Lephys

*roll credits* I'm sorry it was such a complex idea. I should've made it simpler and clearer so you wouldn't misunderstand. I apologize. Let me try again. Just for you, Hiro, ^_^: You might have to pose as someone for whom someone else holds affection. Thus, in order to not be detected and murdered by guards while you gain access to documents and/or areas and/or information, you'd have to respond in an appropriate fashion, as though you are affectionate in return. That would be "romance," but wouldn't actually be "a romance," because your character isn't actually in a romance with that other character. However, there is romance going on (between that lady and her betrothed dude, whom you're impersonating to gain access to... a castle, a keep, a noble's house, etc.), and you're playing through it. Thus "romance" is in the game, but your character is not simply romancing another character. Any further questions? I'd be happy to answer them.

Yeah, I wasn't talking about romancing anyone. I was literally talking about "gaining access to stuff." As in "Oh, sure, sweetie, nothing's out of the ordinary because you're totally my betrothed, so I'm not about to ask questions if you wish to go into your study, or if you need to borrow my key to the treasury." Croikey. I mention using an illusion to get someone to trust you, and the most obvious benefit to your mind is "so you can DO them! 8D!"? o_O

Exactly. If the rest limitation's purpose is apparently to make life miserable, then raising the limit simply makes life less miserable. It's like someone punching you a little more softly in the face, instead of as hard as they could. I've seen the same sentiment expressed by multiple people multiple times now, as if the mechanics are objectively malignant in nature. So, I'm wondering what does a mechanic that's designed to make your life the-opposite-of-miserable look like? Do you get "attacked" by a group of enemies who all heal you and start stabbing themselves? Because, I gotta be honest... that might make the game "easier," but it would make my life miserable, personally. Here I am trying to play a game that actually gives me challenges to overcome, and I can't, because it does it for me, or negates the challenges, etc. So, fundamentally, what makes a mechanic, functionally negative instead of positive?

Ahh, but the difference between starting to wonder and just deciding the process is inherently flawed is deductive reasoning. I understand that people don't feel it's worth the time to find out how it could work, but that hardly requires deciding it just can't. And, yes, making it more long-term would probably be a start. That's at least one factor that I think worked well withe Tali relationship in the Mass Effect Trilogy. You could get to know her a bunch in the first game, but you couldn't actually "romance" her. But, EVENTUALLY you could. The pace, at least, felt a lot less ridiculous than "Hey, between every mission, we get closer and closer to confessing our undying desire to boink to each other." This is one of the main reasons I keep distinctly advocating "romance" and not "romances" in games. The very idea that "a" romance takes place within the span of a game is already very limiting, incongruently so. There are about a billion other types of relationships in the game that don't all result in some ultimate finality. In fact, who's to say the relationship between your main character and another character has to end "well"? Why does it go from "distant" to "close" to "married," etc.? Plenty of other things work that way. You make friends with someone, you get double-crossed, bad things happen, etc. The two of you don't necessarily just become best bros for the rest of time. However, implementations of romances in games almost always go from 0 to 100, in a directly linear fashion. Anything could be implemented that simply. Anything. And it would suck just as much. I'd love to, for example, be able to have my character fall madly in love with some other character who doesn't seem to be very concerned with such things at all. Maybe she even gets into trouble purely because she gets kidnapped or something by people who are trying to get to me, etc. Or, maybe you express a lot of interest in someone, but your other decisions in the game lead to your separation, etc. Maybe by the time you meet back up, that person's married or otherwise engaged. Stuff like that. If anyone ever bothered to treat it just like another standard human interaction that goes on, instead of some "Oh, lots of other things can be all kinds of interesting, but this MUST BE A LINEAR WISH FULFILLMENT in isolation from the rest of the game!", maybe they'd be better.

... But... those all have to be calculated anyway. Almost any ranged weapon system, for example, in any game, has a distance factor. Look at Fallout, even with its age. Then, you already have modifications from weapons, skills, feats, buffs, etc. So those are already in place. It would just be a matter of different, individual ones that happen to be derived from what's coded as a stat-checking factor for that weapon (like MIG for weapon heaviness, or PER for distance accuracy dropoff, etc.) You make it sound as though what I'm suggesting takes a simple system and makes it complex. But, it's pretty much just working with what's already there. Besides... YOU don't have to do any of this, in a cRPG, because the game does it for you. Also, there's in an "either adequate or less than" form. For one thing, the stats already provide global bonuses. So, for your Might to give you +15% damage, AND give you +something damage for a particular weapon, would be redundant at the least. Secondly, if it simply provides a detriment if it's low (a la MIG), or a bonus if it's high, then what you end up with is a more convoluted "this stat directly affects your accuracy, also, on a scale, just like the base accuracy stat (DEX)." Ehh... sort of. But, it's not the same thing. Your accuracy is only SOMETIMES affected by your Might. Your might doesn't actually just sit around in a formula determining your Accuracy, if you want to get technical (and I do, because it's a functional difference). It actually just gets checked if it needs to, to determine a modifier which is then applied to your final accuracy. No different from a debuff. Your Accuracy isn't "DEX * Debuff." It's just Dex, right now. A debuff is a specific, isolated, temporary thing. "Hey, that Accuracy total you got from that formula to determine that character's passive Accuracy value? Reduce it by 10 now, for like 15 seconds." So, yeah, that's a different thing. I agree that it's best not to have two stats factor into one passive value. However, what I'm describing is having factors on the battlefield that call for a check to another stat to determine a modifier. OR, in the case of Perception in my example, It doesn't actually affect Accuracy, but instead, adjusts the already-present range modifier on Accuracy. As I said, If you have 1 DEX and 20 PER, your Accuracy's still crap. It's just the same level of crap (without dropping off) for a much better range. That, to me, is an interesting dynamic. You can make an archer who can make LONGER shots with any given weapon, without making flat-out more-accurate shots than another archer. That one is, in fact, remarkably similar to the current "Might affects damage bonus, Intellect affects AoE size" setup, for, say, a Wizard with a bunch of AoE spells. Sure, your AoE size affects how many targets you can potentially hit, and, thus, how much damage you can deal (X damage times Y opponents = total damage), but it doesn't determine the damage value for the spell you cast. Thus, you can make a high MIG high INT Wizard (at the cost of other stats, obviously) who does the most damage to the highest potential number of targets, OR just a high MIG Wizard who does the most damage but to not as many targets, OR just a high INT Wizard who hits more stuff more often, but does less base damage. Allows for several significant variants of Wizards, all with the same two stats. That's true, and maybe (depending on other things) that's not the best way to handle a specific weapon type. However, I don't think it says anything inherently bad about the utilization of a secondary effect for a given stat (Might, in this example).

That's a mildly ambiguous instruction. Do I repeat until I'm dead, or until the bad guy is dead? "It was terrible! The troll was clearly deceased, but Faldric just kept swinging and swinging. Two days later, we went back to check on him, and told him he should probably rest and eat, but he said he was 'just following instructions,' whatever that means. o_o!"

Or you could have actual tactics in place, instead of just competing DPS/de-DPS(healing) rates. It's currently far more about which weapon you have and what level you are than it is about what choices you're actively making, in the moment.

If only you could substantiate that claim, my analogy would be proven terrible. My argument isn't that romance DEFINITIVELY works. It's simply that seeing it not-work a bunch of times doesn't mean it can't work, just like seeing a bunch of people incorrectly cook a turkey doesn't mean it's impossible to cook one correctly.

Which mechanics are designed to make your life splendid, exactly? I was under the impression that Easy is just a lesser dose of the same mechanics.

Well, for what it's worth, at a certain point, a class system that offers almost infinite options is kind of self-defeating. If you can be the best of 5 classes, there's not much point in having distinct classes in the first place. "This class has bad defense, but then this other class has GOOD defense! So, you just make a both-classes character, and voila!" There's not much point in having different strengths and weaknesses if you can just actively cancel them out. So, yeah, some systems get a little carried away.

See, I prefer the multi-faceted system you described in the example prior to this. Having an entirely different stat (in this case, Might) suddenly determine your ability to hit things, in place of Dexterity, is just a change for change's sake, as it's no less unnatural. You could have a blind, clumsy Fighter who's freakishly muscley, and he's be the most accurate guy in the universe, able to stab the wings off a fly with his greatsword. Having Dex always serve as the foundation for accuracy is the best approach, methinks. The effects of other stats on various specific scenarios offers a lot of great variety to things, while you still know that a low-Dex character is pretty much going to be less accurate, in general, than a high-Dex character. There's plenty of room for supplemental effects, though. Like we said, Might's effect on heavier weapons. You could have Perception, for example, affect ranged-weapon range -- if you have maximum Dex, but low Perception, your accuracy would start dropping off at about 20 feet, whereas, if you have high Perception as well, you'd maintain full accuracy until, say, 50 feet. With that, you get this dynamic: One archer can have 20 Dexterity but only 10 Perception (just example numbers -- high DEX and lower PER) and have a 100% chance to hit foe X at 20 feet, but only a 60% chance to hit the same foe at 50 feet. While, another archer could have 10 Dexterity and 20 Perception, and maybe he'd only have a 75% chance to hit that very same foe at 20 feet, but he might STILL have a 75% chance (as opposed to the first guy's 60%) to hit that foe at 50 feet. Thus, you've built one archer to work better at sniping, while the other's way better at shorter-ranged combat, even with the same class and weapon equipped. That's the kind of stuff I love to see stats allow for. I mean, combat damage is already treated that way. You have a base damage value, then it gets modified by a lot of things before the final damage number pops out. You do 30 damage, because of your Might and your weapon. That guy has low defense? Well, you more often get critical hits, so you deal more than that. That guy has 20 armor? Well, you don't deal as much. You're dealing shock damage? Well, you deal more again. Etc. You don't have to change what fundamentally determines the base damage. You just allow for various factors to alter it in varying circumstances. That's pretty much the foundation of allowing for tactics. Annnnywho, I digress a little, but I like it when feats and traits do the same thing. I'll give an example of the worst thing I think a feats/traits system can do, and that's solely adjust numerical values. When every single feat is "10 more damage" or "15 more accuracy" or "bigger AOE circles", etc. I think there's a problem. Now, it's a bit different if it's "+X damage under such-and-such circumstances," because that gives you the opportunity to set up those circumstances, depending on what they are. I think the more a bonus supports something you can actively make happen (with effort), the better it is, as opposed to just affecting passive sets of circumstances.

I've never made a game video before, but this seems like a good time to learn, if ever there was one.

First of all, I second that, while Josh has only given very technical descriptions of the mechanics thus far, I seriously doubt their plans are to just leave it at that. I'm sure "in-character" descriptions in the game will refer to the general strengths and weaknesses of various weapon types. Then, as for the "swap-fest," I don't see that being an issue, unless you outfit every single person in your party with the same weapon all the time. Then it might be. If you have a decent variety, the most prevalent thing that will most likely happen is that you'll run into a combat encounter in which character X happens to be highly effective against 1 or 2 foes, moderately effective against another handful, and significantly ineffective against 1 or two foes. So, it will most often probably come down to simply target allocation. "That guy's clearly wearing heavy metal armor... Steve's wielding a dagger... Steve should probably not attack that guy, and should go attack that robe-wearing mage or something." As far as it being intuitive, I'm sure it'll take a quick bit of reading and thinking (and a pinch of memorization) to figure out, but it'll become very intuitive after a little first-hand experience with battles and seeing the numbers and effects of your efforts, methinks. I mean, basically, your weapons do damage. How much of a foe's health that damage is kinda depends on the foe, which is something that's not foreign to us (some things will have 30 HP, and some things will have 70; when you hit them with your somewhere-in-the-teens-damage weapon, and they're half-dead, you'll know "that was effective." You won't really need to break out the calculator and/or memorize the exact probable damage output or anything). Okay, now, you just start looking at things that could affect that damage. Your weapon does 14-20 damage. You hit something 3 times, and each time you have yet to surpass 5 damage. Clearly, your weapon is being less-than-effective. Does he have lots of armor? What's his DT rating? *mouseover*. Oh, it's 10. So, at best, I can do like 6 damage. OR, if you notice he doesn't have a relatively high DT rating, then it has to be attack resolution related. What's his Deflection? Is it lots higher than my Accuracy? Oh, it's 60, and my Accuracy is 45. Yup, maybe I should try to hit something with less defense, and hit this guy with a more accurate person. Etc. After that, there's unique resistances and such, which should also show up in the mouse-over tooltips once that foe isn't brand new to your party. So, over time, you'll remember these things. And yeah, when you get to a combat encounter, you might find it prudent to pause, look over the enemies a bit, and kinda come up with a general approach. But, it won't really need to come down to crazy calculations and stuff. It should be pretty intuitive. It's kinda like a little checklist you'll form after several combats with your specific party makeup/equipment/build. Think of it like spell selection, only each spell is a different party member. "Hmmm, that guy's got high fire resistance, so don't send Fireball to attack him. That guy's got really high armor, so don't use LvL-1 PewPewBolt to attack him, or he's gonna block the majority of it." etc. Then, if you so choose, each person COULD swap their weapon to something else, at any given point in time. But, that's kind of up to you. Do you NEED that particular person to handle that particular enemy for some reason? (can't get across the battlefield, etc.)? If so maybe swap from your dagger to your mace or something, or what-have-you. (You'll figure out what weapon pairings you want on your peeps -- what options to have available to swap-to, basically -- beforehand, then won't have to worry much with it after that, except to decide "Hmm, would that weapon be beneficial in this case, or wouldn't it?" Again, kinda like readying spells in any other game. "Do I just want to load up on single-target fire spells, or do I want some AoE's there, just in case I want to hit a group?") Long-story-short, I realize that it seems a bit convoluted when all we have are scattered fragments in the form of answers to various questions all across the forums, but, once it's all together in the game, and you've got readily available tooltips and weapon descriptions, and you can unpause, watch a couple "rounds" of attacks play out, then pause again for a brief review, I think it'll all be quite intuitive. I don't think you're ever going to be trial-and-erroring things or calculating things for a good 10 minutes just to figure out how to effectively win an average combat encounter. Sure, the tougher ones'll probably take an extra bit of thinking, but it's not going to be something you're going to need to play the game a second time just to finally comprehend.

Most likely not, since they'd have to make two different armor models for that, instead of toggling something that inherently exists. I suspect that was probably, at the very least, a contributing factor to the choice to go with shapely armor models instead of others. *shrug*

Josh has said on several occasions that all the people on the team that have playtested the game so far have stated that they always miss whatever class they don't currently have in their party. I think that was mainly for combat-related functionality and tactics, but we can hope it carries over a bit into non-combat stuff, too. I think it'd be pretty great to have general class-based knowledge checks or something (at the very least). If you don't have a Rogue in your party, you'll be trying to handle some situation, and miss out on some key knowledge. Kind of like... if you found a dead body, and happened to have a medical examiner or doctor around, they could probably tell you "well, it looks like he's been dead for 3 days" when you might've been under the impression that the body had JUST been killed. Etc. A Rogue might better know how Rogueish things are done... just like a Wizard would know about the specific workings of a grimoire, or how to track/trace/identify Wizard magic, etc. It would be lovely to have checks in place that made use of the variety between the classes, instead of just skill values that can vary as little as a handful of points. I very much agree that we should, to some degree, miss any given class, even in non-combat situations (throughout the game in general, not in every single non-combat situation), when they're not currently in our party. Furthermore, since it seems we'll be able to have our stay-at-the-stronghold (not currently traveling with you in your party) characters actually do things while they're at the stronghold, it'd be kinda cool if who you left there actually allowed things there to be handled in different ways. Maybe if you leave your Rogue there, and someone tries to attack the place, your Rogue will organize raiding parties to slip out in the night and sabotage the enemy armaments (ballistae, siege equipment, etc.) or something. Or poison/contaminate rations. If you didn't have a Rogue there, you couldn't do that. But you might get other options, in that same scenario, with a Fighter or Wizard there, etc. Could have different effects depending on who's attacking, and from where, etc. That stuff could even be handled by scripted interactions, if you didn't return to handle it yourself (after being notified by scouts, etc.) Anywho... each unique character should bring something to the table.

So... your issue with romance in video games is that a bunch of fans are irrational people? o_O *bewildered* And, to the topic in general, I'll just emphasize yet again that all this "here's why romance is bad, I think: (insert example of a problematic specific implementation of romance)" is very, very similar to saying "Here's why turkeys should not be cooked: (insert a scenario in which a turkey was burned in an oven because it was cooked wrong)."

Yeah, they use dice rolls, not some random determinance. Gyah! Bruce, will you help me start a petition to get Volourn's avatar officially changed to a photo of Grumpy Cat? Don't tell him he looks nice today, or he'll think you mean he doesn't look nice on other days.

With all due respect, JFSOCC, you didn't really answer my question. It seems like your main issue is with the fact that the "Creatures" update (which should directly represent the entirety of the creature design in the game) didn't really show off the utmost of the team's creativity (either the "wow!" creatures are still kept a secret, unfinished, or non-existent). That, as I said, I fully understand, and I'll totally give you that much. I like sandwiches, but if a restaurant was trying to show off their menu to get a 5-star review, and they showed me a bologna and cheese sandwich, I'd be unimpressed. However, if you're trying to say that anything that resembles anything that's already been done is inherently lame and crappy, then I don't really understand that. As I said, that set of criteria is flawed, as it leads to "basically everything sucks unless it's all so strange I don't even know what's going on anymore." Tell me a creature design, and I bet I can point out something it's very similar to from another work of fiction. I don't think that factor, in-and-of-itself, determines the quality of a creature design. Should there not be wolves and bears, too? No canine creatures? No horses? No rodent-like creatures? No insects? We've seen all that a billion times, AND they're not even fantasy creatures. They're real and "mundane." I guess I just don't see how we can toss out "Tribal humanoids" as some kind of forbidden, inherently lame formula, just because it's not completely novel. Again, not saying we shouldn't see some pretty crazy awesome creature designs that are truly intriguing, or that it wouldn't have been really nice to have seen different stuff in the Creatures update. But, people seem to be equating not-100%-novel with "bad," which is a bit arbitrary.

^ See, what if they actually had story value, for one thing? What if you developing a personal relationship with someone meant that they had to abandon some title or path, and/or they became disowned by their house if they were nobility or royalty (because of your character's status or something), and that actually affected how things played out in the world and in the over-arching narrative? Wouldn't that be kind of cool? I know exactly what you mean by preferring the same "lines of dialogue" go into fleshing out lots of other stuff to make the game more varied, but, on that exact same note, romance is something that can make the game more varied. It doesn't when it's like a lot of the typical ones you see, which are, like you said, like one-night stands. So you know without asking him, but I don't? My apologies, your Omniscient. That's my favorite thing about you, Hiro. You're perfectly willing to call me out on the very same thing you yourself have done. Annnnnnd done with you. *bow*

@JFSOCC: I guess I just feel like "utterly" uninspiring is a bit overshooting? Well, let me ask instead of assuming: Are you suggesting that the presented enemies shouldn't even exist beause they're so "uninspiring," OR are you simply saying "yeah yeah, those are fine, but I'm really pissed that you showed only these to us and not the super-crazy unique creatures"? Because, the what-they-showed part I get, but any kind of "there absolutely should not be populations of humanoid creatures at all resembling tribal, kobold/goblin-like things in the world at all" notion would be beyond me. I think the "uninspiring" creatures like that help anchor the fantasy world into some semblance of a believable reality, to be honest. When everything's different from anything I've ever seen before, humans and society seem a bit out of place at that point.

I'm pretty excited about the Blights, I've gotta say. Their description is pretty intriguing. Also, I wonder if the Bîaŵacs can affect non-people (the "things" they've mentioned that sometimes have souls but aren't actually "living" entities). If there's some great tree that's known to have a soul, and a storm hits there, is that tree no longer great, so-to-speak? And how pervasive/frequent are these storms? I think the preview articles from E3 suggested there were cult people contributing to the formation of one, but I figure maybe the storms spawn naturally as well, to some degree. Maybe they're only in certain places? Maybe some of the origins of them are known, but some is just a mystery? Oooh! Would another benefit of being a fampyr be that you could ride out a Bîaŵac while retaining your soul? Or is the animancial binding of a soul to a vessel still too feeble to cause a Bîaŵac to do little more than laugh?

No, I simply pointed out that you don't really know what someone means until you ask them. Then I presented what was clearly my best guess at what he means, as was evident by the "I'm fairly certain" part. "Fairly" inherently implies a degree of certainty below maximum. I didn't even remotely claim you did. My example was merely an example of what was an argument against Bruce's stance, so that I could illustrate the fact that, while presenting a valid point, it didn't validly prove a definitive value for romance itself. Thus, it was an example of something someone like Bruce would call "not valid" in the "Romance: Yes or no?" debate. Perfectly un-rubbish. Why do you think everything's about you? "LOLZ, I didn't say that, so you LOSE at attacking me!" Maybe I was just making an example. Did you ever think of that? No it isn't. But I can see how you might think it was, since you don't like me and liberally exercise your skills of assumption.

*Jackie Chan meme face of frustration* I did think of that. And what I immediately jumped to was the possibility that would charge extra for a 2nd shipment. Someone in this thread suggested it. That would be me. *points to self* If you need a conflict, you're going to have to continue arguing with yourself, because this was my final courtesy clarification, and I'm not going to muddy up a thread with 700 responses to your imagined squabbles.

You get hung up on ultra-technical specifics of words too much, man. Well, when it's convenient, at least. You'd have to ask Bruce (or just assume crap, I guess, since that seems to be working for you), but I'm fairly certain that his use of "every" is just typical human exaggeration for "I've been around long enough to hear an awful, awful lot of counter-arguments." And, as far as "valid" goes, I think he meant that they didn't validate the definiteness of romance being inherently a bad thing to put into a game. Thus, his opinion of romance remains what it is. For example, "But look at this game! Game X did romance, remember? And it was terrible!". That's a perfectly "valid" point. It's not false or somehow invalid. But it's not a valid argument in direct support of the conclusion "and therefore trying to put romance in a game = fail," because nothing about it says that that specific way of attempting it has exhausted all possibilities for its implementation. How did you put it? Oh yes... this applies equally to people who don't like romance. How do you think it feels to have to raise valid points about the merits of romance in game design, only to have them disregard them all as invalid?

I'd just like to point that, at this point in time, it's rather difficult to design something that doesn't bear resemblance to something else that already exists. Here's how I prefer to look at creature designs: IF I had never seen a kobold or any other-such creature before in my life because they never existed and this was the first RPG ever made, do I find these little Xaurips interesting? Because, if I do, it hardly matters how many similar creatures have come before them. That being said, I am also eager to see some of the crazier creature ideas. I'm not saying your hopes for such are bad or something. I've just seen an awful lot of "Welp, that's pretty much a mindflayer" and other such comments in here, and it seems like some of them go a bit beyond fairness. I mean, nowadays, you put a large creature that can fly into a game, and it's just seen as copying dragons. Or, if it's a living tree creature, it's an ent. Or a golem. If it's undead, it's automatically cliche. Bandits? WAY overdone, so let's have a world without bandits. You end up with pretty much nothing. Or a REALLY strange world, haha.