jamoecw

i don't get people who play iron man mode on 'fresh' games that haven't been debugged by loads of people playing them. in my experience there is always something that needs to be patched either because it is game ending, or game breaking. beating a game on iron man mode when a glitch prevents you from dying is lame, likewise dying and losing your game progress due to a glitch is also lame.

This would indubitably be very bad design, and I don't think anyone would defend it. Regional pricing is bad in games, and it is being defended ITT. You have a lot of factors there. In your example, occasional purchases/ sales might be alright. But if the game allows for a lot of loot hoarding, 10% could be a lot, enough to "compel". Which the OP wants to blame entirely on people being OCD about stuff, while I say that if the game is challenging (as it arguably should be), all players will (have to) submit to this. As I have already said, you could simulate economy for the sake of simulating economy, without it affecting the player much. This would however, arguably, be a waste of ressources. "single player games don't need balance/ power cap", I've seen that before, and it never makes sense. It's an opinion you can subscribe to if you think games should fellate the player, but me and the OP seem to actually, in theory, be in agreement that this shouldn't be the case. I'm not going to hold two of these ludicrous conversations at the same time BTW the first point you hit on is if the situation is taken to the extreme, like your arguments about regional pricing. the second point has to do with the value of 10% better (than someone who is unlucky, not average mind you) being a lot, which in previous IE games wasn't. the difference between grades of equipment was pretty steep, so saving 10% wouldn't actually gain you much if anything. third point is all about perception, the difficulty of implementation might be trivial, and thus the small benefit helps to make the world feel believable (like birds or weather in IE games, bottles and other trash in FPS games, it is the little things that do this). fourth point i'd just have to refer you to BG, BG2, darklands, etc. those games were beatable when played without using every little thing to your advantage, but would allow great benefit if you did (soloing BG, BG2, accelerating through early phases of darklands, etc.). the problems usually come into play in SP games when you are penalized for not taking advantage of every little thing, which is different than MP games in that if a player gains an advantage he then operates at a higher level than others (doing everything if co op, making the game more difficult if VS). i am not saying it is never a problem, just that it tends to be far less of an issue than in MP games.

diablo did it. in fact most roguelike games do this, heck even DnD uses derived stats for some stuff. heck it is the basic idea of attributes in a stat based game.

well if they add in banter interactions based on background, then adventurer's hall fill ins won't be bland party members. so it would add more than just simple dialog option flavor. in DA:O my first play through i picked dwarven casteless, it played out fine in the beginning, but when i went back to the dwarves to get there support i had to choose between two people who were a part of groups that tried to kill me during the origin story. while i sat there next to the most legitimate option, but couldn't choose him due to him being a party member (which wasn't an issue for the humans since it was part of the main storyline). it was a forced pick between two evils situation, and the origin story gave a perspective that meant that i should have gone for some other third option (the first ever casteless grey warden deciding the future of all dwarves, definitely a time to shake things up). aside from a few dialog snippets that pop up, your origin didn't matter, in that situation i might as well have been a moleman from planet X. if there was anytime origins should have made a difference that was it. in short, if you have origins, use it, if you don't use it, then don't bother wasting the development time.

trial and error is involved in ferreting out the best trading opportunities in your idea as well. I'm not suggesting that you need to start over because you've once run into stronger enemies because games are usually not designed in such a way that you could get stuck in a rut there. I fear that a game with an arbitrary economy as you suggest could lead to this though. Without advance knowledge of the "good deals", you're likely to run out of funds, which means a dead end in quite a few RPGs. When you're out of funds and possibly badly equipped (not as well equipped as you could have been had you gotten better deals!) and in some place surrounded by wilderness, that is usually bad news (brick wall). In the case of simply going to the wrong area, you can possibly go somewhere else where it's more appropriate to be at your level. You aren't stuck (unless you've made bad choices in building your characters, as I admitted). the same extreme could be applied to enemies. you had 2 fighters in your party, but without a 3rd some critical battle at some point in the 3rd level of a dungeon means that you can't win and thus have to abandon it in hopes that at a higher level you can complete it with only 2 fighters. which is bad game design to need to be so strict on circumstances. the same is applied to regional pricing, vary it by too much and (not only unrealistic) you end up wasting all you money and can't afford the gear you should have for your level and thus end up struggling. if regional pricing varied by 5% in either direction of a standard price, then at most you will be only 10% down from knowing the optimal places. balance wise you should be only 5% off at most. this also means that if you know the optimal place you can only get a 5% boost to your gear. throw in report with merchants on top of that and the benefit/loss becomes even smaller. as the mining town still needs to feed its blacksmith, pay rent, etc. so the cost of a sword has a fairly set production cost, gaining better that shouldn't happen. as you 'waste' money to a merchant, he will give better deals for both buying and selling, so you should make up any losses in the long run. if you spread out your money then you don't get 'penalized' for spending every penny at the expensive merchant, and end up with average pricing. on the other hand any variables that add challenge to the game will make succeeding at those challenges cause the game to be easier, and failing at those challenges cause the game to be harder. streamlining a game is how many competitive games deal with the issue in order to broaden the balance to various skill levels, which tends to be simply dumbing things down. as it is a single player game, i don't see the highs being too high an issue, and if they throw in a mechanic to balance the lows, then it could work. in short if there are a low number of merchants, then it isn't a big deal, in fact theming the slight difference in prices based on regional tendencies would make the game more intuitive with less burden of knowledge, but if they have a large number of merchants and regions and such then it would become more of a hinderance. likewise report can be good if you are supposed to be returning to areas regularly, but if you are supposed to be going linearly through the game then it would be a hinderance.

Specialized merchants give you better deals because they're actually interested in the items your selling and do not want to buy them from other merchants. If a merchant mainly buys/sells spices, while the merchant next to him buys/sells everything, then adventurers would most likely sell all their stuff at the second merchant because it's less of a hassle. In order to get these spices then, the first merchant would have to buy them from the other merchant and he'd make a net loss compared to giving you a better price. (Also what jamoecw said. A general trader cannot be sure if the item will sell quickly or if it'll wind up collecting dust in a corner.) But of course, technically it doesn't make sense for any merchants other than pawnbrokers and more shady dealers to want to buy stuff from you unless there's a crisis. They should have their own connections and networks to keep them supplied and wouldn't trust somebody who waltzes into their shops with what might be stolen goods or bad quality goods. If anything, they might say "I'll do you a favor and buy those items from you, for a small price". And you're right of course that smiths wouldn't want to buy swords. In my opinion the only logical "specialized merchant" that would buy and sell swords in large quantities would be something like a specialized second hand store for adventurer's gear. You know, Ye Olde Adventurer's Shoppe. How that would realistically affect smiths I cannot say. (Just sayin', would've been great if durability was still in. If those "second hand traders" only sold damaged items, that could've balanced things. But in a world where you have a thriving second hand market for swords and armor, I cannot imagine why somebody would decide to become a smith.) back in the early 1900's you could make things and then go to a shop and get them to sell them for you if they thought it was worth it, the shops were sorta centers for commerce. as time went on the mentality that you had specific suppliers and that you didn't need to bother with small time hobbyists that may be in the transition to manufacturer (depending on how things went). my grandfather got started by making golf clubs, then went into manufacturing custom golf clubs, then into retail sporting goods. prior to the black plague there were distinct niches, and just showing up with gear to sell was quite shady. after the black plague showing up with a bunch of gear to sell wasn't suspect, as there was a shortage of skilled personnel, so there was a shortage of well crafted items. almost since the dawn of manufacturing there has been signature marks to identify who made what, so if your stuff is 200 years old then knowledgable merchants would know you didn't go out and rob some place. as population increases the knowledge needed to asses who made what increases, and it becomes too problematic to accept goods from strangers. as population decreases the problems of maintaining supply infrastructure increases. generally low population lends itself to criminal activity and legitimate opportunities, and higher population lends itself to reliability and stagnation.

the factor you're missing is time. a general store sells everyday items to a small group of people, a sword store will draw more people looking just for swords. so the turnaround time for the swords in their inventory is quicker. think of them not as converting a commodity to money, but inventory space. they draw people through advertising and knowledge. they protect themselves from bad investments with knowledge and margins. a general store in a peaceful land isn't going to know about swords, so knowledge is low, so they don't draw sword people, nor can they have narrow margins knowing that the sword is good. a good example is fins. in cold water you generally want open heel fins so that you can have booties to keep your feet warm. most people use fins in warm water. so a general store is used to seeing warm water fins for pools and trips to warm areas. a specialty store has both, but if they are in a colder clime they will probably have more open heel fins. if you are going on a trip, or are serious about fins you are going to want to go to a store that knows what you need, even if you do not. because people don't go to the general store for fins, the few fins they have sit on the shelf longer, so the store has to charge more to make up the difference, but there is a limit (it needs to fall in the 'worth it for the convenience' range). now if you have an old fin that is really good and you go to the general store, they only know that it is an old fin, they don't know that it is good. as they don't know they must assume the worst and low ball you in case it is a cheap old fin, while the specialty store might know what it is exactly (which also means that general stores shouldn't be able to identify things for you, or it should be more expensive), and thus they don't have to assume the worst. in real life if you are looking for a SCUBA fin you are going to go to a SCUBA store, and if you are looking for a swim fin you are going to go to a swim store, walmart has fins, but they are stocked to be as generic as possible, and thus probably aren't going to be as good as if you went to a specialty store (now throughout the bulk savings walmart gets and you'll find the specialty store is even cheaper, though walmart does have bulk pricing due to high inventory space/purchasing per personnel). now if you apply the turn around time logic to swords, then if the shop carries a lot of the sword you are trying to sell, then they probably sell that type often, and thus can offer the best price, while a sword that they do not stock will be the worst price (but still better than a general store as they would treat it as the cheapest type of sword). pawn shops are different still, most people go there when they need money, so they put up an item as collateral, hopefully to buy it back later. the pawnbroker then cares more about the people returning to retrieve their item, so he will want a much better item than the value is worth. in the end he is just a loan officer that uses inventory space instead of a leg breaker or a bank contract. he would be the worst to go to for offloading loot, but for shady dealings he only cares about the same person returning for the item, and thus shouldn't have to worry about selling illegal goods to people (just holding it for a while). he ought to sell stuff for cheap though, as he wants things out of his inventory space so he can loan out more money (so long as he makes money in the deal, again merchants tend not to sell at a loss).

well in games you generally are saving the world (or a small portion of it), so if yo murder some old ladies to help you along you end up neutral, not evil. most games get that wrong. heck they always forget that you are saving all their lives, merchants want you to give them money up front before you grab one of their swords and kill the men trying to kill the shop keeper. so most 'goodly' npcs are really just neutral, and the neutral ones are mildly evil. take mass effect for instance. things start killing human colony worlds, human government sends you out to deal with things, future UN sends you out to deal with things in secret. you save them all on a tight budget, then they discard you. you return and say **** is about to hit the fan, humans see something is going on, but they ignore your work so you turn to the mafia to save their lives. after you get proof they ignore you again, even though all trillions will die as a result. thus the galactic leaders knowingly helped in a genocidal war, they are evil. if you mugged every person you came across (game won't let you, but what if...) that would help you save the universe, and thus you would neutral at worst. in BG you are saving the whole region, you would have to be pretty evil to cause more harm than good, the slider doesn't go anywhere close enough to achieve such levels, thus you can't really be evil in BG. i could go on.

well given that you get a stronghold, i think that running that could be your 'job' you know outfitting, recruiting, and training troops for that big final battle or siege or some such. dealing with fellow nobles, saving villages, stuff like that would be quest like, but i don't see you chopping wood or fishing and such for your stronghold. aside from stronghold management i don't think jobs should play an important part.

retail is a difficult thing to simulate, both my father and grandfather owned retail stores. basically different merchants have different philosophies about how to make money. heck traveling the traveling salesman will go to the local shop in order to sell his wares to someone with money and the time to turn it into profit, then move on, those that buy directly from him are a relatively small portion of his income. he will be unlikely to lower his prices to undercut his best customer (the shop), so you need to have some sort of rapport with him (or browbeat him) in order to get better pricing, but if you do the potential savings is bigger (it is rare to sell at a loss). living where above or behind the shop used to be common, and it led to things like showing up in the dead of night and actually getting service (which isn't done in most games, unless they just stay behind the counter). if you do haggling and report right it could work out quite well. there is short term influence and long term influence, it takes quite a bit to sway short term influence, but repeated dealings would affect long term easier. ex # 1 - so say you show up in the middle of the day to buy gear and such, you go to the shop and haggle a bit and agree on a price for a new shield, then run off into a dungeon and return the next day in the middle of the night. you knock on the door, and the merchant tells you to wait while they open up, so they open up and there is a slight negative temporary influence due to the hour, but you unload 1/3 of his existing stock on him, and you don't haggle on each and every item, the slight long term influence from buying a shield and the lack of significant haggling this time causes him to throw in a few extra coppers on top of the total (the hour doesn't affect the influence enough to make any real difference this time). you thank him and rest at the inn. next time you are in town you see he has a nice sword, and you do some light haggling and get the price reduced a fair amount based by and large from the long term influence from the last transactions with him. you run off and get a substantial amount of good items and come back and off load them for decent profit based on the report you have been building, he sees you as a small time supplier at this point, and wants to keep you happy and productive. ex # 2 - this play through you show up in town in the middle of the day and you try the browbeating tactic to get a substantial deal on a shield, then run off into the dungeon and return in the middle of the night. knock on the door again, and he opens up again, this time due to the browbeating combined with the late night he doesn't bend with the light haggling, so you browbeat him again, he gives a bit and you get and even better deal than last time. you return after a while and see the nice sword again, this time he asks a huge sum of money, due to the poor long term influence, you haggle, to no avail, so you browbeat, he then drops the price down to a little over asking from last playthrough. you go and get all the good items from last playthrough and look to offload them at the same place, this time he gives you very little for the stuff, so you again browbeat him, he then throws you and your loot out of the shop, since he doesn't feel you are worth the trouble of dealing with. excessive haggling is bad, making him money is good. different merchants value different things, to some it is just a job, these won't do as much for you, and will have less flexible pricing (which is good for infrequent visits). to some it is how they live, these will do more for you and will have more flexible pricing (good for frequent, friendly visits). as for traveling merchants, they should come in both varieties, but the advantages would be slightly different: they need to sell things to shops, so a good report would get good prices for selling their goods, but much less so for buying your stuff. they would also be able to get their hands on certain items you want, but be less reliable for finding them (they travel a route after all). different places value different items differently, so that should influence the prices and such at least slightly. these are pretty bare bones for retail, there is a lot of other factors, but these should create an illusion better than most other rpgs of a retail environment.

has anyone thought that even if there are only 8 NPC party members, that there may be a few different generic banter stuff for adventurer's hall characters, so that they do in fact have some depth. personally i'd find this preferable to the bg npc situation: "thank you for saving my life, i owe you a debt. perhaps i could accompany you in order to repay it?" "of course, the more the merrier!" "i'm sorry you have too many people already, come back after you have kicked to the curb some other member that i owe my life to." "will do." *kicks out his oldest party member* "why have you forsaken me? we are both trying to save the sword coast from this vile plot, it will take me too long to form a party of my own, are you sure you want to do this?" "yep, totally, in fact if i need you i want to be able to find you right here in the middle of this very hostile hobgoblin country, so stay put." "roger that, i'll stay right here where i should be mauled over in a day or so on my own." *party alignment stays at 100* "hey new guy, time to join up!" "you won't regret this, i take will follow you no matter what, as it is a solemn pact of honour that must be adhered to. heck there are tales of a great hero that saved the life of one of us and ended up leading a small army by the end of his adventures." *leaves dedicated npc in wilderness to fend for themselves*

You don't need to know anything about making games. To be an authority on matters, you just need to know enough about playing them. Especially when dealing with developers who love worrying about "degenerate gameplay". Convoluted ranting to come here, but hopefully I'll make a point sometime in the next 1000 words. Where to begin. OK. Even if we LOVE what the developers are doing to eliminate "Degenerate Gameplay", they're still doing it wrong. A Game developer should be 100% focussed on creating a fun game, not check-mating bad player behavior at all costs. The latter is just a stupid, soulless approach to game creation. It's like a music artist who, instead of composing a masterpiece from his heart and soul, decides to just study up on his fanbase, and their tastes and habits, and then methodically creating a song that his "research" suggests will be successful. But forget about that pseudo-philosophical crap. Lets focus on the more practical. The given definition (given by Josh Sawyer, in fact) of "Degenerate Gameplay" is stuff like: 1) being able to Rest too often; 2) Being able to Save too often; 3) being able to Reload too often; 4) Min-maxing; 5) Meta-gaming. Now, I don't know about you, but I see these things as the gamer's choice. And its not up to the developer to decide how *I* play *MY* game. If I do 1-5 and end up ruining the experience for myself then that's my problem. However, if the developer wastes his development time creating a game with a billion fail-safes, a million gameplay limitations, and unshakeable, rigid "balance", all designed to ensure that we degenerates will never get the last laugh, then chances are they have just created an unnatural, mechanical thing that will not feel like a masterpiece at all, but a perfectly designed piece of.... unbreakable metal. And when that happens, it's THEIR fault. degenerative gameplay: 1) having to Rest too often; 2) having to Save too often; 3) having to Reload too often; 4) having to Min-max; 5) having to Meta-game. basically they took the old IE games, and looked at the typical stuff players did, and asked themselves why they did it? was it fun? did it give a meaningful edge gameplay wise? if it wasn't fun and it gave an edge they asked themselves, how do i change this to make it more fun? if it was fun and didn't give an edge they asked themselves, how do we reproduce this? if it was fun and it gave an edge they asked themselves, how do we mimic this? if it did neither they asked, can we cut this? if a rock star listens to his fans, he is considered in tune with the community. if he soullessly produces music based on studies of his fans, he will make hit singles and make tons of money. there is in fact a whole genre of this called boy bands, as well as most pop stars (not limited to pop stars though). the history of it is pretty fascinating if you read it, the general consensus is that it would suck, yet most of the time when enough resources are poured into them they make tons of money and gather a big following. the thing about obsidian though is that they have never done what studies say they should do, in fact this whole project is in contrast to what the studies say they should do (hence the need for kickstarter), so by that logic it may very well suck. Assuming a day/night cycle, how about.... the passage of time itself, and whatever in game consequences/effects come along with it, including healing. And/or the fatigue system if PE ends up having one. What? "per day" doesn't, and never has, mandated 24 hours. All 'per day' abilities in D&D and the IE games replenished after a proper, uninterupted 8 hours of rest actually in D&D if it said per day, then it was 24 hours, whether or not you rested (unless it said otherwise), while wizards were 8 hours of rest + x amount of time to prepare spells, sorcerers and bards tended to be just a full 8 hours of rest. they also had per week abilities. of course your DM could house rule anything he wanted to. in IE it was always 8 hours of rest, an engine limitation.

actually the most popular RTSs have more to do with 'mechanical' skill than positioning, turn based strategy on the other hand...

I would suggest the sword type in question would determine the result; a hand held weapon can realistically bring down an elephant. This has been done in the past. Shaka Zulu used to sponsor hunts; he slashed the hamstring from behind with an axe, leaving them open for a fatal blow to the side they couldn't reach. Of course it made the elephant quite furious ... I wouldn't recommend head on, but finesse and diversion tactics would be effective against any modern land animal (they did catch rhino too). Ultimately one-hit kills are fantasy, unless you use a gun ... or get really lucky with a spear. actually one hit kills with a gun are a fantasy as well, in modern warfare bullets are made to penetrate armour and bounce around, so as to spread out the damage, in vietnam there was a 99.9% survival rate for such injuries, it is higher today (amazingly). hunting bullets tend to do localized damage, which is where people get this fantasy, if you hit a vital organ they die, the kinetic force stuns the creature. so they live for a short time (high localized damage kills quicker, if it is a killing blow), but drop almost instantly. and the spear isn't any different than any other weapon that can impale things (like swords), so you can just get really lucky with anything pretty much and one hit kill things (which again doesn't mean an instant kill per se).

i haven't read the whole thread (unlike normal), but: the key problem with fully realistic combat systems is that people don't have a clue about real combat. if your impaled on a spear, you have anywhere from 20 secs to days before you die, half of that you can still fight almost at full effectiveness. fights are about getting the enemy to withdraw to heal the wounded, if you have either modern medicine, or magical healing characters dying would be quite remote, even though losing fights would be more likely. if ambushed the enemy gets to pick positioning, and gets first strike in, after that it is pretty even. so after the first attack your main guy needs medical attention or he's dead after the fight, but you could stay and duke it out. if you have armour then the odds of the enemy doing such a good job is far less. normal fighting (no poisons, magic, etc.), would make priority targets on the enemy things that allow them to keep fighting, such as legs and arms. if you can get a good hit on a leg with a sword you might break it even through the armour, or sever the muscle without, without both legs the enemy would have trouble standing let alone fighting. going for the torso, the best you could hope for is to take out the heart, causing death in about 20 secs, and incapacitation in less than 10, though if you withdraw out of the weapons range to draw out the fight at that point it is effective, otherwise you'll still have to fend him off for the next couple of rounds. poison affects a bodily function, so in essence if you 'save' then you suffer no ill effects, if you 'fail' you suffer minor effects (like being drunk off alcohol), if you 'critically fail' you are on death's door (alcohol poisoning, if untreated you die, though it will take at least a day), and if you 'massively fail' you die in the same time as a crit (20 secs to a few minutes), it would be determined after the poison circulates through your system (after a couple of rounds), and from then on it would diminish as your body processes it out (so there is a chance that you could live if on death's door if you are hardy enough and the poison is weak). magical healing would be OP, as it would mean that fatally wounded people could be saved rather easily (unless they have been decapitated, which is rarer than a crit dealing max damage), fights would last just as long, though the first round or two would determine who would win. a party of just clerics would be able to beat almost any other party. fireballs and such would be far weaker, explosions do damage based on conclusive force. in order to deal fire damage you need time for heat to transfer, if you have magical fire at 5k degrees fahrenheit (roughly double that of a blow torch), you would need about .15 secs to do any damage whatsoever, which means that the outer 1/3 would be perfectly safe (if a bit disorientation and scary). magic missile would be able to impact specific weak points and deliver fatal blows easily, so mages would be pretty uber if they got the first shot in, and the enemy isn't wearing any armour. though out of combat mages making magical equipment would be far more helpful (magical armour that has no weak spots). so in short magic becomes much better, but mainly for logistics, and death becomes much rarer, and losing battles becomes more frequent. unless you scrap magic, then losses increase, deaths also increase slightly but mainly outside of combat.

yojimbo couldn't beat too many people at once, he had to use tricks and tactics in order to beat superior numbers, if two people attacked him and he relied on just speed and such to win he probably would win, but 3 was pushing it, 4 was out of his league for sure, yet he was able to take on a whole town full of bandits, and beat them all. it is less for the most part, there are certain levels of certain classes that gained a huge boost to power, easily doubling in the right circumstance. it is widely considered a failing point of DnD (hence pathfinder). I suppose not. But what kind of skill difference would succeeding in that require and what constitutes a decently capable? My way of thinking would be that a world champion should be, levelwise, in single digits, real good but not above human standards. A high level adventurers would start breaking those barriers of what's humanly possible. So.. would a 6th level fighter beat 16 of 2nd or 3rd level fighters going 4 at a time? I wouldn't think so, I'd say the fighter would have better odds than the boxer though. Guess the real question is: How many low level opponents should the best swordsman in PE world be able to face (and win instead of dying horribly) at one time. Is the answer 2 and he's overpowered facing 3 at a time? Or will he kill 300 spartans without breaking a sweat. I'm suggesting a real world scenario, where a heavyweight champion meets 5 muggers (no knives of guns) in an alleyway. I'd guess the boxer would have a decent chance of getting away victorious. But I'm not sure, havent tried it, no combat experience. I'm further suggesting the fantasy game champion should have way higher level of capability than the best human in real life. in real life a special forces unit can take on any number of opponents, the question isn't numbers, but force density. if you need to reach a certain spot and the enemy have formed a low density line through a city, you could fire a burst, knowing that they will suppress and maneuver around to flank you. instead of staying put after the first shot, you pull back and circle around to hit the forces shifting positions to cover the new gap you can win easily and quickly, then proceed to suppress and move through the gap, then you can move quickly to either reach a new position or to reach your objective. if you had to kill everyone, you would reposition to ambush the forces trying to keep you from reaching whatever they think you are going after. if everytime you level up you get some new way of doing something you could feel like you double in power every time you level up, while only gaining 10%. think of it like a lvl 5 fighter using a sword and shield gaining the ability to shield bash to stun his opponent very briefly, now if he faces an opponent that uses agility in conjunction with armour to keep from getting damaged you can shield bash him which isn't diminished by armour, which stuns (removes dex to AC) long enough for you to get in a good hit with your sword, almost like you were much better at swinging a sword, but instead you just had a different option up your sleeve against that type of opponent. against a light and nimble thief it wouldn't really be all that helpful (low chance to hit), so you are just 10% better upon leveling up against that opponent, unless you pick an ability like grapple or something. so sorta like the ranger's favored enemy thing, but specific to an enemy per se, just something to alter the tactical situation.

if you have to loot trash bins to stay alive, then there is an issue with the loot system. if you loot trash bins and become a millionaire, then there is an issue with the loot system. if you face dozens of enemies with equipment you'd like to use and don't get any of it just because, there is an issue with the drop mechanics. if you face dozens of enemies that don't use the equipment that they would like to use, there is an issue with the drop mechanics. if at the end of a game you have no room in your inventory due to needed 'junk', then there is an issue with the inventory system. if you have been looting everything literally possible and hoarding it, and never have to think about space, then there is an issue with the inventory system. as long as these are taken into consideration, it'll be fine. P.S. infinite doesn't necessarily mean you don't have to worry about space (like if there is only so much you can have with you at any given time, as proposed). it also doesn't mean that you can't 'run out of room' in your inventory (think planescape torment with the junk item being useful only if it is with you at the time).

to keep from cover from being OP you could have things like lightning bolts actually increase the chance to hit when someone is in cover. after all that big burly fighter in front of you decreases the resistance to the path to you. then you add in cloud effects that aren't blocked by cover and you have a pseudo rock paper scissors thing going on. i don't have the time to go into the physics of it, but even plastic can facilitate the flow of high voltages, so having you blockers with high lightning resist wouldn't make them less of a detriment for lightning attacks.

i'll answer with a video i found: irenicus decides to go with them only do to the time it would take to deal with all of them, clearly he has been fighting for some time, and the mages you see him kill are most likely (due to the damage to the environment) far weaker than what he was facing earlier. you don't know that he is running the place (i never mentioned this), but you do know that the prison is less inconvenient to his goal (which involves torture and possibly the death of your sister). it really sets a tone of urgency, when i first played this game i wondered why i couldn't take the fight to the people who were kidnapping my sister (lawfully or not), after all the cowled wizards seem like less of an obstacle than paying someone (a shady someone t that) a sizable fraction of the cities net income (40 lbs of platinum or ~.1% of 48 years of the western hemisphere's production on earth). heck i imagined i would have to hack my way through their guild just to get to the dungeon to find that they had escaped. instead i ran a theater (maybe i didn't run a theater that playthrough, but you get my point).

i got to go with trashman on this one, binary is cool and all, but **** is perfect.

there was a village that managed to subdue a small viking raiding party, they placed those they captured in their giant clay communal oven (which was common back then) as a makeshift jail cell. one of the vikings had a bone disease that was aggravated by the heat of being in a hot box. due to the suffering he was feeling he smashed through the wall and rallied the vikings to victory. this is a real story that some think is how we came to view the shirtless, rage filled viking berserkers. in essence his pain led him to be able to do what a normal person could not. that is a rage counter (at least how it is normally perceived as), pain that allows you to do more than a normal, well disciplined fighter (which is what berserkers really were). having discipline is about doing things everyday that is unpleasant, but achieves some greater goal. taking damage in a fight does not show discipline, and being able to achieve more by being hurt in a fight typically shows a lack of discipline. i think the class is fine, i think that the typical names don't actually fit what they typically represent, i think that a monk isn't too bad of a name (depending on lore it could be better than barbarian, which means foreigner). it is opposite from what is typically used so most people will have an issue with it (i did until i thought about it quite a bit).

perceived strength as well, if you put a city in a desert and make tons of money some people with think it is because you put it in a desert, or that there is some hidden thing that helps make you money there, so they will want to take it, even if all it was was really good administration.

You will find that in combat with weapons, and with helmets, grabbing someones hair is very, very, very, very difficult. Long hair can go into your eyes, but there are simple ways to fix that. The part of the body that is easiest to hit and will have most attention is the torso. Always was, always will. romans mandated shaved heads due to some of their enemies getting in close and pulling their hair to expose their neck and then slice it. helmets were modified and reinforced due to some of their enemies having weapons that manage to cut through them. lots of extra modifications and reinforcements to areas that weren't the torso occurred due to different cultures using different weapons and tactics that increased the risk to those areas. large shields also help to protect the torso more than any other region. culturally things occurred and were effective that goes against our understanding of warfare due to the fact that our warfare evolved from roman warfare (assuming you are from the western world).

my problem with BG2's side quests was that you got almost all of them right after your sister gets taken by some unknown authority, to be brought to a place that is nearly impossible to get to (let alone back out), along with the person who has been mercilessly torturing her, and also happens to think imprisonment will just slow him down in his objective to do some unknown thing involving her torture. therefore you know that the longer you wait the greater the chance that he will have done something to either kill her, torture her more, or leave to some place that is even harder to get to. after this happens you are dropped in a place that has people with their own problems, and your task is to get a bunch of money to get taken to this place. so far it is ok, but then you get every sort of side quest under the sun, from rescuing children, to helping to make a golem. there is no option to demand her release from the authorities, or to even steal from the leaders who have imprisoned her. in essence while your sister is possibly dying, you are running around rescuing kittens from trees for a dollar so that you can eventually amass 100 billion dollars so that you can pay for a bus ride to fort knox. the side quests are great and varied if the plot was different, having options to deal with the problem is fine, but the plot doesn't fit the 'let's kick back and stay in the city for a bit' sort of attitude you have in chapter 2, heck you even take up a residence that requires your constant attention. if your lawful you would contact the authorities and plead your case, and legally fight for her release (politics galore), if you are evil you may just leave there to fend for herself, and thus the whole plot falls apart. the plot is for chaotic good/neutral only, while mechanics favor lawful good alignment. the components by themselves are good, they just don't fit together.

That's quite normal. Different games (and books and all kinds of medias and things) satisfy us in different ways. You don't play Duke Nukem for deep plot and character, just like you don't play Secret of Monkey Island for fast action. Same days you feel liek blasting s*** up with minimal thought involved. Sometimes you want something deeper. Sometimes you want to escape to a different world. Just like sometimes you got a craving for something fruity/sweet, or maybe something very specific. In general, trying to generalize and trying to find a single unifying factor for why you like X - it's doomed to fail, becasue there isn't one. don't forget the babes, duke nukem wouldn't be complete without them.