Lephys

To be fair, the main stattribute problem right now is simply the numbers. When some weapons/attacks are doing damage in the teens, and you get +10% damage from your Might value, you're looking at less than 2 bonus damage. D&D was using a 20-point scale, (+1 To Hit on a d20, +1 damage, etc.) and starter enemies would have like 8-16hp. So, percentage-wise, +1 damage was a big deal. +2 or +3 was even better. Especially with how that worked on the damage-roll range. If it was 1d8, and you had +2, then your damage range (without crit) jumped to 3-10. I'm not sure how the modifiers are applied in PoE (if they adjust the whole range, then let the roll occur, or roll for damage, then modify that result -- I think they affect the damage range first), but +4% damage (from 2 points of Might) of, say, 20 damage, is an extra .8 damage. That versus the HP values of enemies... it's a lot less of a bonus than we saw in D&D. Not trying to say "WE SHOULD BE LIKE DND 8D!". I'm just trying to compare the math between PoE (new) and D&D (something people are used to). Really, the baseline I'd start with regarding stat distinction is "If I give this guy 18 in this stat, and this other guy like 3... HOW different are they?" You don't want the 18-Might guy to do 7,000 damage, while the 3-Might guy does 1 damage, obviously. But you also don't want the essentially top-5-percentile person to be doing like 8 more damage than the person who's as strong as a squirrel, to enemies that need to sustain 100+ damage. So, I couldn't tell you, without extensive iterative testing, what the exact numbers should be, but I feel like the stattributes definitely need larger bonuses. If the combat significance of each point of a stat gets a little boost, and we see plenty of stat-checks throughout the game (because, remember, we're only seeing a tiny portion of the game, so stuff like "How much of a difference does my 4 extra points of Might matter out-of-combat in this game?" is kinda hard to tell at the moment), I think you wouldn't be feeling like the points mattered so much more in D&D. Annnnnnnywho... Now I should probably start actually thinking of talents/class-ability-structuring feedback... *ponder*

Yeah, and that's a terrible way to build a game. That's like playing checkers with someone who doesn't know the rules of checkers. Nothing is gained by doing that, because no one's even "figuring" anything out. They're just "learning" the rules. If that dragon fights you and casts "everyone within 20 feet is dead," then you just learn "Oh, well obviously if I don't want to die, I don't stand within 20 feet of the dragon, or don't let him cast that." You didn't puzzle anything out. You just observed. Someone who goes outside when it's raining doesn't suddenly figure out how to repel rain. They knew an umbrella did the trick. They just didn't know it was going to rain. Anyway, it's STILL not the same, because you can retry one of those fights 73 times, and until you actually do something differently, you aren't going to win. If I keep rushing the kill-within-20-feet dragon, it's never just going to randomly not have that spell anymore, and result in my party just all living and winning the fight. Having a chance-governed roll that determines an outcome, and reloading to get a different one is completely different. You can't DO anything to make the roll land on "SUCCESS!", or to not-land on "FAILURE!". And, again, the entire purpose of chance is negated by circumventing it, because the chance that you will eventually succeed if you roll enough times is greater than zero. You're turning chance into non-chance. Again, a simple toggle option would work way better, if that was the intent.

For one thing, that kind of supports my point. If it's "supposed" to allow you to always succeed, why should it take so long when there are easier options for allowing that without requiring redundant play? And if it's not, then why is the system set up to allow it? Secondly, why do you put points into, say, lockpicking, for your character? Because you want him to pick locks, right? As opposed to not-picking locks. Thus, if you put 73 points into lockpicking, you expect to pick a lot of locks. What if you want to pick ALL the locks in a game? Not just arbitrarily. You want to build your character to be able to do that. Well, you max out Lockpicking, and still, you just randomly fail at some locks. Because. One playthrough, you could get lucky and pick every single lock successfully. Another playthrough, you could fail at 20 locks and jam them. What good does that do to the whole game's design? Why does the game give you the option to decide to make a character that picks locks, as opposed to a character who doesn't (0 or really-low lockpicking skill value), THEN just make your success random anyway? What if it did combat like that? "Oh, you have the best armor in the game, and the best weapons and everything, and you've maxed out your combat skills. Roll for combat victory. OHHHH it landed on 3. I'm sorry, but you lost." Wouldn't that be silly? So, really, how crazy is it to use thresholds? If the game's going to ask "what do you want your character to do," shouldn't it provide (at least at some point -- maybe you have a chance to fail until you reach a certain threshold?) an option for your character to actually DO that, and not just a "what do you want your character to fail a lot less at?"? Again, this is one thing I love about PoE's Attack Resolution. You can ALWAYS do better or worse with any given attack roll, but if you're good enough, you can't just FAIL (miss), and if you're bad enough, you can't just randomly critically hit something. I'm not bashing chance. I'm saying that it doesn't cover everything that's intended. Just because you want chance to be a factor doesn't mean you want it to rule the world.

Not the same thing at all. If you die, for example, then decide to load a save instead of making a whole new game, that's not save-scumming. That's just called "loading." That's kind of the purpose of the system. You're also not circumventing anything. You can't make a game that allows someone to replay it while retaining no meta knowledge of anything that's going to occur in the second playthrough. You could learn how to more easily beat a boss, then just finish the whole game, start a new one, and beat him more easily the second time. You never had to reload, and you haven't circumvented anything at all. You still had to beat the boss. There may be other culprits, but chance is the main one I can think of. The entire purpose of chance, as opposed to a definite outcome, is to have the chance of different outcomes, no matter what you do (at some point -- you can usually minimize/maximize risks by tackling a check with a higher stat/skill rating instead of a lower one, but chance's purpose is still to provide a chance that something happens as opposed to something else, instead of a single outcome). The entire purpose of save-scumming is to trash all the outcomes you don't want until you get the one you do want. It's self-defeating. You can't want both of those things to occur at the same time and retain sanity. You can't WANT to be able to break off a lockpick in a lock, but simultaneously want to always successfully pick every lock. The design of the game was for the lock to not be mandatory to pick. The boss IS mandatory to fight. That's another significant difference. If you jam the lock, some bit of content is simply excluded from your playthrough. If you don't beat a boss, you either don't proceed past that point in the narrative, and/or you die and don't even continue playing the game (without reloading or starting a new game, which is really just "reloading" from as far back as you possible can).

There'd probably be one for "pointless posts pointing out the pointlessness of other posts."

Or maybe check out upcoming game projects if you're interested in them. Ahh, the power of "or."

You seem to be referring to the general definition of "engagement," as in when you're actually in active conflict with an enemy. The engagement being referenced in this thread is the actual Melee Engagement mechanic, which is a relationship within combat between two given characters/entities.

It would really depend on the specifics of the moment. Sometimes an enemy's best interest would be to go after the downed guy to make sure his downing's permanent. Sometimes it would be to ignore him and face the still-conscious threat.

By that line of reasoning, anything the game doesn't let you do is "railroading" your choices. Can't cut a cat and a child in half, then splice them together to make your own cat-child chimera? Can't play as a sword instead of a character? Can't open a portal to a different planet and say "to hell with this!" to the whole main narrative? STOP RAILROADING OUR CHOICES, DEVELOPERS! In seriousness, though, there's got to be another criterion in place than "not-letting us do something is automatically bad." Again, if they didn't allow saving, then scumming wouldn't even be a choice that they could take away. And the only reason they put saving in the game is so that you can play a game in not-a-single-contiguous-sitting. If they wanted you to be able to bypass failures at random rolls/checks, they could've just implemented a "disable check failures" toggle-option in the options menu. Boom. Done. WAY easier than forcing you to redo the same thing 5 times, just to "choose" your option (to bypass chance).

Funny... the main reason I picked that date was because the big list, at the time, had it as an open (un-voted-for) date. 8P Also, I just think it's great that I hadn't checked this thread in a while, and when I clicked to read the last unread post, this was the first one that popped up: Haha. I know, at the time, it was perfectly applicable. But, in light of the recent delay announcement, it's a little funny.

This. By the very nature of the ability to save the state of your game whenever/wherever, you are allowed to re-do things for different outcomes. Doesn't mean that the "rules of the game" are "just reload whenever you want a different outcome! 8D!" Even if that WAS the intention, it would STILL be terrible design, because the game's basically saying "we want you to always be able to get the optimal outcome on anything, but we want you to have to go through a bunch of random, redundant reloads until you actually get it! 8D!" That would be the most convoluted/inefficient design ever. You might as well just make Wizards cast a spell at random. And you'd have to reload and try again to get the spell you actually wanted, saving in between each success. Oodles of fun.

Having a "just click this button and you win the game" difficulty would be a design choice, too. Doesn't make it a reasonable one. The other thing is: Luck is a fickle thing. Sometimes, the problem is really just that it wasn't the smartest move to make a particular thing luck-based to begin with. "You're the most competent person at this skill in the history of this ruleset. Ohhhhh, you hit the .000003% chance that your character suffered an unprecedented seizure while he was trying to perform a simple task! Don't reload and try again, though, because this .000003% chance of seizure was a design choice, 8D!" That's one of my favorite things about the gist of Attack Resolution in PoE. Sure, it doesn't necessarily simulate real life. But, if you're twice as good at aiming as that guy is at dodging/deflecting, you aren't going to just miss 7 times in a row. I'll just say this... If I were the DM in a PnP game session, and someone was trying to overcome some obstacle, I'd come up with some interesting dynamic outcomes for the chances to represent. Picking a lock, for example. "You pick the lock, but it makes a bunch of noise as it slips from your grasp and clangs against the metal door." Or "You pick the lock, but it takes you an hour, instead of 5 minutes, because you weren't a badass." Or "You just don't manage to pick it." Critical failures are significantly less interesting and more just-plain annoying in a cRPG environment. In a DM'd environment, jamming a lock can add tremendously to a situation. In a cRPG, it's basically just "you can't open that door anymore." Also, in a DM'd environment, the DM is constantly adjusting things like that. Roll a d100? Well, what are the ranges going to be, and what will each represent? There's no constant "Oh, you have a 1% chance to jam the lock forever." That, and, it'd be MUCH more interesting to be able to jam a lock, and that mean you'd have to get past the locked thing via some other means (blow the door down or something, attracting a lot of attention, or possibly wounding your party in the blast, or damaging something on the other side of the door, etc.), than just "Lolz! You had a chance to screw yourself, and you did!" Hard chances for everything just don't really transition well into a cRPG. Chance is great, but it's not the end-all-be-all to decide everything. You don't want to turn all character development choices into "improve this, and there's just a better chance it'll actually matter than before, instead of some kind of definite improvement to anything."

That's one of the best things about character creation in an RPG -- getting to say "This is my Wizard (or whichever class you prefer). There are many like it, but this one is mine." Really, anything that affects the fabric of your character needs to affect that in some way, mechanically. Because that's what makes them actually different. There's plenty of opportunity to roleplay whatever we can muster for our characters. We can decide WHY our characters take this quest, and not that one. Or why they handle this situation like this, instead of like that, etc. What we can't do is actually, concretely, make our character different with the power of our imagination. My favorite thing when playing PnP D&D (and really still my favorite thing, in almost any RPG, cRPG or not) is to try and make characters that make even the NPCs in the game world scratch their heads a little bit. "A Wizard who dual-wields clubs?! You're an odd one, aren't you?" So, yeah. From the cold area because of your background/culture? Higher cold resistance would be fantastic (awesome suggestion, gkathellar). Another thing that I've suggested before is what functionally amounts to Knowledge skills/ratings. You don't even have to add in a new thing. Want to check Knowledge - Agriculture? Well, just check for the "Grew Up On A Farm" background. Then, ALSO check whatever level of Lore you'd like. You could even give Lore-check bonuses in certain situations, because of a pertinent background. Know about the crazy stuff going on with this mountain tribe of goblin-people? Maybe if you have a Lore rating of 7. Oh, you grew up in the mountain regions around tribes like this? +2 to your effective Lore rating for the purposes of this particular check. etc. That way, you don't have to just say "Oh, you have this background, then you're a badass at Mechanics!". Because... well, the skills are pretty broad, to be honest. That's another thing, though. When things like backgrounds and culture options grant very general bonuses (or, rather, ONLY grant general bonuses -- like +1 to a stat), they don't really feel like the very unique factor that they are, since usually that one stat point just represents what you could've achieved with a different point allocation. It's kinda like when you get a new spell, and realize it's the same as an old spell, just bigger/more powerful. Then you think, "Hmm... I don't really feel excited about this spell, because it's just like I cast 1.5 fireballs at the same time, instead of just 1." Again, not that it's problematic to have spell upgrades. But, they should be treated as what they are, and not treated as some unique, completely new/distinct ability you've acquired. Anywho... TL;DR: Things suggesting as much distinction as cultural options and backgrounds (moreso backgrounds) should really bring distinct mechanical character modifiers to the table, and not just tweaks to existing, already-adjustable-at-character-creation values.

^ I think he might've thought I meant "take away the arbalest" when I said "take away that." Yeah, I meant take away the stacking multipliers (and/or tweak the damage multiplier numbers or what-have-you -- "fix" the Rogue damage values), and how much insanity would be left.

Well, I don't know if that's: A) because it's a sandbox game, like Minecraft (which is boring if you don't have a goal for yourself and/or enjoy sandbox games -- which, I really think sandbox games should provide enough of a goal, on their own, to make things not boring), OR B) because it's currently at like version .2 out of 1.0, OR C) None of the above. The game looks very mechanically interesting. Boringness could always be cured. Whether it is or not... only time will tell, I guess. But, I wasn't suggesting picking the game up yet. I just thought there were people here who'd find it quite interesting in design, if they hadn't seen it already. I only discovered it yesterday, but I'm pretty much the last to know anything, heh.

I can't remember if it's an option already or not, but, if not... It would be great to be able to filter characters out of auto-pause options. What I mean is, instead of just "when a character is ready for another action" you could set "when selected characters are ready for an action," then have a checklist for which characters. Thus, if you have a PC who's a Wizard, and the rest of your party are Fighters, you can just auto-pause around when your Wizard's ready to do something new, etc.

That could even be a range. Simple little helmet? Just +1 to DT (Or a minor Deflection bonus... whichever). Full, face-covering helmet? Significantly higher defense bonus (+5 or so), but now a -2 or -3 penalty to Accuracy. I dunno exactly how this plays out in real life with helmets, but you could even do an increased penalty specifically to ranged accuracy. I would think melee accuracy would be less of a problem, since it's harder to see a little pinpoint target you're trying to hit from 30 yards than it is to see where a body is from 2 feet away. *shrug*

This is true, but I think "just slap on like 30 active abilities!" is equally as preposterous as "just give 'em more defense, attacks, and chance to hit, and call it a day!". "More passive" doesn't have to mean "just a blob of combat factor values that increase over time." And no, I don't think "You can use knockdown if you want!" helps all that much. Modals are a really good choice, though, I think. But, the thing is, you still have to actively toggle them. So... is that a foul? Defender is a pretty great example of what makes the Fighter passive-yet-interesting, because it actually alters the mechanics of how he's fighting, via engagement, instead of JUST boosting numerical values. The "Indominable" and other such modals from Dragon Age: Origins were actually pretty great in that regard, too, because they were tactically useful. Simply put, just because Fighters shouldn't have spellbooks full of abilities doesn't mean they shouldn't have a lot of options available to them in combat. If you just want to set 5 things and never change them, that's fine. You can always use them more passively without having to strip the options away from them. And you don't have to add a ton of active-use abilities just to provide options.

Any sandbox enthusiasts might want to check out Life Is Feudal (simultaneously terrible and amazing name) on Steam. It's in pretty early access right now, but it definitely looks like it COULD be very interesting. Just thought I'd share here, as something to pass the time, since PoE is delayed,

This! So much! Think about it... Wizard's spells are already divided up into levels, and you pick whatever you want. You don't get FORCED to start with Firebolt, then gain a specific new spell, WoW-style, every couple of levels. Why not structure the other classes' abilities the same way? Just go "These Fighter abilities/talents are all about on-par with each other, so they'll be tier 1. These will be tier 2, etc." Then let the Fighter pick. That, and, honestly, whatever they do, I think the current Weapon Focus talents should just be moved to character creation, and/or tied to cultural choices. Sure, they might only give you +5 or something instead of +10, since you start with them, but it just feels like more of a thing that would be inherent to your character. Why would your character suddenly acquire proficiency with 5+ different weapons? They wouldn't. Then, the actual selectable talents at level-ups could simply include some array of further specializations for individual weapons. You could even have pairings, at that point, as an intermediate level. "You're even better with this melee weapon and this ranged weapon," for example. Then, have a third tier that's weapon masteries. Like I said... however that's handled, the "you're better with all these thematically-grouped weapons" option needs to be a character-creation option. It's too weighted, otherwise (OR pointless, depending on how you view weapon switching), and it doesn't make much sense to gain such a thing spontaneously during adventuring.

I would honestly rather just have all those ingredients and such be extra currency you loot/find, and just have some Enchanter dudes in various locations that allow you to pick whatever enchantments you want, and pay for them. Same with crafting. I'd rather just buy/find the items, than find a bunch of ingredients, then just happen to technically "craft" some stuff. It really serves almost no purpose other than to provide a slight, psychological "Yay, I made stuff!" feeling, and maybe to provide slightly different timings for item acquisition (out in the field instead of in town, or technically wherever you want... of course, you have to have just looted something in order to be able to spontaneously craft something you previously couldn't have, so you might as well have just found the craftable, itself.)

I don't follow. Why does doing 18 or whatever stat bonus you get from the beginning make my process flawed? How does your character's potential not exist in a video game that's simulating the existence of a person? Do people have potentials? Do they vary? Okay. Then why would a virtual person suddenly not have a virtual potential? Or maybe there was more to what you said that I just misunderstood? What doesn't represent what thing? So, you're not saying your way is better or worse, you're just saying "my" (I don't really own it) way is definitely worse? Diplomacy check, please...

I actually think the best way to deal with threads like this is to "derail" them into actual discussion. Hmm... maybe that'd just be called "railing" a thread?

That's what I mean. Take that away, and how much insanity would remain, for example? I'm not trying to argue semantics, but, it just seems like if something as simple as "Oh, woops... that doesn't need to be stacking, *fix*" brings the Rogue significantly closer to the mean, then the Rogue, as a class, isn't really that "imbalanced." Or, to put it in a possibly-less-like-spoken-by-a-defective-android fashion, the difference in something like damage output numbers does not necessarily coincide proportionately to the difference in the balance of class "blueprints," so to speak. If the classes were buildings, and you wanted them to all have the same square-footage, and Steve the construction worker accidentally wrote 100 on one wall, instead of 10. Well, that building's HUGE, but the blueprint's 99.9% fine. You just need to fix that number.

Yeah, I'd like for things like backgrounds/cultural choices to provide more... flavor, for lack of a better word. Not in the sense of "purely fun/cosmetic stuff." But... less "one of your numbers is simply raised," and more "your character is unique in only a way that this particular background/culture can provide." That's why I made the comparison to traits from Fallout. You couldn't ever just level up and achieve the same effect as Finesse, for example. Just as one example, what if your cultural choice gave you bonuses to Accuracy with particular weapons? "You're much more familiar with the Spear and the Longbow" or something. Probably not the best example, but nothing else would make you better specifically with just the spear and the long bow. OR... OOOH! Better example. EXAMPLE MULLIGAN! Haha. Since the Weapon Specialization talents already boost your accuracy with weapon groups, what if your cultural choice affected your critical chance with particular weapons? As in version 1.0 of the example, above, it wouldn't have to be the same number of weapons as the Specialization talents (I think they're groups of 5 or 6 weapons?), so maybe just one or two. A melee and a ranged? *shrug*. But, that's the style of effect I look for in something like culture/background selection. Something that makes your character your character, and not just "well, you ALSO have 17 Might, but 1 of that comes from the fact that you are from THIS region." Also, it's not necessarily that there's a problem with character creation having cultural options that give you stat bonuses. That's basically a more-interesting form of racial bonuses, so I'm totally fine with that. So, either background should be the more interesting thing, or something akin to Traits should be added. Really, though, since backgrounds are already there, it'd be best to use those, like Arcanum did. Arcanum's were at least interesting (usually a stat bonus and/or stat detriment, various skill bonuses, and/or some unique effect such as "better reactions from females," etc.)