Lephys

You've got me beat. My first PC was a 386. Can't remember how big the hard drive was (I think 20MB?), but I DO remember that it was a 10Mhz system, with a TURBO button that took it to... brace yourselves... 20Mhz! WHOA, SLOW DOWN, PC! I think modern PCs need that button. "Whoa, getting some framerate drop here... *doubles the CPU speed*... *computer bursts into flame*" I remember Prince of Persia, though. That was the most amazing game to me when I first played it. That and Betrayal at Krondor.

No matter how you look at it, it still comes down to a quantity of content. To be more accurate, they don't have the time and resources to do romance after the quantity of other priority content that they've already locked in. Think of it as a 9th companion. Sure, it's just another companion. It might be different from the other companions, and bring something else to the narrative and party dynamic, and it's not a separate feature, but, if they aren't able to do that companion, they just aren't. It would probably be easier if it were simply an additional existing thing. But, it's a whole 'nother facet of character developmental representation. And, like you said, it's hard to properly portray. That's why most games just kinda have Romance make a cameo, rather than really be deliberately woven into the narrative design. It's like those movies that are based solely around "CHECK OUT THIS ACTOR SHOOTING THINGS AND KICKING ARSE!". All that really matters is that that actor is there, and not how good the script or story is, or really what that actor's even doing. Too many games do that, and that's why people tend to groan at the sheer mention of romance.

Honestly, I think RPGs could do with more "Uhhh, guys, we probably shouldn't just stand around here in these ruins for too long... we'd best get moving soon" factor. If that were the case, then having to take extra time to actually search things (using some kind of skill) would actually be interesting. For example, in State of Decay (zombie apocalypse setting), you actually have a foraging/rummaging skill (can't remember what it's called), and you even have two relative speeds at which you can search at any given time. If you search slowly, you're much quieter, but it takes a lot longer. If you opt to perform a speedy search, you're much more likely to knock something over and make a very loud noise, which attracts the crap out of nearby zombies. The improvement of your skill increases the chances of you not making any sound, even when searching speedily, AND improves your search times. Now, I'm not saying "that's the solution to every instance of searching in the entirety of a cRPG! *dusts off hands*". But, I'm just trying to point out how interesting searching can be when it's not JUST a delay to the player's gametime. Also, I might've mentioned it before, but I think scripted interactions have a lot of potential utility for searchable/hidden things. But, yeah, as for the highlight toggle, I think it works best basically as a "what can my character easily see right now that I maybe cannot at this floaty, floaty perspective, so far from the ground?" button.

Crap, when I saw "Wind Axe," I thought it was an air-element-attributed axe! o_o 6_u

No no no... he said "purely" through chance. If you get a crit on rolls of 96-100, for example, you can't affect what the dice land on. You could roll 95 or below 50 times in a row, and always get hits, but never crits. OR, you could roll 20 criticals in that same set of rolls. Doesn't matter what else you do or decide, as long as the dice get rolled that many times. What you CAN actively effective on a tactical, in-the-moment level is the difference between your ACC and the DEF of your target, by choosing a different target, buffing, debuffing, etc. That's what the whole Attack Resolution system is based on: the actual situational influence of characters' Accuracy and defense values. He doesn't want to have one thing (criticals) be completely divorced from that system and tied purely to the actual dice roll, while everything else is a part of that system. In other words, he doesn't want two separate systems. You can already modify any number of things within the given system. There are already abilities that convert a portion of grazes to hits, etc., so you can already directly affect the critical range if you wish to. You can have talents, as it stands, that passively increase your critical chance. That doesn't mean that divorcing only critical hits from the rest of the Attack Resolution system somehow doesn't make the game unnecessarily more complex. Also, I didn't see anywhere where he said they flatout don't care about making attributes more powerful. He just mentioned several improvements to attribute modifiers. And if Accuracy is currently too powerful, then maybe suggest how to change Accuracy, not insist that attributes be changed to indirectly sort of maybe make Accuracy a bit better. You can reduce the graze range (making not-putting points into Perception less devastating to your ability to hit stuff well), and/or adjust any of the other ranges as you see fit in various ways. I don't understand why people are so allergic to the idea of tuning systems, and are so ready to jump straight to complete remodeling.

Only thing I don't like about Seari's, really, is that the log takes up so much horizontal space, for basically no functional reason. I tried to think of a few ideas for how to utilize a wide log like that -- maybe put allies' combat log entries on the left side, and enemies' on the right side or something -- but I can't really think of anything solid (having enemies' entries on the right, for example, would prevent you from intuitively knowing who did something first: you or an enemy.) Maybe the log could be worked down into the lower bar, beside the action hotbar or something, instead of floating in its own entire row above that. *shrug*

It's not even realism, though. It's not like, realistically, your character could spot anything at all hidden in the entire room, simply by utilizing a floating mouse-cursor that some deity-like entity (who was ultimately controlling the character) moved about the room until things were revealed, but only to that entity. You've already got a system in place for your character to have limited capabilities that you, the player, cannot leapfrog over. If your character has crap Intellect, then, no matter how clever you are, you cannot cause him to produce some huge, clever dialogue response in order to solve some problem. So, likewise, if your character has crap Perception (or whatever you want to affect it), then he should be incapable of detecting subtle, hidden things, no matter how many times you dance your mouse cursor over them. So, again, if they want to put in some sort of thorough searching mechanic, then that would be cool. But, it shouldn't be up to the player to literally search for hidden things, beyond having your party actually go see what's down this branch of the cave as opposed to just ignoring that entire corridor. It makes no sense, in the context of the entire RPG system, to force the player to rely on his own perceptive abilities to detect some tiny "hidden" trinket on the ground 5 feet away from the character. Your character would pretty easily be able to spot that, just by glancing in that direction, but, to the player, it's one little tiny pixel that MIGHT be a slightly different shade of color from the dirt around it. Don't get me wrong... finding hidden objects on the screen can be fun. I'm not saying that's just dumb to enjoy that at all. It's just silly, in the context of an RPG in which your character's ratings determine all the other outcomes.

It does, in a way. But... at the same time, you're hovering above a party of characters that you're controlling. So, forcing you, the player, to manually search for things isn't really in-line with that same roleplaying experience. In a PnP game, you pretty much control your character first-hand. So, unless you specifically look thoroughly through that pile of trinkets in the corner, your character isn't really going to find something in the midst of it. However, if you walked into a room that had any kind of decent lighting, your character would immediately know that, 100ft away, in the corner, was a barrel, or a chest, etc. You wouldn't have to walk close to it, then search. Basically, if it would be something the DM would reveal to you in the room's general description, then I see no problem with highlighting it. The highlighting is KIND of like the DM telling you "there's a rusty chest in the corner," without you explicitly searching the corner to see if there's something in it. But, because of the cRPG perspective, simply not-revealing that, or requiring the player to search for it, kind of makes no sense, and/or comes with unintentional side effects. So... *shrug*. I don't mind the highlight function, for things that are readily visible to your characters (even if they're technically beyond sight range... if we were dealing with threat visibility, here, I'd be worried about that). But I do think that any kind of in-depth searching should require extra effort/choice on the player's part. And it shouldn't just be something you can walk around, spamming, that covers a 20-foot radius at a time, because that's not what you do in the underlying PnP experience. Simply because there were consequences for doing so. Maybe thoroughly searching an area causes you to make lots of noise, and attracts baddies? Who knows. Time-sensitivity is the best thing, but it's hard to put in that level of it in a cRPG.

Asynchronous action does not inherently equal chaos. Everyone in The Hunger Games started at the same distance from the Cornucopia, and all got to start performing actions at the same time, so obviously what occurred at the start of every Hunger Games was the opposite of chaos. Nope. 8P I went first (because of asynchronization), and knocked you to the ground before you got to attack. Looks to me like that's less chaotic than both of us scrambling to attack one another at the exact same time and wondering who's technically going to land an attack first. I'm sorry, but round-based "real-time movement + non-real-time combat" is just the worst part of turn-based combat tossed into a blender along with the worst part of real-time combat. "Oh, it's nice that you didn't really ever have to worry about pausing but about once every 6 seconds" is the only real benefit it provided, as compared to other options. That said, that doesn't mean that a fully real-time, asynchronous system is somehow immune to chaos, and it doesn't mean that PoE's current system doesn't have some chaos going on, or that we should have to pause every millisecond. It's just not the fault of everything (but movement, for some reason) not being married to a metronome.

Hiro is quite right. You'd pretty much have to go through and change each check in each dialogue/situation to its "sub-skill," instead of the umbrella. Which... is a lot less work than straight-up adding in things that aren't already checked. BUT, I don't know that that means it's necessarily easy to do, or that they have plenty of time to do that. Also, you'd have to change all that code to check "traps" and "lockpicking" and such, instead of Mechanics, for individual skill checks. Which, that's easy enough in and of itself, but it's more the sheer number of changes you'd have to make that would likely be the issue. *shrug*. I can't really definitively say that that would be impossible, either. But I wouldn't want the skills expanded if those changes weren't made.

I think Dangerous Implement should just be renamed "Swordchucks,"

The only thing I hate about having to manually search around is that it usually doesn't come with much of an actual in-game cost. What I mean is, if the time it took you to search a room, as opposed to just hitting the highlight toggle and seeing everything in the room actually meant that some enemy gets into better position, or some other time-sensitive thing occurs, it would be a bit more meaningful. But, as it stands, other than allowing you to sort of enjoy the pseudo-simulation of active searching. In a PnP game, something like searching a room in a detailed fashion actually mattered, because you weren't ever sure what would happen during that time. Maybe some bandits return from patrolling/pilfering, to catch you off-guard while you're all rummaging through stuff in a room. Or maybe it gets dark, making it more dangerous for you to travel back to town from wherever you are, etc. But, in most cRPGs, it's basically just a slight simulation of having to search, with practically no other significance whatsoever. So, *shrug*. I think highlight is a good tool, and should always show you the containers and such that are obvious to your characters' perceptive abilities. Maybe some kind of more-thorough searching could be put in, via scripted interactions or something.

I blame the industry, AND people, for just not caring what something actually is as long as someone uses it differently enough times. Like DLC. "Ohhh, it's just some added-on thing as an afterthought to get more money now!" No, that's what it could be, and what we should be wary of. Yet, people now often shun the very idea of additional digital content. 8P

First of all... excellent post, as usual, Others have said a ton in here, so I'm just going to pitch in my two cents, rather than go through the whole thing saying "NO" this and "YES" this. I'm just attempting to contribute to the brainstorming on the matter, as many of the things you've suggested make me thing of even more options that could or could not accomplish the same goals, or to a different extent, etc. (Essentially, this is not a re-write of everything you've suggested. If I don't address something, then I probably had no issue with it, and/or only had an idea of something else to consider not solely because I decided it was better already.) Attack Resolution I definitely agree about the Attack Resolution system. I think the way in which it works is fantastic, but the numbers were sort of arbitrarily made symmetrical, which was a great idea initially, I think, but they should be adjusted now, in some fashion. Tying crits to the roll itself would accomplish the goal of toning them down a bit, but I don't know that it wouldn't be somehow better to simply tweak the Attack Resolution math, instead. Maybe every 2 points your ACC-DEF increases grants you a point of Crit chance, for example, instead of every 1 point. Each additional positive point of difference would always shift the bottom half of the spectrum down, but would alternate between adding in a point of Hit or Crit, depending. It could be every other point, or every 3rd point, etc. "Hit, Hit, Crit... Hit, Hit, Crit." You still get a greater chance of criticals, and it's still nice and intuitively packed into Attack Resolution, but it doesn't make +15 differences start being ridiculously absurd, etc. In fact, it might even be a good idea to apply the same principle to full misses. Every 2 or 3 points of shift downward, knock off a point of miss. With every 2 points, you'd have to get to +10 ACC-DEF bonus in order to completely eliminate the chance of missing. And, separately, I'd say that the hit-to-graze range ratio shouldn't be 45-45. It should be more like 35(graze)-55(Hit) or something, at ACC-DEF = 0. I fully agree with the many that say we're seeing too many Grazes, but, I think the answer is to simply tone down the Grazes, not change the mechanic somehow. The initial idea was sound -- to get rid of that "more than 10% of the time I'm just going to whiff and accomplish nothing" feeling, and replace it with actual accomplishment much more of the time, with only a relatively small chance to actually do nothing. And 45 Graze with 5 Miss does that. BUT, I think what was neglected was the fact that, half of the time, you still feel like you're severely underperforming. I think the default entire sub-par (be it partial or zero damage) range of the spectrum needs to be smaller than the positive one. Because, in just-hit-or-miss games, you typically don't deal with a ~50% chance to hit. That's already pretty bad, really. So, even though it's been change from full misses, it's still basically a 50% chance to suck, to a player's brain. Armor System While I agree that switching to DR and abandoning integers would be easy to math, I agree with others in that it doesn't really contribute to the tactical/dynamic nature of combat. It makes damage effectiveness more of a static thing, and not at-all situational. Does the foe have more armor? Then you'll do less damage, proportionately. Your Might modifier, being a percentage, might as well just be called DR reduction. They take 50% less damage, and you deal 25% more damage? Then they're basically just taking 25% less damage from you. I realize that relationship remains regardless of the specific system used (any damage reduction and any damage bonus cancel out, to some degree), but DT does it in a much more interesting fashion. If you boil it down, I think that's one of the core tenants of what we look for in an RPG: situational significance, for lack of a better term. Instead of "oh no... this weapon kinda sucks against armor," you get "Oh, this weapon kinda sucks against this particular enemy." That, and there's a lot more of a dynamic at play. If you can't breach a DT regularly, maybe you can augment your Accuracy/critical chance and start dealing significantly more damage, instead of just some proportional increase ("Oh, I was only doing 2 damage, but now that it's doubled, I do 4! YEAH!"). Also, I like the idea of armor JUST contributing to DT, and not affecting Deflection. That, and I think, if that were the case, then it might be awesome for only shields to affect Deflection. The thing is, you could still have Deflection be able to be tied to things like armor value, with Talents and the like. "Every 3 points of DT gives you 1 more point of Deflection," or something similar. On the other hand, you could have low-DT characters with high Deflection, which, I think, is much more interesting than "For every additional point of damage protection, I also get better at not-getting-hit as badly." There's just a redundant portion of overlap, there. "This armor is protecting me from damage, but is also deflecting potentially damaging attacks, despite the fact that they're striking 'me'." I mean, if your armor grants Deflection that leads to a Graze instead of a Hit, should it provide half DT against that hit? How can it simultaneously mitigate the damage of the hit, AND contribute to the hit being a less-damaging hit? It's a little weird, to be honest. And, like I said, it opens up a lot more interesting possibilities for, as an example, characters who don't get hit often, but still take massive damage when they do (Because of low DT, but high Deflection). Shields Guess I went kind of the opposite on shields, heh. As above, armor shouldn't enhance Deflection (not defaultly), but should provide DT. And shields should enhance Deflection (defaultly... doesn't mean you couldn't have exceptions that provide DT, for example). Attributes I really think this is still just a big matter of a bunch of little factors contributing to a bad result. Like a meal in which your chicken was overcooked, AND there was too much pepper, AND it was cold, etc. Doesn't mean the ingredients are wrong. It just means several things should've been prepared differently. Cook the chicken less, use less pepper, and actually bring it to the table in a timely fashion. Problem solved. You don't have to cook something else to deliver a tasty dish. Anywho, I think the attributes still have some room for moving effects around, but, to be honest, I couldn't really say, at the moment, what specifically should be done. I still think that, ideally, each attribute should have one primary function, and one (or two, even) secondary functions that are measurably less significant, per attribute point, than their primary functions, in general. But, that's a lot easier said than done. But, replaying New Vegas (I say "replaying" but I never actually finished the game story, just played the crap out of it like a slowpoke who explores everything), I notice very interesting effects like Agility affecting your Action points (primary), but also affecting your weapon reload speed (secondary). The reload speed increase is nice if you focus on guns, so you COULD take Agility just for that, if you really wanted to (depending on your particular build/focus), but action points are highly useful to everyone, too. Someone like myself, who's specialized in Unarmed combat, has some guns for backup, but doesn't really care too much about reload speed. I guess the point is, even if you don't really want to put points into a stat just for some Action Points (maybe you're one of those anti-VATS people, heh), you still have other reasons not to just dump that stat. Anywho, I realize that's kind of what they're trying to do with PoE stats, and again, I realize it's just a bit tricky to get them all feeling like they're on par with one another. But, I think as long as you don't stack primaries and secondaries (like pairing damage bonus with defense bonus or action speed or something), the secondaries don't necessarily need to be "balanced" as much. Looking at the New Vegas example, I'm not as worried about reload speed being balanced against Strength's carry weight bonus, for example. Because, neither of those is really the type of thing that makes a stat a no-brainer or insta-wins combat/the game for you. Interrupts Interrupt is one of those things that might work best if divorced from stats. Or, not necessarily fully removed, but at least treated as something that need not be solely supported by stats. This is where Talents could really shine, once again. And I definitely think it would be great if you could have a variety of options for effects on interrupt, as you've suggested. Basically, I just don't think we need to look at any one stat's effect on Interrupt, then say "Oh no, Interrupt's too insignificant now, but if we increase it, then that stat becomes a no-brainer! *tear out own hair* !", since you can always have Talents bolster someone's interruption capabilities, etc. That and/or traits at character creation. That sort of thing. I think that's the strength of talents, right now. And the stat system really needs to rely more on what Talents could do. I think it tries to cover too great an extent of factors on its own.

*Hiro Protagonist II tries to strike the point... but misses!* Just... don't even worry about it. It's really not worth it. Just pretend no one ever said anything, and enjoy life.

That's great, but did a lot of people play BG1 and just start at level 8? Also, I'm not doubting the ability to play a game when starting at level 8, in either situation. I know people aren't just going to keel over and become incapable of playing, and the game isn't going to crash. Just, referencing BG2 doesn't really address the idea that was brought up, which is starting with a level 8 character in a game that doesn't start with level 8 characters. And yes, you can level up peeps from the inn. That is true. The process of leveling up inn-people isn't difficult. Noted.

It would be pretty cool if there was an actual continuing branch for losing (not just an alternative (okay then, let's get out of jail) a given fight. Maybe your party gets tortured or something, which causes someone to snap, and actually affects their personality/character development for the remainder of the narrative. Maybe your stronghold suffers while you're captive? BUT, that all comes down to game scope. Every time you allow for two completely separate continuities to a story, you've got to go big or go home. 'Cause, if one's the "Oh, you're not really supposed to do this" option, and the other's fully fleshed out, then what's the point? And yeah, if the losing outcome is just going to be a long, entertaining "let's get back on the exact same track we would've been on had we WON that fight," then there's not much point in it. That's an if, though.

Except I played and completed the first BG game. I knew all of the characters you started with in BG2. That, and we know that PoE doesn't start at level 8. I admit that I'm glad we won't be spoiled on the story and whatnot. BUT, at the same time, it's a bit difficult to test "the game" when you're just thrown into the middle. So, *shrug*. There's good and bad to both approaches.

Well, voluntarily doing away with engagement would also wreck one of the Fighter's main advantages. I know engagement isn't perfect right now, but it needs to be fixed, not done away with. And, truth be told, if you choose to voluntarily mod something out of the game, you can't rightly complain that something else suffers for it, or that the game wasn't designed with your mod's system abolishment in mind. I mean, IF animal companions had engagement-related abilities, and you modded out engagement, you'd think the person modding out the engagement mechanic would mod in replacement abilities. *shrug*

I thought the more obvious solution was to just give Mages mana-blades. STILL SWORDS FOR EVERYONE!

They wouldn't move of their own accord. They could have essentially waypoints. But, instead of targets of a simple move command -- "Move to here" -- it would be more like a target for combat movement -- "If you move while fighting, move toward here." Think of combat movement, functionally, as a simple move command being executed amid a gauntlet of crowd-control spellcasters. If you tell someone to move over to a signpost, from where they are, they're going to take off running toward that signpost. Every time they get hit with a slow, or knocked down, etc, their movement will be impeded. But, the whole time, they resume moving toward that whenever they get the chance. And enemy ground gained (pushing you "back," or whichever way the enemy's movement goal is, I guess) is similar to the effect of the Fear spell in a lot of RPGs now. It sort of hijacks control of your character, and makes them run not-where-you-want-them-to. Until it's over, at which point your character is free to resume their previous movement. *shrug*. Would it be a simple thing to just code in real quick? Probably not. But, the design itself is not that complex. You'd probably just want to have incorporated it into your game prior to this late in development, is all.

Everything in Fallout was 2D, yet plenty of it was interactable.

Yeah! I have no qualms with some later-tier Firestorm (for example) spell being "better" overall than Fireball, as long as it does something DIFFERENT from Fireball. I don't want to have to cast "greater fireball," when I could just cast a better fireball. A Warrior doesn't use "Greater Sword Swing." He just gets better with his sword swings. So, from a gameplay standpoint, it's a lot more enjoyable than feeling like you're having to re-acquire the same thing over and over again. The fact that your progress has no effect on your spells makes 'em feel more like grenades than spells.

Maybe the wolf should just get way-easier disengagement, since it's supposed to be more agile than others. So, you could feasibly have the wolf keep changing targets without getting annihilated. *shrug*

Yeah, I think it's fine for anything but dialogue to be interacted with via the closest party member (looting, opening something, etc.). Then, dialogue should just be able to be initiated without standing 2 feet away from someone. I mean, I don't always run up to someone's face before asking a question. So, I think dialogue should always have your main character move/interact, so that it isn't confusing. And just let them interact from 10-15 feet away, so you're not always having someone jog all the way up to someone else (especially helpful in situations when combat can spring straight out of the end of dialogue.)