jamoecw

well your first point that shield bashing does something special in real life is wrong, it is not much different than striking with a gauntlet. the second example is a bit off, as you aren't being prevented from firing your bow by someone raising their shield, though tripping someone who is already prone seems silly, think more like telling one of your characters to attack, would it be better for them to attack on their own, or have you constantly clicking to get them to attack? so since i have stuck mainly to fighters, a good question would be to ask is:is it something that is being done with something that just sits at the ready and isn't used while in combat? if the answer is yes then it probably is a good candidate for instant use, otherwise probably not. of course if you can't find more than a couple of things that would fit this, then you should ask yourself would there be great benefit for an instant use over short delay use? if not then maybe there doesn't need to be instant use.

A good 40 yard dash is around 5 seconds, so its safe to say a 30 yard dash will be around 4 seconds. It makes a lot of arrows in 4 seconds, I know some masters archers may manage that with 30 pounds bows. But in 4 seconds I think that most good archers with a strong bow would manage only one good shot. It think it's safer to say that a ranged weapon work as good at range as a melee weapon work in close quarters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9RGnujlkI as for masters? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1KC1Os-_NE though if we assumed the same level of proficiency, we would have to really curb their ability to do other things in order to make it balanced with melee.

shield bashing doesn't normally knock people down in real life, i think that is the issue. shield bashing is just attacking with the shield, using the shield to do something to knock someone down is more akin to the bull rush of DnD which doesn't need to use of shield realistically. the example sounds good, but remember you have 5 others that you are controlling, so that one guy you control in order time the second knockdown at the right time gives you a 1 second window in which you have to act at most, and given that he probably get up in at most 3 seconds that means a lot of micromanaging if you can't tell your guy to do X when the opportunity arises. that would open the window from the first knock down to the end of the second window, or 4 seconds. you could instead have the knock down keep the guy down for 3 seconds each time it is done, no matter if he is open to it or not, which means that doing it to him early just wastes effect time at the expense of micromanagement. obviously knocking someone down is more of a trip, and shouldn't be done constantly in every situation. actively using your shield to deflect blows should, and actively using your shield to hit your opponent when you are already slapping his weapon seems pretty sound in most situations, not much different than dual wielding weapons. as for setting an ability to be done when able, it opens up counterplay other than a simple can't do it sort of thing, you can have it delay the length of time it can be done or have temporary penalties before it happens so that it isn't quite so binary. that way if an ability has a strong effect (like knock down) you don't have to make it so that all high level enemies are immune, which skews its usefulness quite a bit both suddenly and drastically.

I could've sworn that, very early in my playthrough, I spoke to someone, who then marked the location of a big city on my map (didn't see it there before they described where it was in dialogue). The only thing I hate about exploration in Arcanum is that, just in trying to travel to even Shrouded Hills from the Crash Site, you can potentially bump into anything from like level 1 pansy wolves to level 5 kill-you-in-one-hit enemies. I'm all for the randomness of weaker/tougher foes, but, especially where you HAVE to world-map-travel merely to progress the narrative, the range of potential toughness of the foes you can encounter shouldn't be quite so great. if you have the patients i would advise walking it if you are worried about random encounters, pretty much nothing in between, though i see that as a game flaw (random encounters should scale at least in part with your level so you don't get ****ed, and the wilderness should have random enemies, and thus it should be safer to travel a necessary but dangerous route via auto travel). and ya, 1 person can tell about 1 city in shrouded hills, likewise in that city, so forth and so on, creating a linear route of exploration kinda (even if it isn't technically a line).

well as for realism, you have to look at what gets hit within the torso, what size wound channel it leaves behind, kinetic dispersion in the surrounding tissues, etc. arrows tend to have small wound channels and low kinetic dispersion, as well as being left in to plug up the wound, though as it is a small wound channel it does tend to penetrate the ribs better than say the edge of a sword (not the point mind you). arrows are less dangerous on average, that is not to say that arrows can't be deadlier than swords, or that they aren't lethal enough to kill in one hit anyway. now with that said, a dedicated military caste uses different bows than the average bow today, with tons of power being stored up and released all at once gives it more kinetic energy on impact at close range than a sword generally does in a fight. as a result arrows have great penetrating power against armour, though they do less damage once they have penetrated, which may or may not be relevant. now take into account that instant kills are a difficult thing to achieve, even if lethal hits are easy (getting stabbed in the heart may take many minutes to kill you, and before you go down you are still fighting). now if we take into account parrying and such then the rate that an archer will be able to deliver armour penetrating shots to an armoured opponent charging them from say 30 yards should be about 2-3, while the same amount of time fighting in melee if both are at equal skill will be 1 at most. so with all of these variables floating around we can safely say that archers should do more damage to an armoured opponent without a shield or cover before they have to run away as fast as their legs can carry them and thus do no more damage during the fight than an armoured warrior with a greatsword. or to simplify even further: ranged weapons work better at range than melee weapons do at melee against an stupid yet skillful armoured opponent. now we could get more complex and talk about effectiveness of various stances and weapons of melee to find the most effective at killing in the short run and compare that to the fastest killing ranged weapon, but i think we have enough variables in play for now. {edit} and considering the answer of how ranged weapons will be in PE has been given to us it sorta makes the argument moot {/edit}

power overwhelming - whether or not it is true, you and your companions believe that you will explode killing all of those around you at some point, literally a walking bomb. fear from damage taken is also applied as an aura to you (effectively fear from damage is double for you) and all your companions within 60 ft of you. sexual perversion - you have unpopular sexual desires. seduction dialog choices are only half as likely to succeed, and if they fail you suffer a reputation penalty. killing them softly with words - its not what you say, or how you say it, but something else. intimidation is twice as likely to succeed and has half the negative effects if successful. this here's my boomstick! - you feel that those that do not use guns are ignorant primitives, though some just see you as looney. any time you need to convince someone of your power (like say for intimidation) and you have a gun equipped, you get the option of 'this here's my boomstick!' which has double the benefits of both success and failure. open handed - you share your things with those close to you, after all you're in this together. your companions like you better every time you camp out in the wilderness. inner demons - those close to you get to glimpse the darkness you keep locked away within yourself. your companions dislike you more every time you camp out in the wilderness. get it done - you have a tendency to do that which needs to be done, even when others say it is impossible. your chance to succeed at skill checks involving hands on non finesse tasks (building a crude bridge, pulling someone out of a hole, etc.)have a higher chance of success. discipline - you believe that consistency is key, and focus on achieving that maxim. all random numbers associated with things that you do (attacking, skill checks, etc.) is less random (1-100 becomes 25-75). personal villain - there is someone out there who has grown up to hate you with all their being. at some random point in the game someone with your same wealth in items and level will attack you with an equal party to boot, if you fail to kill the villain (it isn't pointed out which one it is), it will return later again matching your level and wealth and companions.

well given that the universe goes on for an eternity, which equates to an ever expanding universe that will keep expanding so long as there is something traveling towards the edge, in effect pushing the universe outwards. thus the game is about increasing the size of the universe for some reason or other, maybe the size of the universe dictates how many gods exist? thus your job is to ensure that there is room for some god (maybe yourself, as you might be making room for yourself to ascend into godhood).

Has the world gone mad? No, reaching into a fire is not an adequate comparison to implementing a fun mechanic that many people enjoy into an RPG. And that's like, the whole point. If it's as if you're putting your hand into a fire, then you're already strongly biased against pickpocketing. It's not like pickpocketing needs this one special feature that makes it not horrible (i.e. the wet cloth around your hand). For me it's the other way around, pickpocketing is already a good feature, but right now it has an unnecessary aspect to it that makes it not much fun. So it's more like trying to light a nice candle by using a match with a hand soaked in flammable oil. Also I vehemently disagree that every proposed solution is heavy on resources. That is simply a false statement, in fact most systems here are so easy that they could be scripted in one afternoon, I reckon. Not to mention that some of them would probably involve less calculations than what's been done in the IE games before (the "always succeed if skill is high enough" system doesn't even need a roll, for example). And please, don't forget that this is supposed to be an RPG. Obviously everyone has preferences when playing the game, but that does not mean that your Lawful Good is the way that most people take or the one that should be catered to the most. A good crime system is crucial to a believable world, whether you make use of it or not. as for dev resources, keep in mind that the existing system is a simple skill check system, that gives access to existing inventories. and that system has to undergo testing and balancing which means that with almost nothing to the system you have days of dev resources invested. now take into consideration that 3 out 4 independently proposed systems that were posted before his first post require custom content for each mark and you end up with tons of dev resources spent on something that typically has almost no resources spent normally. the reaching into fire thing i think is a good analogy due to the fact that back in greek and roman times it was considered a feat for a hero the snatch something from the fire, either by skill or toughness, which by today's standards is considered silly and foolhardy. he sees the attempt at pickpocketing in the game as not worth much based on previous experience, he is ambivalent towards the chances of success for improving it, and hasn't looked into any of the suggestions posted. lephys kept trying to make comparisons that involved a flaw in logic, or an outright denial in the chances of success, which are both untrue, all that is asked ultimately is that any suggestions are kept to use the same dev resources used currently: if (skill:pickpocket > x) then (set 'attempt' = rnd (1-20) + skill:pickpocket) else (target hostile) if ('attempt' > x) then (target inventoryscreen) else (target hostile) clear 'attempt' which is what 6-7 lines of code and a button and a cursor?

i think that you should 'set' an ability to fire should our opponent give you the opportunity, like tripping. until it happens you fight differently and thus either do less damage or take more or some such penalty, and you do so longer the harder it is to perform the action against your opponent. once it is done you no longer have the penalties. i think this is far better for 99% of all non magical activated (non modal, as a fair amount of abilities should be modal for warriors) abilities. you could even have a que for each 'channel' as the devs have put it. so that you could say set trip, then que up something afterwards so that it ends up being a pseudo AI script. shield bash i'd have as a modal ability, but bullrush i'd have as a set ability (most people get those two confused).

Never played Ultima so I can't really compare. But let me make a wild guess, Ultima was more main-stream with its fantasy universe. I never read world descriptions in manuals, so at least for me it was the game world itself. I surely read about crafting in the manual, but sorry, if you can have all the fun just reading about crafting mechanics without doing it in the game, you would be a pretty strange gamer. And music is designed to be a part of a game, it often doesn't work standalone. Most film music is pretty boring on its own as well. Remember that I only cited what I found good besides all the stuff upvoted in this threads poll. Do you also find all that in the manual? And since you say that "can all be gained by reading the manual" [sarcasm]did you really play the game or was reading the manual enough for you?[/sarcasm] Because really, I can't remember that just through reading the manual I lost interest in crafting in the game. I thought you meant companions when you said character interaction simply because I didn't find any fault in the interaction with NPCs in the world. The language, the dialogs were a strong point of the game to me. Naturally if you expected 100% of NPCs had to have something to say to you, your impressions was different. Ultima and fishing. First test of what would become a main stay in all MMOs. Let me make a second guess why Ultima became a greater success, maybe it was the precursor to the first MMOs, especially Ultima online. Whether that is a sign of quality or just compatibility with a typical teenagers taste? You tell me. ultima is held up for its sandboxiness, which means a lot of non combat options. everyone existed in the world and wasn't just eye candy, i think that maybe when people say how great arcanum was for its non com stuff haven't played many of the older rpgs (the ultima series started in 1981), which had more than just killing things. i remember when everquest didn't have any crafting, ultima online sprung forth as the first mmo, and every mmo has fallen in its shadow, so naturally they feature ultima features (even if they don't start with them or use an engine meant for them). if arcanum had a staff to continue to work on it like a mmo then i'm sure you would have seen influences from bg and better combat mechanics and balancing. as for not reading the manual and learning about the world through the game, well that probably made the experience better, as i read the manual and was never really surprised except when something that should be there wasn't. like when fighting your through the canyons right after the blimp crash, then ending up in complete open country with no creatures till i got close to town. when i decided to grind on my first play through to take on the weaponless bandits without resorting to dynamite and ran around the wilderness looking for things to kill only to find trees (no plants to grab either might as well of been empty grasslands), and then seeing the bridge being constructed and trying to find a way to help with that to no avail. after the fight auto traveling and encountering a bear on my way to the only other settlement on the map, which killed me off and i had to do the bandit battle all over again. then getting to town and kept to the sewers to kill rats, gathered up as much xp as i could then wandered off into the slums only to get killed by a bum with a knife. the manual hinted at loads of possibilities beyond just killing things, and i have yet to see play through or guide that takes that path without heavy meta knowledge of very specific things (kinda like old games and 'easter eggs'). the only random creatures are random overland encounters via auto travel, and you only get xp from damaging things, therefore once you can fight the creatures placed in the world you can then focus on non combat stuff, until then it is a combat game with some of the wrst combat mechanics around. though once you've reached this point the game starts to open up and you can go around and check out the work the devs did, which isn't the best way to do things, since until that point the game is poor, and if you decide to continue down a combat heavy path then ten game is poor after that, but right in the middle the game shows what it can really be with an open world and plenty of options and things to strive for, if that was the game from the start there might be an active modding community for it today and a desire for an enhanced edition. currently it is a game that is looked at to learn from and a fun game if you can get past its weaknesses, though it shouldn't be considered something more in its whole than say divine divinity.

having the building process take i game time might be feasible to so without increasing dev resources. not sure on the time frame the game is supposed to take place, so i don't know how feasible it is, hopefully it spans some decent amount of years. though in previous games you tended to operate pretty fast, in the 3.0 D&D DMG it says that as a rule of thumb one level = 1 year (mainly for world building), yet in BG in a matter of days (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little) you go from lvl 1 to level 5+, and in NWN you go from 1 to 10+ in one day. so depending on pacing it can be problematic to have any sort of build time (too short in game = no time to build, too long in game = irrelevant build time). it would be nice for a game to have a chapter broken up with some decent down time to show that you don't go from a complete wuss to demi god over night.

both the archer and kensai were ridiculously overpowered. as far as making ranged weapons balanced, just make it so that shields offer cover bonuses vs. ranged weapons, and have them be a parry tool for melee. so a big cumbersome shield is great against ranged opponents, but much less so against melee opponents. so if you only had to deal with melee a 2 hander was great, but if you had to face ranged then you are at a big disadvantage and need to take cover. as shields would make archers pretty useless at short ranges (normal IE ranges) just allow them to fire at longer ranges with penalties for range. next reduce damage so a light sling bullet does the same damage as a short bow as your base damage amount, then scale up from there with armour penetration and greater damage and such for better ranged weapons. so while a melee weapon does more damage on average, an archer would be hitting you well before you got in range, and so charging an archer is suicide without a shield unless you could get close via cover. finally have parry bonuses work against ranged weapons in melee, so that archers have big accuracy penalty in melee. so wolves, and rats and such at low levels would be cake with ranged weapons (so long as you have perception to see them at range), but goblins with shields would tear you apart. in other words uncivilized beasts and such would be easier to kill via ranged weapons than melee, but civilized things with shields would be a big problem. go into a dungeon where everything is going to be at close range? better bring powerful ranged weapons to have moderate dps as you won't get many shots before they close into melee, if you get any. of course as there are guns in the game, and the drawback of those is the reload time both guns and decent crossbows would be fairly viable in dungeons.

i think the key issue with activated abilities is that we look to much at dragon age for what it will be like. mages channeled their spells, during which time if disrupted the spell would fail and then it would go on CD wasting it, much like in D&D. the difference is that spending time disrupting spells at the expense of doing damage meant that your survival goes way up, but in dragon age the mage just casts another spell (which gets disrupted), and another in a big cycle, meaning that disrupting a mage and not doing any damage = lose, while in D&D = win. so in DA:O to deal with a mage you focus him and do as much damage as possible, just like any other battle (focus the threat), while in D&D you could change tactics and meet with greater success against a mage, this meant that mages were in fact allowed to be super powerful as they had this weakness to balance them out (ideally), in DA:O they lacked this weakness, which means balance wise they need to be just as big of a threat as a fighter, which means either the fighter needs to be beefed up or the mages gimped, and they went for the path of beefing up the fighters (and failed in my opinion). so the wrong way to do activated abilities is to do them in a way that reduces tactical options, increases the need to micromanage when your characters use abilities, makes all classes feel the same. avoid these pitfalls and you should do fine for activated abilities.

i thought the difference was kinda cool and a plus for the game, but the severely limited selection for races was pretty bad. pretty much if the races was a different size, then they weren't allowed to be female. as for the gender penalty and bonus, males were neutral, and the females were given modifiers, if you know how the caps work with bonuses this become an issue late in the game, so that means that a human male (base line, no modifiers) can get 20 in anything, the most important number as it gives bonuses (and strength keeps giving bonuses beyond 20). now a human female can get 20 in all but one stat, strength, she can of course even get to 21 in constitution (though that extra point doesn't mean much). a half orc negates the strength penalty, being the only female able to reach 20, ends up with 6 attribute bonuses, a male on the other hand gets 7 as strength keeps giving its bonus for every point after 20 as well as 20. as a result females are never equal (even if you give up your background to negate these you are missing your background). so while i applaud that they gave a mechanical difference between male and female, making the decision more than just eye candy, they didn't think it through and needed some polish to get it right (which is pretty much the whole bad point of arcanum, in bad need of polishing). had they sat down and thought about it, they could have made con worth double past 20 (as str was worth double past 19) or something that made it so that con could keep getting bonuses past 20, then changed it so that both genders either got bonuses or penalties (not both on one). now if they wanted to use up dev resources making equal content between the genders, they could have added some female races at this point so that they had an equal selection, but they could have stated that they didn't think it would have been worth it as most gamers are guys or something like that and it would have been fine.

with that whole clothing thing and climbing in trees thing you could do the whole blend into a wall thing. get the right clothes and click on a wall and your character disappears into the wall, when people start looking for you they just see the wall until they notice its you (big bonus to stealth, in exchange for being stationary). it would work the same for having camo and being in a bush (a more rl example), enemies being completely unaware of your existence until your spotted via high enough ticks. normally have a threshold where they don't care up to some fraction of ticks (like half or 3/4 or something), but if you are 'blended' then that is removed or raised significantly and you generate less ticks. as for being prone, maybe crossbows while being inferior on a damage per shot+reload rotation next to a bow, might be able to be shot from the prone position giving massive bonuses both offensively and defensively (at least against ranged). also while in a tree you can't really have proper posture so bows should take an accuracy penalty, while crossbows wouldn't. stuff like that would really make crossbows a good alternative to bows without the need for a feat to 'level the playing field' (like rapid reload). a quest where you have to kill someone you could get some special clothes and a crossbow then wait for him to show up, then take a shot with his guards around him and get a backstab bonus instantly killing him, then the guards would run around trying to find out where you are and you can lie still while the rest of the party attacks the guards nearby, causing them to all run over there, then you can sneak away or start attacking them from behind.

You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG. well first off i didn't say arcanum was bad, only that it is compared to BG which means that people end up thinking less of it. and as for rpgs that would have been considered good being in the gutter, if you thought that arcanum was just good when in a world without BG then you don't think too highly of it either, i was talking about pretty much all the rpgs that you can't think of because they flopped and died (okay maybe not, but they didn't see the kind of following previous RPGs of similar caliber, pre BG), arcanum would have been considered much better if it had come out 5 years prior, and probably would have had an equal or better reaction if it came out 5 years after. i am not saying those games aren't good (skyrim, etc.) but pretty much all of those lack a party (aside from grimrock, which is indie, like P:E), and the NPCs in the world pretty much all have something to say, like in BG how when you interacted with NPCs and they said things, instead of being eye candy. in fact you have done nothing but reinforce what i have said. you'd have to name a AAA title that lacked character interaction fluff like gossip and rumors from non essential NPCs or a strong narrative. yes arcanum had this, but what did the game offer other than this that was really good? pretty much just noncombat options in the game, which amounts to a few dialog choices, but nothing earth shattering. look at age of decadence,... arcanum isn't nearly as polarized as AoD, but for now they have the same failings: innovative mechanics without the content to support them. I might not remember Arcanum correctly after all this time, is it really the case that you could not talk to any non-essential people on the street? Even if not, many RPGs just have a few standard phrases that even different NPCs say repeatedly. That is not interaction that is a bunch of parrots walking around. Examples: Fallout3, The dark Eye: Drakensang. That might be slightly better than mute NPCs, but far from an essential feature. I don't get what you want to say with "find a game that ... lacked a strong narrative. yes, arcanum had this". Why should I offer you a comparable game if it isn't comparable to arcanum? It seems you try to put arcanum in a box together with failed RPGs, then point out that they all failed because they lack different "essential" features and thereby you showed something lacking in arcanum. Haven't tried Age of Decadence, can't comment on it, but what does that failure say about arcanum? I'm not sure. AoD doesn't sound like Arcanum at all Arcanum had the best world building together with torment, it had the best crafting system I ever saw, it had the best intro and the most fitting music of any RPG, see above poll for even more features I concur with. Its combat was lacking somewhat mostly due to balancing issues. It may have had non-essential features missing like chatty companions, but I don't remember missing them and I played Arcanum after BG. I'm simply not buying your sentence that these features you miss are *essential* (your words). They may be essential to you, granted. Obviously not to many other people or Arcanum wouldn't have such an enduring fan base. yes there are plenty of people wandering the street that you can't talk to, guards that can teach you stuff you can, some give gossip, but there are others you can't talk to. i didn't say it failed, i said that it isn't considered as good as it should have been due to the same reasons other rpgs failed that shouldn't have. ultima has a great world, and excellent crafting, in fact everything that ultima had arcanum pretty much beat, yet the ultima series is considered a greater classic than arcanum. why is this the case? bad combat, poor balance between skills, large tracts of useless empty land, limited non combat options. why is the manual a good source of what was done right in arcanum? well the world is nearly always something that is cited as a positive for the game, which the manual describes in a very well done and immersive manner. crafting? yep the manual describes that decently well, without having the dumpster dive for hours or save up for schematics (in other words if you want to know about how crafting works the manual does a very good job of it). music, well you don't have to play the game for that. intro cutscene? again you don't have to play the game for that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7jvpU6lR5E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy7H-AcpXJM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjbWuXZA5w&list=PL0D3CF5B4F2C44A2D so that takes care of half of what you cited as wy arcanum is good, the other half can be gained from reading the manual. again i am not saying that game is bad, in fact it is good, but it has some severe weaknesses. as for chatty companions, i never said anything about that, other people have been arguing that i have a problem with that, i said character interaction, which can be NPCs talking to each other, or you talking to NPCs, or reading signs, or picking flowers, etc. the point is that if combat sucks, then the game has to stand on noncombat almost alone, and so there is a greater burden on that side of things, in ultima you could chop down trees and fish and stuff. in arcanum you simply have a skill and a script behind the scenes does a check to see if it is high enough for a dialog option, which can get messed up due to previous actions/conversation (just look at chris's playthrough of the bandits at the bridge). here's a good review of the game even states that if you like older games (than when arcanum was released) you'll like arcanum, as long as you can get past its rough spots. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ4Bne_9YKA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AukXagFIEws when thinking of systems, try to make these fantastic, yet non magical, methods possible. i especially like the last geisha one. though given enough time, i'm sure she would have been noticed, in fact if all of the cutscenes were n the video you would have seen the ones where the ninja/general did notice and killed her. also keep in mind that different creatures have different primary senses, so just having vision on the perceiver would take into account dogs and such. creatures that glow would have a visual detection radii larger than their body as well. i'm under the impression that detection is at least partially rogue-like (i think that is the current buzz word for dynamic FoW), i also figured that the sneaker would have a small 'noise radii' (not just sound, but general perceptual stuff) and that when it would overlap with the detection radii you'd start collecting ticks, once full the perceiver would have enough info to become alert, that delay from full suspicion to alert would vary based on the perceiver's wisdom (or whatever) and different things that confuse the situation (like the rogue playing dead, or the rogue being some creature that the perceiver doesn't register as a creature). as for building levels, keep in mind that things aren't static, you can (and should) do things to alter the detection grid the guards create with their perception radii. on thing you could do is make a guard ai that moves towards areas of low perception in order to investigate thoroughly, and another that shies away from such places, as they are dangerous, then select the appropriate one for the guard. so if you use some water arrows to take out a torch, the guards will move to either investigate or keep themselves from getting stealth killed, which alters the detection grid, and if it was a carefully calculated high efficiency grid then there is now an opening (hopefully as the player you made the opening where you need it).

That example completely skirts the actual point of mine. Fire burns. If you touch it with bare flesh, it will burn your bare flesh. However, people being near fire don't necessarily stick their hands in fires. That is something you can intuitively know without any first-hand experience with fires. You are aware that you have direct control over your hands, and you know enough about fire to know it doesn't posses your mind and compel you to reach into it with your hands. Therefore, a good example would be "I knew of some people that built a fire, and then they reached into it and burned their hands. So, I think building fires just inherently results in burning your hands." To put it simply, whether or not a gameplay mechanic is fun is dependent upon MUCH more than simply the fact that it was attempted in the first place. Successful implementation is not needed to reveal the sheer possibility of its existence, just as knowing someone who built a fire and DIDN'T burn their hands isn't needed to know that one can build and light a fire without burning their hands in it. see you made the conclusion that reaching into fire = getting burnt. which isn't necessarily the case, if done right you can reach into fire just fine without getting burnt, which is why it is a good example. he has seen many the same result several times and thus assumes that the result is guaranteed, much like a lot of people and reaching into fire. he then advocates that people shouldn't reach into fire because you will get burned, when the conversation is about reaching into fire without getting burned. he is using his past experience to come to a conclusion about the subject matter at hand, not a related one (building the fire). the bulletproof vest analogy has him stating that the bullet proof vest probably wouldn't work, because those who wandered through a war zone got shot. he advocates not walking through the war zone, he thinks that a bullet proof vest is a good idea if one has to walk through the war zone, but why when you're probably going to get shot with or without the vest? as for the wood=fire example, he never talks about people doing things wrong (throwing fire at wood), in fact he operates as if everything is operating as expected, so unless people are supposed to throw fire at the wood it is an unrelated analogy. he mainly says that that aspect of the game doesn't seem balanced or fun, so while balancing it may work, it probably won't be worth it. so while you can find a way to reach into fire to do something, it isn't guaranteed and so why not just get some tongs and then not have to spend all that time preparing to reach into the fire in the first place? he hasn't disagreed with any of the suggestions, only that resources spent on them might not be the best use of resources. i agree that most suggestions are resource heavy solutions, which is why i suggested looking towards other genres with similar issues with theft and using a low resource solution that has worked elsewhere and adapting it to this genre. his judgement is sound, yet he has decided to avoid the problem and hopes it doesn't impact the areas he actually enjoys, instead of thinking of a solution or even taking the time to listen to some (which he admits isn't the most polite thing to do).

While I very much like the idea, might I ask how this system differentiates between investigation and discovery? It seems like they're either one in the same (a guard will NEVER be prompted to change his behavior and look/move in your direction based on hearing/seeing SOMEthing that he isn't sure yet is you, until you run out of ticks and he just-plain discovers you), or investigation negates the tick-pool system (you get to a certain number of ticks, or you get within a certain range, and the enemy turns to investigate a sound/image, even if you weren't moving or doing anything out of the ordinary... even if you were behind him). Does that make sense? Simple example: If you sneak up behind a guard, then just stand still, you shouldn't actually incur ANY ticks, until he turns around. If you're being perfectly still, you're not generating any sound. Or, is the tick system intended to come into play only once you're being investigated? If that's the case, then the only problem I see is the whole "why am I ticking ever-closer to detection if I'm hidden from view and completely still/silent, but simply happen to be within a certain distance of the target?" when you're behind him or whatnot. well people give off body heat and increase the moisture in the area near them (they are made of water). so if you get close to someone just by living you can be giving away your position. then add in little things like yawning, turning your head, stretching, etc. and you end up causing a change in states which may change your dead zone enough to start detecting someone glued to the back of your head. one of the roman emperors was paranoid and had polished marble put into most of his construction because it is shiny and people who are sneaking up on him alter the ambient light reflecting off the marble enough to warn him. i could see 1 point for movement each radii, +1 for each of the inner due to ambient factors (so staying still cuts discovery in less than half). as for instant discovery, perhaps instead +24 ticks/sec instead, thus someone not really alert might get jumped from in front if the rogue was super stealthy and quick. also perhaps each radii should be a set distance, and as the perception increases you gain extra radii, so you detect even faster close in at the same scaling (at say whenever you radius increases by the original amount, so if the starting radii is say 30ft for the outer circle and they all expand as you put skill points into perception, when the radii gets to 60ft. then you'd get another inner radii the same size as the original version, that detects at 7 ticks/sec in addition to the others at 1, 3, and 5.). that way highly perceptive people can't get jumped easily from behind around corners, without making them able to detect things through walls (which would get weird at high levels).

well given that you also get to customize your character, that means that character customization becomes much more restrictive. gaining one chance at backstab could easily be made up with better skill/feat choices, even more so if you grind slightly and use that extra ability for an extra level or during the fight. the inverse also becomes true, by specializing you are deciding to give up something else, which if a potion every now and again can partially or completely compensate for that trade off (say for noncom situations, like picking locks that are worth it via meta knowledge) diminishes that choice as a choice. so you still end up with OP vs. mundane, you've only upped the difficulty so that you need to be OP, and thus that same level of restriction has been applied to everything else as well.Huh? What are u talking about? This has nothing to do with being OP. I've played the same class with the same skill set on two different difficulties and it made a difference to think about the strategy of when to use potions. Pretty soon you're going to say that spells shouldn't be as versatile because they make your character OP... well i was talking about the need to make certain choices, instead of being free to choose which ever choice you want. so when you upped the difficulty did you have to use the potions, or could you sell them and buy a better sword or armour, resulting in equal difficulty throughout the game? if by using the sword or armour does it make grinding to a new level in order to make the harder battles easier more or less viable? are the harder battles still viable with the sword or armour instead of potions? in other words since potions boost performance for a short duration and sword or armour boost it permanently, they can't have the same level level of effect. therefore potions become needed to beat tougher enemies, unless you can grind up enough levels prior with the permanent bonuses of the equipment. this also means that during character creation combat ability can't be sacrificed for non combat ability unless you can grind up enough levels to compensate early on. now assuming you can grind levels to compensate, and the potions have a flat bonus (8HP healed, armour set to 00, etc.) they will become less valuable at higher levels, making grinding superior power wise until you reach the cutoff, at which point points spent during leveling as well as during character creation on combat ability become more important (think diablo 1 wizard syndrome). as for magic, there isn't a limited amount of castings in a game, and thus doesn't fall into this precise issue (though there is still the more there is the more mundane it is).

drew a blank, guessed, failed. thanks for correcting me (not sarcasm), i hate it when i get specifics that wrong. You sound like all RPGs have to have specific features or they have no chance. Which is simply not true. Look at Grimrock or Skyrim/FO3. No companion interaction, no preset history for your PC necessary and still a lot of people had fun with these games many years after the "revolution". Wasteland2 will also have blank party members for you to (role) play. And Arcanum (if we ignore the combat) was loved by many people exactly as it was, even after BG. There is more than one way to do an RPG. @Gromnir: Rulebooks were the rule before context-sensitive help was invented/possible. Whether that information is in the game as tooltips and in-game manual screens or externally as a book there are games that simply need it. Even with the best user interface you can't avoid having to read auxiliary information in games like Civilization or a war game for example. So when codex praises arcanum for needing a book they are probably not refering to the UI descriptions but to the underlying mechanics that are described in the manual. PS: I can't remember to have had any problems with Arcanums UI when I played it. It might be different if a camera is behind my head and I was forced to do it inbetween designing new games. well first off i didn't say arcanum was bad, only that it is compared to BG which means that people end up thinking less of it. and as for rpgs that would have been considered good being in the gutter, if you thought that arcanum was just good when in a world without BG then you don't think too highly of it either, i was talking about pretty much all the rpgs that you can't think of because they flopped and died (okay maybe not, but they didn't see the kind of following previous RPGs of similar caliber, pre BG), arcanum would have been considered much better if it had come out 5 years prior, and probably would have had an equal or better reaction if it came out 5 years after. i am not saying those games aren't good (skyrim, etc.) but pretty much all of those lack a party (aside from grimrock, which is indie, like P:E), and the NPCs in the world pretty much all have something to say, like in BG how when you interacted with NPCs and they said things, instead of being eye candy. in fact you have done nothing but reinforce what i have said. you'd have to name a AAA title that lacked character interaction fluff like gossip and rumors from non essential NPCs or a strong narrative. yes arcanum had this, but what did the game offer other than this that was really good? pretty much just noncombat options in the game, which amounts to a few dialog choices, but nothing earth shattering. look at age of decadence, the demo is out and combat is costly and hard. the big appeal is character interaction, and non combat options. a lot of people don't like it, the combat has only a few limited options with steep advancement. that same commitment to dialog options results in a relatively easy game. pretty much it ends up like arcanum, a lot of the game mechanics introduced for combat are good and innovative, yet due to the way that you have to approach it means that you don't notice the mechanics. the intricacies of the noncombat side of things becomes little more than play the bonuses game, which then you leverage those bonuses to offset the fact that you are avoiding innovative side of the game, and thus all the descriptors and text all boil down to what bonuses you get and how well it helps to avoid combat. arcanum isn't nearly as polarized as AoD, but for now they have the same failings: innovative mechanics without the content to support them.

read some history of a time when slings, bows and crossbows were regularly used as a primary weapon for militaries and you'll find that not all ranged weapons are accurately portrayed in DnD of any edition. now throw in the early DnD power curve, where 1st level characters sometimes weren't given a name as they might not survive the first encounter, and 5th level characters could take on whole dungeons solo. then boost the power of low level characters so they don't die quite so easy, and nerf high level characters so combat isn't such a cake walk, and you should start to find the issue with 2nd edition ADnD in a computerized combat heavy environment. DnD has expanded its options up until 4th edition, 3rd edition started to get refined via pathfinder. options are much harder to do in a computer environment, and thus while DnD has been getting refined it has been moving towards being clever to gain an advantage over good dice rolls. learning from DnD is great, even using DnD terms to describe the game is great, but using it for a cRPG leads to balance issues. as P:E isn't DnD we don't know if it will have balance issues like the other IE games that were built on DnD rule sets. of course they could have altered the number of opponents you faced, so if you faced 15 mice or something that were balanced for CR1 then you would do most of your fighting in melee, as you wouldn't be able to kill them all before they got to you, at which point the drawbacks of bows would play out.

indomitable - unrealistic, not sure what they were going for (other than making an generic 'stamina sink') powerful - partially realistic, just look at kendo rules. you need to strike hard enough to penetrate armor or it doesn't count, now look at kendo matches, when they do go for a hit that earns them points they tend to miss more than when they are just doing light strikes. so in real life doing a hard hit telegraphs your swing, which helps the person evade, though only doing hard hits is unrealistic. warcry - unrealistic, warcries/chants are to intimidate your enemy, if you sound powerful and your stomps are loud you may be heavier (denser) than you appear, which tells the enemy that you are a tougher opponent. sounds crazy, but it works, at least for old battles were you were close to the enemy. modern equivalent would be suppression effects, loud explosions and bullets whizzing by your head makes you want to not engage. the actual effect is because the combat mechanics aren't very robust in DA:O and they wanted to simulate psychological effects so that you weren't just sitting there hitting the enemy, which means it probably has something to do with why indomitable works the way it does, though not sure. in other words they wanted a complex combat system with lots of options to keep it from getting boring, but wanted a simple combat system so that people weren't intimidated with options. they wanted an smart and deliberate combat flow that rewarded smart decisions, yet wanted a fast paced action oriented combat that rewarded timing and micromanagement. this is the result of such decisions, not something in between, but something that fails at both. activated abilities aren't the problem, how they used it is. as for a game with modal abilities that is realistic, try way of the samurai. each sword had a stance that you used with it, this is effectively a modal ability, there are advantages and disadvantages to each stance, which is quite realistic. different stances were quicker at doing different strikes, meaning that they changed how you would fight depending on if you had a high guard or a low guard. the game lacked stamina, but used sword durability instead, high guard was generally a stronger stance, but the extra force meant that you were harder on your swords. thus cost and benefit, realistically done aside from the fact that you couldn't just change your stance when you wanted, which is pretty much what activated modal abilities are.

feel free to imagine an inserted eye-roll emoticon here if doing so better conveys our mixed derision and exasperation. *sigh* HA! Good Fun! ps unless you wanna get thread chopped, please add something thread-relevant to your posts. is bad form. example: arcanum, in addition to being a snooze-fest with wildly unbalanced combat mechanics, had no memorable characters. while you are right, you also have to realize that baldur's gate has revolutionized how we judge rpgs, after it had percolated and other rpgs that would have been considered fairly good were tossed in the gutter developers knew that character development and interaction was necessary for rgs from that point on. gone were the days of throwing a generic warrior, rogue and wizard together and then focussing on the lore, story, and mechanics. it also came at a time when publishers were putting pressure on developers to release an unfinished product so that it can get fixed later via patches on a shoestring budget. once you account for all of that you realize arcanum was a really good game, it just happened to be made at the wrong time. while i enjoy watching the playthroughs of arcanum by sawyer, he would have taken away much more by reading the rulebook (which he didn't do given his issues with the interface). it had great fluff and told how it was envisioned, which is really good, and has pretty much what was lacking from the game itself.

bad examples, here's a better one: more like if you watch other people stick their hands into fire and then getting burned, then you thinking that sticking your hands into fire will get you burned. in other words past experiences lend weight to an outcome, without any sort of experience to the contrary results in a conclusion being drawn that prevents further experimentation. if some random discussion talks about wrapping the hand in water soaked cloth, the person who has decided that hands always gets burned when sticking them into fire might just decide that it probably wouldn't work and thus not try it, while someone who was open to experimentation might be convinced with further discussion that the superior thermal qualities of oil might work better than water and try that under the assumption that it would work better than water.