Lephys

Well, personally, I think item-dependency shouldn't be tethered to class (quite to such an extent), when it could simply be a separate spectrum within character customization. Also, "but they get really strong in an incredibly specific manner" isn't really a justifiable argument for "so therefore it's okay that they're so role-restricted." Just because I want to wield arcane magic doesn't mean I want all my combat to go "cast spell --> kill 17 things in one explosion --> DONE!". Maybe I want to have a more interesting struggle with the foe, just using cool magical means than basic physical smashy means. Look at the "hybrid" classes, like Cipher. You fight with basics, build up a resource, then you get to unleash things at different levels of that resource. But for some reason, if you're super magical, you just turn into a giant cannon, and that's okay because you're such a powerful cannon. Would it be okay for Fighters to get 0 abilities, as long as they were super good at weapons-ing people?

Even if people didn't necessarily ask with a great deal of tact, I feel it's a sufficiently legitimate question: Why does short hair on a female make your mind jump all the way to "... trans, maybe?"? Or rather, what would be the minimum required features on a female to make them look not-boyish? I am (and I believe others are) genuinely curious. Aloth has long hair. Does he look trans? I'm not even inferring that you're placing any negative connotation on the word "trans." I'm just genuinely curious how you're making the associations, as you see to have an awfully small threshold for "this person no longer looks like the gender that they are."

You're absolutely correct. That's why there should be a party size of 739. It would be just as easy to balance the game for that. u_p

Understandable, but I think we could have a LITTLE fun with our armor/helmets, without going full WoW. I'm all for straying from realism about 15% or so. I mean, full-on boobplate... sure, no-go. But I don't mind something having some subtle decoration/shaping to it. You know, just bringing a little artistic creativity into it, mostly in the texture/surface aesthetics, but maybe just a TINY bit into the actual volumetric design. Especially since, realistically, a lot of optimal designs are extremely simple-looking. One of the great aspects of video games is the ability to inject imagination into things that would, in the real world, be severely adversely affected by such imaginings being made real. EDIT: @Juodas Varnas ... Whose helmet is that?! 8D

So sayeth the ancient game code we excavated forth from the earth, or so sayeth the game code that didn't exist until some humans got together and designed it thusly? omgFIREBALLS's general point is that there's plenty of room for a greater equipment-effectiveness spectrum for the casting role, which is true. Just because Fighters and the like get relatively greater martial benefits from weapons and such doesn't mean that it's somehow illegal or wrong to allow for interesting benefits for casty folk as well. That's one of the still-quite-rigid things about DnD-esque magic. You start out with "you can fling a couple of fireworks at people, but for the rest of combat, you're just going to flail around nigh-ineffectively with a weapon." And they justify this with "well, when you get higher level, you'll be able to just recreate reality with your willpower and summon a planet from elsewhere in the solar system to crash down upon your foes, so it's okay." Obviously it's less extreme of an incline in Pillars, especially Deadfire, what with booting Vancian magic to the curb and going with per-encounter stuff. But, why shouldn't a caster get the option to go much more passive with their build? Why should their strength so rigidly rely upon all their active abilities? We've got multi-classing now, and we're all about some options for character builds. So why not a caster spectrum for weapons? Doesn't even have to be caster-specific. Just a subset of equipment that allows you to finely tune things other than martial prowess. Even for a Fighter, it could be an option to focus more on your abilities and such than on pure weapon to-hit chance and damage, etc.

A compromise I could possibly see for pre-buffing would be the inclusion of "prepared" spells/abilities. Basically, you'd always be allowed one ability that would basically be an instant-cast within the first 5 seconds of combat (or maybe a different number of seconds. Or maybe just for the entirety of combat? But then you could kinda cheese it later on when you double-cast something). This way, though, you couldn't go around beefing yourself up all day outside of combat, and you'd still have to decide WHOM to target with what abilities once combat starts, but there would still be a tiny extra element of strategic planning, and an opportunity to exercise preparedness at the start of combat. That's about the extent of party preparedness I could understand, as "everyone be spellshielded and armor-boosted and fire-resistant and super accurate and flaming-weaponed!" is kind of ridiculous every time you're jogging about. And I'm sorry, but "Oh, that guy uses fire... WHICH PRE-BUFF DO I CAST HERE?! SUCH PUZZLE!" is not much "intelligence" and depth added to the game. Yet again, we see the effects of the transition from tabletop to CRPG. In a tabletop game, you might enter a dungeon and cast some kind of flame shield. Then, you could do crazy awesome specific things and get out of super interesting scenarios using that. In CRPGs (so far), it basically just amounts to a combat buff. So, yes, in tabletop, it could be pretty interesting to see the ways in which you'd use buffs to get through places, and how it would affect lots and lots of stuff ("Oh, I can wade through this lava now, because I have a strong enough Flame Shield spell on me!"). But, when it just becomes shifts in combat numbers, no one really cares much anymore to play the Matching game with combat numbers. "Oh, you've increased your attack? I'll increase our armor (block-your-attack) numbers! Your attacks do poison damage? IMMUNITY TO POISON! Let's see how many things we can each negate on one another, to chore-ishly return us back to neutral! 8D!" Ugh... Same thing with resting. Everyone's like "Blagh! Why is resting gone?! It's super important!" But it never is in a CRPG. It's just a thing that you do because you have to when you're low on resources, and the only "depth" to it is "you might cue a random combat 'ambush' encounter if you do it in a dangerous area." Imagine if 17 different things could happen whilst you were resting. Imagine if, in PoE, a number of scripted interactions could occur if you rested in different areas. So instead of this thing that you do PURELY to "get back to the game" with full health and mana, it could actually be a part of the gameplay. So yeah... maybe one day we'll see CRPGs become advanced enough to allow players almost the same amount of interactivity as tabletop campaigns. That would be pretty amazing. I know it's not easy to do and requires a goodly bit of resources, so I understand kind of why we haven't seen it yet. Pillars is at least headed that way via scripted interactions, so that's cool.

@Lord_Mord: Ahh, I appreciate it. I honestly just wasn't understanding how you meant that "That was only meant for wizard" bit. Sorry about that. Yeah, it works, but it doesn't change the fact that something's missing, and it only illustrates that one, "doesn't really matter how you do it" scenario of kicking in a door. To not-measure Strength is not morally wrong or evil, all right? I've made my arguments as objective as possible. Yes, if they just called "Might" something else, like "Power" or "Damage" or something, AND didn't actually represent it as your character's strength (if it was ONLY like... "spirit power" or something and the whole game just said "F you!" to any measurement or reference of physical strength), then stuff would be a bit better. Still, strength is a commonly used stat in rulesets for a reason, as it effects so many different possibilities in an RPG setting. Anything else that is a separate power source (i.e. arcane magic, priest faith/devotion, etc.) is an entirely separate thing that can have very interesting pros and cons when compared to physical strength. We're talking about the possibilities here. So, to say "Meh, the strength of your soul is just how strong anything you do is going to be" sort of throws a lot of that out the window, which is unfortunate. That's the gist of the Might "problem." It's semantics, and oversimplified character metrics, AND it's just plain a poorly-chosen compromise that didn't really accomplish much in the way of eliminating dump stats, etc (and it was not the best way to eliminate dump stats, either). I understand that they had a time crunch and limited resources, so I don't blame them for doing it. This isn't about bashing Obsidian. This is about striving for the best design there can be. So, ideally, much more can be accomplished, reasonably, within the stat system than they are currently accomplishing. I'm not posting any of this to make anyone agree with me. I'm posting it on the off chance that someone actually cares to consider it fully, thereby reinforcing whatever conclusion they end up reaching after such consideration (even if it's their same conclusion, but with a greater consideration backing it, and possibly even for new reasons.) And I don't mind anyone disagreeing here. I'm just sick of people trying to highlander the discussion (there can be only ONE idea) and trying to shoot down any other NOTIONS in here, rather than the actual arguments that are being presented for those notions. It's as if some people cannot even fathom how any human being could possibly have a problem with the current stat system, or simply believe there to be a different way of doing it.

Nowhere in any of my post that you quoted (nor in any unquoted posts) did I say anything about attributes bearing the requirement of making physical measurements. I merely said that they are player metrics. If you're going to keep telling someone to toss out their expectations and adapt, you might want to put a hold on your own expectations of their general argument, until you've actually read and evaluated the words that they've presented. Also, the sheer amount of mental effort I've put into evaluating this seems far more adaptive than the "Nah, it's all fine, and the hundreds of people who have brought up individual arguments and breakdowns of this are all just narrow-minded and need to deal with it" notion that you seem to be ferociously holding to. I do not understand why, as you are and have been an extremely valuable collaborator on these forums. To clarify, it's fine that you disagree with me, but you could at least show enough respect to disagree on the same level, and not with a little hand-wave that already assumes the entire idea behind my argument was wrong before my argument even got around to being made. I just honestly cannot see how you're giving my posts much thought if you think "Luck isn't physical, and it's an attribute" somehow shot down any percentage of my presented argument.

@Varana: Everything happens for reasons. A crazy person could stab someone, because pengins. That doesn't mean things happen for GOOD reasons. Simply put, the fact that people partake in something does not mean that thing is THE thing that people want, unfortunately. That would be great if the market worked that way, but it doesn't. Much like small children, you could give them the option between a bowl of sugar and gourmet food of any variety imaginable, and they'd just go "YEAH, SUGAR!". It's not even necessarily that they enjoy the sugar more. It's just that they know exactly what to expect, and it's a sweet treat, even if the enjoyment lasts 10 seconds and they feel horrible later because they don't get any nutrients whatsoever. On this same note, you could ask a child "Would you like 1 cookie per day for the rest of your life, or a box of cookies right now?", and they'd probably go with the box of cookies. This is similar with DLC. People nowadays are addicted to convenience. It's not that so many people have done all their homework and have extraordinarily refined conclusions that state that wee bits of off-handed DLC are meeting their every need and maximizing their enjoyment of a game. It's that they just want another bowl of game sugar. It's obviously a bit more complex than that, but, largely, that is the effect in place. This is why there are even games on Steam, for example, with an INCREDIBLE amount of problems and such, and/or they're just terrible, and people will still just go purchase them because they were on-sale and were well-marketed, THEN complain about how they didn't get their money's worth and it's unfair that they paid X dollars for this horrible game. Why? Because it's too much work to actually determine whether or not a game is likely not horrible BEFORE buying it. Don't get me wrong... lots of people DO make good decisions and do their homework. I'm not saying 100% of the populous is dumb and "wants" bad DLC. But, essentially, there's a large group of gamers out there with very low standards/lazy-decision-making. So, they want new "stuff," and they don't really care what it is, before they buy it. They're willing to shell out X dollars per day/week/month just to keep getting new doses of game, purely because it's new. Games such as MMOs are built around this, so at least it works for them. However, when a game that isn't really designed for that just says "Hey, let's try to get in on these low-standards!," it usually doesn't end well. Sure, the game company gets a new source of revenue, but at what cost? Also, by the very nature of how this type of DLC content fits with the gamers who play games like PoE, it results in lower-quality DLC. It's all about context. Again, one could point out that the game is made out of story, mechanics, combat scenarios, loot, characters, dialogue, quests, etc. These are the sources of enjoyment in the game, and they all work together to bring that enjoyment. Well, when you release a DLC that JUST tosses in 3 new combat scenarios, for example, you're just not getting very much. It's not as efficient a use of development time than, say, a DLC that adds a little of ALL of those categories. And you can't really have a super tiny DLC that does that. That's just how things work. So, am I saying that PoE cannot have any smaller DLCs that are effective or worth it? Not at all. But, it's less likely. There are very limited options for small DLCs that wouldn't be piddly. And, even with something feasible like a weapon/equipment pack, the vast majority of PoE's gamerbase would rather see that stuff introduced in a new area, with new characters, new quests, and new mechanics and story, than just tossed into the game all willy-nilly. It's just probability, and that's just how things work. Small DLCs that are frequent only work with certain types of games, and even then they only are so effective. They started being done so much because they COULD, not because there was a need for them. MMOs did the same thing about 10 years ago. "Oh, WoW is super popular! Everyone make an MMO!" You can't tell me all those MMOs that came out were super quality games. A lot of them just wanted to cash in on the trend that was occurring. That happened for a reason, and that reason was simply "People are willing to pay monthly for a fun, social progression/fashion experience, so I COULD make a game like that and people would probably buy it enough for me to make some money, so I'll do it." That isn't to say that if companies had just made other types of games at that time, everyone would've bought nothing but MMOs. A lot of companies just have lazy shareholders who care more about not-risking any loss than they do about their products actually being well-designed.

I've always hated the fact that summoned weapons in tabletop were super cool, then became kind of "meh" when they jumped to CRPGs. I wish people would follow the likes of Dragon's Dogma, which has a spell called Brontide, which has your Mage/Sorcerer pull a bolt of lightning out of their palm, Voltron-style, then carry it around by the end while it's crackling all over the place (and generally just behaving like an actual lightning bolt, and not just some whip that HAPPENS to technically be magical and also deal lightning damage), then just swing this crackling bolt around like a giant whip, electrocuting all in their path. It's channeled, for what it's worth, so that it exists as long as you have the stamina (functions like mana in most games) to maintain it. And, especially in a game like Pillars, with its very specific time "costs" for various actions, I'd really love to see summoned weapons have a certain number of uses/attacks, like Guild Wars 2's summoned weapons. It would even be nice to see them grant unique abilities for their duration, like in that game. Maybe they start with no extra abilities, just basic attack, but they gain these. *shrug*. But, GW2 even had certain abilities on these summoned weapons cost more "charges" than others. So, if you had a lava axe, you could throw it for like 1 charge, or just attack for 1 charge, or you could cleave a swath of fire into the ground with it for like 4 charges, and you only had something like 10 charges with each summon (a very easily adjusted number, so this is just an example). Food for thought.

@Lord_Mord: That only illustrates the problem further. It was MEANT for Wizards, but it doesn't apply to only the things it was meant for, as there can still be high-INT Fighters.

Just my 2 cents: The two (roleplaying choices and quality mathematical benefits) shouldn't really be mutually exclusive, in general. For example, if I pick all the equipment I want, but 10 other sets of equipment options would leave me with +3's across the board, that's probably not the best situation. On the other hand, if I had to really dig to find a set of equipment that would leave me with significantly increased stats and such, then sure. But, ideally, they should coincide. I should be able to pick things that I like that ALSO help me out mechanics-wise. The simpler version of this that you see in many games is "I like weapon-type A, but ALL the other weapon types are far more useful than that one, measurably so." Or it could be a school of magic, etc. It comes down to viability. Inherently, a part of the game is intelligently outfitting your party so that they can take on challenges. Sometimes it's fun to under-outfit or specifically hinder your character for purely roleplaying reasons, but you shouldn't have to do so when it isn't deliberate. Honestly, I don't think the +X Attribute equipment is the most effective thing for the goal it's trying to provide, in anything. Even in tabletop, it's broader than it needs to be and there are plenty of alternatives. You could give someone a helmet, for example, that grants them +5 to all melee damage, instead of +5 to Strength. Or, make it more interesting and unique. Your character already has Strength. So, granting Strength isn't really giving anything new. It's just adjusting the volume on an existing thing, so to speak. Granting some effect when you critically hit, or some unique aura really makes equipment stand out a lot more than just boosting stats. If you really want to boost stats, just award Attribute points for certain things. Were you gonna put a Helm of +3 Intelligence in this cave? Instead, put something that permanently increases your Intelligence by 1 or something, and a Helm that provides some cool, unique effect. The vast majority of characters wouldn't say "Pssh, I don't want to be stronger and smarter and have a greater constitution," so it's usually not the case that stat-bonus equipment serves to enhance role-playing choices. The better trade-offs would be the unique effects, like "do I want to use THIS helm that causes everyone around me to bleed, or do I want to use THIS helm that provides light in dark areas and makes me immune to Perception-altering effects and illusions?" That defines your character a lot more than "Do I wear this helm that makes all damage-dealing AND healing things I do more effective (+ Might), or do I wear this other helm that makes a couple of things different?" I really think that most of the time, Attribute boosts are too broad and uncreative of an effect for equipment, and mostly unnecessary for equipment, specifically. The exception is when the Attribute system has individual points make a HUGE difference, and/or supports the idea of a point or two (that you can't get any other way) making a huge difference. For example, if a bunch of Wizard spells have effects based on "for every point of Intelligence past 14, do something spiffy," and there're one or two pieces of equipment in the entire game that grant +1 or MAYBE +2 Intelligence, then it's much more of a significant choice. Having the stat boost actually drastically changes your character. But if it's just "Meh... a few things increase by a percentage for each of those points," then it doesn't seem very in-line with the kind of options you should get from interesting equipment.

Possibly. Also, it depends on what you mean. if the expansion "attaches" to the main game (provides additional stuff to explore, but not necessarily AFTER the main game's campaign... just kind of whenever), then yes, I suppose. You go go "into the expansion," get the character, then go back to the main game's content and use the full-blown companion. However, unless they just happen to re-write all the existing sidekick interactions (or lack there-of), the character is just going to be strangely underdeveloped in all the main game content, then miraculously super well-developed in all of the extra content. That's kind of the weird disconnect people are afraid of. "This person's been traveling with me for the entire game, yet NOW they suddenly care a lot about what all's going on around us." Not the end of the world. Just strange. But, they COULD insert lots of character-specific quest arcs and such in a "do them whenever" way. That would be more likely than their rewriting the main game content to actually include the previously-a-sidekick-character's interactions with everything that's going on around them -- interactions which were previously missing.

Or they could be changed. It's an option, *shrug*. The gun-damage thing is just another symptom. The problem generates so many little symptoms that are easy to shrug off individually, but when observed collectively serve to illuminate the problem.

This is simply incorrect. It's not about bias or preconception, it's about the literal purpose of stats. They are simply player metrics. Why? Because, well, imagine PoE without any stats, (nothing else added to compensate, just no stats), then tell me nothing would be missing. Imagine that everything's subjective, and there's no objective reason for the existence of stats within an RPG system. Can you tell me what's missing in that hypothetical? Of course you can. Same thing with Might. If I were a developer, and I wanted to quite feasibly take advantage of a character metric that exists within the game world (physical strength), in the interest of creating a scenario in which ONE Wizard might be able to do something that a different type of Wizard would be unable to do, I am unable to do it. In the equation, Might is a big "(X+Y)", and I cannot call upon either X or Y, separately, even though they exist. I'm not inventing muscles or arcane power. They both exist, as dictated by the game. Maybe Might does everything that you and Obsidian want it to do, but that's not the same thing as doing what it's "supposed to." Or, to be more technically specific, the stat system is not doing what it is supposed to do. If you had a system whose stats were only Tallness, Gumption, and Hair, would you tell me that "Meh, if that's how the person who invented it wanted it to be, then it does everything it needs to do"? Would it be simple bias that anyone would have any kind of a problem with those stats, as entire character metrics? I really wish you would put as much effort into actually explaining how the problem is only player preconception as I put into explaining my point. Everyone keeps trying to shoot down this stuff with "Nope, sorry. Incorrect. Also you just like DnD stats too much" or some such nonsense. Just because two things happen to be similar doesn't mean they correlate. I'm not biased against anything. I'm objectively evaluating the stat system as it exists, in the unbiased context of an RPG that aims to do what it is RPGs do. The Might stat (amongst others) have shortcomings within this context, not simply as compared to one or another attribute systems that I just so happen to like. If I like a different stat system, it's because it does a better job of actually providing character metrics that support more creativity in the game world. Not "because it's stat system X."

Nope. You're not processing my words a step at a time. You're skipping like 5 steps ahead and trying to correlate too many things at once. The rocking chair example wasn't directly speaking to the general competency of companies. It was speaking directly to my "assumption" that the creation of anything takes time and effort. I don't assume that objects falling from a greater height can reach greater speeds than those falling from a lesser height. It's simply true. You can't really assume something that's observably true is true, unless I guess you just don't know it's true but suspect it is, technically... That's getting away from the point, though. What you don't realize, I think, is that you seem to be making the assumption that my point is "anything less than a huge expansion will be crap" or something. Which is strange, considering that I haven't even given any specific measurements or timeframes, so I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to be assuming makes DLC bad. The relationship between the amount of time and effort spent on the content and the quality of the content is a real, measurable thing. Go back in time and undo my birth, and it remains so. My saying it doesn't make it true. I'm observing that it is true, then saying that to you, who doesn't seem to be observing the same thing. They can make lesser DLCs. These can be good. However, the lesser they are, the less chance they have of being significant. Sure, plenty of folks like a fun weapon pack or something. Getting new stuff is always novel and exciting, to some extent. But we're comparing two options. I'd rather see new weapons AND a new area and chunk of story in which to utilize these new weapons. And I think pretty much anyone would agree with that. Between playing the entire same game over with just a couple of new weapons, or getting, say, new weapon TYPES (new weapons that are also not weapon-types that existed in the base game), with their own new mechanics/proficiencies, etc., which would you choose? You can't have both. If it takes them 1 month to just slap new weapons in, and 3 months to make the new weapon types, then doing the first would delay the second by 3 months. So, I'm not saying that there's no possible little content that can be cool. But, the smaller you go, the less significant it becomes, and the less warranting of actual purchasable DLC it becomes. If it cost the dev team no time and manpower, then by all means, put all the fun DLC nibbles in that you want. However, if they're at all planning on doing a full expansion, or any piece of relatively MORE-substantial content, then tossing out little snacks here and there is pretty moot, as the time is better spent simply incorporating those snacks into the bigger chunk. It almost always works better when the DLC is larger and more substantial, due in large part to the fact that the teams are able to spend more time both designing AND implementing it. If you give them 3 days to make some DLC, you can't sincerely tell me it's going to be good, much less better than something that the same team could make in a whole month. EDIT (forgot to touch on the rest of your rebuttal): You're missing details. I lead with there not being a specific time below which quality is bad, and above which quality is good. Too little time always reduces quality. Obviously 1 second is not long enough to produce quality DLC. Two days is probably still not, but would at least be better than nothing. A month would allow for much higher quality. Now... would 73 years just result in an EQUAL improvement in quality? No. At some point, the quality gain drops off. Also, it depends on what it is, specifically, the DLC is supposed to be. However, the timeframe they have inherently constrains the scope of what the DLC can be. Does that make sense? If they have 1 week, then it HAS to be something piddly. It can't be a whole new companion, or an entire robust questline, because those things take longer than that. OR, it could be one of those things, but just REALLY crappy. Nowhere did I assume any of that. Since we're starting to get into super-technicalities of word choice here, the idea I attempted to state (whether or not it came across as this) is that big DLC CAN be of better quality than smaller DLC, and that the smaller you go, the less signficant or robust the content CAN be. All other factors remaining the same (same team, same amount of effort per-resource-unit of time and manpower), a DLC designed for 3 months is going to be better than one designed for only 2 weeks. It can be more significant within the scope of the game, more iterated upon and polished before it's deployed, etc. Time is basically a multiplier, up to an extent. That's just how human brains work in designing, and how pretty much anything works in terms of human craftsmanship. You're acting as though there's no evidence or reasoning behind anything that I'm suggesting. And I'm sorry, but in this case, I cannot agree to disagree. I disagree with your disagreement. If someone says to me "If I walk across traffic here with my eyes closed, surely no harm will come to me," I'm not just going to say "Meh, I guess we can agree to disagree." That's just not who I am. I'm going to try to point out to them the things they're failing to observe. I'm not telling you to think what I think, exactly. I'm encouraging you to consider the same factors that I'm considering. If you can deliver a response that takes into account observable factors and relationships, and STILL points out how it's entirely possible that what I'm saying is completely untrue, then I will gladly alter my current thinking on the matter in favor of your presented reasoning.

@Baltic: Your uncertainty in that response illustrates my point. Basically, you're correct, but that just means that All Barbarian/Wizards are equally as strong physically as they are magically. Which kind of goes against multi-classing, but only in character measurements. In other words, everyone with muscles doesn't have magic (a pure Barbarian doesn't "use magic." Sure, he does "magical" soul ability stuff, but there's something different about what a Wizard can do that the Barbarian cannot do, as stated in both game mechanics AND lore). Yet, everyone with X amount of magical power has either an equal amount of muscle power, OR an indefinite amount of either. This isn't about just making perfect sense, or being realistic. Within the game world's own context, it has decreed that each individual person possesses both physical differences of size and strength, AND differences in magical prowess, but the stat just measures both at the same time, or ambiguously only one or the other at the very least. That would be better, yes, but it still doesn't really solve the problem. Fighters with high Int would still be bashing the door down with magic, even though they don't really use potent magic. Also, it's not really about the semantics of what the text states that the character is doing. Your example is one of a feat that can be performed by either type of power. Imagine if there was something in the game that could only be overcome via magical power, OR can only be overcome by physical power. How, then, do you determine that character A can overcome it, but character B cannot? The game is literally incapable of determining that, because Might measures both. Simply put, the all-encompassing Might stat causes a couple of problems, AND separately there are improvements to be made in the checking system (check abilities and more stats, etc. to produce more interesting interactions than just "are you powerful?! YOU BLOWED UP THING WITH FORCE!" The first problem (Might stat) isn't a humungous problem, but not-changing it just makes the solution to the second problem more convoluted, (i.e. "just keep checking Might + other stuff until you sort of maybe measure the thing you're wanting to, but still quite don't because Might's arbitrarily two measurements in one").

I don't ask that an attribute system perfectly simulate all things. However, in a role-playing game, its goal should probably be to provide a full-spectrum of significant character distinguishments. That's the core of my issue with the PoE system. The only problem with Might that I have is that the system essentially says "Let's just assume anyone with X amount of Might can do all the exact same things that anyone else with X amount of Might can." It would be like combining armor and dodging. If you just say "Meh, at the end of the day, all that matters is whether or not you took damage," then you've diluted the whole role-playing aspect of the game world. Do you dodge things well, or actually nullify attacks that strike you? Ahhh, who cares. You avoid damage. Everyone is just a damage-avoider now. The only reason Might "isn't that big of a deal" in PoE is because it's not really checked as significantly as it should be. This is the problem with Strength in 99% of RPGs. It's why there are dump stats. "Why should I take any Strength, as an (insert non-Warrior class her)? What... to pass those 2 Strength checks in the whole game that let me get past some minor obstacle, or achieve an outcome in a scenario that already had an alternative route to it anyway?" Same with Intelligence for Fighters. You maybe don't want them to be so dumb they can't function, but what's the use in their being smarter than a 10-year-old? You're spending an attribute point and getting FAR less for your "dollar." The solution to that isn't over-simplifying the attributes. Why take away the robustness of the system? This is why I LOVE some of the things mentioned/suggested in this thread. Give Fighter-types a sub-grouping of abilities and talents with INT pre-requisites, for example. Make more checks to attributes, directly, and/or skills, directly. And don't get me wrong... I know that with the first game, they had a pretty huge crunch, and were building all their assets and figuring Unity out from scratch, basically. But now that they've got a little more wiggle-room, I don't see it as unreasonable to try and get closer to some sort of ideal with attributes. The ideal isn't "make it just like DnD." But DnD had a pretty good foundation, coincidentally because of what all the stats represented. There are a ton of different attribute systems in different table-top games, but all the best ones are the ones that actually measure interesting, differentiating factors about your character, then are backed up by a system that actually uses those measurements to produce significant and dynamic results. When we went from table-top to CRPG, the tech at the time couldn't really handle the vast majority of the checks and attribute usages that you'd see in a tabletop session. Thus, the attributes were reduced to "how does this affect me, numbers-wise, in combat?", with dialogue checks trailing behind in second place and a sprinkling of other checks throughout. Now that video games have come so far, the solution is not to reduce the attribute measurements down to the level of existing gameplay systems, but instead to bring the existing gameplay systems up to par with the attribute measurements. Obviously Deadfire's budget only allows for so much, so if they can't do something, they can't do it. No one can feasibly be mad about that or demand that it be done anyway. However, to just say "Meh, the attribute system's okay, I guess. Better not waste any time even considering improvements to it" would be ludicrous. Proposing and discussing changes and improvements to the system and brainstorming reasons for them doesn't hurt anyone, and can only potentially contribute to a better understanding of attribute design on the part of anyone reading or taking part in such a discussion. So, I say collaborate away.

@Baltic, That's a lovely example to illustrate how simple it all is and how silly it is to "overthink" this whole Might thing. So now that Deadfire has multiclassing, what would a Barbarian/Wizard use to intimidate someone? Better yet, how would Barbarian/Wizard A's intimidation differ from the very differently-built Barbarian/Wizard B's intimidation?

Incorrect. All this back-and-forth is unnecessary, I'll give you that. However, there's a single, perfectly valid problem with all-encompassing Might, and that's simply that it makes a world in which neither physical strength nor non-physical strength can be measured. If a Wizard has 18 Might, what kind of physical strength does he have? He has ??? physical Strength, because "Wizards' Might is their MAGICAL power, 8D!". That's great, but he still has a body and a capability. Same with a Barbarian. He still has a mind and a magical capacity (in the PoE world), even if he doesn't cast spells, per se. So, which are you measuring on each character? Both (in which case all Wizards are the hugest, Conan-y dudes ever), or only one on any given character. Thus, imagine your party is trapped in a cell and there's a nearby device that's like a magical EMP. If your Wizard has high MAGICAL strength but is a feeble, no-muscley tiny person, then he can't do much. If he IS muscle-y and physically strong, then maybe he can break or lift something. Reciprocally, if everyone's tied up or restrained, but your Wizard is super magically powerful, then he can do magic stuff to significantly affect the situation, as distinct from physical things. The all-encompassing "Might" allows for neither of these scenarios. The game simply cannot measure physical strength as distinct from magical strength, even though they both exist. So, to just say "Wizard's power is magical, and Warrior's power is physical" doesn't cut it. That's ignoring that 2 things are defined, and neither is ever measured.

Maybe I oughtta give it a shot sometime. My problem with most RPGs nowadays is that, even when they try to break from good/evil choices, they tend to fall back onto just success/failure. Even when they try to make it about consequences for your choices, it's usually just "try for outcome A, or try for outcome B. You picked A? Your consequences are that outcome B happens no matter what, MUAHAHAHA!" So, it tends to feel flat. One of the most important things to keep in mind when designing choice branches is the idea that the player's choices matter. That doesn't mean that if you try to convince the Goblin King to be nice instead of mean, he just does it. But, if your choice can't influence the situation and alter the flow of the story (even if it flows back to "Goblin King still bad, he still does the bad thing"), then there's no point in offering the choice. So, I think it's best for those options to be designed with "Here's the situation: what can the player DO about this?" in mind, rather than "What end-goal should the player character be allowed to pick?". It's more important to be able to react like we want to to a situation, than to be presented with these huge "do you let this guy live or kill him?" decisions that seem to be working backwards from the outcome design. Whether he lives or dies (just an example), there are about a dozen other ways in which to react. Maybe you kill him yourself, or maybe you anonymously hire someone to kill him, which makes it look like some faction did it, which causes problems with another faction. Maybe you tell the guy who's looking for the person who destroyed his family's livelihood growing up that this quest-person is the one he's looking for, and you convince him of that. HE kills him. Maybe he finds out you were lying, maybe he doesn't. Consequences. What do you want to do, and what does that change? We don't really care if there aren't 73 different options for who takes over as king on a throne. We just want 73 options for how to GET to that point, and for contextual things to be meaningfully different when we do, even if the same "thing" happens. Sorry... mini-tangent.

I would like to know which assumptions those might be, if you don't mind. I honestly don't know to what you're referring.

I agree that this is true, but the problem with the "this is kind of necessary now" argument is that it started out as unnecessary, then became "necessary" due to someone changing it to that. "The market" is just what everyone habitually adjusts to. If all game developers, tomorrow, stopped making anything but pixel-graphics fighting games, do you think tens of millions of gamers would just stop playing games for several years until something different came out again? Nope. The majority of folks would just play whatever's available, and complain about it all the while. Same with anything. If all music decided "we're only going to produce death metal," then people would just pick the death metal they liked the most out of the sea of death metal, because SOMEthing is better than nothing. So... I dare say that the reasoning behind these little DLCs is flawed. It's like advertising wars. "Well, WE'VE got to put out a new commercial because our competitor did!". Great, now X% of people are going to remember YOUR commercial, and Y% of people are going to remember THEIR commercial. If 700 different competitors all have commercials out for their competing products, then it's almost the same as if NO ONE has a commercial out. If you're churning out DLC just to put SOMEthing out for the market, and everyone else is doing the same thing, then no one's actually putting out content because they feel like it's purposeful content that's necessary and dedicated to the core game design. So, everyone loses. You're just getting the masses used to something they hate. "I don't want to play this crappy DLC, but I don't want to go a year without something new to do, so I'll just roll the dice on what I deem the best possible crappy DLC to buy." If everyone just started making quality DLC, you think people would miss all the tiny stuff? Nope. They'd get used to it, REALLY fast. Just like they were back when big expansions were how it was done. It's like we got huge bandwidth increases and could push more stuff out more quickly, and someone one day just said "Hey, I bet we COULD add some new random crap to the game every week, if we wanted to." And they started doing it, and based on a bunch of skewed number-crunching interpretations, everyone said "Oh wow, that got results! We'd better all do the same exact thing or they'll win!" Kind of like "Crazy Steve sawed his own leg off last week, and he won the lottery today! Better grab your saws and get sawin'!"

The thing is... it's about that whole "as long as it's done well" part. Imagine if someone was like "Sure, I'll handcraft you a new rocking chair every single day!". Well, you can say "As long as it's a good rocking chair, I'm cool with that!". But, are you really betting that a daily-made good was lovingly hand-crafted? That's kind of our point. I'm not saying there's a specific amount of time, necessarily, that HAS to be spent on some DLC stuff. But, most of the time the really quick/tiny stuff isn't very well thought-out. So, if you want to get the most out of your $60 (or whatever the price of the full game you purchase may be), then you probably want to get the BEST most out of it, and not just maximize the quantity of stuff you arbitrarily get, correct? Like, what if they just kept releasing thousands of weapons every week? Eventually, (very quickly, actually), your need for new weapons would diminish, and you wouldn't really be getting much out of the new stuff.

Heh. Honestly, the general trend of "we've got to pump out add-on content at very regular intervals" has been a terrible one for game content. The old games used to have full-blown (sometimes standalone) expansions that released at like 30 or 40 bucks as compared to 50 or 60 for the base game. Sometimes it would take them a year or so to get these out. Sometimes they took a bit less time and were a bit smaller, etc. It was very organic. So, it felt a lot more like the process was "Come up with idea > production plan it > produce accordingly." Now it's just "Production plan regular content > try to hurriedly come up with content that's not SUPER extensive, but isn't so piddly people will get mad, so that it's just kind of "meh" in scope/quality > make it really, really fast, because the arbitrary deadline's more important than the quality of the idea or its execution." It reminds me of a burger place saying "We'll get your meal out in 5 minutes or it's free!". Then, maybe 1 in 10 people gets an actually-cooked burger, but at least everyone's getting food constantly, right? *eye roll*