[An idea for a future game mechanic (PE2)]

@PrimeJunta:

 

The idea is, however, an intriguing thought. Certainly, there's something there that's worth developing.

 

Which is not to say that you aren't correct.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

Oh, very well. That was fun to write, though.

[An idea for a future game mechanic (PE2)]

Also, for the record, you shouldn't be hired to write the dialogue.

Seems unnecessarily harsh. It's clearly placeholder material used to illustrate his point, isn't it? No, they're not exactly Richard Price-caliber lines, but I doubt he (she?) expended a great deal of effort on them.

[A Dialogue Mechanic Worth Investigating]

@AGX-17:

 

Well, admittedly, I would like to see PE gain traction outside the target market without compromising any of its mechanics. I'm a pretty staunch advocate of growing the RPG market without simplifying the games in the genre, as you may have noticed.

 

You're right that I should have cut the post down a lot, though, as the only idea in that whole thing that's of interest to me in terms of its applicability to PE is the dice-roll mechanic, and chopping most of the extraneous material would've been a good move. The post was very much a first-draft, brainstorming-on-the-fly piece, and those rarely work outside the context of the original discussion which spawned them. I confess it was pure laziness on my part not to simply restate the idea in a more concise fashion. I might rectify that shortly.

 

In my meager defense, I was only able to use my smartphone at the time I posted it, and editing a large piece on a smartphone is a poor choice.

 

Upon further reflection, the mechanic seems like a much better fit for a sequel to or improvement upon the mechanics of New Vegas, not PE. The Torment method works just fine for it, methinks.

 

Still, I hope the idea at least provides some food for thought.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

@Helm:

 

You're right, we're all too stupid to understand you. I mean, we don't understand RPGs, right? Just like Josh Sawyer who hates BG2 and loves Skyrim and I heard he punched a baby just for looking at him funny. We all want RPGs to be action games with twitch combat like Skyrim which Josh Sawyer who is a terrible human being likes, right?

 

Why can't me and Josh and Lephys and all the other people who are definitely conspiring to bring about the fall of RPGs just shut up and let you take over? I mean, you are a genius who knows what an RPG is and what it isn't, there's no question of that. Why do simpletons like us always stand in your way? Ah, if we would just listen, we would see that you, o warrior-poet, are a light shining in the darkness, a way through the neverending tempest that is this sad life!

 

It must be so frustrating to be a scholar of your caliber! It's no wonder you're so absurdly condescending to everyone who doesn't agree with you - I mean, it's gotta be tough among us proles, yeah? If we would just accept that the definition of an RPG is whatever you like at any given moment, such wonders we could create! Characters making wise decisions and showered with kill XP for that wisdom! Limited inventory space to reward wise decisions! Enemies that look exactly like Josh Sawyer who hates BG2 and loves Skyrim and may or may not be the son of the devil!

 

Gosh, it makes me weep just to picture it...!

 

Oh, if only we understood that an RPG is about building a character! If only we realized that loot and experience points are a reward for making tactically sound decisions! If only we could see that character skill should matter more than player skill in a real RPG! If only we knew the pleasures of a narrative that rewards choice with appropriate consequences! If only we enjoyed satisfying, tactically complex combat!

 

But, alas, we do not. How could we? We're so stupid! Not like you, o mighty prophet, wisest of the wise, bravest of the brave!

 

But there is hope, my lord! Josh and Lephys and myself resolved to enter into a secret compact with you at the last meeting of the conspiracy to murder RPGs. Yea, as Vilquar did betray the People to the illithids, so too would we sell out our fellows!

 

To convince you of our intentions, we bring tribute, my lord! Our copies of Skyrim, signed by the accursed Howard of Todd himself! We shall break these with a hammer atop your altar, my lord, and prove our reverence! Surely this will please you, o lord of lords, eminence of eminences?

 

WE REPENT, LORD HELM! WE REPENT!

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

@Helm:

 

No. You're the one who seems determined not to read your own posts. Why should I bother replying if you don't know or care about what you just said?

[A Dialogue Mechanic Worth Investigating]

 

Sounds like the PS:T way, in which it works great!

It does work well.

 

Displaying skill values in dialogue lines would be an immersion-breaker.

And a gameplay-breaker, telling the player which line is the "best" one.

Did you play New Vegas?

 

@Osvir:

 

I agree.

[KNOCK KNOCK!?]

Knocking on doors sounds nice, frankly. It's always a bit weird to come to a locked door and immediately have to pick the lock to see what's inside.

[An idea for a future game mechanic (PE2)]

I do think it's high time for dialogue to be more about "how" and less about "what." We've gone too long with the "Say the aggressive thing to start a fight, say the polite thing to gain favor, say the terrible thing to frighten them, say the sexy thing to seduce them, etc." structure. But, that's more a comment on specific designs than the system itself. 8P

What games have you been playing, and where can I find them? Are you from the Glorious Future of cRPGs? O_O

 

Most cRPGs (classic and modern) outside of AP and PST don't give me any choice at all in what things I can say, let alone how I can say them. Of the choices mentioned, the only ones the player gets nine times out of ten are "start a fight" and "ask politely."

 

With the dialogue-wheel mechanic current games favor, even that's pushing it. It's usually "start a fight politely" or "start a fight by being rude."

 

And then you get into combat, and there are twenty-seven different varieties of flail you can smash your enemy's brains in with. You know? Dialogue mechanics are still crazy underdeveloped compared to combat mechanics. I understand the logistical reasons behind that, but I still feel like there's a lot more developers could be doing.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

@Helm:

 

See? You're bad at reading.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

@Helm:

 

Funny, because when I think of RPGs, the IE games and Fallout are the first ones that come to mind. Certainly, I consider them the pinnacle of the Western approach to the genre. Not that you'll believe me, because why should facts get in the way of your childish vendetta against Josh Sawyer for not designing his game to your exact specifications.

 

I did quite enjoy Skyrim (which I fully expect you to cite as "proof" that I "don't understand" RPGs, because you are bad at reading), but I would readily admit it has serious problems with its RPG mechanics. I wouldn't call them fatal by any means, but they do impact the game.

 

I would also call Skyrim an RPG, because that's what it is. By my reckoning, any game in which you define a character in whole or in part is deserving of the term RPG. It may not be a particularly deep RPG when considered solely as an RPG, but it is an RPG. Even you said that building a character is the key part of an RPG. You build a character in Skyrim.

 

Yes, every character ultimately ends up becoming a generalist, but that is a problem with the way leveling works in Skyrim, not a reason to disqualify it from being an RPG. A generalist in Skyrim is still a character who has been defined by the player; two Level 70 generalists that serve the same function in combat might not have the exact same perks checked in their perk trees, and thus one is only pretty good at melee combat while the other's great at it. That is a difference between the characters. It is not a large difference, but it is a difference.

 

I do like that you skipped over my actual substantive points and called them "a bunch of BS." I'm going to take that as an admission of defeat.

 

Finally, you appear to have misinterpreted (quite deliberately, I assume) my answer to your question. I said that I would be willing to try a system that doesn't give you XP for anything. Whether or not I would want such a system in PE is a different question, one to which I would answer firmly in the negative. Kill XP is not important to maintaining the integrity of the IE experience; quest XP absolutely is.

 

Alright, go on, dig the hole deeper. I'll wait.

[Degenerate Gameplay]

Ha!

 

I was amused to see the reactions to my post, because they were exactly as I had predicted they would be.

 

PrimeJunta has the right of it. I love dungeon crawlers like Diablo and Etrian Odyssey, and I love hack-&-slash killfests. Love 'em, love 'em, love 'em. And they are games centered around numbers going up.

 

The IE games had numbers going up, but they were not centered around numbers going up. The Icewind Dale series, maybe, but the rest of them? Absolutely not.

 

And I can prove it to you.

 

Ask yourselves what your favorite memories of the Baldur's Gate games are. This includes battles, by the way; good encounter design is enjoyable in itself, regardless of the ultimate reward (though that can certainly be quite nice). Oh, and loot is also included.

 

Are you picturing those memories in your mind?

 

How many of your very favorite memories from Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 begin and end with numbers going up? I don't mean the excitement of learning what the higher numbers allowed you to do within the game, but solely the numbers themselves.

 

Very few, I'd wager. I doubt you were checking the XP counter every time you killed a monster to see if your sweet, sweet numbers went up.

 

And if you were, it wasn't because you were SO DANG EXCITED to see those numbers increase, was it?

 

You did what you did in those games in order to overcome the goal set before you. If you wanted a better sword, you wanted it to kill some dudes who were guarding a part of the map you'd never been to before. If you wanted to level up, you wanted to do it because you wanted to complete a quest sitting at the bottom of your journal that you'd been killed trying to complete a number of times before. You wanted the numbers to go up in the IE games because they let you do more things within the content.

 

The numbers, in other words, were a means to an end, and not an end in themselves.

 

In a numbers-go-up game like Diablo, you want to go up a level or get better loot so you can go up another level and get betterer loot so you can go up another level and get bettererer loot, et cetera, ad nauseam. The sole point of character progression is more character progression. That doesn't make Diablo a better or worse game than Baldur's Gate, just a different one.

 

The IE games - even the Icewind Dale series, in a way - were quest-focused narrative RPGs. I completely understand the desire of some players to have percieved control over their leveling, and I wouldn't necessarily be averse to that. Certainly, I don't care at all for the overly prescriptive leveling of Mass Effect 2 and 3, and I'd imagine that's what most people here are afraid of. I'm just saying that a spiritual successor to a series of quest-focused narrative RPGs should ideally be about questing.

 

It's also worth mentioning that the "challenge XP" Sawyer has referred to multiple times would - if it's anything like New Vegas - basically be combat XP. It would simply be delivered in one lump sum as opposed to being parceled out over a long period of time. I understand why someone might prefer one to the other, but there's not a huge functional difference between the two.

 

When any of you actually sit down and play PE in 2014, I seriously doubt any of you will be fuming at the changes made to the IE formula. Unless, of course, you've already made up your mind to fume at the changes on release. But, hell, you can't all be Codexers, can you?

[A Dialogue Mechanic Worth Investigating]

@rjshae:

 

Hmm, interesting.

 

@JFSOCC:

 

Fair point. The attempt is to emulate the variable nature of PnP while allowing for guaranteed successes, but you're correct that simply giving more varied options can also mitigate the "auto-win" feeling.

 

@Karkarov:

 

Someone has posted a similar thread? I'm new here.

 

As to your argument, I understand it, for sure.

[Open world or Linear]

IE-style, obv. Though an attempt to capture BG1's more freeform approach to exploration would be nice, since none of the other IE games really recaptured it.

[A Dialogue Mechanic Worth Investigating]

I'm sure "This is an idea I came up with" has become an automatic eyeroller of a phrase for many people on here, not least the developers themselves. Nevertheless, this is an idea I mentioned in a thread on the Wasteland 2 boards that almost immediately struck me as a good fit for PE, and people seemed to like it a lot over there, so I think it's worth copy-pasting.

 

Probably worth noting that I was here assuming a hard threshold-based system of Speech checks, as in New Vegas. That may or may not be the case for PE, but I think at least some of this is still salient regardless. Oh, and Fallout obviously has a classless skill system and PE doesn't, so.

 

I'm also going to censor some of the curse words, as I'm not yet sure of this forum's policy regarding them.

 

Regarding the skill check debate:

 

I've thought a lot about this, because it's one of those eternal problems with cRPGs that nobody's ever managed to solve for both the people who want hard thresholds and the people who want skill check rolls every single time. Furthermore, I'd argue that neither type of interaction is entirely satisfying even for the proponents of each.

 

Skill thresholds are a clear attempt to make the mechanics behind dialogue checks less obtuse for people without a PnP background, and in this, they succeed. However, in making the mechanics transparent and fixed, they render said mechanics dull as dishwater.

 

If I have 75 Speech in New Vegas, and I talk to somebody and see a [speech 50] dialogue option right there, I know immediately that A) I am going to pass that check, B) that the check's result will always be a positive one for my PC, and C) that I'm not going to regret passing the check in any way later.

 

That system is, I think, a better one for video games specifically, because every player instinctively understands why he or she failed and how to remedy said failure. If someone's never played a PnP game before, they're going to be angry at the game when they arbitrarily miss a check, because all they understand is what's on the screen. If their Speech is 90, and they fail a Speech check, they don't understand it as a roll that went askew, because there's no die rolled in front of them and no DM to argue with. It simply reads as the game deciding to f**k them over. And even if you are a player who, at the least, understands intellectually that dice are your only measure of success, I'd argue that it's still aggravating as hell, because all other video games train you to expect your failures to be your fault. In an action game, when you appear to connect and don't, you blame the game for being cheap and call it bad design.

 

(Sidebar, skip if tl;dr: This is why I'm always preaching the gospel of good visual feedback (and let's face it, most old-school RPGs had crap visual feedback, even if you understood intellectually what was happening); if the die roll is hidden, it might as well be imaginary, and that means the game ends up feeling unfair, even when you know it isn't. That, more than anything, is the barrier to new publisher-funded "old-school cRPGs." You can argue all you like that it doesn't matter, but when everything else on the market is designed to be grokked in a WYSIWYG manner, and the genre we're all fans of works on a principle that is inherently not WYSIWYG-friendly, the fact that publishers want it to be a WYSIWYG thing makes complete sense. My feeling is that they're right about WYSIWYG, but wrong that the only way to achieve WYSIWYG is through real-time action-game mechanics. If you have visuals that clearly communicate success, failure, and why the success or the failure occurred, the player won't feel cheated. It's the lack of same that makes even many PnP players long for real-time or RTwP combat in their cRPGs.)

 

ANYWAY, the threshold system eliminates all of these problems, but it introduces a new and, depending on the player, equally aggravating problem; there's no sense that you've actually overcome a challenge, because there's never any risk involved. You don't have the required points, you don't succeed. You have the required points, you succeed. In New Vegas specifically, you can't even have the chance to succeed taken away from you, because failing the check nets you little more than a goofy "That dog won't hunt, fella!" line from an NPC, and you can retry it whenever you want. This renders diplomacy naturally inferior to combat as a means of conflict resolution, because combat has emergent possibilities and diplomacy doesn't.

 

Some would argue that this is an inherent problem with dialogue trees, and those people are right, to a certain extent. However, Wasteland 2 will presumably have a dialogue tree mechanic, and rightfully so, I say, because most interactions in an RPG work best when handled through a big, diverse dialogue tree. We'll also have a text parser, but I think that's best used for passwords and name-dropping. Most complex interactions should be handled through dialogue trees, just because of the granularity of character definition you get with them.

 

Let's assume for the sake of argument that not one bit of my long-winded analysis above is wrong or even particularly disagreeable. I'm sure the truth on both counts is exactly the opposite, but please grant this lunatic his myriad hypotheses for the moment.

 

So, how do we confer the advantages of thresholds and the advantages of random skill checks while eliminating or minimizing the disadvantages of each approach? Well, I can't say with any certainty that these solutions are remotely definitive, because I am an armchair designer who is crap at math and middling at logic, but here are a few tentative suggestions:

 

1) Assuming there are hard thresholds, in all instances where a threshold exists, allow us to roll a skill check that has a percentage of success that goes up as we level up in that skill until it hits one hundred percent. Let's use New Vegas' transparent thresholds as an example: when your skill wasn't as high as the threshold you needed to pass, it showed a fraction like this next to the goofy little skill failure line of dialogue:

 

[speech 45/50]

 

That is converted easily enough into a percentage out of one hundred, and that percentage could be used to determine our chance of success. Using the example given, that would mean we would have a ninety percent chance to pass the skill check despite not having the required skill. This is easy to understand, it makes every rank meaningful, and patently ridiculous bulls**t like someone with 100 Speech arbitrarily failing the speech check doesn't happen.

 

2) The result of a successful speech check should always be successful for whoever is speaking, but they don't have to lead to an optimal outcome for everyone involved. For example, say you are attempting to convince a, I dunno, bandit to let the hostage they're holding go. In New Vegas' model, a failed check would mean the hostage would not be released. In my proposed system, even if the check itself is an automatic pass, what if you then have to negotiate the terms of the hostage's release? Just because the bandit agrees to let the hostage go, that doesn't mean that he's not planning to shoot the hostage in the back. This is where something like Spot Lie comes in handy, and also some ingenuity on the part of the player. Negotiations should not begin and end in a single dialogue tree anyway.

 

Having multiple different skill checks in a single negotiation that all have a chance of succeeding makes for a much more intense game without compromising the roleplaying mechanics or player agency, and it requires not one bit of twitch gameplay to work.

 

3) The possibility of extra rewards that SniperHF [a guy on the W2 boards] mentioned could be accounted for by using the PnP mechanics of Nat 20 and Nat 1. To wit, you might automatically pass the hard threshold of success whenever you try convincing someone to lower his gun, but there's still a roll in the background to determine the outcome. So if you roll a natural twenty on that roll, the guy gives you his gun, but if you roll a natural one, the guy's gun accidentally goes off as he's lowering it and hits a party member in the leg. There's no need to make any of this clear to the player who doesn't read the manual, because for all anyone knows, that's what was supposed to happen anyway.

 

4) Hide the non-combat skill thresholds in the game unless the player uses an "Analyze" ability that requires some sort of Perception check, maybe PER + INT. This would be an abstraction of a PC's deductive reasoning abilities ("I don't think he means to let that girl go, fellas. See how his hand's at his side, ready to draw?").

 

5) This one might be somewhat controversial, but I think it could be interesting. I'm not beholden to it, but it could make for an enjoyable mechanic if done correctly. Have to-hit chance work on hidden skill thresholds like the non-combat skill checks. However, those should be capped at a ninety-five to ninety-nine percent success rate, Fallout-style, to allow for the occasional miss. That way, you get the verisimilitude of the occasional missed shot in every encounter, but you aren't missing a f**king rat you've killed thousands of and have long since ceased giving a s**t about, as in Fallout. The threshold percentage could be modifed by distance and maybe degree of cover.

 

There, those are a few ideas for a threshold-based system that I believe addresses a lot of the problems people raise, but confers a lot of the advantages of a threshold-based system. I could, of course, be wrong.

 

Feel free to use or discard any of this as needed, inXile [or, in this case, Obsidian]. Apologies for the tl;dr nature of this post. I didn't mean to witter on forever, but, you know, I never do...

Now, obviously, this isn't something I think PE should adopt wholesale, but there are some interesting ideas in there that could be adapted to PE's systems. I would never claim it's perfect, but it's a good starting point.

 

What say you, PE forumgoers? I'm open to any reasonable criticisms.

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

@Stun:

 

That's fair. I retract my previous statements and apologize for impugning your character.

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

@Stun:

 

Mm-hmm. That's what I thought you'd say. And I'm so glad you did, because you just revealed the depth of your ignorance.

 

You are welcome to dislike Japanese RPGs. The point is, you are rejecting and - for the purposes of this discussion - denying the existence of an entire genre's worth of steadfastly traditional party-based RPGs on the grounds that you don't like them, and yet you are taking it upon yourself to lecture me on the nature of party-based RPGs. You are, in other words, a hypocrite.

 

I can understand the exclusion of "Bioware hybrids" from the discussion, because they remove traditional genre elements. I don't agree with their exclusion, but I get it. But to argue that we can't bring Japanese games into the discussion because "they're all icky and Japanese" is to out yourself as just as much of an ignoramus as you just implicitly accused me of being.

 

You're willfully ignorant of an entire country's worth of games, and you're telling me party-based RPGs "might not be for me?" What would you know about party-based RPGs? You're the one who hasn't followed the subgenre's evolution for the past twelve years!

 

You said "inventory management" - by which you meant "the type of inventory management I like" - was "a staple of party-based RPGs." I mentioned that there were many party-based RPGs with unlimited inventories that still involve the management of an inventory. You said that was irrelevant to the discussion, because - ugh! - they're Japanese.

 

Yes, and the Witcher games are Polish; what's your point? JRPGs are direct descendants of Wizardry and Ultima III. Should we exclude those games from the discussion? Because you're essentially arguing for that when you argue for the exclusion of JRPGs from any discussion of RPGs.

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

Inventory management is a staple of party based RPG gaming. If you consider that a waste of time then perhaps the genre's not your cup of tea.

So all those party-based Japanese RPGs based on Wizardry, like Etrian Odyssey, that have unlimited inventories A) don't have inventory management, and B) aren't party-based RPGs?

 

Interesting.

 

You know games with only one created character (like, er, all the non-IWD Infinity Engine games) aren't technically "party-based" RPGs either, right? Because, according to some people's definition of "party-based," it's only a party-based game if you create all your PCs.

 

That's stupid, right? I mean, the IE games are clearly party-based, yeah? Only a lunatic would assume that one specific implementation of a feature that they really really like is the feature itself, and any variation on it will automatically result in disaster! Oh, those crazy RPG nerds!

 

Why am I bringing that up? Oh, no reason. You were saying?

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

It... doesn't waste the player's time?

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

Quest only xp does not reward you for your prefered playstyle or for making the hardest and most demading decisions, it only rewards you for crossing an imaginary line and nothing else. It makes combat in a combat based game a pointless chore which is avoided as much as possible. Stealth games use quest only xp and what do you do? You avoid combat as much as possible. Wow, that was real hard to figure out.

 

But now Project Eternity is a stealth game with a substantial stealth ability. If you choose to sneak and are caught, then you engage in pointless combat. If you choose to fight, then you uh, just engage in the pointless combat.

 

Wow, who would have ever figured that out when he saw the Kickstarter.

 

 

If you need a number to go up to do something you already enjoy doing in a game, may I humbly suggest that you don't actually like doing it very much?

 

EDIT: My apologies for the multiple posts, by the way. I'm using my phone to type, and there doesn't seem to be a way to quote multiple people in the same post in the mobile version of the forum.

Well, maybe we should remove quest xp for all sidequests too. Or will you only do quests if they reward you with xp?

 

Of course you would do all of the sidequests just for "phun", because only the content matters and not the numbers that go up (as you wrote in another thread).

Yes, I would do all of the sidequests just for fun. That's why I do sidequests. And play games. For fun.

 

Would I be fine with the removal of all XP? Sure, if there was a better progression system. I've never heard of one that would work as well as XP, but I'd try it.

 

You know they're called "experience points," right? Meaning that they are an abstract measure of what your character learned from his or her experiences, AKA the content.

 

In other words, even the name of the mechanic is an implicit condemnation of the "make numbers go up" mentality.

 

By the way, combat is part of the content. If it weren't, it wouldn't be in the game. Why spend time on it at all if you can just sneak past everything? That's just bad design.

 

...He says, knowing that Helm is going to miss the point and follow up with something like, "So you agree Josh Sawyer who hates BG2 and loves Skyrim and punishes wise decisions by allowing players to enjoy themselves is a bad designer, then?"

 

Also worth noting? All challenges in games are about crossing an imaginary line. You go to a place, you solve a puzzle, you fight some dudes, you fight a boss, you get the ball to the goal - it's all just crossing imaginary lines over and over again.

 

To be fairer to you than you're undoubtedly going to be to me, I do vaguely understand what you're talking about. If overcoming a challenge feels like crossing an imaginary line, it's ultimately a failure on the developer's part.

 

Josh Sawyer knows this. Josh Sawyer has said it outright many times. It's not his fault that you're ignoring his actual words on the matter - even the ones you've cherry-picked, which is pretty astonishing - because he didn't like a game you liked and liked a game you didn't like.

 

One more thing: it's possible to love a game without wanting to make one like it, and it's possible to dislike a game while understanding what people love about it. I love Tetris, but I would have no interest whatsoever in making Tetris 2. Conversely, World Of Warcraft does very little for me, but I get why the people who love it love it.

 

Alright, have at me. Really tear this one apart, okay? I want to see just how tortured your logic can get.

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

@JonVanCaneghem

 

Interesting!

 

I'd like to request one clarification, if I could: are you saying that hidden caches we don't find will be wholly owned by the scavs (and thus not in the dungeon anymore), or that we'll have to explore the dungeon a second time to recover any hidden caches?

 

I'd be cool with the first, not so much with the second. Backtracking is dull, and being forced to make every dungeon "backtrack-compatible" might limit what Obsidian can do with the content inside the dungeon (e.g. no cave-ins).

 

I can, I suppose, see the appeal of the second approach, but it's not for me.

[Degenerate Gameplay]

If you want to play a game about making numbers go up, there are plenty available. The IE games' strength was that they were about the content itself. The numbers are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

[Stash: The Unlimited Inventory Mechanic]

I love it. Don't care that it's not "realistic." A weight limit isn't fun, but has some theoretical utility in gameplay. This system removes the unfun element, but keeps the utility.

 

I would be cool with a totally unlimited inventory, of course. I'm playing as an adventurer, not someone who tidies up a room.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

I see a quest only based reward fundamentally flawed for two reasons. Firstly there are lots of us who grew up on classical RPG-s including BG who enjoyed the combat XP. Not everybody, but definitely a lot of us enjoyed this aspect and found it as a fundamental aspect of these old D&D based series. One reason – not exclusive - to visit every single room and cave of a dungeon is just to get a little more of that XP and the hope to find more loot on those corpses. And so the other reason is that sneaking past a foe would leave you in a quite unsatisfied state of mind: what did that creature had, which I may have missed to pick? Clearing a dungeon dry, is not that bad as you think, and is in no way grinding per se. Grinding, or its negative connotation rather applies to MMORPG-s where you ruin others experience by frequently revisiting dungeons and depriving others from the full experience. In a crpg this is not an issue. Although a very different game, in Skyrim, I spend reading books in dungeons several hours, sometimes I spend a half a (real) day reading if I find many in a dungeon on shelves and then killing the next goblin is still fun. So no, in a CRPG the purpose of combat XP is not to level up as fast as possible, but to get the maximum enjoyment out of the game. So please leave the good old combat system alone, or make reasonable changes to is, and make up rewarding pacific elements parallel. Let everyone do what they want, you do not need to force people via mechanics. I somehow do understand Helm’s apocalyptical stature, because such “innovative” changes may lead to an unfortunate decline of the project. However I still see it in a way that combat XP is not yet out ruled. Hopefully I am right on this.

 

 

If you need a number to go up to do something you already enjoy doing in a game, may I humbly suggest that you don't actually like doing it very much?

 

EDIT: My apologies for the multiple posts, by the way. I'm using my phone to type, and there doesn't seem to be a way to quote multiple people in the same post in the mobile version of the forum.

[Balancing Stealth vs Combat]

You know, of he who hates Baldur's Gate but loves Skyrim.

I love how you think that matters in any way.

 

Monte Cook also loves Skyrim. Does that stop him from being Monte Cook?

 

Not to mention that loving something doesn't mean you want to copy it, and disliking something doesn't mean you don't appreciate what it's trying to do.

 

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but as the obsessive lorekeeper of all things Sawyer, one would assume you'd be aware that Josh has spoken of Baldur's Gate 1 with approval several times, yes? Which would imply that he didn't care for the more explicitly linear direction in which they took 2, in which case your argument that doesn't matter to PE's success is invalid anyway.