Lephys

@MaxQuest: I really appreciate the awesome response. I was honestly asking those questions rhetorically, just to point out that the existing system/world doesn't really account for them. But, those answers were spot on and well-thought-out, . I don't necessarily want all that stuff to be mechanically represented in the game (I mean, it'd be great if it was, but I don't expect that of a CRPG, until maybe a bunch of them slowly inch toward that and we get better able to do such things with game programming). I just think those questions need to be asked when designing a stat system. "What exactly are we measuring, and what aren't we measuring, and why?". Also, those questions were partially to illustrate how the "It's cool, Might doesn't have any weird loose-ends" notion is flawed, as oodles of folk keep jumping into this and rolling with that. Which I don't blame them, I suppose, as at a glance it does seem like it's all just semantics. But when you look a bit closer, it's a lot more than semantics. And if this wasn't an actual RPG with lots of story and lore depth, I wouldn't care about answering these questions. For example, Diablo. I don't really care how everything's measured in Diablo. You hack-and-slash your way through enemies. The end. It's a fun game, but the stats aren't trying to tie into a bunch of actual RPG elements. They just have the combat and numbers-progression of a lite RPG system, and a linear story. That's it. That's a different kind of game. You could basically make up whatever stats you want, because all they functionally affect are your end-numbers (damage, defense, regen, mana, health, etc.). EDIT: Just to further illustrate, this raises the "so does soul power handle everything, or wouldn't you think Intellect (or at least some kind of mental metric) would play some sort of a role here?" I mean, does soul power power their brains, too? Basically, if your soul is an energy source, then what all does it do? Or do you use other metrics (intelligence, strength, agility, etc.) to shape and use it?

*shrug*. It is, in a way. My problem is that with old DnD/Infinity Engine rules, your casters being out of juice means that they're basically reduced to walking decoys. It's one thing to be down to a limited amount of effectiveness, but another thing to be functionally useless. That was always my biggest problem with older DnD Vancian magic. "You're a Wizard? Here, you get no competency at anything, and also these couple of Just Piss Off The Enemy spells per day! 8D!". Especially in the tabletop setting. You'd better hope your DM has a boat-load of non-combat adventuring planned for you for the next hour-or-so, 'cause you're not resting anytime soon. "I'd like to swing my shoestring (the only thing I'm strong enough/competent enough to wield) at the goblin." *rolls*... "You critically miss because you suck so badly at anything that isn't magic, and now you've choked yourself to death with your shoestring." If not for that, I'd love to keep going when my Wizard's out of juice. That and my main character was always the Wizard, ... I'd imagine it's not as bad if the caster who's out of spells is just one of your lackeys.

It is always bothersome when Dwarves are just re-sized humans. . Aesthetically, they seem like more of a sub-race than an actual race, if they're not distinct enough. I can't think of a couple of other games that have done this, but I know they exist.

This, so very much so. No one is (rightly) faulting anyone for having preferences, but standing around having a preference-off does no one any good. The reasons that are the basis for our opinions are what matters most in collaboratively figuring out ways in which we can build the game such that we can all enjoy it as much as possible. I don't think anyone here really has a problem with the general idea of casting buffs, or resting to heal. Again, if they were playing a tabletop game and had to decide on some place to rest, with a DM deciding what happens based upon when and where they rest, and it led to interesting gameplay for them specifically because of the choices they made, then they'd most likely enjoy it a lot more. But, CRPGs give people a lot of reasons to not enjoy many of the things that have been implemented over the years, largely because they're carry-overs from tabletop without the meatiness that tabletop brings. I love roleplaying, but I'm not going to play a game in which resting purely replenishes your spells and health and such, then PRETEND that all the other factors are there to actually support much more meaning in when and where I rest. There are plenty of other games that actually support that roleplay. I'm not going to go play Checkers and pretend that all the pieces are the characters in PoE, when I could just play PoE and have to pretend a lot less to achieve awesome roleplaying. Don't use a hammer to take out a screw when you can just use a different tool. If you want to use a hammer, find a goal that the hammer's good for, THEN use the hammer.

Claiming that you want that would be that, yes. Merely pointing out that your reasoning finds a party of 700+ characters to be fine is nothing of the sort. You expressed absolutely no criteria for a ceiling on party size. You even stated that the number of party members has no bearing on the difficulty of balancing the game for said party size. See, the expected sequence of events is: 1) Present reasoning. 2) Someone points out, in a completely robotic, neutral fashion, a flaw in your reasoning. 3) You amend your stated reasoning by elaborating on it or otherwise explain how it was misunderstood and the flaw doesn't actually exist, OR you realize that the flaw exists and re-consider your reasoning. Instead, for some reason, I've noticed a trend of people choosing imaginary option #4, which is "Pretend no one pointed out anything valid, and that their argument had nothing to do with what you stated/presented, presumably so that you can feel better about yourself after assuming that all logical observations are personal assaults in some fashion." Discussion is collaborative. You have a perspective on party size that is different from mine and others' here, so we're simply trying to explore your reasoning and perspective so that we can better understand the topic as a whole. Either I was mistaken in pointing out a flaw in your reasoning (in which case you make that known to me, and understanding is gained), or I was not mistaken (in which case you observe my addition to the discussion, and greater understanding is gained). Blocking this process by dodging/circumventing collaboration accomplishes nothing. Nor does anyone "winning" against anyone else. The only way we win is to discuss and understand. This is discussion's only purpose. @Abel: Definitely nothing wrong with having a preference for 6, . And hey... when all's said and done, with how things are in Deadfire when we actually get to play it, you may even find that they've done it in such a way that you don't greatly miss that 6th party member. You never know,

There are still just weird loose-end questions. Can the Wizard infinitely enhance his "physical" attacks with a bit of magic? If so, then why are his spells so limited, and why can't he turn that off to preserve stamina at the cost of reduced damage, or amplify it even more at the cost of stamina? That would be tactically interesting. And the Fighter's using "magic" as well (soul power or what-have-you, as everyone is), so why can't HE enhance his weapon swing with that? And if he is doing that already, then how does the Wizard's weapon swing enhancement differ from the Fighter's? That perception mostly works, but it just has a weird hole in it. And I know these things seem nitpicky, but they're valid questions to be asked, especially in a game type who's rule system is filled with dozens of little values that cause dynamic adjustments to things to determine the values that we actually look at/use. Like damage. Imagine if you had a flaming sword, and it just said "20 damage." Wouldn't you wonder how much of that was fire, and how much of that was physical/slashing? I don't think you'd be appeased if someone just said "Meh, that's just the sword's overall power. I'd imagine it's being enhanced a bit by the fire." Even if all 20 of it was fire damage... if you went and hit something that was immune to fire, wouldn't you wonder why the physical impact of the sword did 0 damage? That's honestly the best example I've seen as a comparison to the Might problem, and I have no idea why I couldn't think of as good of an example before now. It's not only perfectly reasonable to ask these questions and figure out how these breakdowns work, but they are the bread-and-butter of RPG mechanics. Just because you don't want to use ALL of them doesn't mean that you don't want to use any of them.

I understand that differentiation could be a concern. I'm not really looking for a specific class to be created. I'm more commenting on how Wizard/Mage class magic is treated, and how it could probably be expanded upon pretty easily. The melee-mage is just always my go-to example, because generally games have Mages = ranged. You get some short-ranged spells, sure, but they're still just ranged spells, by design. I think an expansion of creativity in the approach to magic would greatly benefit most fantasy RPGs. I'm playing Dragon's Dogma right now (the newest release on PS4, even though the original game's a PS3 game from 2012), and even being the older game that it is, they do a LOT of fun stuff with the magic/ability system. There's a Magic Archer class (hybrid Ranger and Mage) that uses Magic Bows (exclusive weapon type - can't use ammo, so no poison arrows or fire arrows, etc.) that basically fires Magic Missiles in place of arrows. So already, just the basic attack is different and interesting. Then, all their abilities are very archer-like, but feel like completely different abilities, for the most part. It feels like what you'd do if you were a mage, but wanted to be an archer. "I'll use magic to fire my bow, and design my spells around archer/dagger abilities!". This is a bit separate, and more of a presentation thing, but I feel like often the spells used by Mages tend to feel too much like their own things. Like you have a bunch of grenades in your inventory, but only Class X can pull the pin and throw them, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel very much like how you behave in combat is different from another class. Especially when you get the DnD style Mages, plus Priests, plus Druids, etc. Everyone just feels like people with exclusive access to different types of grenades, to an extent. So, making the feel of a class fit the style can go a long way, is all. The way in which casters use weapons makes a big difference.

No it isn't, and no I wouldn't say that. But I would say that thinking "music is for my enjoyment, therefore it should sound only like my one favorite band, and nothing else. Any other combinations of sounds that could possibly be conceived are not good or are less good than only the sounds I've already heard and have deemed my favorite" is narrow-minded. You only commented on Ydwin, but you said you'd prefer her to be more feminine. So, either you're applying your preferences to all characters as you come to them, or you're okay with 7,000 other characters in Deadfire being unfeminine so long as JUST Ydwin for some reason is made more feminine. So, just because you didn't specifically name all the other people you'd rather were more feminine doesn't mean you didn't suggest that all female characters in Deadfire should possess a minimum level of femininity that suits your subjective tastes. To put it another way, the only reasoning you gave for Ydwin's design to be altered is that you found her lacking in femininity. It wasn't like "well, based on her background and the vision expressed for her, I think this level of femininity doesn't match well with her character design." Nope. Just "I like feminine females, therefore I'd like it if she were more feminine." So it follows that if we present any female in the game world to you who happens to be under this level of femininity, you'd prefer that they were more feminine. Thus, you're not okay with a game world that contains ANY females who are less than some arbitrary, baseline femininity. That's pretty narrow-minded. That may not have been your intent, which is fine. I'm simply pointing out where your line of reasoning leads, in the manner in which you applied it. If you're okay with some female characters in the world being less feminine, and others being more feminine, then you'd either: A) Be fine with Ydwin's design, as she'd just be an example of variety amongst female characters, or B ) Have a specific problem with her aesthetics as they pertain to her specific character design/role/etc. (a problem with an objective basis, essentially). EDIT: For what it's worth, I am not attacking you. I am simply pointing out how your comments are presenting themselves. I understand English isn't your first language, and I have to say that I couldn't tell at all, so your English is quite excellent. . So, again, it's not that I'm trying to tell you what you mean, but without any context or elaboration, just coming in and saying "character X needs to be more feminine," the only thing people are going to take from that is that you arbitrarily want attractive female characters, for no other reason than that you expect females to be attractive to you.

Indeed, DigitalCrack. There are lots of cool ways to make these things be more than mathematical penalties. It mainly comes down to budgetary constraints, as you have to do a bit of expansion on some of the game systems to support such things, and I have absolutely no idea what they can and cannot do within their budget. Ideally, it'd all be super supported, and we'd have all kinds of crazy stuff in there. I would love for 2 days worth of poison to be something interesting that can happen to your characters and prompt differences in your adventure, other than "your characters are constantly taking damage and could die, which would be annoying for combat and/or just cause you to miss out on all the rest of their companion content." Hopefully at least some of that stuff can be done, with whatever they're able to get put into the game.

This is a pretty baseless assumption. There are only so many human facial features one can come up with when designing a realistic human character. The artist could potentially not even know what Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is, and could still produce a character who resembles one of the 17 bajillion characters in GoT OR any other existing story, to be honest. This is like saying "Oh, you and this other guy look very similar, so it's obvious that you're both sired by the same father." Nope. Some people look almost identical and are not at all related. Now, you could guess that this is the case, and it's possible it's the case, but it is not obvious where the artist's inspiration came from, or their reasons for designing the character thusly. Going a step further, Game of Thrones is not the first story ever to have a character like Catlyn or a character like Ellaria, nor are those actresses the first people to look like that.

*sigh*... The objective points are getting made on both sides, but keep being danced-around in the main debate. Yes, pre-buffing can be interesting, in a tabletop context in which 73,000 different things could be affected by which buffs you had in place and when. Even that has its limits, though. For example, if you could easily just have 19 beneficial effects on your party all the time, "just in case," then the baseline "power" of your party goes up exponentially. All those things that were inherently designed to be obstacles (poison, spell damage, etc.) for you to tactically overcome, you aren't tactically overcoming. You're just opting to bypass dealing with them altogether. Then, there's the matter of, when you're all pre-buffed like that, what is the best way for a foe to deal with you? By dispelling all your pre-buffs, of course. Now what? Wow, that's sure interesting. Does my party go into a dangerous scenario protected by everything I can think of, or do they not? Does the enemy decide to remove those things, or do they just let all their effects fall flat? It starts to become silly. Not because I think its silly, but because the purposes of the components of the game mechanics actually start cancelling each other out. So, in this case limitation is completely necessary to keep silliness levels down. Aside from any of that, ideally the game simulates all those spiffy tabletop checks and intriguing dynamics. But, if it cannot/doesn't, then all the prebuffs and manual reviving and whatnot that Goddard keeps praising become negligible. In a tabletop game, it's super interesting if someone dies and you have to revive them, because the DM's going to make an adventure out of it. If the whole party's still poisoned, or is cursed and rotting, that'll become an adventure. But, in a CRPG that happens to not be so dynamic, it's just a bland, passive effect on the math of your survivability. Reviving someone is just a matter of travel time and possibly an extra cost. Being poisoned is just something that makes you hate your gameplay time until you can remove the poison, OR a tax on your healing items, unless you just reload and try to avoid poison. So, I'm not saying there's one right way to do things, but it's not all just subjective taste and preference. You can't subjectively desire something irrational and that be okay. You can't want tactical depth, AND the ability to pre-emptively avoid all negative status affects and boost all your combat numbers whenever you'd like, just so you never have to enter combat and deal with a lesser state of defense/protection. These things measurably, factually cancel each other out. So if you want anytime buffs, you have to have a way to maintain their significance. Maybe you limit the number that can be active at any point in time, and/or they become toggleable/channelable spells that still allow other spells/abilities to be used, but lessens their power in some way? Basically, there's got to be a way to maintain tactical depth. There are several options for that, and brainstorming on that front would be great. And you're not wrong, Goddard, about how cool a bunch of this stuff can be. But, you're simply reminiscing about this stuff, then saying "it's great so it should be in," with absolutely no context of how it should work inside of Deadfire. We can't just: Step 1 -- Insert pre-buffing Step 2 -- ... Step 3 -- Profit! A lot of these things, when not properly supported by the context of the game's mechanics and systems, do become just added time sinks. They cost you stuff, but don't end up actually adding anything. And it has nothing to do with their inherent value as game mechanic ideas. It has to do with the circumstances in which they are implemented.

Heh... I was playing something with a difficulty named "Impossible" or something similar (I know there are several, can't think of it right now), and my fiance thought it would be fantastic for a game to have a difficulty specifically named "Impossible" that was literally impossible. But don't tell the players that. Let them figure it out. So, these hardcore people start playing it, and it SEEMS like maybe it's doable, just really really hard, but every time you get an enemy down to half health or something, they just heal back to full, etc. See how long it takes for people to figure out it's literally impossible.

Mayhaps it's actually XCOM: Pirates on Legendary difficulty, and that crewmember got a papercut or something.

I never said it was a problem in the setting. However, the setting was hand-crafted by human brains with a preconception of magic. Or, more specifically, it's not really Obsidian's fault that I don't get more than one preconception of magic in games. It's more the industry as a whole. PoE's a lot better than others. The worst culprits are the "You get firebolt, ice bolt, or lightning bolt. Then you get fire AoE, ice AoE, or chain lightning. BOOM! You're a mage! Creativity, FOREGONE!" games. But, really, just the idea that anyone who wields magic must be a squishy, ranged person who just tosses out giant bombshells and hopes they never get close to someone is pretty prevalent in fantasy RPGs. You don't see a lot else. Even when you do, it's just a 50/50 blend of regular weapon fighting and ranged bomb-tossing to make a super edgy/cool "battlemage." Which is cool, I suppose, but they're just missing so many good opportunities to say "Hey, what about just a melee mage, whose magic was designed around fighting up-close?" It would just be a different approach to the employment of magic, entirely. I'm not saying no one's ever done it. It's just extremely rare. I believe the fundamental preconception of how magic works is a barrier to creative design.

^ That. And it's not just semantics. Some people have made arguments for pure semantics, sure, but it's a problem no matter how you look at it. The PoE world has defined strength as separate from "soul strength." And even in animes (where it's most prevalent) in which almost everyone has some inner power or "spirit force," etc., that they do stuff with, there are still people in the world who don't. Hence the "oh no, I better use my awesome power to protect all these innocent people who can't do anything." There could be a world in which your muscular capabilities actually translate directly into your fictional power source, and there probably are such worlds somewhere in the Earth's library of fictional media. However, in this case, the world would need to be designed around that. Not just "everyone's got both, but you measure them together, or just never measure one of them ever and pretend everything's okay." Again, people are free to disagree, but I hate seeing people consistently fail to understand the issue.

I almost wish he'd make a "fake" account and actually post on here as just some random theorycrafter, heh.

They are. Fantasies, in general. They are not necessarily wish fulfillment, because, like books, they are partially about exploring and enjoying the specific imaginings of others as well. Not just "pinpoint only the things I happen to already enjoy and then only read books/play games that have ONLY characters that I find attractive in them." It's not about being more enlightened, and it's not a competition. It's simply narrower-minded (as an objective measurement, and not an insult) to restrict oneself to such a small chunk of the spectrum of fiction, to want all characters in an imagined world to be designed a certain way. Why NOT have variety in your fantasy world? That's all.

I love fantasy, but I just wish the industry would ditch their preconceptions about magic. I'm still waiting to be able to play a Wizard/Mage who grabs a chain, enchants it, then fights with that like Ghost Rider. Or, there's always the lightning whip from GW2/ Brontide spell from Dragon's Dogma. There are just so many more creative ways for magic to be used than "I'm a pansy and stand far away and hope no one notices whilst I summon meteor storms." There's still this overly rigid "you're a ranged projectile wielder" preconception about casters in RPGs, especially fantasy settings. About the only magic we ever see applied to melee is merely to amplify existing melee capabilities (i.e. "I'm faster/stronger/shielded now!"). Even magical summoned weapons tend to just be essentially existing enchanted weapons in the game world, just without you having to go loot/enchant them. Or maybe they have some specific combo/degree of enchantments that you can't actually craft into a weapon, so it's like "Oh, this leeches 3 health on hit AND has +3 to hit." It's just not very reinforcing of "a spell freakin' wove this object into existence."

Yeah, it's not that the entire effect cancels itself out or anything, but the smaller radius inherently gives you less space to accidentally hit friendlies with bad stuff and enemies with good stuff. So, the two factors are working against each other, to an extent. Also, that would be freakin' AWESOME if instead of the INT penalty, it just made your targeting circle like... 3 times larger, and you weren't sure exactly where, within that circle, your actual target was going to be, if that makes sense. I dunno if that's what you were getting at with the targeting error, but it's what immediately came to mind when I read that. Just keep your actually spell effect radius the same size, but give you a much-less-precise targeting "reticle" for the spell/ability. 8D

^ I understand, but confusion: 1) Converts the entire target circle to friendly-fire/enemy-aid. AND 2) Makes that target circle smaller. In a way (not in 100% of ways, mind you), that seems counter-intuitive. That would be like a bleed effect (for example) that made its target take X damage for every step they took, but also slowed them so that they couldn't take nearly as many steps as they'd usually be able to. It's still effective, but it makes itself less effective. Imagine your targeting circle is 20 meters, and you get confused. Now, it's... I dunno, 16 meters. So, it's easier for you to either ONLY hit enemies with your bad spell, or ONLY hit allies with your good spell, because the circle you're having to target isn't as large. I realize that the smaller circle is still a detriment if you, say, want to hit your entire party with a beneficial spell, but the effect of confusion is that that would've ALSO hit any enemies within that area. It's a weird catch-22 almost, which is why it just seems weird to modify INT at all instead of simply applying the base confusion effect of "this thing I don't want to happen to these people will happen to these people." Also, I understand what you're saying, and I'm unclear on how it's different from 1's system. Maybe in Deadfire, not as much stuff has friendly fire built in? Or maybe this is more punishing on difficulties that don't use friendly fire than it is on difficulties that do? I have no idea. Either way, I think healy/beneficial spells ONLY hit friendlies before, didn't they? So at the very least, that effect is a definite negative (those hitting your enemies, that is) with the Confusion effect. *shrug*. Unclear on a few things, but the main pertinent thing is the -5 INT penalty. It seems out of place with the information I currently have.

Why buy when you can BUILD ONE FOR LESS! 8D! I'm pretty excited for Deadfire! All these infos and tidbits of nougaty goodness. I should probably stop being a slowpoke and actually finish the first game. :\

Ahhh... that makes a lot more sense. I completely misunderstood that. Sorry, HooAmEye!

@Valci: Not necessarily "as many as." It's not all-or-nothing. Just, in Pillars 1, Wizards COULD boost their Perception and Might, then run around trying to be effective with weapons, but they were pretty ineffective still. That, and most equipment actually directly inhibited their casting speeds, etc. So, there was basically a big neon sign for Wizards pointing to the "Stay far away and just do big magical things" build. I see a lot of room between that and "everyone is exactly the same and Wizards are no longer different from Fighters."

You may ignore me, if you'd like. Usually that involves the opposite of directly making reference to me, however, . I merely asked a question. I'm not sure exactly what encouraging another forum user to refrain from answering a simple question accomplishes. Also, your question about the next update doesn't have anything to do with the topic, but you seem to have thrown it in there to justify your post encouraging folks to pay posts no mind.

The weird thing about that is... doesn't INT still affect AoE radius size in Deadfire? If so, then the confusion effect is partially self-defeating. "I'll make it so that your beneficial spell will hit EVERYONE who happens to fall inside this circle! MUAHAHAHAHA! Oh, also, the circle is smaller, thus it's easier to miss the people you don't want to hit with it. MUAHAHAH... hah... hahah?"