Lephys

Could not such a mode lead to the player become overly prideful? Also, they should put in a mode in which all your weapons are significantly larger. In honor of Fallout: New Vegas, they could call that mode... Bigggg IRRRRRONNNN! BIG IRRRrrooooonnnn!!! 6_u

If it is, indeed, an OR, I hope that there are still at least a bunch of ANDs throughout the game. They might not have those values set where they want them yet. I mean... ONE Athletics to charge a guy holding a hostage at blade-point before he can react?! Really? Apparently the Athletics scale is binary: 0 is you have to stop and pant for a few minutes after every step you take. 1 is Bionic Man.

Or the sea. If by "shipping" you mean "sea-vessel"ing.

Nope. But slapping per-kill XP back into the system doesn't repair that flaw, so I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make. How you structure XP and advancement is a completely separate matter. If you wanted to have combat experience, and non-combat experience, independent of one another, that would be a big step in the right direction. An objective XP system would simply offer the appropriate type of XP for any given completed objective, whether it be killing something, or convincing someone of something, escaping a place, procuring an item, etc. P.S., it's not really a "flaw," anyway (the improving A from doing B), since the system is intentionally abstracted like that. It's a flaw in terms of realistic representation, but not a flaw in terms of a system that's just trying to represent adventuring progress in general.

That's a tough one, but I'm going to have to go with "no." Unless you're shipping professions of undying love. Or shipping yourself to your beloved.

"This is my Orlan servant. He's tasked with orlan me up for my daily massage." 6_u

Hopefully they do. It's always a lot easier (for both parties involved) when there's an established feedback system.

Sorry, I shouldn't have had the "more" in there. Fixed. Thanks, Also... Right, Stun, because never before has someone leveled up and gained combat prowess from XP gained by non-combat actions. lol

True, but I think it might have some bearing on the likelihood of your being hit by a truck.

*applause* Our mantra will be "Be Specific!"

The only flaw I've pointed out in regard to per-kill XP is in believing that it somehow accurately represents the gain of actual combat experience (the first-hand knowledge and skill, not the abstract RPG points) than objective-based XP can. They're both the same thing, with the exception that in a per-kill XP system, achieving the death of things is always an objective, while performing other tasks isn't. If you could actually provide me with some nugget of reference for how, exactly, you feel I'm not making any sense, maybe I could be of some help. Typing it concisely isn't going to do the trick. Watch: "Per-kill XP doesn't really represent combat experience as accurately as you might think, and objective-based XP doesn't inherently blacklist kills or combat from being an XP source." There. $20 says I get a "but why?". Then, I elaborate, and suddenly, I've just typed so many words that they magically stop making sense. Because the amount of sense something makes is directly proportionate to its word count, it would seem. It really saddens me that people feel like they can't just ask me what they think I mean. this is like some kind of test. "Oh, the naturally-analytical guy doesn't automagically think just like I do. Either he types something in such a way that I'm perfectly familiar with his entire thought process, or we shoot down his entire argument as irrelevant or invalid or nonsensical. 8D!" I'm just here to discuss, and if you don't tell me where my points are unclear to your brain, I'm going to try to just shine the whole thing up myself, not just the few spots you didn't get. That's just how I am. My interest is in people who want to know what I mean, knowing what I mean. If you don't care to know what I mean, then more power to you. And, if you don't understand something I say, I'm well aware that it may be because of the way I said it. Doesn't mean either of us is lacking in mental capacity. It merely means we think differently. I know I think differently, and I don't expect to somehow say everything in such a way that everyone has absolutely no questions or uncertainty about it. I try, but I don't expect to succeed without a little clarification or questioning. For what it's worth.

Well, much of the stronghold's income potential seems to have to do with heavy investments into the stronghold. I mean, it seems that, if it can be attacked, and defenses matter there, then if you don't invest in the defenses, and you have a mountain of gold so huge it is the tallest thing in your stronghold and can be seem shining in the night's moonlight from miles away, you're probably going to get quite plundered. And, as far as what you do with your stronghold money, maybe it's restricted? Maybe what you do with it affects your reputation? "Hey, our lord took all our taxes and tariffs and went and bought solid gold-plated armor and weapons for himself and all his good friends! GET THE PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES!"

Well, another question is: Do the weapon sets actually serve as inventory space, or do they simply serve as shortcuts to weapons you're already carrying? If you can store 8 weapons in your weapon set slots, then fill the rest of your inventory with other weapons and such, then that's a much bigger issue than if they're simply equip macros. I mean, I would assume they're like shortcuts/macros. Otherwise, you'd have to have TWO shields in order to have set 1 be, say, a sword and shield, and have set 2 be an axe and (the same) shield. So, in that case, 4 sets isn't nearly that crazy. If you were carrying a sword, a dagger, an axe, and a shield, you could fill all 4 sets (Sword-dagger, sword-axe, sword-shield, axe-shield.) Basically, if you're still limited by what you can carry (aside from the infinite stash that isn't accessible for weapon-swapping), the weapon sets really do just become a UI convenience. They're only a convenient collection of "equip this and this" commands, and don't really govern how many things you can carry or equip at any given time.

It's likely (at least partially) intent on distinguishing metal from non-metal, at the camera's typical distance. Kinda like how they had to make "fatter" rapiers and longer daggers, etc., than what would be exactly proportional, in order to maintain the distinctive characteristics of the given piece of equipment. Also, though, that seems like one of those things (armor shininess, that is) that probably hasn't gotten its last dose of tweaking, yet.

There is. Not-half-assed is the right way, for example. If there's a wrong way to do something, then, by default, there' a right way. Doesn't mean there's only a single design that's correct. It just means that there's a correct approach to take. Objectively.

Waste of resources? I dunno, seems like they're... heading in the right direction, to me. 6_u

Oh I know. Sorry about that. I was just using your words to reference the issue. Then just commenting on how a lot of these "problems" that get pointed out or questioned would probably do well to be figured as unintentional because of the incomplete game build. 8P This. I know an ooze would have the possibility of dropping humanoid equipment, but, you'd think the digestion period for even an amorphous, sentient ooze wouldn't be eternity (no pun intended, but pun still appreciated). Anywho, an ooze was a bad example to reference, since the point was more about things that obviously wouldn't just drop swords and jewelry (in the "you drop what you're wielding/carrying" aspect of the loot system.)

Not just kill... brutally harvest and assimilate. For their own good, An umpteen-billion-year-old entity couldn't come up with, say, a way to just kill people in their sleep and copy their brains or something. Nope. Honestly, for a long while there, I highly suspected the plan was "give them a common enemy, until you know they won't destroy themselves." Which would've at least made sense. *shrug*... I digress... Hmm... either way, you would think the pre-production/writing crews and such wouldn't take as much of a hit from all that. The hardcore, really-hard-to-change engine work comes a bit later in the cycle, so the writing/design people at least have more time to work on stuff, either way. Not all the stuff, mind you, but the not-yet-processed-for-coding ideas, at least.

I agree that just the presence of some dynamic shadows would be significantly better than none. Super-accurate, hi-res shadows shaped exactly like they should be, is not really important.

I like that Josh has an "If we ever do those, it'll be done right and not half-assed" mentality.

Er... splendid?

Well, seeing as how they're apparently my word wars (I'm glad no one else gets credit for them, at all), I guess I'll just be sitting around, warring against a bot until I see "Here comes a NEW CHALLENGER!" at the top of my screen. Seriously though, if you do not wish to discuss it further, that's fine. Doesn't mean "HA-HAH, I WIN!" or anything. This isn't a game of chicken.

@Stun, you are inferring meanings that I'm not specifically stating, from almost everything I'm saying. I know not why, since, by now, you must be aware that I err on the side of elaboration. It does matter. And, if you would be so kind, please show me how you know that, in PoE, every time a quest is technically completed (even if it was completed by finishing a task that was, itself, the final part of the overall quest objective), you get a bunch of "this is ONLY for completing the whole quest" XP on top of anything else you get. Because I missed that memo. Could you... be more specific? o_o A bunny is not a strawman. I don't even comprehend what you're suggesting there. You are clearly not comprehending my example, and or do not know what "if" means. "If" doesn't mean "this is what's going to probably happen with a bunny." Yes, the example was ridiculous, on purpose. I apologize, as I forgot many here do not comprehend the exaggeration in such examples. Let me just go with a different one, instead of trying to explain that one. I feel that would be best. Another that I already made, how bout? A big trap. Maybe you see a bunch of super "hard to kill"... I dunno... Ogres. But you've lured them to a ledge above some liquid hot magma. Sure, it'd be super difficult to murder them to death with your trusty blade, but maybe you knock them off into the lava. Well, the lava did all the dirty work, but you "killed" them. They weren't hard to kill. It took one knockdown, and a convenient pit of lava. Why do you get all that "kill XP" for knocking something down? I can understand if you got more for battling them and taking them down completely yourself. But the game doesn't distinguish. I don't know how else to make this clear. The game says "was this an Ogre? Did it die? You get ## XP." It doesn't care how much effort you had to expend, or how representative of the actual combat experience your character would've gained that the XP value actually is. First of all, no. I specifically said (and you quoted) "to your level of character." So, your resistance has nothing to do with that, unless you can become so high level that you just have an inherent 100% fire resistance, in which case, yes, by that point, the thing probably isn't a threat to you. If you just so happen to don a bunch of fire resistance stuff, that has nothing to do with the level of your character. Second of all, my point was that the game decides, up front (from a table) how threatening a given foe is to a given character at a given level, then allots XP rewards accordingly. It doesn't care if you fight an Ogre naked, with your bare fists, or fully decked out in diamond gear crafted by some divine blacksmith, that naturally just melts nearby Ogres within 10 seconds. All it cares about is a generalized calculation of your capabilities at a given level, versus the enemy's capabilities at a given level. It doesn't care about the circumstances, or your effort, or how much combat XP someone would actually gain based on any of that. Just "Were you technically fighting it, and did it perish? HAVE SOME XP!"

^ Well, that too, but I was more thinking "why did they deem that beta access should cost money in the first place"?

See, for what it's worth, that could actually be pretty cool, too. If you have a Rogue, then maybe you can run some kind of stealth operations on enemy forces, etc. via the stronghold management and/or scripted interactions. However, that's still very much specifically scripted scenarios, and not just "I want to actively control my Rogue around the whole castle, randomly pickpocketing every person I come across." It's still not really sandbox pickpocketing. At the very least, it's a quest, one in which the only important thing is separating the guard leader from his magic sword that would otherwise prevent you from staging your assault very easily. Nothing is really gained there by having a "Freely attempt to pickpocket anyone, whenever!" mechanic in-place. Also, it's really hard to pick"pocket" a bastard sword. If it's strapped to someone, you're going to have a tough time stealing it. Maybe you steal it while he's nodding off and it's propped against a table 2 feet away? Or maybe you just knock him out and take it. *shrug*. Either way, stealth operations would be pretty cool, and could be handled by something similar to the scripted interactions. Or, a quest-like mission with your Rogue and some peeps from your stronghold to back him up. Or just your main party, etc.