Fearabbit

Huh? I'm not on a high horse. I'm not looking down on anybody's choice for their character name, but I'm looking for inspiration for suitable names given the cultures and naming conventions in the game, because those are names that I want to choose. Messier-31 was implying that there's already a thread for character names, and I explained that this one is more specified because it's about names that fit the setting and where to draw inspiration from if you want to name your character this way.

That's a topic about what names people will giver their characters. This is a topic about appropriate names given the setting of the game, and how to get inspiration for them. With the side question if that's something that's important for the people here (for me, it is). This post, however, is very good: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71478-serious-first-world-problems-how-do-you-name-your-characters/?p=1592608

Okay, now that you all got that one out of your system, please get back to the actual topic which is not about stupid MMO names user names or childish names that are usually reserved for Blue from the Pokemon games.

Yup, 6 GB for me too. And Steam said the game would only require 18 GB anyway. Don't know where those 36 GB come from.

Ok, ok that's difficult, read this What name would you suggest for a Godlike born in a small boreal dwarf colony in The White That Wends? Hmm, both Boreal Dwarf colony and The White That Wends screams "Inuit-like culture" to me. So I'd go with something like that. Here's a name generator for that: http://fantasynamegenerators.com/inuit-names.php My favorite so far is Tiqriganiannig. Apparently means Arctic Fox. Actually, these names are quite awesome in general. Ataciara (Familiar Spirit), Irdlirvirisissong (Demon cousin of the moon), ... oh that last one is actually perfect for a Moon Godlike. (By the way, I'm basing this on the one boreal dwarf we know - Sagani, who has an animal companion called Itumaak. Both sound like Inuit names. And The White That Wends is obviously a snowy frontier region with harsh conditions.)

Thanks sparklecat! That list is a bit short, but it's better than nothing. The notes about the frequency of certain letters are useful. By the way, I think this name generator is excellent: http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?q=namegenerator It uses names from the world of The Elder Scrolls though, so depending on the race you select, they may not be appropriate. But the selection is huge - Morrowind alone had over 2000 uniquely named NPCs, if I recall correctly (because bandits etc weren't given a generic description like "bandit" in that game, but actually had a name). I feel like some of the Redguard, Breton, Imperial and Nord names might be appropriate for PoE, especially if you switch out the letters a bit to match the names of PoE's cultures. For example it suggested "Kalortod" to me - in order to fit that into PoE, I guess I'd change it to "Calrthôd" and that'd be Glanfathan. But as you can see, I'm really struggling. ^^ This is always hard for me because I have like zero creativity when it comes to names. I have to have some kind of source.

PoE is coming! And as release is getting closer it's time to think about the characters we want to create. But there's always one huge problem for me: What kind of name is appropriate? I don't know these races yet. I know the names of maybe three or four companions and that's it. How can I know if my chain of letters passes as a name for the race I want to play? Heck, maybe at some point in the game it turns out that it's a vulgar insult in their language. :D So how do you approach this? Where do you get your inspiration? Or do you simply not care and choose the name your characters always have no matter what RPG you're playing? Also if someone knows a cool name generator that doesn't give me the most generic fantasy names imaginable, that would be awesome.

If someone has such a bad internet connection that it takes them several days to download a game, then they should not have assumed they'd be able to play it on day one. And that is true for this whole argument. Nobody ever said we'd get the game so soon that we will be able to play it on release day. If you assumed that, then it's your own fault. Usually when I buy a game digitally, I can only do that the day it's released. I have to bear in mind that it needs to be downloaded. That is my own responsibility. I don't have a right to complain "you said that you'd release this game today, but I'm still downloading and won't be able to play until tomorrow, what the heck". And to be sure, you did not pre-order the game. You backed it. It's a different thing and if you assumed that you'd get all the pre-order benefits from it, well that's your own fault, again. In short, being angry about this makes no sense at all. It's fine to be sad/disappointed, but don't start saying they screwed up. They said they'd try to give us our keys early enough, they never promised anything (and they certainly didn't say "yeah you guys with 56k modems certainly will be able to play it on release day, we'll give you the keys one month in advance just to be sure!"). "Other kickstarter projects did it!" Oh please. That's not even an argument, that's just being childish. Give me a real good argument for being pissed about this, and I'll accept it. But it pretty much has to include a quote where Obsidian promises us keys early enough to play on release day, and they did not do that.

ARE there people who are already streaming it, though? I thought there was an embargo until release. Maybe they should be reported? I'd have thought that they gave out copies to Let's Players early either so they can get accustomed to it (for streaming) or so they can pre-record their videos and upload them on release. Not for streaming it before it's out. (IF anyone's doing that.) In any case, I'm super excited! I kind of thought it would release today so that turned into a downer this morning. ^^ But I can handle 3 more days, I guess. Not sure how to manage my time after release though. I do have a master's thesis that's due in a couple of weeks.

I was half convinced of the new system, but yeah. Thanks for reminding me of this quote, I think they should really stick to that. Idea: Take the old system, but base the amount of points you have to invest in order to improve a skill on the weighted average of the skills. The further the skills are apart, the more you need to spend. This discourages min-maxing at least, though I don't know if it's too complex for players to get behind.

1/2: right on, my exact thoughts as well. Turns out in the case of #2 that is almost always true as well, it is normally the faster route out. I also agree that I would rather see them go back and do real objective exp, I think that is what most people who understood the EXP goals as originally stated wanted and expected. Rabbit.... no. I am not thinking you used that as a conversation ender, I just don't like people using it at all. Unless it is popping up in some heinous in your face cant be ignored way... such as the biggest occurrence of ludo narrative dissonance (why cant you just say "it doesn't make narrative sense") of Dexterity = action speed. I fully agree with both of you. If there's a reason for me to disarm traps and pick locks, of course I'll do it. And I don't need an additional incentive to do it, so sticking an XP reward on it is unnecessary. And a real Objective XP system would be awesome. I think the only game I've played that had something like it was VtM: Bloodlines. And I suspect that it would completely change the way I play an isometric RPG. Where I usually tried to clear a dungeon completely, I might not do that anymore, and stuff like that. And I'm really curious about that, which is another reason I'd hate PoE to go back to the old XP system. (Concerning ludo-narrative dissonance again: I did write "it doesn't make sense for my character to do that" before, which turned into a discussion about roleplaying - not exactly what I meant. The term at least makes it clear that it's not about my personal restrictions imposed on the game because of roleplaying - it's about the narrative as it emerges from your actions within the game. If that narrative is bonkers, there's ludo-narrative dissonance. I'm sorry you don't like that term, but I think it describes the situation pretty well.) Anyway, since we're already derailing this thread into a discussion of general XP systems again, I'd like to take the opportunity to repeat an idea someone had in another thread: There's a way to implement both systems at the same time that is still balanced and simple to do. Basically, you implement kill XP, lockpicking XP and all those other small XP rewards. At the same time, the quests have lots of stages where you're awarded Objective XP. The twist is that the XP gained from killing and disarming traps and so on gets subtracted from the XP gained from quest stages. So let's say you're in a dungeon and the next objective is "get to the final chamber and defeat the boss monster". Getting there gives you 1000 XP. But there are 10 traps in the dungeon, and you disarm them all for 15 XP each, also you kill a couple of enemies for 250 XP. That is 400 XP in total. And when you defeat the boss monster, you only get 600 for completing the objective. If you hadn't killed any enemy or disarmed any trap, you would've gotten the total 1000 XP, but all in all, you get the same amount of XP. What is the advantage of such a system? For starters, it's excellent for people who don't care about questing and just want to explore the world. Short of removing Quest XP altogether, this is the perfect solution for people who want to do as few sidequests as possible. There's also an advantage for people who like the small XP rewards in general: Sometimes, these XP rewards will be just enough to level up. Instead of having to wait until after the final boss encounter, you get your XP earlier and have an advantage over people who used stealth to get to the boss directly. Personally I think this is a very good idea. It should be easy to implement too, since you don't have to worry about balancing at all.

Come on. What is this? Do you deny now that there are traps, and that you can usually go around them? Do you deny that there are often rooms with multiple doors, where some might be locked?

These are the situations that happen all the time: 1. There is a corridor full of traps. I don't need to disarm them, there's a way around it. Guess what, I find myself disarming all of them anyway. 2. There is a locked door, but the room is accessible from a different door as well (which is the non-stealthy way so there's a fight). I enter through the opened door, and after the fight I go over to the locked door and unlock it. Even though that door is useless to me now. If you say that hasn't happened to you in IE games or other similar RPGs you're simply not telling the truth. The situations are there, I'd even say they make up a big part of the dungeon crawling experience. I don't like them and I think there is a game design that prevents them without changing a lot, making everybody happy instead of only the people who shouldn't care either way because they open every lock and disarm every trap anyway. I only see advantages. @Karkarov, see above. Concerning ludo-narrative dissonance, I did say that it's *always* there. You're dismissive because you think I'm using it as a discussion ender: "this game has ludo-narrative dissonance, that's bad, I win". Not so. All I'm saying is that it's better to try and minimize it IF (!!!) there are two equally feasible and quite similar game designs. If one of them is slightly better in that regard that's reason enough to design the game this way, especially because I've heard no good arguments for the other option yet. BTW don't start with the "most people" arguments.

That's what I'm getting at. Why have mechanics in a roleplaying game that you have to fight against or ignore in order to roleplay? Give me a freaking break - it's locks and traps - they are there for you to open/disarm - they are not there for show or mood or any other reason - if the devs want to give me some experience for spending some skill points so that I can open or disarm them then I am all for it - if you're not thats fine but stop with this ridiculous off the wall reasoning that getting a few points of experience for doing so means you can't freaking roleplay. You're completely ignoring any points made except the one that you find ridiculous, though. (And the questions raised.) Also you're making it sound so extreme. Personally I think it's annoying that you get rewarded for doing unnecessary stuff. I think it's unbalanced to get two rewards for picking a lock (an XP reward and a loot reward). And I think it's ironic that an RPG rewards me for compulsively disarming all traps for no reason. I'm not desperately crying "waaah I can't roleplaaaay". But there is always a ludo-narrative dissonance in games, and I don't see why we would want to increase that, instead of trying to minimize it. And giving players rewards for unnecessary actions that this character wouldn't do in a normal story is exactly that - purposely increasing the ludo-narrative dissonance.

@Gfted1 - It's either a negligible effect or it isn't. That's what it boils down to, and we've had all the arguments for either possibility in the last few posts. That's a great attitude. Of course the question is what "good" means, and that's where the trenches are. But actually, yeah - there hasn't been a whole lot of "demanding" in this thread, which is a good thing. But there has been a lot of it in general during development, and I'm a bit sick of it. I guess I do fall into that trap myself sometimes, but mostly I'm trying to say "this is my opinion, here are my arguments, but if the devs disagree so be it".

So is demanding XP for lockpicking and disarming (and combat XP of course) because your preferred playstyle is to kill everything, pick every lock and disarm all the traps. And then telling other people that they shouldn't care that they get less XP if they don't want to do that. It always works both ways. The difference is that there is a system that works for all sides in a balanced way - an objective based XP system. It's closer to "having your cake and eating it too" for everyone, and I've yet to hear a good argument against it.

GreyFox, but what kind of argument is this? You're just throwing it out there. "Hey, maybe the true reason is budget and time constraints!" It serves no purpose. There are people who prefer the one system and people who prefer the other system. Saying "but one of these systems is maybe only the prefered choice because it's easier to implement" does not add anything to the discussion (except maybe for the argument "AND it's easier to implement!" for the crowd who would like to do without XP rewards for every second action you take in the game). Also I'm sick and tired of this argument that I shouldn't compare my own experience with that of others. Balancing is not about other people, it's about me and about the efficiency of my playstyle. And when I'm severly handicapped for actually roleplaying a character that makes sense, then I find that annoying. And that includes creating a character that is not min-maxed, as well as a character that does not stop to disarm every freaking trap because at this very moment, in the dungeon, surrounded by enemies, he decides that it's a good time for some practice. That's how I want to play a roleplaying game, and I have a problem if the game is constantly rewarding me for NOT playing this way, instead of rewarding me for playing exactly this way. (And I understand that there have to be limits here and there to this ideal of an RPG, but we certainly don't need to add even more of them, especially if they - disarming and lockpicking XP - are pointless, as we've established in the last few posts!)

If I get XP for disabling a trap, even though I spotted it and can simply walk around it without negative consequences, then that's a flawed design. The game would be rewarding me for wasting my time, and even worse: for breaking my own suspension of disbelief, for stepping out of my personal narrative. There's also the argument about degenerative gameplay, of course, but for me the narrative issue is more problematic. My characters see a trap, and they can avoid it. There's no reason for them to be disarming it. Hell, in some situations you even want the trap to stay there, because you know there might still be enemies around. Of course the counter-argument is the same as with anything that suffers from so-called degenerative gameplay - "so don't do it". But that argument can be turned around to "so just do it anyway" if there ISN'T a reward for disarming traps. (The arguments are completely interchangable with the ones regarding Combat XP.) The only reasonable basis for any discussion is the assumption that the majority of players will follow the basic reward system to some degree. In that case, I think the rewards shouldn't oppose the goals and motives of the player, because nothing is gained from it. It only serves to frustrate people who don't want to miss out on XP and yet gain no pleasure from performing the unnecessary actions required to get the XP. (Of course, I'm not saying that disarming traps or fighting enemies are actions that are annoying in and of themselves. But thinking "oh I'm missing out on XP right now because I didn't disarm that trap back there... sigh, better go back", that's the annoying part.) Oh, and in sort-of response to what Karkarov said: why should you even get XP for opening the chest? The contents of the chest should be the reward for opening it, don't you think?

Just wanted to ask if there are any Vlad Taltos fans here! Two days ago, the newest book "Hawk" came out and I'm currently reading it. It's so, so good. Since I was 13 or 14 years old, those books have been my favorite fantasy series ever, yet they are fairly unknown. It's difficult for me to describe what makes them special, because anyone can say "this fantasy world is very cool" and "I like the author's writing" and it doesn't tell you anything about whether you will like it. So... what are those novels about, and what makes them special? First of all, the main character is a human living in an "elven" empire. (Though the "elves" actually call themselves humans, and they call humans "Easterners" and regard them as less than human.) He is Vlad Taltos, and he is an assassin. And a witch (that is the Eastern type of magic, which involves lots of herbs and rituals and stuff). And he dabbles in sorcery - that is the Dragaeran, i.e. elven, way of magic, which involves the Orb, a divine artifact that draws its power from a sea of amorphia and circles the head of the Empress. The most common uses of sorcery are telepathy, teleportation and checking the time. Also, cooling spells for your beverages. But yeah, about the assassin part - since he's a human living in the Dragaeran Empire, he has experienced racism from an early age on, which made him kind of hate the Dragaerans. So when there was an opportunity to join the Dragaeran mafia, who paid him for beating up (and later killing) Dragaerans, that seemed like a good deal. And in this world, killing people is an art form - it all depends on how dead you're supposed to make them. People can be revived, you know. Unless you make it permanent by chopping off the head, or hiding the body long enough. Or you use Morganti weapons, which instantly destroy a person's soul. Morganti is the most horrible thing you can do to a person - so make sure you're getting paid well for it. As you can see, this is high fantasy stuff. It's the kind of high fantasy that I've only seen in Morrowind before - a unique world where people actually use magic to do stupid stuff like cooling your drinks, or using it for an umbrella spell when it rains. (As compared to normal fantasy which is just "take a grim medieval setting and add dwarves, elves and magic".) It's also funny as hell, as you might have figured. The books are usually told from Vlad's perspective, and he just constantly makes fun of everything. So you have this fantasy world with its lords and ladies who fight for honor and glory and are serious all the time... and then you have this protagonist who just constantly takes the piss out of them. It's awesome. And I've not even mentioned half the stuff that makes the books even more interesting. Take Vlad's reptilian familiar, for example, with whom he frequently exchanges wisecracks via telepathy. Or take the 17 Houses of the Dragaeran Empire and how the Cycle determines which one of them is in power, the complicated history of the Empire that includes a kind-of recent Interregnum after some guy turned the former capital city into a sea of chaos, the Gods and the Paths of the Dead, why the goddess Verra is kind of a bitch and who that small brown-haired girl is... ...I'm not good at describing things, but this series is really, really excellent. It's a wild and unique take on a fantasy setting, and anyone who likes characters like Garrett from Thief will feel right at home here. The stories are a mix of assassination jobs that Vlad takes on and more "epic" occurrences, and they quickly draw you in. For those who want to give it a try: Start with "Jhereg" and go by release date, don't try to read them in chronological order (it's not really possible anyway). And to those who know the series already: What are your favorite stories, what do you think of "Hawk", how did you like the "Khaavren Romances" (which is a spin-off set before and during the Interregnum and is kind of a parody of / homage to the Three Musketeers)?

You mean something awfully similar to the pitch Obsidian had a couple of years ago...? Edit: Just in case anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about.

I like your suggestion. Especially the part where Might gets no defense, which really makes a lot of sense and further emphasizes the point that this is not Strength. Currently it has a very physical defense just for the sake of symmetry, making it that much harder to grasp that Might is a new concept. Both the current system and the system from your paper are hybrids in a way. Your suggestion up there is more abstract, but it is consistently so. BTW if I remember correctly Josh can only access his forum account from the office. At least that was his excuse for always posting on Something Awful. EDIT: ...right you are.

It's not a flaw I created. The elegance we spoke about was two offensive, two defensive and two universal attributes. We do not count what the attributes give to the minor defenses in that assessment. It is a flaw you created when you took Deflection into the mix. (A move that I approve of, just to make that clear.) They're not "minor defenses", they're defenses, plain and simple. Three of them. Before, there was symmetry, then you included the fourth defense without re-arranging the others, and now there is no symmetry anymore. And I find your notion that Deflection is more important than the other defenses very worrying, because unlike any of the other changes, you don't back it up with evidence. You're saying that physical damage happens more frequently, but I know that you know the math behind this kind of stuff, so you should know how simplified that argument is and how many things you are ignoring. Saying that Will and Reflex saves are less important than Deflection saves is saying that spellcasters are useless. It's also ignoring the numbers in the calculations. If an attribute gave you enough Will to make you immune against magic, that would be useful as hell. In any case. One possible solution would be to put all defenses into Resolve. All four of them. Think about it. It's the exact same thing that was done for damage, accuracy, AoE and duration... it was de-coupled from the kind of effect it had. All that mattered was its primary function, and that's what the attribute affected. Simple and symmetrical.

That's fine No. In other parts of your paper you're actually talking about the elegance and symmetry and how you want to preserve them. The more I think about it, the more this seems like a very big flaw. It's the equivalent of having Might govern all damage except for ranged attacks, or having Intellect affect all AoE except for melee abilities. While you can find justifications for it, you're simply giving up on the symmetry and elegance you were aiming for. I'm not saying it's a deal-breaker, but let's call it what it is - a flaw that, if possible, should be dealt with.

All I'm saying is that it's not very elegant. I don't know about balancing (although I think it's dangerous to just shrug it off as a non-issue like you're doing right now), but I do know that all that nice symmetry of your system simply isn't there in this case. Deflection is directly competing against Accuracy, Damage etc. in the same way the other defenses are. The only (!) difference is that you'll likely be hit more often with normal melee/ranged attacks than with magic, abilities or poison. I don't think that's enough to label Deflection as the "major defense" and all others as "minor defenses", especially since the effect of getting hit by magic/abilities is much worse than that of getting hit by melee/ranged. Again, I didn't say anything against that. EDIT: Basically, your argument with "the others are distributed among the attributes, only Deflection is competing against Damage, Accuracy etc." is only valid if the other defenses are indeed negligible. You're basically saying that Deflection is the defense stat that makes all the difference, and I don't think it's true. If we took all the other defenses and put them into Resolve, so that Resolve affects Fortitude, Will, Reflexes and Deflection, then you could say "okay now we have an attribute that competes against the other attributes by offering better defenses". This is your line of reasoning right now, but it only works if you take the whole range of defenses. Otherwise you're comparing oranges and apples. Might is all the damage. Perception is all the accuracy. Either you have an attribute that has all the defenses, or you have an asymmetrical, inelegant system.

??? Okay, then they all are competing against each other, except for Will and Deflection because they are both governed by Resolve. Like, what are you trying to tell me right now? (I suspect that you are misunderstanding what I said. I didn't say anything against having an attribute that affects Deflection, I just said that right now it's not very symmetrical, since Resolve governs two defenses unlike any other attribute.)