Fearabbit

Quoting myself because this is still off-topic, you guys. Also: Captain Shrek was talking about how IE games (or NWN) had a spell list that technically would have allowed some interesting use of magic outside of magic, but they didn't implement it properly. So there was potential there, and his argument was basically "the solution to this is to add the necessary content, not to simply take away that untapped potential". PrimaJunta meanwhile doesn't see the problem because to him the potential didn't exist - his point being that if it was left unused, then it wasn't really there in the first place. Of course PoE doesn't owe it to the IE games to use this untapped potential in any way. It doesn't become an action RPG if it uses its abilities in the same way as every cRPG ever does, i.e. for combat. It just becomes a normal RPG. (Well, Arcanum and the Elder Scrolls games have some non-combat spells I can think of that were actually useful, but those are open-world games and follow a different design philosophy anyway.) So with all positions regarding this discussion cleared, let's move on.

Almost all RPGs have attributes. Having them does not make you appear more like Baldur's Gate, it makes you appear like a usual RPG.

The conspiracy theory wasn't really necessary for the point you were making. "Rounds should be longer" is a fair criticism, but "Rounds currently are super short because Hasbro and Obsidian want to turn RPGs into MMOs" just makes you sound like a raving madman. (Also without it your post would've been so much shorter.) That said. I haven't played the beta, but I tend to agree. I think NWN and KotOR handled this type of combat pretty well, with a command queue (!) and with pretty long rounds so that you didn't always have to pause and didn't feel quite as rushed and stressed.

Again, this is way off-topic guys. By the way, I like the narrative reason to have a "soul power" attribute. I don't think the game needs to be boring and old-fashioned about its attributes - if a new attribute fits the world perfectly, then definitely put it in! That said, I have a problem with Might being that attribute and boiling down to both physical and mental damage. It would've been cool if the "soul power attribute" had a very specific purpose for each class, to show how souls influence every part of life, but in different ways. Fighters use it to guide their strikes, resulting in higher crits; ciphers basically have a "soul duel" with their enemy, so that the time needed to gather Focus is shorter the higher the soul's power is; chanters can invite more souls to their "reenactments", and so on. These are just examples, but having it do something very specific instead of being a generic damage modifier would have been more interesting, I believe, and would have driven home the point that this extra power does not come from mental or physical capabilities, but from somewhere else. (In that case I still would have implemented a Strength attribute though. 7 attributes - 3 mental, 3 physical, one for the soul's power. That would have been nice.)

Just a quick reminder to anyone who feels betrayed by Obsidian, accuses them of false advertising and says that they basically promised Baldur's Gate 3 and now they do all these changes and *gasp* have ideas of their own. This was the pitch: "Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment." "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment." That's it. That's all they wrote about the influence of IE games on the game design. There was no mention of the attribute system they were going to use or anything like that.

I'd really like to discuss various ideas about making the system more intuitive, about the implications of turning Might back into Strength, what needs to be considered and so on. But I'd like you all to respect the premise of this thread, which is that having a Might attribute is unintuitive. You can either ignore this thread if you disagree, or propose your own solutions that deal with this in some way - if you can find a way to make Might intuitive, go ahead. Making suggestions where the main point of this thread isn't addressed is not the idea here. (To be sure, your suggestions aren't bad, they just avoid the main point of this thread.) I also just don't want to have the same discussion as everywhere else here, where one side says why the current system is better and the other why the old one was better. We have the highly popular "no bad builds, a failure in practice" thread for that and lots of other threads too.

I would just like to say that this is the most perfectly balanced solution I've seen so far, and it's incredibly easy to implement as well. If someone just wants to go around killing critters, they can do that. But if they progress in the story, they'll find that quests don't give them any XP anymore.But that's alright because they already got the XP. It also means that we wouldn't actually need to separate XP systems. This system does not incentivize you to kill monsters to gain XP, except if you need that level up you've been waiting for a little earlier. I don't know if it's a system that will be agreeable to the majority of players, so maybe a mod would be the best solution for something like that. But damn, I like the simplicity of it. If the xp given were low enough it wouldn't make up for the added challenge. Perhaps 5 was too high; lets try 4. A player needs a lot of xp to level. 4 xp per level of the enemy will not make hard easier than normal. Keep in mind as well that xp is divided by your team.??? This has no relation to my post that I can see. The system in my post (which is not mine, but Grand Commander's) is balanced no matter how many monsters there are and (almost) no matter how high the XP gain is. @Indira, I don't think your dev mail confirmed that "Quest XP" will be the way they're doing it. Yes Kill XP seems unlikely but they have probably noticed that people were disappointed about the lack of objectives during and outside of quests. And this disappointment is actually something we all agree on. My guess is that they'll add more objectives.

I would just like to say that this is the most perfectly balanced solution I've seen so far, and it's incredibly easy to implement as well. If someone just wants to go around killing critters, they can do that. But if they progress in the story, they'll find that quests don't give them any XP anymore. But that's alright because they already got the XP. It also means that we wouldn't actually need to separate XP systems. This system does not incentivize you to kill monsters to gain XP, except if you need that level up you've been waiting for a little earlier. I don't know if it's a system that will be agreeable to the majority of players, so maybe a mod would be the best solution for something like that. But damn, I like the simplicity of it.

The point he was making was that it would not work to have a viable intelligent Fighter. When it clearly does. Why do you need a class "Normal Fighter" that invariably needs STR, CON and DEX and one class "Clever Fighter" who benefits from DEX, INT and PER, when you only need one class? What would be the difference? That Clever Fighter has abilities that are unlocked by INT? The current system takes a Fighter ability and changes its nature dependent on your attributes. That is like having Normal Fighter and Clever Fighter as classes, only that they are handled by the same class and that the transition from "Normal Fighter" to "Clever Fighter" is more fluent. And it works, it just needs tweaking.

Have you actually looked at the current attribute system? PoE allows for fighters who are intelligent instead of strong. And it works quite well, except for one small problem: The values have to be tweaked a bit. Also nobody's saying that the intelligent fighter should be as good as the strong one in every circumstance. It might be that, all in all, he's not as good a build. Nobody (who you should care about) wants perfect balance. But if I can actually roleplay as an intelligent leader instead of a dumb brute while still being quite good in combat situations, then that's enough reason to play this build.

It's not complex, I think. Damage is split up, Accuracy is split up, and both of that is intuitive for the player. Then I have Melee Crits and Reload Time, whereas you have Crits and Recovery Time. I also disagree that it would give rise to cookie-cutter stat distributions. For everyone but pure spellcasters (priests/wizards), each attribute has benefits. Pure spellcasters don't need Strength quite as much except if they plan to use non-magic combat as well, and that is not at all unlikely, since both priests and wizards have some cool spells for improving non-magic combat. And then there's still Healing, which might be more important for them depending on the implementation - if it is a constant value instead of a percentage of the total health, then classes with lower health benefit more from it. So it's actually quite balanced. And it is intuitive. Concerning your suggestion: 1. Healing is not a mental thing. Either the body heals, or your "soul power" is responsible for that, in which case it would have to be Might. Technically I think it should be Constitution, but Strength kind of makes sense as well since it's your muscle tissue that is affected by healing. 2. Also Recovery Time - why Intellect for that? It makes no sense to me. The good thing about AoE and Duration was that they were features of a spell/ability that you could imagine could be improved by thinking about the spell/ability in question and tinkering with it. Intelligently. It fits much better into Intellect than your suggestions to keep them both here. And since some spells don't have AoE and other don't have durations, they should really be governed by the same attribute to keep it balanced. Players won't know whether duration or AoE is more important, whereas by keeping them together it's made clear that one attribute is responsible for Damage, and the other for Efficiency of a spell/ability. 3. Crit Chance for PER and Accuracy for DEX is just very arbitrary, and I think my system better sells the point that one attribute is for being agile, quick and coordinated, while the other is for aiming your shots and swings. 4. And also the thing about Might, of course. I don't think it works. That said... if Obsidian can take suggestions from you, from me and from everyone else and improve their system, I bet they'll find a good solution. I would hope that it's an intuitive one. But like I said earlier, I can live with a "meta system" that is not meant to represent a character but is therefore very balanced.

Thanks for liking the idea. As for the premise - I know it's dangerous to judge how players feel based on a few forum posts. But we do know that right now the attribute system is unbalanced and has at least two dump stats, so if nothing else than this system tries to get rid of those by switching things around a bit. As for Might, which is the "big problem" I'm addressing... I guess we'll have to let Obsidian decide about this one based on their own playtesting and our feedback. I do feel that the criticism against Might is somewhat valid and that Obsidian *might* be on the edge in regards to that as well. But I don't know. It's not just about people voicing their criticism though - it's also about people who straight up don't realize how important Might is for their character, or people who end up using it for all their characters because it feels so important, even if the other attributes are secretly useful as well. I've seen both of these reactions here and on Youtube - one guy fittingly dumped Might for his Wizard character while raising Intellect and Resolve, because those sounded to him like the "wizard attributes". This could of course be addressed by a clearer description for Might, but it might also indicate that people just aren't used to a system where an apparent physical attribute pushes their magical damage, and if we can get rid of that without screwing with the balance too much, then maybe it's just a good solution. By the way, I think that if they changed it now, there wouldn't be too big of a backlash - most people haven't grown attached to the attribute system yet.

If this really can be implemented easily, I think it would be a good idea. However, you're currently proposing that the kill XP get added on top of the quest XP. That's obviously unbalanced - I'd suggest that if activated, the rewards from objectives and quests get reduced by about two thirds of the amount of XP you can get in a dungeon. So that you can get more XP if you really kill every monster, but you don't end up with way more XP than somebody who chooses the other system.

My thoughts about the attribute system and how to improve it. Putting a link here in case it gets overlooked in the other forum. Note: I did not play the beta, but I've watched several playthroughs and read several discussions about the attributes. This is more an attempt to make the system more intuitive, while hopefully keeping it balanced.

Yes you're missing something. The base melee accuracy. Very Low for wizards, Very High for fighters. Your muscle wizard would be whiffing and grazing while your fighter would be hitting and critting. But grazing means that I didn't hit correctly. That's a different mechanic. I know that fighters are better at fighting than wizards, I never said that wasn't the case. @Malekith: Yeah, I keep bringin up Dragonball as a comparison myself. Because physical and spiritual strength are strongly connected in these types of shows (and also in martial arts in general). But if that is the case then the game needs to put that into its world and narrative somewhere. And I have a feeling many people wouldn't like this oriental focus.

His class can be Wizard, his skill non-existent, and he'd still deal more damage with one strike than a buff Fighter who has trained his technique all his life. Or am I missing something here? That's exactly how the system works right now if I'm not mistaken. Of course the Wizard wouldn't be an effective fighter in the long run, but he'd still deal high damage with one strike, and there's nothing about his physique that really explains it. If there was a game that had 2 classes - Knight and Wizard - and one of them was pure melee combat while the other was pure spellcasting - then describing their aptitude in combat with an attribute called Damage or Might is not a problem. But if you have lots of hybrids, and if Wizards can wield weapons if they want to, then the visualization problems appear.

I do concur here. People associate Might with Strength, but it isn't Strength, it is a reflection of the "force" or "power" of your soul. You could be a 100 pound weakling in Eora and have a 18 or higher Might. Changing it over to Power would be a good idea and fairly simple to implement. But this 100 pound weakling would still wreak havoc with a broadsword. He wouldn't have the right technique maybe, but he'd make tons of damage with each strike. No, I can't really visualize this character. :/ (I can live with Might, but it is a strange attribute for me if we don't go down the Dragonball route where strength equals magic powers.)

Well, every attribute needs to do something for the class so that you don't dump it. But if you read my description of this, the basic idea is not to make everything 100% balanced, quite the opposite. Resolve and Intellect are more important for Wizards than Dexterity, which is even rather useless to them except for its defenses. Fighters don't benefit from Resolve and Perception as much except for the small crit bonus and the defenses. And so on. This system will lead to certain builds that are more optimized than others for certain types of character. The good thing is that it still allows characters with different builds and different strategies in combat to succeed, you just might have to play them very differently. (Since this is still largely Obsidian's attribute system, that point has stayed the same.)

Yeah but you could take this system and make both action points and skill points less important. By decreasing the bonus that AGI and INT give you and by increasing the base value. And saying that the additional INT skill points are actually "mental skill points" and that you need to spend two of these to increase a combat skill. I'm pretty sure that it'd be easy to balance the system this way. There's a point where you changed so much that AGI and INT are useless; and there's the current system where they are overpowered. There has to be a sweet spot in the middle. By the way, I've written down my thoughts on improving the current attribute system. Take a look if you're interested.

GOD DAMMIT. I had this really lengthy post and then I accidentally closed the window. Okay, second try. It's time to accept that Might is not accepted by many players. I love the idea of an attribute system where every attribute is useful for every class, but many people just don't like the idea that mental and physical power are based on the same attribute. And I can understand why. We want our fragile old wizards who deal tons of damage. We don't want "muscle wizards", no matter how wacky and fun that sounds. There is a disconnect between the Might attribute and our understanding of what attributes are supposed to represent in a character. Also, some of the attributes are somewhat unintuitive right now. And unbalanced. Resolve and Perception are dump stats right now. Resolve is a lot like Willpower, a mental intensity and presence. But nothing meaningful is tied to it. Perception is your awareness of surroundings, but same problem, it's only used for a mechanic that, while sounding interesting, is not very intuitive. Dexterity on the other hand seems bloated with all the things it governs. I want to change that, but I realize it won't be completely balanced. This is also something we'll just have to accept. Either we have a balanced system, or we have a slightly unbalanced system that makes people happy. My goal here is to make it just a tiny bit unbalanced while still making different builds possible and fun to play. What I'm NOT going to do is try and balance the system perfectly. Many people go ahead and say "okay so my system is Might gives 2% weapon damage, +1% to crits, blabla..." Going into detail like that won't solve anything. I want to propose a system where a fighter has reasons for different builds, and where a spellcaster has reasons for different builds. If there's a general reason for each class to put points into all attributes, then the system is balanceable. And that's all I'm aiming for right now. (By the way - the current system IS balanceable. It's just a question of making Interrupts and Concentration more important and Damage less important. The problem with the current system is not that it's unbalanced, it's that it's at its core not well-liked.) Even if the system turns out a bit unbalanced, the gameplay outside of combat takes care of that. Because seriously. The non-combat gameplay sounds awesome. There's lots of attribute checks etc and it sounds like roleplaying will be a blast. So even if combat isn't exactly balanced, I believe every character build will be interesting enough simply because of its non-combat possibilities that it warrants at least one playthrough. This is my main argument for why it's not so bad to have a slightly unbalanced system. If someone ignores all that content and only goes for min-maxing... well that really is his problem. With all that said... here's my proposal. Turn Might into Strength. Take out the Magic/Ability Damage. This instantly makes the attribute less interesting for many classes. Add Magic/Ability Damage to Resolve. As said, Resolve is basically Willpower. It's a perfect fit for Magic/Ability Damage and instantly makes this attribute important to a lot of classes - mostly to spellcasters however, for whom this will be the main attribute along with Intellect. Keep Intellect as AoE and Duration modifier. Resolve is a character's intensity, but intellect is his cleverness and allows them to shape their powers to their will. Makes perfect sense and is intuitive. Split Accuracy into Melee Accuracy and Ranged Accuracy. Leave Melee Accuracy in DEX, put Ranged Accuracy into PER. Perception is the attribute for keen sight and aiming. Ranged combat should benefit hugely from it, and this way it does. DEX was never a good fit for ranged accuracy. Add Ranged Reload Speed to DEX and Melee Crits to PER. DEX is however a perfect fit for reload speed, and we can use that to keep it interesting for ranged combatants. PER on the other hand allows melee combatants to see openings and use them. This makes it interesting for them without overpowering it for ranged combat. That's it. Now you might think "but now Strength is useless for spellcasters". But that's not true. First of all, there's the Healing which they can still benefit from. Then: Druids need it in their animal shape. Ciphers, Chanters and Monks need it anyway because part of their class is based upon attacking first and using powers later. And Wizards and Priests actually have spells at their disposal that are only useful when they have decent Strength. It's totally possible to play a Battlemage this way. But yeah, if you want to play a glass-cannon wizard, you can dump Strength now while still dealing tons of damage. (You won't be able to intimidate anyone anymore though.) And all in all, Strength might be a bit too unimportant for spellcasters now. But that's the price you have to pay to make the players happy, and I believe this solution is still pretty good. Hope some of the devs read and consider this. P.S. And no I don't want a discussion about whether the current system is intuitive or not. This is a proposal under the premise that the majority of players don't like the current system. If that's not true in your opinion, great, you can ignore this. If it is true, then this is the closest I can think of to keeping the current system while making the majority of players happy at the same time.

Lol. I actually criticised Obsidian's system in the very same post where I said that Fallout's attribute system was perfect because of *badumm-tss* realism. Stop being so defensive and actually read what people are writing. And Arcanum is the PERFECT example of why adding magic to a good realistic system doesn't work. I think Fallout's system was great. It was a bit unbalanced BUT it was balanceable. There wasn't an inherent flaw in the way attributes affected other stuff - just the values of how much they affected them needed to be tweaked. INT and AGI were too powerful, but that was a question of decreasing their effect by a couple %. No problem. The system itself was good because it was intuitive and gave you a feeling for the character you were playing. Then came Arcanum and added magic on top of it. And everything got screwed up. I loooove Arcanum don't get me wrong. But that attribute system is broken and not balanceable. In Fallout it made sense for a fighter to add points to INT (even going over the top and making it the most useful stat) - in Arcanum this freedom during character generation was lost completely. And such is the way in a fantasy universe where you add magic to an otherwise normal person and tie it only to his mental attributes. Because no matter how you spin it, you either end up with a system that's unbalanced for everyone, or balanced for everyone but highly overpowered for mages. (Imagine if you took Fallout's system and added Spell Damage to INT and added "Magic" as a skill. You can't make that not overpowered.) Your system must be balanced if you have no magic. And it must be balanced when you have magic. In order to do that magic needs to be governed by all attributes in some way. There's pretty much no other way. Personally, I'm open to suggestions. I'd prefer it if Might was actually Strength, but still affected magic in some way that was more intuitive and acceptable to the RPG crowd.

Well yeah, but Fallout has the advantage of being based on the real world. There's no magic here, so of course every attribute makes sense. For any attribute to make sense with regards to magic, you need a story. You need to explain to the player the world he's now experiencing, and what kind of rules there are. I don't know, I guess I just don't have a problem with the idea that controlling magic can be a very physical and exhausting activity. Basically... like a Kamehameha. And then this type of attribute makes perfect sense to me. The question is, do I like this story? Or do I prefer the one where magic is a purely intellectual exercise? Personally, I don't like either of them too much. I'm a sorcerer at heart, magic in my opinion is something that you learn intuitively if you have a talent for it, no matter how smart you are. If I could choose, I'd have made Might something that gives you more control over the spell you're building up in your body, because as a strong person you have more control over your body. Constitution lowers the chance of interrupts because it's the "physical willpower" and interrupts are mostly a physical effect. And Resolve should increase a spell's damage because it's the "mental willpower". But that's just my two cents.

So freaking badass. Too bad they're so different from the PoE style. I think it looks weird to have a full-body portrait of my main character and then just the faces for my companions.

But it matters, only not as much as you want. Which is exactly the sweet spot for me. You're not forced to play a certain race, but playing a certain race has a nice little bonus.

You've grown used to systems where each class had favored attributes, guys. Yes the new system is a bit unintuitive but I'd rather have an unintuitive system that aims for innovation than the same old one with its same problems. I do not consider a wizard to automatically be a glass cannon, for example. If that is the idea you have of a wizard, it's because you've played too much D&D to think of other possibilities. My only concern is that a "battlemage" might be unbalanced. If you make a mage with 18 Might and put him in the frontline with a greatsword, he will be great at fighting AND his spells will be powerful. But I don't know, I'm not part of the beta unfortunately. Has anyone tried that out?