BrainMuncher

@lephys, yeah I only used the term "ripped off" because that's what I was replying to. My point was that the fact that some things are similar to things from dnd isn't a reason to not like them. If you avoided games that had thing inspired by dnd you'd have to pretty much avoid playing games altogether.

Half of the game is inspired by/ripped from dnd. I think intentionally so. Half of the entire video game industry is ripped from dnd. Fan of Flames - burning hands Jolting Touch - shocking grasp Minoletta's Minor Missiles - I'll let you guess this one Thrust of Tattered Veils - lance of disruption Wizard's Double - mirror image Concelhaut's Corrosive Siphon - idk about this one Ray of Fire - scorcher Fireball - Classic, reliable, deadly. That's fireball. (Reflexes) Kalakoth's Minor Blights - minute meteors Minoletta's Bounding Missiles - missile storm Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage - cloak of fear Dimensional Shift - idk Essential Phantom - summon shadow Minor Arcane Reflection - spell turning Citzal's Spirit Lance - idk Malignant Cloud - cloudkill Arkemyr's Capricious Hex - cause disease/contagion Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar - ice storm

Oh dear. I don't sense any malice, besides the question wasn't intentionally made absurd, and was rhetorical anyway. Misunderstandings happen all the time, even among good friends. I'm giving out free hugs btw

Maybe you could raise your concerns over here to see what they have planned or would normally use. http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?518-Paradox-General-Discussion&s=0d1b001f13bb7f8b800a3cb7ae6f8a86 Just a thought.

Well for me, I do want the same out-of-combat version and in-combat version of the same buff, whenever I cast the spell. Why would I want different versions? Can you show me an IE spell that has different out-of-combat version and an in-combat version of the same buff? No? Didn't think so. Have you actually played the IE games? I think the cause of the misunderstanding is that in order to have two versions, they must be different. If they are the same then they are not different versions, since they are the same, there is only one version. So the question was clumsily worded, and understandably was easily misunderstood. The answer was a contradiction because the question was too. "Do you want two versions of the same thing?" Well if there are two versions, then they are not the same. If they are the same then there is only one version. Quite an absurd question, it is almost impossible to answer without a contradiction. lol

False. If it's false that you don't want the same buff to have an in-combat version, then it's true that you want each buff to have an in-combat version. As distinct from some other version that doesn't have "in-combat" as a descriptor. Thus, two versions. Which is why I asked if that's what Stun meant. Sweet merciful f*ck. Enough of this banal gibberish. I said false because, I don't expect nor want "versions" of a specific buff. Moreover, wanting pre-buffs only means that I want to be able to cast some buffs before battle so that when the battle starts, I will already be at my best possible fighting condition and can thus concentrate on the enemy, instead of having to spend too much time on my own defensive protections. To be fair, it seems you've misunderstood lephys' question, and gave the wrong answer. eg, you do not want an out-of-combat version and an in-combat version of the same buff, right? You should have said true. As it is, the above quote is a contradiction.

Obsidian probably can't actually answer that (at least not now), since it will be Paradox that handles the physical distribution. All of the kickstarter reward tiers that included a boxed copy also include a digital copy, and if you didn't already pay for that you could just get the game from gog.com or steam. But surely Russia has some sort of registered mail or other reliable delivery service. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Is this arrangement more or less functionally equivalent to the already known distribution deal with gog and steam, but for the physical side of things? I think it would put people's minds at ease if it were explained like that, knowing that essentially Obsidian has hired Paradox to perform a service for them. As opposed to having voluntarily entered slavery for a slice of stale bread.

I think it would be really difficult to do an in game audio commentary that didn't come out being a bit weird, awkward, or even perhaps annoying? However I can see a text-based commentary working out. Imagine the devs want to put some commentary in about the main menu, or maybe the world map or even character screen. If you mis-hear the first time, and it doesn't repeat, you'll have to start all over again just to hear that little bit of commentary. If it does repeat, you'll quickly grow infuriated with the commentary playing every time you open the map. Wouldn't be a problem if it was text based - perhaps some sort of dismissible window - just read or ignore it at your leisure. It would be weird to walk into a new area and have someone suddenly start talking in your ear about something in that area that you haven't seen yet. Maybe an audio commentary could work if you put enough effort into it, like having little snippets scattered about the environment, activated by clicking a little icon (or "using" the icon with one of your characters, like a door). Kill dragon, click on audio thing with humorous anecdote about the dragon. Click otherwise non-interactive statue in a city for a horror story about how the artist had to model it five times because the files kept getting corrupted or whatever. Hmm, I think I've managed to convince myself that an audio commentary would actually be possible after all. It still sounds difficult to do though, especially if you tried to add it in after the fact. Hopefully the devs find a good way to do it that isn't too huge of a time sink for them.

Pelican for increased bag space xD

I imagine in a game like this you're probably going to want to always have vsync on, with big flat backgrounds tearing will be really noticeable when scrolling. Having animation at greater than 60hz I imagine to be very unimportant for this type of point and click game. I'm not saying there is no difference but since it's not an action game the difference would be negligible. From what I know of unity, all the physics stuff is done at a fixed interval, and the rendering is decoupled and just goes as fast as it can. So if your simulation is reliant on the physics engine then at some point extra framerate isn't really relevant since you're just rendering the same frame over and over in between game updates.

Looks like you get your wish on this one: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63701-the-hassle-of-increased-move-speed/?do=findComment&comment=1331520

I don't really care about whether or not it's perverted or feminism and what-have-you it just looks ridiculous

If item identification will be a thing, party-wide lore/knowledge. So as long as one member has enough to ID an item, it gets ID'd regardless of whose inventory it is in.

Something to avoid, is too many samey combat encounters. A good example is the game torchlight (the first one, I haven't played the second one so can't comment). I realise it's a different genre but it stands out more there since combat is all there is. The entire game, with the exception of a few boss encounters, was small to medium sized rooms, connected with small to medium sized corridors, filled with small to medium sized groups of enemies. The enemies were always roughly around your level, getting more powerful at the same rate as you, so each new area felt very similar to the last just with different visuals. Some of the IE games suffered from this to a certain extent, but not nearly as bad, there was a pretty good amount of variation. Many encounters would be against groups of 6-10 enemies, maybe goblins at first, mostly melee with a couple archers and maybe a shaman. Then a bit later maybe orcs or something with a similar composition. Basically the same fight just with larger HP and damage numbers. Ideally I think there should be all manner of encounters which vary by a) the size of the battlefield, b) the strength and number of enemies, and c) the length of the battle: - short battle on huge battlefield with massive numbers of weak enemies - short battle in medium room with medium number of medium strength enemies - very lengthy battle in large room with small groups of weak enemies - medium length battle in small room with single powerful enemies - short battle in medium room with large number of powerful enemies - etc. One of the most memorable fights from BG2 for me was in ToB, in a cave somewhere (I think it was this one), I got attacked by some fairly run-of-the-mill guys. I started killing them, and everything seemed status quo, but then I realised there's more of them, and they just kept coming. More and more threw themselves at me, my party started to get split up, and they kept coming, seemingly endlessly. I remember really having to scrape the bottom of the barrel and use everything at my disposal to get to the end. That's not to say that it was more difficult, just that it was unexpected and I had to make do with what might have been imperfect tools, after many spells were used up. It was a long time ago so I can't remember much detail but I think they were mostly just basic melee enemies. So it wasn't memorable because of unique interesting monsters. What made it memorable was the length of the battle. The vast majority of battles in these games only end up lasting a few rounds, regardless of the number and strength of the enemies. Just try to think of the last time a cloud or fog spell ran out before the battle was over, almost never. So that battle really stood out for me because the length of it was in stark contrast to most of the rest of the game. Dragon battles tend to stand out because they are against one really strong enemy, which is also pretty rare. They also tend to last longer than usual. Between the size of the battlefield, the strength and number of enemies, and the length of the battle, there are many variations to be had, use as many as possible! Don't be afraid to put in what seem to be absurd fights, like your high level party getting attacked by a single rat in the woods. Or maybe they get attacked by 1000 rats all at once, sure they all die in one hit, but death by 1000 cuts could be real, especially if you get surrounded and can't move. It doesn't always have to be a group of 6-10 epic dire rats appropriate for your level.

The better question is this: Why can the Wizard only rip DOORS off their hinges, and not rip enemies limb from limb? If he can just run around casually forming magical energy into physical force, why doesn't he just step out onto the battlefield, then hurl all the enemies into walls and boulders, or simple crush all their armor in on themselves, winning every fight in seconds? Either a Wizard uses raw magical energy in the same way that a Fighter uses the kinetic energy from his muscles, or a Wizard does things differently. I may have a rationalisation that appeals to you: The wizard simply is not trained in the ways of physical combat and fighting. The reason this guy is able to shrug off powerful blows to the groin is not because of a high constitution stat, but because of many years of training. I could probably get pretty buff if I went to the gym every day for a couple of years, but it wouldn't mean I'd be of any use in a fight. I'd need fight training for that. I might be at an advantage against other weaker opponents who also have no fight training. But a low strength, highly trained fighter could probably just take me out/down with a single move, while avoiding/deflecting any cumbersome attacks I might offer. I'm guessing might allows the wizard to direct and manipulate larger bursts of energy without losing control and potentially skewing his aim or doing himself an injury. In order for a fireball or a ray of frost to actually damage something it has to at some point exist in a physical form, so it doesn't bother me that there might be a physical aspect to to directing and controlling the energy.

I'm not really a fan of unlimited ammo, especially the special types, for normal ammo I don't really care as you'll probably always have enough anyway if PoE is anything like the IE games, which seems to be the goal. But this thread wasn't supposed to be about that. What I really wanted to discuss was POWERFUL ammo, the types that you don't want to be plentiful, how to make these types better to avoid those disincentives I listed in the OP, such as: a. the high purchase prices b. the unwillingness to use them due to the high selling prices c. their ineffectiveness against targets worthy of their price, needed to keep encounters challenging Case in point, in many of the old games, you'd find at some point some really nice returning throwing weapons, usually being +2 or better, and with some elemental damage or other special effect on top. Suddenly your tanks are also powerful ranged combatants with unlimited special ammo, the strength damage bonus, and even their melee weapon proficiencies and specialization bonuses to boot, all while using a shield. Clearly powerful items, and the non-returning equivalents would cost a fortune, making them returning was the only way anyone would use them because of a b & c listed above. What I'm getting at is that surely there is a middle ground between prohibitively consumable and unlimited, or so cheap and plentiful to be practically unlimited. Everyone seems to agree that % chance to recover setups, while nice for flavour, are basically functionally equivalent to a price drop and/or availability increase, so that doesn't really address what I'm getting at. Having these high power ammo types instead be indestructible and non-returning/infinite would be a more sane solution, you'd still get to throw a couple to open the fight and gain a little advantage, or use them mid-engagement to help snipe some dangerous foe who is out of melee reach, without being able to just sit there and hurl away all day such that everything dies before it even gets close. Similarly for bow ammo, having special ammo unlimited eliminates any tactical consideration from using it. Having it inexhaustible, but limited somehow on a per-encounter or per-day or per-whatever basis both: a. removes the fear of "wasting" it on an easy encounter b. prevents the buying & selling price issues, and c. stops you from blowing your whole load at once, ensuring specific challenging encounters can remain challenging without resorting to monster immunities I hope that clarifies what I'm trying to get at here

Are you using physX rigidbodies to handle collisions or have you written your own collision prevention/handling using raycasts or something, while moving everything "manually"?

The thing about % chance based ammunition recovery is that it doesn't really achieve anything in terms of mechanics or balance. At the end of the day, there is very little functional difference between having 90 non-recoverable arrows, and having 60 arrows that can be recovered 50% of the time. In both cases you'll on average have 90 arrows to use. So you may as well just give 90 non-recoverable arrows and be done with it. So all you've really achieved by adding recoverability is to add some randomness, and the possibility that players can get either screwed or rewarded by RNG. If you're doing it for increased flavour/realism, that's fine, and does make a lot of sense especially for things like throwing axes and daggers. But functionally, it's basically no different than an availability increase or price drop.

Wow I forgot about that, you're right that was really discouraging.

I have a few points I'd like to make regarding how ammunition has been handled in games I've played, what I liked, what I didn't like, and how I think things should be done. I believe the various types of magical/enchanted/special ammunition had some problems, most of them caused by a single problem: they were overpowered. Hitting for double or in some cases triple the average damage of a normal arrow obviously wasn't something the devs wanted you to be able to do all the time, so there were various ways these things were limited: Cost The ammunition was made very expensive, tens of thousands of gold for 20 or so arrows/bolts/bullets, because they are overpowered and allowing a plentiful supply might trivialise the content. This means I never actually purchased them from a shop but made a fortune selling them off, leaving me with way more money than I probably should have had, all the best (non-ammo) equipment money could buy, and plenty of cash to spare. When you know that each arrow you fire is 2000 less gold in the pocket, there's not much incentive to ever actually use them instead of selling them off. You might think this becomes less of an issue as the game progresses and players accumulate more wealth, but the opposite can actually happen. As your level climbs higher and you start discharging many arrows, a stack might only last a handful of rounds. On top of that, since all those extra attacks are at progressively lower chances to hit, there's a good chance a lot of those arrows will go to waste. Immunities On the odd occasion when you actually run into some villain that seems worthy of your Ultimate Arrows of Carnage, it's most likely the case that the guy is always making a saving throw to negate their effect, or just completely immune to them, since they only have a +1 enhancement and any villain worth his salt will of course laugh at anything less than a +2 weapon (or whatever). This is necessary of course, because being able to actually use these overpowered items that players have been hoarding might trivialise this encounter of many portents. Scarcity "Those arrows of irresistible permadeath are pretty powerful, but if we only give the player three of them, then it should be ok." The problem is when you only have three of them, how many foes are worthy of such an arrow? You certainly won't be using them on some goblin that can already be dispatched with no more than a dirty look. Maybe I'm just a compulsive hoarder but I seem to always finish these types of games with inventories choked full of begging for a worthy foe that isn't immune to them. Some games have included special bows or quivers with unlimited ammunition. I'm not really fond of these either because if it's unlimited, then it's not special anymore. All it really does is set a new baseline below which everything else is worthless. If your bow produces infinite amounts of +2 +1d6 flame arrows then every other bow is suddenly obsolete. Not to mention that now this is the new baseline that you need to balance the monsters around, probably getting resistance or immunity to +2 flame arrows or something. So what can be done about all this? Firstly, for those things that you want to be plentiful, make them less powerful. Instead of +2d6 fire damage, reflex for half, how about just +1 or +2 with no save? Since they're not so powerful they can be cheaper, meaning players will be more likely to use them. Since they're not so powerful you don't need to worry about them trivialising boss monsters, meaning they will be useful when the players need them most. Since they're not so powerful there's no need to make them scarce, meaning players won't be compelled to hoard them and never actually use them. But if the ammo is plentiful and not terribly powerful, it's not very special then is it. So how do you make very powerful ammo that is also balanced and not disappointing? There are a couple of ways I'd like to see this done: Magical/special quivers that can enchant x amount of arrows per day. Toggle your fiery quiver's ability and those normal arrows you shoot become fire arrows, until you reach the daily limit. If you use +2 arrows, then you'll be shooting +2 fire arrows.Since the arrows are enchanted as you draw them from the quiver to fire them, this avoids any abuse of creating arrows every day and selling them, or just accumulating a huge stock over time to bypass the daily limit. Since the supply is inexhaustible as long as you have some normal arrows, players will be more liberal with their use Since the supply is limited, you don't need to worry about players being at full power at all times as soon as the quiver becomes available. Players would be much more likely to buy something like this from a shop as it represents lasting value. High buying prices would make sense and not be prohibitive, while high selling prices wouldn't be borderline abusive. It scales effortlessly throughout the game, since it's enchanting whatever arrows you're firing. A standard infinite fire arrow quiver might become obsolete once most enemies require +x ammo to hit them, while this would continue to work. The other (perhaps even better) way is to have rare special arrows that are indestructible. By this I mean they can always be recovered from the ground or a corpse afterwards. Now you can have that dungeon with the single arrow of divine destiny up on a pedestal, and have the player actually thrilled to find it. Such an arrow would essentially become a 1/encounter ability, unless you went and retrieved it mid-battle. Similarly, you could increment out indestructible "medium-strength" arrows throughout the game. So maybe at level two you find a single fire arrow, but by level ten you've managed to hoard 8 of them, letting you shoot eight every encounter. This is the most reasonable balancing mechanism I can think of that actually allows overpowered arrows to exist without having them suck for one reason or another. You could have the saving throw if needed, and if the monster makes the save, it's no big deal. I might actually make use of that 1 arrow of dispelling instead of saving it for that scenario that never eventuates. Getting more than one is actually good. If you already have a quiver of infinite flame, then you don't have much use for a second one. But finding a second, third, or even twentieth indestructible arrow of flame will probably be very welcome. Unlike the inexhaustible quiver idea, this makes finding and collecting arrows more fun. And you actually get the arrows, instead of some magic quiver. I'm not sure why but there's something about actually seeing the arrows themselves there in your inventory that is somehow better than a magical quiver, or bow of arrow manufacturing. That's all for now, thanks for reading and please share your thoughts and criticisms.

If you are talking just about games in general, or about your imaginary dream game, then I am with you. But in the case of PE, I have to disagree. Firstly, obsidian seem to really like the idea of a strong narrative, and such sandboxy freedom is somewhat at odds with that. The more freedom you afford to affect the world, the weaker your narrative must become. At the extreme pure sandbox end of the scale, the entire narrative is created by the player's actions, while at the other extreme you're basically just watching a movie. An example of the sandbox extreme would be a game like civilization - there is no narrative whatsoever but at the end you look back and there is a story there of what happened. My second point is that it is just really impractical to create these things in computer games, and a lot of the time when people try, it doesn't come out all that well. Let's say you have three decisions in the game where the player choice has a big impact on the world, and each of these presents three options. Now after the first decision, you have 3 outcomes to account for. After the second decision, 9 different possible outcomes, and 27 after the third. For these decisions to have any significant weight or value you will have to weave consequences of them into the rest of the game, which creates a massive amount of work, and the payoff isn't that great. All you got for all that work was only three decisions for the player, and a slightly weaker narrative. The decisions probably aren't even all that interesting, maybe a good/bad/neutral/quirky choice, or a choice to side with the red team or the blue team. They can't really be enormously interesting because the rest of the game is still mostly the same, there is no time to make 27 different games where each eventuality is covered with different content. Tabletop has none of these problems, since you only ever have to deal with one possible world state, which is whatever state the game is currently in. You'll generally have a fair idea in advance what the players are going to decide to do, and if something unexpected happens you can adjust on the fly. Things also tend to happen at a slower pace, so you end up with a lot more time to put into a much smaller set of possibilities. It might seem counter-intuitive but I believe that the "many choices, only one outcome" is actually much better at enabling role play in cRPGs. This is because you can afford to put many dialog options covering all sorts of attitudes, and even many different paths into short term plot points when you know the outcome will be the same. Let's say it's chapter 2 and the king needs the macguffin to drive back the invading horde. If the outcome is always that the king gets the macguffin somehow, you can put all sorts of different ways that he gets it into the game, without changing the eventual world state and multiplying the size of your game. Maybe you go and get the thing and hand it over for the good of the realm. Maybe you sell it for profit instead, but the guy who bought it hands it over. Maybe you just don't really care and don't even go looking for it, because you're busy doing other things and someone else gets it. Maybe you plant it on some poor guy and accuse him of withholding it to get him into trouble and better your position in some unrelated deal. Maybe you do everything you can to stop him from getting it but he gets it anyway, and so on. Since these are all short term things that do not affect the overall world state, you can have a lot of them and hopefully make the player feel like they were able to choose the path they wanted to. Now lets say you add in one more route, one where the king doesn't get what he needs and the city is destroyed. You've only really added +1 options to the many you already had, but you've potentially made a ton of work for yourself to account for such a significant event in the remainder of the game.

That orlan certainly is an interesting looking chap. I thought I would offer you folks my expert analysis of the image.

Sorry for necro, I can't seem to view the attachment in the OP, it says I don't have permission.