from your regular arsenal (at least in quantity limitation/availability), because all you're doing is exploiting a passive advantage. "You're just going to jog past me, within arm's reach? Then I'm going to trip the CRAP out of you!" If there's something wrong with that concept, what is it, and how would we fix it without arbitrarily giving up on the idea that someone sprinting full-speed right past someone else, whom they're ignoring, wouldn't be easily and immediately clotheslined with a longsword for their horrible, horrible decision-making?

I'm not so sure about that (that there's no logic in what he's saying.) One of the things the game is trying to represent is character progression. Therefore, obviously SOME things are going to not-be just their own rewards. If you need XP to progress, and you never got any, that clearly wouldn't work. So, the game is either seeking to represent progression via every single iteration of any process or act whatsoever (simulation, basically), OR it's not. If not, then only certain things are, by design, going to produce XP rewards. If the things that aren't are not intended to be "their own reward," then that's a horrible game design concept. It's not just combat, either. There'll be lots of dialogue that you'll read and respond to, and you won't get XP except for certain moments. So, it is expected that the act of reading and partaking in dialogues with NPCs is enjoyable, nonetheless. Or, to look at it another way, everything in the game shouldn't be dependent upon the active progression of your characters just to be enjoyable. Otherwise, the only enjoyable thing in the game is character progression.

Can't we just have a Wizard spell that Transmutes your foes' blood into confetti?

Maybe it aged like wine. Have you been storing it in a music cellar, perchance?

That's all true (at least we both think, I guess? heh). But, it's irrelevant to the point that we can and frequently do discern objectively true information. What you're saying is almost like saying "well, no one's psychic, but we often properly discover the location of natural resources anyway." What's important is that we can figure things out that DO happen to be true (it's not a coincidence). Not whether or not we can just know truth technically. That's the nature of logic, though. Starting with things you DO know to figure out things you don't. That and philosophy. Things like "do I exist?" You may not be what you perceive yourself to be, but the very fact that you're perceiving anything at all proves that you aren't nothing, and that you actually exist. Etc. Annnnywho. I get what you're saying, but it doesn't support "I'm going to throw reasons why something is the way it is at you, then just play the 'everything's subjective so none of this is right or wrong or valuable at all' card." There's either no objectivity to be had with something, or there's more than none to be had. I don't even care if it never gets close to 100%, or if we'll always be limited to our pathetic human perceptions. We've figured out plenty of things with them, and we're not about to stop now. We can either put all our chips on "nothing we've ever perceived is actually real or true" -- which is a possibility -- or we can go on the basis of "assuming all the things that seem 100% to be true to our perceptions, after rigorous investigation and deductive reasoning, let's keep on applying these methods in order to actually find out more things, instead of just thinking whatever we happen to think and calling it a day." I choose the latter. Romance or anything else, take your pick... if there's no objective thought into designing a game involving it, then I don't want that game.

Negative. Some things people say are subjective. Some things are not. 2+2=4 isn't subjective. It's factual information. Doesn't matter that it's your perception of math. You're perceiving something static and truthful. It's all about context. Here's an example: You might say "This ferrari is better than that little economy car." That's subjective. However, if you said "This ferarri is faster than that little economy car," that's objective. The ferrari is measurably, truthfully faster than the other vehicle. You aren't speaking to your mere individual perception of things. You're speaking to observable facts. Objectivity is essentially the basis for all science. You start with things you DO know, and try to figure out things you don't, so that you can know more things. Thus, if you're interested in objectivity in discussion, you're actually interested in evaluating whether or not there's some amount of concrete, truthful data that can be deduced from an exploration of a topic. Namely, romance in games, here. If you truly believe that everything's all just subjective, and objectivity doesn't matter, then what's even the point in saying anything more than "I don't like X" or "I like X."? Hearing the pleasant sound of your own text? Also, nothing need be "fully objective" to be significant. Even though the ferrari is faster than the economy car, I can still subjectively like the color of the economy car better than the color of the ferarri, etc. So, the comparison of the two cars isn't fully objective, but so what? What IS fully objective? The fact that the ferrari is faster than the other car. That matters, as opposed to that simply being an opinion, or somehow unprovable. An objective statement can serve as a basis for something else. In fact, objectivity pretty much serves as the basis for subjectivity. We don't just randomly or arbitrarily like or dislike things. We like and dislike things for reasons. We believe certain ways for reasons. That isn't to say that we're always reasonable (specifically adhering to reason/logic for all our deductions/conclusions), but that you like the color of a car because it is, in fact, that color. If nothing was fully objective, then the color of the car would be completely just people's opinion. The court of law would be even worse than it is now. "Your honor... that my client's 73 stabs to the victim's headial region was somehow harmful to the victim, much less caused the victim's death, is PURELY subjective!" Anywho, simply put, there is significance to the difference between objective context and subjective. It's all about the goal. You're either attempting to prove/deduce/support something you believe to be in some way observably true, to at least some degree, OR you're simply sharing your personal perspective that you know has nothing to do with objectivity. There's nothing wrong with that, if that is the case, but, you just can't really have both as a goal. What I mean is, something's either just opinion, or it's some combination of opinion and observable/measurable fact. So, yes, we do all like different things in games. ALSO, even if you DO like romance, there's some aspect of objectively better and worse ways to do it. There's not ONE correct way to do it. But there is, in general, a right way and a wrong way to do it. As with anything else.

Mayhaps. That's not a horrible idea, but I'd honestly prefer for bestiary-related-lore/knowledge to actually serve some kind of purpose in the game. And about the only purposes I can think of that make any sense relate directly to combat, at which point it'd be strange for pacifist organizations to be all "Hey, since you never kill any bears, we'll present you with the knowledge of how to better kill bears, u_u." But, like I said, sheer creature lore rewards could be pretty neat. I'm just not sure what purpose to have them serve.