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Jobby

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Everything posted by Jobby

  1. Jobby
    I very much doubt any backers of P.E. hate combat as you say Helm, i can see where your coming from regarding combat xp, but really does it make a big difference? As long as the games balanced everything's good, besides it actually allows for certain combat scenarios without creating grind-fest leveling areas, for example the respawning "hell gate" thingymajigger in Arcanum, as far as i can see it will allow for us to have hordes of respawning (in some areas) enemy's without the danger of making the game too easy because you've leveled up too much.
  2. Jobby
    I don't understand why when people simply want to expand upon things that have been previously done (I.E. engine stealth) they get accused of tampering or mutating the game into something else, commandos style stealth was very well done (line of sight, light and noise) and if resources allowed would be a wonderful addition to any rpg, as opposed to the random dice roll which is unaffected by any of the aforementioned. Clearly Commandos was solely a stealth combat game whilst P.E. will have a whole host of other things going on, however if the unity engine allows these mechanics to be introduced i don't see why they shouldn't, but anyway in regards to the OP, i agree with all 8 points raised as well as adding in if you don't want to kill someone you don't get their rare stuff, this could also tie in with actual motivation to be evil, which is severely lacking in just about any rpg i've ever played.
  3. Jobby
    Sentient weapons, done properly could be a lot of fun i think, some of the ideas here have been great such as an intelligence/will check to see if the player becomes possessed, or a quest where your goal is to free the soul from the weapon, perhaps at the cost of some weapon stats but with the benefit of another recruitable npc. I also think i really cool scenario would be where you have a weapon imbued with the soul of some deity's servant, give this weapon to a Paladin/Monk/Cleric who worships said deity (perhaps an NPC) and you could have some really interesting dialogue, imagine your paladin having a theological argument with his sword.
  4. Jobby
    I agree, I am sick of being a millionaire by the end of every rpg (or the midway point) I always find the most enjoyable part of a games economy is when you make a conscious effort to save money for a specific weapon in preparation for a specific quest. I have a couple of suggestions as to how this situation could be avoided. First, give the player a motivation to keep unique legendary weapons, perhaps an armory in the stronghold where u can recruit some dude to research the unique weapons you find, this could reveal more about their lore, unlock hidden abilities, or allow the creation of a few new unique weapons once you have collected enough. Someone else suggested equipping your guards, again i think this is a good idea. Finally for a money sink the stronghold could be upgraded, much like Suikoden where you recruit unique characters to improve your castle, the difference being that you could have a cost involved in setting up a blacksmith/alchemist/tavern as well as having to persuade the individual to join your cause.
  5. Jobby
    Awesome news, Good inventory management, Distinct but not limited classes and an interesting damage/armour mechanic. I am slightly worried about the passive vs active though, i would hope a well designed character with a mix of passive and active abilitys would be more formidable than a purely passive one.
  6. Jobby
    Fair enough, i get the impression flavour skills are something they want to stay away from, although at the same time utilisation of the word "appealing" as opposed to "balanced" may imply otherwise, but yeah in that case i'm in agreement with you, as long as there more useful skills than can possibly be obtained in one playthrough i'll be happy :D.
  7. Jobby
    I'm all for status ailments although i dont think they should nessecarily be linked to criticals, i'd rather have a "called shot" mechanic or something different for that (a tactical descision to cause an ailment as opposed to a lucky shot), im kinda in agreement with UpgrayeDD in that they could make the game as much about luck as tactics and remove a degree of control from the player.
  8. Jobby
    Arcanum did this very well, it actually meant you could knock people out instead of killing them if you so desired, but then again in Arcanum your stamina didnt regenerate, perhaps heavy/blunt weapons could also cause status ailments like you hinted at e.g. crit hit causes winded which prevents stamina regeneration for xx seconds etc..
  9. Jobby
    Will there be any benefit to having multiple characters with the same non-combat skills though? If not then surely there will be a degree of specialisation, in fact skill point scarcity in my mind would push players towards creating 6 specialists in whatever they consider to be the 6 major skills. What could be quite interesting and i think someone else alluded to this would be a system where non-combat skills can increase a characters combat effectiveness, e.g. a few levels in scouting may give you a boost to perception, which in turn could be a modifier for ranged attacks, therefore whilst you may still have a tracking "expert" it could still make sense to have a few characters well versed in it. I do think seperating the experience pools is a good idea though, it was quite annoying in Arcanum when you had to utilise skill points to learn how to make new guns, which in essence was a one use skill and even if you didn't take it you may still find the weapon in the game world.
  10. Jobby
    What the hell is that guy dressed up as? he looks like a fat Ace Ventura
  11. Jobby
    I can see what you mean and how that would be frustrating for many players but i kinda liked the tradeoffs that would imply, i.e. if i want to avoid trap damage i need to have a weak utility character in my party when instead i could've had a fighter tank who could soak up the damage, or another healer to fix the damage etc.. Of course this did become a bit irrelevent with the swashbuckler class and then the TOB "equip anything" skill, which basically turned thiefs into killing machines. But in the end as long as there are distinctly different classes, races and playstyles and not just 6 different ways of doing the exact same thing then i'll be happy, personally despite being a cynic at heart i genuinely believe Obsidian are devoting the time and effort to make this a unique and enjoyable system.
  12. Jobby
    As much as a dynamic economy would be awesome i do wonder if it would be a nightmare to balance, although i think PrimeJuntas maybe went a bit too far in regards to elastic supply/demand and turtle ecology lol. I would imagine that if you buy all the turtle beaks the sellers store will regenerate say 2 per day to a maxiumum of 20 and the price is dependent upon how many beaks they have in stock at any given time, obviously this mechanic will not work if the player can spam rest for 10 days to get the cheapest possible price, clearly the games economy is limited by how realistic other game mechanics are. Another example in regards to the relationship between the games other mechanics and it's economy, say there were differing prices depending on availability of resources within a region i.e. turtle beaks cheap in coastal areas and costly in mountanious areas, this mechanic becomes skewed and unblanced if the player can at no "time" cost to himself (fast travel) to the coast, stock up on beaks, travel to mountains, sell beaks and repeat the process until the player is a millionaire, clearly to balance this there has to be some cost involved in the traveling process (which i am not nessecarily against). The occassional scriped economy event could be really cool, especially if it could tie in with some quests the player undertook, e.g. player destroys a dam to kill an oncoming army of goblins, town is saved but the surrounding area is flooded to the extent that traders can't get in or out (**** example i know), now say the player had alternatives to flooding the valley, this scenario could really provide interesting consequence and action mechanics. I do remember in BG2 there was a weird economy situation going on with the rakashas (SP?) and the traders in trademeet, but none of the traders had anything paticularly useful to buy so it all fell down a bit lol. At the very least i hope to see limited gold from vendors anyway.
  13. Jobby
    I would like to be able to dual wield anything (within reason) as long as there are appropriate trade offs and it isn't simply a case of equiping the two most powerful weapons you can find, perhaps weilding a shorter sword in the off-hand gives better defense as it's easier to block/manouvre with?
  14. Jobby
    That would be fun
  15. Jobby
    Maybe so but it would certainly be clear, I'd rather not have disclaimers such as BGs "this weapon is very rare, dont put any points in it, infact i dont even know why we made it a seperate skill" I guess it's a fine line between holding a players hand and dumping them into an entirely new system with no advice, at the end of the day i think most of us will agree that we dont want a system where every character is equally powerful but nor do we want a system where we get shafted for thinking that "reading ancient poetry" might be useful and suddenly we have a character who can do nothing but read hyroglyphs. On that note however i'm pretty sure theyve said that combat skills and non-combat skills will be completely seperate, so we can finally create a poetry reading badass! :D
  16. Jobby
    To be fair we've seen very little of the worlds lore, im sure monks will be intertwined with the games history and world very well as Obsidian can work from the ground up and aren't randomly throwing them into a pre-established world. I didn't personally feel like monks fitted in to the Forgotten Realms world very well, if at all, but at the end of the day they're here by popular demand and they aren't going to be removed at this stage. Anyway, nobodys forcing us to play as them, personally i'll be avoiding the monk and the chanter class most likely as i've never liked bards and fighting with your fists is boring when you can have fancy magical swords lol, (these views are only based on what i've seen so far ofc).
  17. Jobby
    I can see where your coming from Sacred, although i very much doubt they'll manage to make every skill equally useful no matter how hard they try, I've yet to play a Crpg where every skill is perfectly balanced and nor would i want to otherwise i might aswel play WOW. From what they've said though they may mean something akin to what you've suggested in that a level 6 in Read Ancient Poetry may be just as useful as level 2 in lockpicking as both cost the same number of skillpoints to reach that level. I think Sawyer was implying that he didn't want more casual gamers to gimp their characters early on, which was something that was very possible in the BG series especially if you decided to dual class (Fighter/mage cant wear armour... pointless lol), there is a flip side to this argument however in that the dual classing system did allow for some pretty epic characters to be built if you knew what you were doing. PrimeJunta - "I'm not sure that skills should be balanced by the designers by making the more useful ones cost more. I think it's more important that the game telegraphs the usefulness of the skills it offers, either explicitly or implicitly." Surely having one skill costing more than other does telegraph the skills usefulness, assuming ofc the developers design it properly and dont have a cheap mechanic that can completely undermine a skill.
  18. Jobby
    I would add that mechanic should be that when character get into fight he can simply drop torch on the ground to keep light up - another strategic layer is that you have to keep your party where you can see I would say keep them where you can see if you want them to be effective, so if they leave the 'light pool' their critical miss chance and other stats change, so that they are more likely to be hit, hurt themselves or friendlies, etc. I like these ideas although i think the torches will need to have a relatively large radius so we dont have 6 people fighting in a huddle defeating the purpose of tactial formations and it could really add to the role of a rogue if his hide in the shadows was limited during combat to actual dark areas, I could imagine him running out of the light, going stealth and then backstabbing. It could also set up some awesome non-scripted events with your party being assualted from the shadows by shades that don't need to magically spawn. As a side note it would be pretty cool if the 15 level meta-dungeon got darker the deeper you went.
  19. Jobby
    Hey all, i was just thinking about one of my BG2 playthroughs where i punched some woman for claiming her child was mines (silly i know but i was role playing a nasty bastard) and suddenly the entire Temple District wanted me dead even though nobody saw it, not to mention that i'd saved them all from that dodgy beholder dude. I really hope this all or nothing mechanic is removed or better managed, i would like to be able to brawl with annoying people (with the exception of neb / neeber who ironically i spared lol) without locking game areas off, i would also like to commit crimes unnoticed and not recieve reputation drops, but i suppose the main question is how would people like the crime and punishment system to be treated in PE? I think it would be fantastic if they implement different punishments for different towns or factions, for example for getting caught stealing in one place you have to pay a fine and return goods, in another town/civilisation/race/faction however they insist you must serve a prison sentence etc.. Infact expanding upon this, it would be interesting if there were different laws entirely for different places, they've already stated that the worship of certain dietys is outlawed in different areas, so what happens with your priest/preistess of whomever refuses to remove their insignia? Could make for some interesting character dialogue options aswel. I'm hoping that crime will be linked to reputation which will be unique for each faction, meaning you can be a criminal in the eyes of some but a hero in the eyes of others. Finally, i always thought it was a really neat feature in Arcanum where if u slaughtered a town/village you were labeled as the "butcher of stillwater" or something, regardless of your good deeds that label never dissapeared, no matter how many kittens you save afterwards.
  20. Jobby
    I'm pretty sure they've already said the tab button will highlight stuff like in TOB (or there will be a simmilar mechanic)
  21. Jobby
    I guess i should have mentioned that aswel anubite, no instantly obvious puzzles like the recent rpgs, although as this is supposed to be a genuine throwback i doubt we'll see that anyway.
  22. Jobby
    I would like to see a resting system simmilar to that of the BG series where you can rest in most places where some locations are more likely to cause random encounters than others. However as it seems that resting is going to be more important in PE than the BG series i feel they should take some time to flesh out the system, i would quite like to see some arbitrary resource (that does not require inventory space or micromanagement) being depleted but i would also like to see something deeper than this, perhaps a rest menu where you have to option to assign party members tasks, i.e. player xx can forage/hunt, player yy stands guard.. etc.. It doesnt need to be a long and painstaking process. I realise i may be in the minority here and i am not going to spit the dummy out if we end up with the standard "fade to black" rest mechanic of the BG series i just think it's an area that could be expanded upon. Also i think the well rested idea is very good, alsthough as opposed to "to hit" increases i would propose +x max stamina till next rest or fatigue kicks in (is fatigue even in the game?), this may also serve as an initiative for players not to rest spam and to hold off resting until the can find another inn. Finally i think it would be quite cool if when camping you actual saw your tent set up where you had decided to rest, with your pcs round the campfire to chat to, not quite to the same extents as the KOTOR and DA home hub where you have to spam chat to everyone to make them like you more (which i thought felt rather forced). Perhaps things like the journal, crafting and maps could be visible items in the camp area that you could access (I'm not saying remove them from the UI). To be fair this last paragraph is more for personal preference and flavour more than anything else, and i realise it would add little to the game other than a better feel of adventure (for me anyway).
  23. Jobby
    Logical ones... that is all, if i ever play anything like shadowgate again i may murder someone.
  24. Jobby
    Yeah thats what i was getting at, you worded it more eloquently though
  25. Jobby
    Just a thought: it would be really cool if the dungeon was almost a "write your own story" scenario whereby at the end despite the fact there was no relevance to the main plot you could still feel like it was a relevent and epic part of your partys travels as opposed to a grind fest. For example Interactions with other adventurers whom you can meet outside and inside the dungeon (thus making the dungeon feel like part of the greater gameworld). Dungeon being a big part of the game lore as previously stated. Multiple solutions to any mini quests within the dungeon, such as laying a spirit to rest to advance or just smashing its face in with magic missles etc.. Multiple routes? / hidden passages? Reaching a depth/level noone else has, and the game recognising you for that. Satisfying conclusion that impacts on the gameworld (even if it is just reputation wise and the only tangible difference is that npcs are aware of your achievements)
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