Iucounu
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Posts posted by Iucounu
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Sounds to me like PE is being designed as a system which stops players from failing.
It's being designed as a game where failure comes from failing to master the game's content rather than its systems. You don't lose a battle because you picked the wrong stats to improve. You lose a battle because you didn't use the right tactics and abilities.
It's a different paradigm than the "system mastery" school of RPGs.
Has Obsidian stated this somewhere? I don't think just because there supposedly are no dump-stats, you can derive that it's impossible to make very bad builds in P:E.
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So, no examples? How surprising.
Kind of ironic that you were criticising my open-mindedness BruceVC. Perhaps you should at least reflect the general idea of the article yourself, and replace the word "science" in the article with "logic". Seriously, you are far more stuck in your worldview than me and the creationists I know.
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Well, that for instance every wizard only causes base damage with his weapon strikes me to be a bit weird. But affinity with a certain skillset.. ok.
he doesnt have to... he may get a skill that allows him to use magic to buff up his physical attacks, adding thus a part of his power to the weapon damage, but not all of his power like a fighter would
You could do that. However, I was referring to mental and soulbased attributes from the start which are explained within the world, not just some abstracted stats that are only made for the player. But I'm not saying that such a system couldn't work. Again, it's about simulationist vs. gamey.
I get the impression, that the more you have to do with gamedesign, the more you tend to develop gamey games. Just like Picasso went from naturalistic art to abstract art, because he found the former more and more boring. Perhaps.
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Still, all you're doing is exactly what the author also suggested. You saw one word, came to a conclusion, and judged the author based on it. Without actually reading the article. You're getting mired in the (supposed - since you didn't read it) details of his examples, rather than the thesis provided.You really need to read article Iucounu, you are demonstrating exactly what the article says that when people that faced with irrefutable facts they rationalize there belief and are incapable of reason, its fascinating to watch as you try to explain your view. I understand this is a defense mechanism as to accept another perspective would undermine everything you believe and what you believe is what defines you
Lol, I'm not even a firm creationism believer myself, so I guess your smartass psycho-analysis sort of fails. I'm just going ignore the rest, as you haven't made a single argument in your post.
So why are you rejecting the article and arguing against it? Please don't tell me that you aren't one of those people who just likes to debate a point that they don't really have a valid opinion about? Would it be possible for you actually post what you mean instead of wasting peoples time when they respond to your comments?
No clue what you're talking about. Perhaps you could give me an expample, where I'm not posting what I mean.
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Still, all you're doing is exactly what the author also suggested. You saw one word, came to a conclusion, and judged the author based on it. Without actually reading the article. You're getting mired in the (supposed - since you didn't read it) details of his examples, rather than the thesis provided.Two word and a senctence, to be precise. And I was prejudiced because I was lazy. I'm going to read the article soon, and should I be mistaken, I will gladly change my opinion about the author.
The problem you're making, is that you're still expecting science to prove something to be true.
And I have no idea why you think this. You already quoted me yourself:
It's the scientific method, but the scientific method is no guarantee for "truth".
So please explain how you get the idea that I think science must prove stuff to be "true" to be considered science? On the contrary, it's the very opposite I'm arguing for the whole time..
Although I must admit I need you to elaborate on what you mean by "natural scientific level." It's a term I am not familiar with.I was referring to natural science, like physics, biology, chemistry and stuff.
What I can say, however, is that the hypothesis that they were always accurate at least has some level of support. As such, I will be more inclined to believe someone that claims that they have always been constant, as opposed to someone claiming that they have not always been constant. If we shift from science to philosophy, however, and philosophize that they may not have always been constant, then that has as much support as any philosophical claim that they have always been constant.
I've already admitted to you that assuming natural laws were always constant has another quality than assuming they were not. So if you will, call it philosophical.
Is your goal to shift the discussion towards semantics? Having said that, the fact that scientists do in fact calculate things within a range of error is an acknowledgement that their measurements are never perfectly precise. Also, taking a measurement is also not science. It's taking a measurement. Although I suppose it wasn't obstinately clear that my use of the term science was referring to the idea the process of the scientific method. Although in general I'd still stand by the statement even if using the term science.
You don't have science without hypotheses and ultimately theories. At best you just have observations.
And you don't have natural science without observations. But to answer you question: I didn't mean to argue, I was merely interested in what exactly you meant.
Given that my response was to your line which specifically stated "scientific method" I find the shift of focus to semantics to come across as evasive.What reason would I have to be evasive?
You really need to read article Iucounu, you are demonstrating exactly what the article says that when people that faced with irrefutable facts they rationalize there belief and are incapable of reason, its fascinating to watch as you try to explain your view. I understand this is a defense mechanism as to accept another perspective would undermine everything you believe and what you believe is what defines you
Lol, I'm not even a firm creationism believer myself, so I guess your smartass psycho-analysis sort of fails. I'm just going ignore the rest, as you haven't made a single argument in your post.
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If you mean me, I was just discussing a possible implementation of the system, not the one Obsidian will use, as I don't really know how it will look like. In any case, no reason to bitch around.
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Well, that for instance every wizard only causes base damage with his weapon strikes me to be a bit weird. But affinity with a certain skillset.. ok.
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Its still the same attribute, and attributes, at least that's my understanding, are your inborn abilities. That's what seperates them from skills, or not? They should depend on your race at best, not your class.
And if you say, a goblin fighter can only have so much power, and a ogre has so much power, than the actual attribute or stat for me would not be the power, but the actual limitation of the power stat for a specific race with a certain class.
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well if the damage output of a character is measured by a stat called power, then the ogre has 500 and the goblin 50. simple as that. the stat will determine how hard you can hit with a specific part of your class' skillset, not how big your muscles are. a wizard with lots of power will gain no extra damage for physical attacks, but will do significantly more damage with his spells than the base value, when for a fighter, the power stat means muscles and more muscles and for a thief means more criticals
And of course, an ogre mage would again have a power of 500, and a goblin wizard a power of 50..
For what do actually have stats then? If it is that way with this class, and the other way with the other class, it would make more sense for it to be some class skill.
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Well, asymmetric systems suck anyway imo. I want my opponents and other creatures in the world to be affected by the same rules than my pc, and this should be reflected in their stats. But I guess there is no accounting for taste.
1. I don't think these attributes are supposed to be literal representations of the characters' physical and mental traits the way D&D's ability scores are.
never claimed that.
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So that muscles aren't needed anymore? And the heart is perhaps only clocking to nurture the brain? Or lies intelligence in the soul too, so no brain needed? Well, at least that way we'd finally get a totally coherent system, when introducing HP inflation.
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So you read one word, assumed it was about a more generalist aspect of the term creationism, and therefore dismissed the article outright. So basically, also doing what the article suggests?
If it was about this more specific form of creationism or not, doesn't really matter.
What am I supposed to think, if it's an article concerning science, in the picture above in big letters is written "truth", "belief", and in the title "how people are fooling themselves on [...] creationism"? Well, I could have been unjustly prejudiced, in case the author was only referring to truth with regards to hard facts. If however, he assumes that creationism with a 6000 years old earth can't be the truth, I was right.
One advantage the assumption of natural laws remaining constant does have, however, is that so far they appear to have remained that way. For at least a (exceptionally) tiny point of time, we can state that these various natural laws appear to be constant, so you can hypothesize that they may have always been that way as there's a tiny bit of data that does that doesn't contradict it. Supposing that the Law's may not be constant, however, relies exclusively on faith to support the assertion since it's not something that we can support - at least at this time. The burden of proof that the natural laws have changed to support some of the more extreme perspectives lies in the hands of those that make said claims. If they are not able to, for what reasons should I take their claims as being accurate?
And claiming natural laws were always constant is accurate? Accurate in the sense of an objective way to examine things? Yes. Accurate in the sense of truth? No.
However, I figure that the method you describe has another quality, as it doesn't require one to make up things, and only goes by that which is already given. Sound approach, and if it would apply to the theory of evolution, I'd have a much easier time believing in it. However, up till now, scientists failed to prove that evolution is possible on a natural scientific level. So I guess the only thing that seperates it from creationism so far is that there is at least a chance the mechanics might be explained, and perhaps also it's 'simplicity' based on Occam's Razor. But of course, it doesn't need to be any more true becuse of that.
The scientific method doesn't test for truth. It tests to see if things are false. The idea that something is only true until something comes along to show otherwise has been a mainstay of the scientific method since its inception. You can never claim that your test has proved something true. Only that it hasn't proven it false. Perform enough tests in a variety of ways that don't show that something is false, and you start to get a theory since, thus far, data supports it. But science never proves anything to be true.
You mean, really anything, or just theories? I would think science does at least consider some observations and the outcome of a scientific experiment to be true, otherwise scientists would have a hard time to build any theories at all.
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And with such a mental or soulbased set of attributes, how you're going to distinguish the attackingpower of, say an ogre vs a kobold? You'd still expect the ogre to have a higher damage output, because of his superiour body mass and muscle strenght. And if you implement these attributes for such creatures, you'd expect your pcs to have such attributes as well. Or are these attributes so insignificant to your pc, that they don't play a role at all? Doesn't sound very convincing.
Or perhaps soulpower is the measure of strength for every creature there is, and muscles and body mass aren't important for nobody. That on the other hand, would just feel alien.
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Creationism in the broader sense, is just saying that humanity was created by some other intelligence. Even if it were possible to prove that mankind and dinosaurs didn't life at the same time, that would not refute creationism in general. Not even creationism in a Christian sense, because you won't find any concrete numbers concerning the age of the earth in the bible.
But to answer your questions: Yes, even then, it's still a matter of interpretation. You could for instance, assume that the natural laws, how we know them, were always valid, even in the distant past. That would be a naturalistic point of view, which is not objective, but subjective. Or you could assume that god changed natural laws as time progressed, and perhaps dinosaurs' boness are just there to test our belief? Not objective, but subjective.
Evolution is no hard natural science theory, but rather an historical theory. It's evidence will never have the same quality as evidence through a scientific experiment, where you see the results at first hand. Heck, even in a hard scientific experiment, you try to induce universal principles only under the assumption that space and time are homogeneous, and that the experiment will lead to the same results anywhere, anytime, which is again, just an assumption that leads to an interpretation. It's the scientific method, but the scientific method is no guarantee for "truth".
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That would be rather uncommon for a person with scientific backround, so I assumed the contrary. By writing people are fooling themselves on creationism, he implies that creationism is wrong, or going after picture above the article, not 'the truth'. But in the end, nobody can know that. There are some hard facts in form of fossils, basic biology and other stuff, that can be considered as truth, but if you believe in evolution or creationism, is dependent on your interpretation of these facts, and not the facts themselves. If the author fails to take this into account, it's probably because creationism doesn't fit into his worldview, and in that he's a victim of the very phenomen that he's trying to analyse.
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The Science of Why We Don’t Believe Science How our brains fool us on climate, creationism
I stopped reading. The author is probably fooling himself.
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Well yeah, the examples I brought are more passive in nature, meaning they involved only passive bonuses without player involvement. Storm of Zehir didn't went much further with that idea. Although the team-sneak-feat is at least situational (character must attack from behind, while target is engaged by other character), and requires some "active" teamwork to be pulled of.
In any case, of course there could also be active abilities or at least modes, that you could utilize in certain situations.
I guess for some of them you could cut out the extra feat completely and just call it maneuvers that you have automatically, if the particiapants have the necessary abilities/skills/feats, as you said. Or a team feat that has multiple uses depending on the situation, sounds also very interesting. With different requirements even more..
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By “teamwork feats” I mean feats, abilities, whatever, that affect several characters instead of only one, up to the whole party, and that have certain requirements for every party member or participant. NWN 2 Storm of Zehir had something like that. In the Adventuring Guild, you could learn such abilities for money. One party member was the “specialist”, who required the highest prerequesites for the teamwork feat, and the other party members needed only a few skillpoints at best. For example, I think the ability “rush” requires the specialist to have a survivalskill of about 12, and the toughness feat, while the other party members only need about 1 or 2 skillpoints in survival. It allowed the whole party to travel faster within the wilderness, almost as fast as the fastest of them would travel alone.Another example would be the feat that needs a specialist who is able to sneak attack, and where the other party members require some points in hide, minor sneak attack abilities or the weapon finesse feat (or something different that I've forgotten). The feat granted every party member additional bonuses when attacking an opponent from behind.Would you like to see such abilities in P:E, and if yes, how important should they be in the game?
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Dragon age franchise was bearable because it wasn't dnd.
??????????????
I played Dragon Age: Origins on Insane difficulty on my first go and the combat was so **** it made me never play the game again. Pretty much involved cheesing your way through everything. Every encounter was 10 archers with knockdown arrows trolling u hard (yes I finished it). Combat was also ridiculously boring.
The hardest fight was definitely against Ser Kauthrien in my opinion, to beat that (insane, v1.0 of the game) I had to cheese the resurrection timer/distance and doorways.
You know that you were actually "supposed" to lose that fight, do you? That was the only fight in the whole game were I had real difficulties on nightmare. Dextank ftw! But If I put the lack of build complexity aside, I find DA combat better than e.g. combat in NWN 2, where I didn't even had to use any spells or special abilities (in a fight) to beat the game, only long and tedious buffing before every battle. Basically you only had to make sure that your tank had an high enough AC, and that was everything you needed to win almost every fight, even on high difficulty. In DA this was not possible, because the Attack Defense mechanics had a scale of I believe 100 instead of only 20, and because of stunarrows and other stuff.
@topic
I don't know what difficulty I'll play as of yet. Probably hard. But I want to play the game without conventional saving and loading. That's an experience I always wanted to have, the thrill of losing everything, and taking all the consequenses. But if you can save/load, you always give into temptation. That's why I find it so great that you have the option in P:E to disable loading after deafeat completely.
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I've always found the whole 2E system unimaginative and static. But looking back, I had more fun playing 2E than the much more dynamic and number-heavy 3E. If I had a clue why, I'd probably gain a deeper understanding of the universe.
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Macros, definately macros, especially for buffs. I don't know how heavily combat in P:E will rely on buffs, but in IWD and NWN 2 it has always been a chore. The buffing up before tough battles took 4 times longer than the actual fight, and when you play on high difficulty, every battle is tough. That isn't fun anymore.
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Really like the idea with the skill pool. That brings a new dynamic into party based rpgs, how it should be. If I have a group of specialist wizards, then I expect new spells and rituals for research, unavailable to just one wizard. The same with crafting items, and enchanting.
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It's true that points in crafting that are given to more than one character are usually wasted points (now that I think about it, it's the same with social skills). But what's the solution to this problem? Everybody repairs the stuff he wears himself, and this is abstracted into some form of durability of items that is determined by the crafting skill of the wearer? Certainly better from a gamist point of view, but also kind of artificial. I really have no clue if I'd like that or not (which I don't have most of the time). But it certainly doesn't cause any euphoria.
In any case, I think the argument about the money sink isn't valid. Repairing items requires resscources, sure, but you can't seriously compare the maintenance of weapons and armor to the costs of upgrading a stronghold. When you have that much money, repairing items won't be a money sink at all, as simple as that. Moreover, at a later stage in the game, you're likely to carry some magical weapons, and I hope that magical weapons, or at least some magical weapons, aren't affected by the durability system. Otherwise, they would appear too mundane.
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Gathering information about the enemy, could be a bigger part in the game. Divination spells of any kind, that scry the enemy or gather information about them by other means, without being detected if skillful (in all IE games, with the exception of perhaps BG 2, divination was the weakest magic school), the ability/skill to estimate how able opponents are and what weaknesses they have, before the fight even starts (could be an important ability for more tactical oriented fighters, and also rogues). Ranger knowledge, to estimate the strength of certain beasts. Also, magical equipment should be visible on characters. If some enemy figher wears an adamantine armor instead of a conventional iron armor, I should be able to see it.
All that is especially important for people who intend to play the game on iron man (like me), without saving and loading.
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Josh Sawyer reveals some information about Project Eternity's attribute scores
in Pillars of Eternity: Stories (Spoiler Warning!)
Posted
I guess it depends how you look at it. Very bad possibly not, but I'm satisfied if there is enough potential to make average and rather powerful builds. With the former, you could get problems on higher difficulty and small groups.
Even if you can't make a weak because intelligent and charismatic fighter anymore, there will still be stat distributions that are weaker than others, and you might make bad choices with your skills and feats, by combining them bad, or choosing feats/skills that don't fit your stats or your overall build concept well.