cleric Nemir

All hail Agiel, a Hero, a Legend. You have persuaded me to leave in a more flashing manner. There, considering how my "existence" here is obstructing the point of this forum, I will remove myself from it. Have a nice eternity.

I would like more than anything for this to be the potential truth, but all so far indicates they don't die, just maimed and left at fixed value of 0HP until combat is over. Difficulty setting/toggle, or both, for the actual death option.

I'm really more displeased here that "maimed being presented as an untouchable state" is not done as something similar to "maimed and slowly dying - needs to be stabilized". Look at Temple of Elemental evil and the combat in there. Elements of that game's combat system can be used as working examples, even if it's turn-based, there's existing ideas that are good, and can surely be implemented in some form to a RTwP game. There 's other ways to do this, I strongly think that there could be other solutions instead of those now planned. I would be perfectly fine with "revive his stamina" that is acyually "you stabilized his condition" for example, provided that the maimed is still vulnerable to AoE and can be coup-de-grace'd if rest of the party doesn't make sure he is out of danger. Fighter positioning near to distract, spells like Sanctuary and Resilient sphere,etc. I'm not saying that enemies should be scripted to continue attacking him while maimed; "KO all - then kill'em" would be fine model of AI behavior imo, but the feeling of real threat is lacking if the enemy cannot do diddly-squat to the PE's maimed one that is unkillable, in my perception of rpg combat. Bottom point is I cannot enjoy such a game, it's not a simple thing of toggling death "on" for me. Yes, you are trying your best to present me their design as a valid one and not all that different, but I cannot view it as such, because I immersion-wise feel better with the IE one's. I can only thank you for trying, and sticking with the debate, you and all others that did. Do you agree that we end this? I will be left to my worries until I see some videos on combat and then reconsider those worries under a video example, and we can go back to other topics. ("I thought you'd never ask" and lets wrap it?).

I am not trying to get worshipers of "how grand and awesome me and my thinking and gaming is", I am trying to explain how and why am I shocked, I'm always open for discussion of my view, but I will defend it, not brick-wall in front of it. I will always defend a view of mine, and if someone doesn't want to debate because they don't give a fuk what I think, then I can be at peace knowing that. So, are you interested in a debate on my views or not? If not,then why are we typing this to each other, you and me?

It's a game with a save/load system. And if I am reloading whole day like an idiot on vanilla, then the reasons it is so are pretty much clear. It is either the fact that I suck very much, or the fact that game is so "good" that it isn't my fault at all. Now,in all my plays and replays of the oldies, and I am not counting the noob period here, I have moderately-to-almost-none reloaded my saves in them on vanilla, but more important to me seems the fact that almost every time I needed to reload I found it reasonable. My spellsets were inappropriate, my positioning flawed, weapons and gear ineffective, my opponents - which I always welcome in a game - have been VERY strong, and I needed to think of what to do, how to approach the fight,etc. In my particular case, it rarely pissed me off that I had to reload a save in a game I consider good, but yes - there were plenty situations that I found to be a game's problem, or I can imagine them as a problem to some type of players. That sounds like it needs balance, not a "begin from scrap" design. Truth is,when the topic concerns those good old games ( trademark abuse? ), they are generally all viewed as good and are very popular up to this day, in and beyond this forum. Point of my posts,Lephys,is why is now a PE's vanilla being redesigned in such a strange way? I find the concept of toggleable death, death as an "ingame character death that we all were perfectly normal with in vanilla numerous times in oldies" death to be very, very - strange. I so far used expressions like absurd, immersion-breaking, nonsense, mayhap even thrown a curse or two, because I cannot comprehend their decision to change the game's design into one that is having unkillable player characters per se - 'cause it's a load of crap. Why is change going in that direction at all? I guess I never mentioned that I consider Dragon Age a load of crap also, have I? Nothing can ever persuade me that this direction is a good thing,Lephys. Because it's crap,sounds crap, and it will most certainly look craplike. "They made our PCs unkillable in order to balance the game, but if you're feeling mighty you can set so they can actually be killed". Does that sound crap or is it just me, Lephys? Try to say it to someone unfamiliar with the game development, but familiar with the oldies. Please. Do just that. Don't forget to show that person the announcements of PE before you do it, so he can hope some. One more thing - I am still not sure why do you people always take an example of "one/more PC died, continue the game and suffer". I never suggested such thing, because when I pick my party members I usually like them, making sure they won't die, and if they do - I reload. And try my best to make it not happen again, thus learning and getting better in the game. It's something quite normal for a game with save/load to have as a point of it. Are you people trying to count in the imaginary 1% "hardcore" players that would resist the urge to load a save, and are actually worrying they suffer for it? Which exactly of the old games had this in mind, ever? Why would any previous game address such "grand" percentage players at all? Who even mentioned such need here? Until there comes a gameplay video that can show me it isn't looking and feeling as stupid as it sounds, I will not be persuaded that things are fine. Because PE is currently developing around the stupidest thing I have ever heard - a disposal of the very idea of player character death in combat. Death's on Expert mode. If you do set it on, you are punishing yourself. In a fantasy cRPG that is to be a successor of old ones. I'm loosing link between PE and the oldies just by saying those sentences outloud.

Well, lets think again, if you just reload after a death, you have an easier game play than someone who plays on with a maimed character. You agree? So something isn't right if the first play style is called the hardcore one. So either the developers didn't think at all when they made that comment or they were assuming that when you play with death enabled you really want death and don't want to reload. I.e. someone who reloads should play with maimed instead so that he doesn't need the whimpy reload anymore and really hardcore players turn death on. In other words, when the developers talked of hardcore they probably meant real hardcore, not the mass of players that were as whimpy in BGs times as they are now, including you and me. NO! You can have a maimed character that will EVENTUALLY end up dead if you do not ACT. You can have him slowly dying, in a sort of "bleeding to death" way we mentioned. But that turned into a "you could've had", because they decided to rip you off of means to stabilize that character's "bleeding to death" state and regenerate him enough hp that he can remain safe. This can be done different yet equally good in many,many ways, with your actions as a player and AI actions properly balanced, AND turn out tactically appealing. Plus,no - I am not against the penalties that would be applied to that character as teknoman2 believes, I consider that idea fukin briliant. I also only once specifically said that, in so far seen cRPGs, the death of a PC isn't necessarily a game-over situation, and that is bloody true - because you had means of raising that dead fuker back to life. Be it item, spell or a trip to the God's Pocket Monastery. Jesus. For all that is good and just, why is the main argument you two have a NO RELOAD paradise of a game ?? You cannot possibly mean to say that you expect a save/load system game, ANY game out of an sea of them you ever saw in your life, to be so friendly to you it challenges you in no way to reload a fukin save ? Really, guys ?? Dafuq??? Let me tell you how I as a long-term gamer react to such a game that makes me die on occasions. I say that sorta game is fricking awesome. And we all here died our share from BG's over IWD's,Fallouts and whatnot. Now, when I would sit to a game where I enter combat, get maimed and then watch as my character is invulnerable in that maimed state, I'd go fukin bananas. Because I am not playin an undying superhero that can go around and BANG/POW/KHA-SPLAT everything else to death like a Marvel character, I do not just keep calm and say "Yep, should'd hard-mode dis" ,carry on; I take that CD out and hurl it like a motherfukin diskos. Why? Because I am expecting a good and persuasive continuation to our beloved genre of games. Familiar one, at least. I am literally AMAZED that this forum isn't in a civil war-state over this. I truly and full-heartedly am a m a z e d. Also teknoman: I haven't even began to touch the subject of my OWN worries, worries over how the fist-fukin father of fuker am I to play my favorite class roll inthere and what will it look like. You wanna know how I feel when thinking about playing a priest inthere? I feel like there's a huge Obsidian foot up my ass. And you can feel free to guess why. I have managed my best to swallow these new concepts so far because I still (barely) manage have hope within me, but this is simply absurd. I can pull out one last straw here and say that I am prepared to wait and see some videos on this until "all my hope dies", because current state of their design will not make me feel bad or wrong about my opinion.

For 99% it's the latter. Exactly my point, I question if people REALLY restart an game after spending 50 hours + playing just because they got killed. This would be the ultimate exercise in futility for me Of course that noone was doing that but a sadistic few, and I sure wasn't one of them. Is it late to mention again that we had various other ways to prevent permadeath in the games before this one, so you already had a set of chances in which you could prolong such a "nuisance" that dying surely is? There already was the "equivalent of three lives" all along,cmon. Cause there was healing & resurrection trough spells or items, and unique heavy buffing. So if it wasn't broken,why are they fixing it? (SIGH. No, I mean "broken" as in "non functional" - NOT "flawed,but operational"", and "fixing" as in "repairing" - NOT "starting from scratch") Why did the need to improve turned into a rework that looks like this: We added a new element, Stamina, and we thrown healing and resurrection out. Instakills? Vorpal swords? We consider them a nuisance, screw those. Wait.. with no healing and resurrection, how do we make actual dying situation less of a problem inthere? We'll remove it. And those "punks" that wanna get sadistic, NOT the imaginary 1% that continues the game when one of the companions is dead - but those punks that were perfectly normal with: (Sensuki again - he's better with words than me, ergo the quotes) "I do not mind reloading if a character dies, that has been the acceptable norm for me in games since I started playing RPGs. If a character of yours gets killed, it simply means that you made a mistake and need to play better. One could argue that a lot of the stuff in the BG & IWDs revolved around a bit of a dice roll (such as saves) but most of the time you had to interrupt casters casting save or die spells or prepare the correct protective spells in advance. Some people find this tedious but I just accepted it as the standard, I do not have a problem with it as such.",for those gamers we have a toggle of PC death/game mode that gives 'em their coveted reloads and immersion-friendly deaths, lulz, have fun healing that if you fail at the first go. "It's good that we have options.", Sensuki concludes. Though I generally support his post's view, I must add that we need to ask ourselves how far must it go? My previous, most recent post was a lame joke, but now I am serious. I do not think that developers are doing it right and that they can surely do better. Let me answer the jethro's question: So where do you see your very subjective "hardcore" in this mass of reloaders and raise-deaders? I DO NOT SEE IT. THAT WAS MY JOKE'S POINT. WHAT WAS ONCE NORMAL IS BEING MADE INTO A HARDCORE OVER THE YEARS. I even hate the whole - hard/soft core separations to begin with. But I didn't invented the damn separation, and the "evolution" of cRPGs is adjusting the slider on it not towards hard or soft in particular, but moving it altogether towards BAD. In My H fukin O.

Hey guys, stop playing games wrooooooooong! I've grown to like Lephys's "slap both b*tches" style more than anyone else's, sorreh.

Well, ladi-fukin-da. I ain't even mad anymore.

Disappointed with the re-edition of Helsing, thrilled with the one on Berserk. I still consider Berserk as the one with the ultimate story. If just manga was released in a pace that isn't "chapter -lightyear- chapter"... Shingeki no Kyojin? I'm finding manga more dramatic than anime. Never stopped watchin One piece and Naruto, and whenever I feel funny about the fact that I'm bloody 29 y.o. and watchin 'em - one episode later and I'm crying/laughing out loud, deeply drawn in that magic. Recently watched a strangely appealing anime called Baccano !. I recommend dis, it is short, 13 episodes + 3 specials that follow to the story. Music is great also. Currently busy with Tower of god, a Korean manhva that has the classic left-to-right direction you read it. I cannot recommend this enough, it is brilliant. Good thread,btw.

ACAB. No exceptions.

"maiming is like a less permanent death for the non hardcore gamers" . Oh,wow. So the Day has finally come.. Look on their work ye mighty, and despair; the legendary Obsidian made player character death a hardcore thing. I just know I'm going to have nightmares about this one. Death of the PC is hardcore now. Death of the PC is.. hardcore.. Death.. of the PC.. is hardcore.. Death.. PC.. hardcore..

First Scenario: PCs get maimed when they reach 0 HP and are out of the fight. If the whole group reaches 0 HP, the game ends -> Reload. Summarize: Fail. Answer: When only one PC is at 0 HP there is no "game over" message. If the reduced group still wins the fight, this one PC obviously has got wounds that put him out of the fight but didn't kill him. No need to reload. (Does this answer anything you tried to say?) Not really. Two things: if only one PC dies in the previous games (opposed to what's now a "reaches 0 hp") , you do not necessarily have a game over, and I didn't started this by assuming that it does. Best example (most logical one) is that character is slowly "bleeding to death", imo. And you can manage to get to save him nevertheless. Second, it is rumored that when a main PC gets maimed,you do have a game over. That would be even worse (imo), and I want to get as many info on this as I can here. But - when all of the party is KO'd, it is equal to all party died/left to bleed. It doesn't justify their decision that an unconscious character is to be unkillable, or to sum it: I see no reason for a character not to be able to die, and yet they want to present a "vanilla" where this is the case. Summarize: Why no bleeding to final death then? Bleeding is a nice way to turn up the tension. The player gets not only the penalty of having to fight with one man less but also the penalty of having to disengage a second character to heal that one. And it breaks immersion. Answer: Difficulty can be adjusted. Tension will also be high if most of your party blacked out and your last man standing wins (or not). But sure, bleeding is a nice mechanic, beta will show how good PE works without it (but lots of other RPGs did quite well without it by the way). Immersion? Now this is really far-fetched. You don't blink an eye if your fighter is battling at 100% effectiveness while at 1 HP and is instantly out and bleeding like a pig when at 0 HP? But a guy passed out with wounds that would need a lot longer than a few minutes to kill you guy and therefore don't need to be simulated breaks your immersion? RPG combat is an approximation and people have no problem to turn a blind eye if it is fun. Select your eye (or select death, that's why it is an option) My point was to say that having unkillable characters in a fight is very immersion-breaking. Again-in my opinion. I never suggested that so far solutions (your fighter at 1 HP example) is something that I like. My overall conclusion to the devs decision to make dying a selected thing is that it is bad, and that I feel concerned that it will appear bad to anyone that plays it "vanilla" way. Surely there must be other ways to this,no? Summarize: I might want to play with death enabled, but the option menu is just one mouse click away and could lead me to change it to maim-mode. Answer: Really? What about going into options and changing the game to "super easy"? Same problem. What about "save until you succeed with the difficulty check" that gets you the uber-sword ? Same problem. What about reading in the internet which house you have to burglar to get that +3 amulet? Same problem. You have to deal with your weak mind yourself, as it always was in single-player games. You have a good point here. I mentioned it only because it felt like a "drop that spilled the cup" when I think of devs decisions. But you're right, nevertheless.

So, (and this is now considered final,right?) by default the maimed character is ignored, and AoE can suck it. I know he doesn't just get up without suffering penalties,and that regenerating stamina can get him up, no HP regen, and I just wanted to be clear on the fact that, while he's maimed, he is beyond interest of enemies plus cannot be further damaged than that. Thank you. Now I can finally say that I find this very bad as a design - regardless of the fact that I can switch it on/off or just go play in Expert,since I don't like it in "vanilla". If that is what the perpetually discussed "goal" of the devs will look like when the game comes out and one sits to play it on Normal, then I don't like it one single bit.

Anyway, if someone, anyone, can answer me how hostile environment reacts to a maimed character, I might get a better picture on what's worrying me here. If I can hear more details on that situation, I could draw my conclusion whether it is a good design against the problem of so-called "save scumming", because right know I am not convinced that it is. Thanks in advance? EDIT: This. The "-Death vs. Maiming" under "Combat options:". I would give my all right now to see more details about this.

I can live with that. Tried to say something meaningful, if it's viewed as a fail, then ok. Carry on.

By default, party members who fall in combat receive long-lasting injuries the decrease their effectiveness for some time. There is an optional difficulty setting that adds on permadeath. That's is something that bothers me much more than all this tactic/strategy/normalization/chances of this and that. I'll try to be even more clear with what my point is here. If, at some spot, in a gameplay where difficulty setting for death is turned off, our whole party is knocked out or maimed, do we have a message on the screen that says "game over" ? This is extremely relevant to any combat situation. Why? Because,if there is, then: 1. Why on earth have we no death of a player character? It results in a same "game over" message. You have to reload. And it drags along the validation of ressurections, healings, and instakills. 2. If we can continue the fight with a maimed character lying there immune to all around, then excuse me for noticing, but THAT is what sounds heavily cheap to begin with. There is no pressure on us when his HP reaches 0, because - lol: he cannot die. There's no time-ticking health drop,no coup-de -grace,AoE to worry about anymore,and ALL IS GOOD ??? I like to be open to new ideas, but if I was to see a display of such combat situation, I would very much turned around and walk away. My immersion would break like a captain Ugly's mirror. 3. If the option for death is toggled ingame,than let me ask any one of you who played a Bethesda game: How many times have you `tgm ? Ex: I have to: go job/out/sleep/etc. ,lemme just god-up a sec and be quick and dominant about dis. Immersion down the drain. If it is reserved to a game difficulty mode, then we have an two-faced game that, with this, PROVES itself to be striving to by default be a failsafe one. AND doing it wrong. So if any this is not viewed by anyone as a primary discussion point to all the talks on combat,then I shall politely leave this thread. It was a troll thread to begin with,but turned somewhat interesting briefly.

Can our character or a companion even die in the PE ? Cause if it cannot as they say, what happens when, example, a party member is maimed/knocked out? He will not be coup-de-grace'd, so does enemy lost interest in him? Does he become temporary invulnerable to any AoE damage and untargetable? Just lying there until someone restores his stamina, and he jumps back up like no fireballs hit the spot where he lay? Or until the combat ends, and then he just gets up and says "PHEW, glad that was over". With not only instakill spells, vorpal swords and such out of the picture, but player/party member's death, how can anything be appealing in such combat ? "Tactics get better when you can't die", that would be a great final one.

I think you just made a damn fine example . The task is there as a final goal, it isn't forcing the player and you can play trough it the way you really want. Hungry is at war, people are starving - choose your approach. You're a barbarian type: you go str8 to fight that war. If you are a rogue - plunder the neighbors. You're a knight type, but a pacifist one: you enter the role of a caravan defender while starving people are being evacuated, and defend the new settlement in a foreign environment. Druid? Commune with the land itself to find the means of making it farm-friendly. Etc. More than enough space left for side quests and arch-enemies. Again,major plus in that you play trough it the way you feel suits you, for the entire duration of the game, without being forced to just participate in that war, because war. And even wars can be resolved in many different ways without one being directly in it. It really is a good example on how a game can offer freedom of choice with a fixed goal in the background, JFSOCC. I'm glad I asked.

Your post,first on this page,proposes a task-like climactic battle,but it isn't all that different than "fighting ultimate evils". Messier's post below shows some fine examples.. that aren't all that different except for that "kill everyone",when you think of it. It's still You vs. big bad enemy/group. All the choices that are really relevant are left for that moment,which kinda nulls the whole process of getting there,IMO. You're right, my examples were in a different direction. I still think a grand task is something you can do. It might involve no combat at all. two different alternative solutions, do not confuse. Completing a task at ending sounds like something heavily story driven,which means, if I understood it, there's a background story to it, furthermore suggesting some major event or such, as why you are to perform that task. Yes,it can be different than facing ending evil characters, with a good story and all, but linearity is still very present. You get to choose a solution to that task, so it's another choice that comes down at the end. Linearity is my real problem here. I would rather have heavy choices set to us before so we can reach different endings entirely, not one single situation set by some major story as an ending one. Still,give me an example of your task ending, so I can get a better picture, if it's not too much to ask. I'm interested to hear it.

Agreed 100%. No, the chance of surviving would have been 90% if he had gone faster. Just like it was 90% when he took his time, maybe because he had been lucky a dozen times or because the mage did other things like buffing his allies, we don't know that. In this very specific situation, it didn't matter at all how fast he took out the mage. The only way to guarantee a 100% success is to kill the mage before he can cast a single spell, because it could be just the one that insta-kills you. That's the part where the game stops being tactical and just gives you a checklist of things you have to do in a certain order to survive - I'd say that's not a good tactical gameplay design. High constitution would have helped, but how do you know that you need high constitution when in earlier battles you never even lost a lot of health? In hindsight it's easy to see how he could've survived, but hindsight is not the same as tactics. Tactics are based on the empirical evaluation of your situation, and choosing a different attribute instead of constitution when you never had problems with HP before was actually good tactics, if you ask me. Ah,this just points to lots of other discussions. Like in the thread about instakill spells, it comes down not to the question is it good/bad tactics, but to the question whether you like to reload, instakill as a concept - dying at a snap of someone's finger because you had no chance to buff or get to that someone in time in first try. Do you want to be instantly able to get by every encounter in your fist try? Instakill is a death as any,he can also instantly kill you with lightning bolt ( because you were not only not resistant to it, but being in metal armor you provided him a bonus mayhap? ) - one shot and you'd have to reload. You cannot know what an encounter brings and be prepared for each and every. Mage with instakill spell encounter is no different than mage with "spell penetration & empowered spell sorta thing" icluded, whooping your ass with lightning bolt - because you forgot (he popped out of nowhere,zomg) to replace the ring of fire with the ring of lightning resistance. If this game is to have a death of the PC included, that death can occur in so many ways,and the speed of that process can be very quick or very slow, regardless if there's instakill or not. As I consider this to be a fact, I was not thrilled by this . It would mean that instakill spells are to be also toggled or reserved for Expert mode as dying at all. If they EVEN decide to have instakill spells,they haven't yet as far as I know (please link if you found some evidence, I'd like to know more on this) . I was reading trough the instant death thread and found that devs also mostly consider instakill "bad idea" and "cheap",but I am not persuaded at WHY. Wrong tactic can,wrong equipment choice or buffing or positioning etc also can, as many pointed out, kill you as fast as instadeath can. If you ARE able to die,that is. Simple as that. So there's either gonna be lots of wrong tactics and death, or the game's Normal mode equals Ultra easy mode where you cannot die,cannot make an ultimate mistake whatsoever and all is dandy fine. Can someone explain me what happens when ALL the party is KOed?? Does enemy walk away? If you ain't dying,you sure ain't getting a "game over" scene,as far as I can deduce. So WHAT do you get? And how logical or how appealing to us it can be being designed like that?

Yep. Also some spell resistance on gear and a good ole Death Ward buff or such.

If figured it can't hurt to post some observations. They may have a complete story,and may not. Most stories themselves start as an idea (building block of a building block sorta thing) around which you shape them ,constantly adding or removing material to finalize a perfect brick. Nothing is final until it's final, get what I'm sayin'? My aim was also to spark theories, ideas about different approaches,if some of us can think of any at all. Maybe this'll give some new idea to someone somewhere ,if not to the devs themselves.

Yeah,I'm a nitpick. But I somehow feel that we should be presented with some marks that will display our troops as "ours", "ones that serve to that specific stronghold", you know? Like there were Greycloaks, but there we had just a section of the existing unit that serves to us and get referenced as "our", no Whitecloaks or Blackcloaks to call our own. And this is (I guess) an advanced version of the stronghold concept. We could still have a tailor or such that would allow us to have our own flags and colors. Maybe it really is hard to do, I don't know, but societies have that trend, even in fantasy setting. It's not exactly new. That trend follows us throughout history, it remained in sports, jobs, military (specific unit marking). When you get a job as a guard, you are usually given something, a uniform,logo on a tagplate or cloth, etc. specific enough to mark you as one working for your employer,no? Atleast you are required the "black tuxedo guard" stereotype . Trend,one of the oldest that remained up to this day. We all like it in one way or another. I like the black&white of my football (you call it soccer) team,and I wear it somewhere on me when they play to mark myself as one of theirs.

Just thought it would be great if we could customize our Stronghold's flag and cloaks of our units rather than being presented with ones ingame. I'm thinking something like standard medieval two-colored flag and unit cloak where we can select the two colors, plus one from a preset of symbols for the center of it both. Maybe a preset of flag/cloak types or something more ? Thoughts?