Helm

Wrong. Only the secondary health bar heals when resting. The main health bar "automagically" regenerates by itself. ^^

Yes, "that" rat. You've missed my point, methinks. Let's go with an opponent that's a better example than a rat. How much of a difference is there, in functionality and effect, between level-scaling the "same" bandits (so that the player fights level 5 bandits at level 5, level 6 bandits at level 7, level 7 bandits at level 9, level 8 bandits at level 11, etc.) and making 4 different groups of bandits with slightly different models and textures who are, respectively, level 5, level 6, level 7, and level 8? Pretty much none. "Ohhhh, they look different... I see." I really don't think that you get my point. In a level scaled game the level of these bandits will rise if you go up a level. The difficulty will practically always be the same. The only obstacle is trying to overcome your boredom while wandering around aimlessly. Level scaling leads to degenerate gameplay in an RPG. If you have a level scaled game, then you might as well just turn the game into a hack & slash without any levels or stats at all, seeing that leveling up will have practically no outcome on gameplay, which in turn leads to monotonous progression. Btw, you seem to have just plainly ignored what I wrote here. An action RPG like does not have to be bad, it can be very good like in "A link to the past". The only thing is that the Nintendo DID NOT rob the player his sense of progression, there are obstacles in that game that cannot be simply overcome. You had to collect many items (heart containers, better swords an other magical items) in order to continue through the dungeons and eventually complete the game. So even in a game like Zelda you had to develop your character to win (which is a key factor of an RPG) - this is not true for these terrible level scaled games. You really write a lot...

The worst part of the round based RTwP system ist that you always had to wait until the end of the round (as you said, 6 seconds) before you could cast a spell, attack, drink a potion etc. In a worse case scenario your char would just stand there for for almost 6 seconds until the end of the round ended before he would actually do what you told him, so it was a rather awkward sometimes. Btw , theoretically you could parry an infinite amount of times in the D&D system. ^^

OMG, it was really close this time. I'm so happy we all made it! :D Maybe they are actually busy with creating real RPG mechanics instead of dumbing many mechanics down to retard level.... I hope so at least.

Darklands Torment: New Vegas

Well, you should be able to heal both imo. The stamina healing potions could be uncommon and the health potions could be very rare or something. I agree but currently thats not how the mechanics are being described. Stamina will self regenerate both inside and outside of combat but health can only be regenerated by resting. It was just a recommendation in the hope that Sawyer and the boys read it and come to their senses. Maybe the magic healing fairy will come and heal you in your sleep in PE.

Having Bob the Barbarian wait in a corner until his stamina (main health bar) has rapidly healed from those 3 big hits increases the need for tactics? Interesting. I really do not think that CoD style healing requires the player to make wiser tactical and strategical choices if you ask me. ^^ I don't think hiding Bob in the corner is what I was insinuating. I specifically mentioned spells and abilities that negate damage. Using tactics to put shields on Bob preemptively as opposed to hitting him with heals reactively. EG you see he has 3 enemies attacking him, and the priest, cleric, mage, or bard buff him with a spell that increase AC or DR, perhaps both. Well, buffing was usually always the main defensive tactic anyway. You could have 10000 healing potions, if your tactics were fundamentally flawed then they didn't help you one bit anyway.

The D&D system is slightly unbalanced and a bit "goofy", sure, but the IE games still have some of the best game mechanics to date. It was not just the story, setting and atmosphere that made these games great, the mechanics also played a huge role. Missing basically only means that you will do less damage. If you only have an 80% chance to hit, then you will only do about 80% of the damage that you would theoretically induce if 100% of your attacks would hit. Without the "miss-hit" mechanic you would do more damage, so the overall damage would have to be reduced to compensate this. In the end the outcome would be almost the same, the mechanics would just be "dumbed down". Anyway, if your fundamental strategy and tactics are flawed, then you will of course have problems. In that case you should probably think about decreasing the difficulty instead of blaming it on the RNG. Btw in the IE games there were ways to increase your chance of hitting an enemy, just as there were ways to decrease the chance of getting hit. like?

Well, you should be able to heal both imo. The stamina healing potions could be uncommon and the health potions could be very rare or something. Having Bob the Barbarian wait in a corner until his stamina (main health bar) has rapidly healed from those 3 big hits increases the need for tactics? Interesting. I really do not think that CoD style healing requires the player to make wiser tactical and strategical choices if you ask me. ^^

No, it's scaled by level range of dungeon, character level and party if you have any. It's a more complex system than for example diablo 2 where the only factor is size of the group. I've never played dark age of camelot, but lord of the rings online uses the exact same system for instances (dungeons) which I played for a few months. You are correct though, technically it is level scaling, but on the other hand it also an MMO which dynamically level scales instances to group size (and the lowest player level... in Lotro at least).

A few of them have some good LS: - Borderlands (have min-max range, bosses have player level +x, have set levels) - Dark Age of Camelot have very good LS - Dragon Age have good ranges and LS but the game mechanics are to tweakish - The last Remnant I knew you were gonna bring up Borderlands and Dragon Age (after a Google search). Well Borderlands really isn't an RPG and Dragon Age Origins does not level scale, it uses a hybrid scaling system including elements of player centric scaling. BioWare calls this system challenge scaling. The system has been criticized, but it certainly is not as bad as player centric level scaling, a lot better actually, seeing that does not totally throw the feeling of progression out the window. So is PE going to use the Dragon Age Origins system or what? It certainly is not a good system, but it is not terrible like level scaling is. Btw. Dark age of Camelot only scales instances to group size just like many other MMOs. That is not level scaling.

Blinded Chars will always be able to hit concealed foes for half damage.

Oh yeah, there have to be very interesting factions in the game, that are also at war or battle with each other. This is what makes a game a lot more interesting. But knowing Sawyer, there will be factions in the game and they will also battle with each other. I do believe he mentioned this somewhere.

How can I know what games did you played? But it can be implemented differently. Physics in games sucked until someone had it done right, voice acting was pure **** until the companies started to hire actual voice actors and not make programmers to "act". Just because something was badly one it doesn't mean it cannot be done better. Then give me an example of a game where level scaling is done extremely well and makes the game just as good if not better than an RPG without level scaling.

Well, then enlighten me and tell me in which games I loved level scaling. Anyway, Player centric level scaling is how level scaling is always implemented in games. And yes, it sucks. It always sucks.

This will be a good combo for example: An estoc sword (piercing), long sword (slashing) and a morning star (blunt). I'm looking for the option: "Great work. I like the armor system and only have a few minor reservations." Because I have some reservations about arrows. How are they supposed to work? Bodkin (piercing) and broadhead (vs. lightly armored enemies, slashing) makes sense. But what about heavily armored foes? Would you use fire arrows or something against them?

Level scaling evocates the degenerate gaming phenomena known as empty leveling and monotonous progression. Empty leveling because moving up a level has very little outcome on gameplay, in other words the levels are "empty" and monotonous progression, because the player is robbed of his sense progression in character development (character development is of course a key factor in in an RPG). If the player's character rises in level in a level scaled game, aspects of the world will change to accommodate that character's growth. If you level up, then the level of the enemies you encounter will also increase accordingly, as if the world only revolves arounds the level of your character or party. This prevents the player from feeling any true sense that his/her character has grown in power. You will also never face an unsurpassable obstacle and never have the option to remove this obstacle by becoming more powerful. This where side quests come in, they allow a player to grind with variability in order to become more powerful and to overcome obstacles in the main quest. That is why I hate level scaling. Well, but this is actually just level-scaling in a piddly disguise, unless the rats are a completely different creature all together. You've literally thrown rats at the player that are better than the previous rats they fought. Same as with just scaling the exact same rats up to level 8, but with a prettier package. Not really. That rat will always be level 8 if the game is not level scaled. If I fight it with level 2 (and barely survive) or level 12 (and annihilate it), it doesn't matter, that certain rat will always be a level 8 rat.

I have, all the time actually. You might want to focus a certain enemy more than another, so you split up your team and have the characters with the better THAC0 focus an enemy (e.g. super nasty mage), that must come down much quicker than another enemy (e.g. nasty mage). And strategically I would always try to improve my THAC0 as much as possible. That was a lot of fun, especially when you found some super awesome item. I always loved rewards like that.

The first clear statement I read said that healing magic will be rare. Then someone said there would be none at all. Current stance seems to be that it's rare. So I'm building on that when I'm saying that you'll want to be very careful with your health potions and possible rare spells. How is that system inferior to IE style DnD games? Where you could tag "cast healing spells on rest" and then just spam that rest button, considering that even a lvl 1 cleric or druid could cast healing spells? The only thing it accomplished was forcing you to include at least one of either class in your party (= no brainer). I am not a fan of sleep spamming either (or even sleeping to heal for that matter), but I have to say that you couldn't sleep spam everywhere in the IE-games, in certain areas it was actually impossible, because you were constantly swarmed by enemies (not to mention that had to sleep for many days to even fully heal your team). These were always the areas where you actually really needed to heal. You always had to make sure that you had a healer and enough healing potions as a strategic element. Healing was tactically also very important in the IE games. I do believe it will be possible to heal your stamina in PE also, it will not only regenerate rapidly by itself. If Sawyer gets rid of the rapidly regenerating stamina bar (health bar 1), includes stamina potions, (very rare) health potions and healers then that would be a very interesting, original and excellent mechanic imo. Btw, none of the classes in the IE-games are required. For instance, you could have all fighters or all mages and still play and win the game. Sure, such unorthodox combinations make the game harder, but it is possible. Except that, in other games, you're 100% expected to HAVE to use healing to complete a battle. It wasn't really a big deal that you made absolutely sure you took as little damage as possible through strategic decision-making as it was that you avoided taking too much damage in too little a time. All the damage and HP numbers were designed with healing in mind, or the dedicated healing classes and overly abundant healing potions would be useless. Not necessarily. There are ways to mitigate or drastically reduce damage, even though health potions did play a large part. There were many ways to win a battle in an IE game and In many situations healing was actually the less efficient tactic, sometimes it was clearly the best tactic.... and not only tactically but strategically.

The really brief version is to imagine a normal attack in AD&D, but if you miss, you inflict half minimum damage. Math and values can get shoved all over the place, but that's the fundamental mechanic. Whether you like the concept is separate from how well it works in practice (which really comes down to math/value specifics). Well, something like this is what I would like to see in PE (with armor, shield and stat bonuses/maluses and what not of course): Attack roll: you hit enemy = full damage you strafe enemy = half damage you miss = no damage is inflicted Defense roll: character does not block or parry = damage (from atttack roll) is inflicted character blocks = less damage (from atttack roll) is inflicted character parrys = no damage (from atttack roll) is inflicted

That is almost like saying that an FPS sucks because you can miss even if your tactics are flawless. If you can't cope with missing then your strategic and tactical choices were not good enough, that is all. If I personally know that it is possible to miss, then I change my tactical and strategical planning accordingly because that is what you are supposed to do. The IE-games also used RNG (dice rolls), so why are you even here if you hated that anyway? EDIT (first line): can't => can (of course ^^)

I said: These mechanics will make healers and healing potions almost completely redundant as strategical elements. In other words, you probably wont even need a healer (a priest, whatever) or healing potions because the health system will be almost completely and solely tactical based with a self-regenerating health (stamina) bar. Understand now? IOW: you will lose health, and that health can't be regained by resting at will and it doesn't regenerate. That means you'll wish for healers, rather than them being redundant. Items/ spells that could refresh health will be rare and valuable, adding possibly more strategic choices in how you will outfit/ make up your party. Which means that the only strategic element of the health system will be the fact that you want to take as little damage as possible. This is is the same for every game, you always try to avoid taking damage as much as possible. By removing healers and healing potions you are removing two strategic elements and in turn are simplifying the game strategically and tactically. That certainly is a huge problem if you ask me.

Well, that is how level scaling is practically always implemented. There are of course a few exceptions (e.g. only the bosses and mini-bosses are level scaled), but that is generally how level scaling is implemented. Sawyer implemented level scaling extremely well into New Vegas, so It took me personally a while until I noticed it. Only the main campaign was level scaled, everything else was static. So, in New Vegas, you could either ignore every side quest or do EVERY side quest. It didn't matter, the difficulty of the main campaign would be the same. This is actually a huge problem imo, I will go into more detail if you wish to hear my opinion. There is no problem if a developer takes a level 2 rat, raises it's level to 8 and changes the name (to "evil rat" or something) and then sticks it in the game, but then again that is not level scaling, that is just a way to diversify the enemies without spending too many resources (a good example is WoW, the game uses this extensively). If the game is level scaled, then the rat also levels up when you level up. And that is the problem.

An 80% chance to hit means that "only" 4 out of 5 (or 80 out of 100, etc.) attacks will connect and hit. I'm pretty sure that >95% of the potential players are able to do such simple math.... (but maybe I am wrong). ^^ I understand what you are trying to say and I agree that this can be extremely annoying for e.g. magic spells that had such a low chance of hitting that you don't even bother to memorize them. But for regular sword attacks...? If only 80% of your attacks connect and hit, then all it really means is that you do about 80% of the potential damage that you would do if 100% of your attacks connected (which really is not that dramatic as a miss with a single magic spell). And yes, missing is annoying, it sucks and I hate it. The fun is improving your stats to reduce the chance of it even happenening, and that is where the fun comes in imo.

Of course missing is not a tactical error, you miss even if your tactical and strategical planning is flawless (obviously). That is what is supposed to happen. But like I said, this forces you to improve your tactical and strategical planning in order to cope better with the consequences of missing. There are many ways to do this in X-Com, I don't think I need to list them though.