J. Trudel

I think you should see this vid : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUleDEFkUtE#at=14 I do think they already have a lighting system in place. A good one.

Sure, sure. I'll start worrying about that just as soon as I'm done with more eminent baseless worries, like "Are meteorites going to collide with my head today?", or "Is my lunch 37 days from now going to fall onto the floor/ground before I get a chance to eat it?" I mean, I don't know what Josh Sawyer and team are capable of in 18 months, but I should definitely be worrying about their inability to make a game with their own resources and decisions, according to their own design/budget/schedule, if anything. What we definitely shouldn't worry about? The possibility that they might actually be competent and succeed at their goal. That would just be silly. Forget half, even, since we don't know the amount. We know that Obsidian's filling a glass. Let's go ahead and call the glass partially empty, rather than partially full. I think you shouldn't worry, but still submit many ideas ! You never know what an idea might bring into a yet uncompleted game. But I definitely trust Obsidian to bring a game that will be imperfect for everyone, but that will still be an awesome game. If the game is boring, well, at least we can say we wanted to contribute.

I do agree with that, UI design has a lot to do with finding balance between aesthetics and function. Functionial and ugly is mood killing, and nice but hard to use is gamebreaking.

I hope there will be special circonstances when insta death is a possibility. However this should not be overdone AND the player should be able to see it coming. For example, when Perseus faced the Medusa, he knew that looking at her gaze would turn him to stone (and end his life). So he had to find a way to prevent that. This led him to one of the most epic encounter ever told. Players should be able to live such encounters. You know that a detail in the encounter can mean your end, but there is always a weak spot you can find. This would encourage stories encounters, which are way more interesting than meaningless criters. Should players be able to do that to ennemies ? Yes but in the same, idea, ennemies should know when players wield such death dealing powers ! It's not meta-gaming proof, but revealing the information to the player before the encounter would render meta-gaming useless.. as you will learn it before the encounter anyway. What it will do is built up tension before the encounter. Will your strategy work ? Is it true ? How can you prevent this ? I think this can bring much.

In-game art is amazing. I hope that you guys will do all that art in ultra high res so we might zoom in and out to view the details.

I agree that it's a role playing game and not a Sim game. Actually, I can't think of any sim games that have good role play in them. But combat is only a part of the role playing experience, and not the other way around (even if you fight 90 % of the time). Baldur's Gate series (on pc) was one of the few games that actually felt like a RPG despite the limited possibilities at that time. What I hope is that P:E improve on the genre by pushing it's concept even further. If it was to be only a hack n slash game, I would be very sad about it as there are a thousand game on the market that are already out. I hope (am pretty sure, actually) that the devs aim to make something special out of that game.

If I can remember, in Baldur's Gate 2 your player could own a class specific stronghold. Engage in NPC romance, some of them even ended up in having a kid. Your NPC's even had some personnal quest of their own. If you look closely at P:E you have crafting, deep story, NPC interactions, also look at this quotes from the dev : I do think you are of the mark pall. Sure this game will ALSO have xp, loot, dungeon crawling. But it's not ONLY about this small protion of the game.

I am unsure what you didn't grasp in the concept of ''Role Playing'', IE games were not about killing monster and getting xp. It was about living a story in a fantasy world. Gaining experience and loot are just some of the mechanics to make the world exiting. You should play Dungeon Hunter Alliance, it may fill everything you need from a cRPG. Honestly, I don't think P:E is for you.

I hope the dev notice your post and take many many notes on what you said ! I second 110 % of your ideas. If I may add something, even while in the party, the NPC's may as well have some will of their own, conflict, romance or friendship between themselves. This would make the group a much more dynamic experience. It may not have been the best way to do it, but I still love how DA:O camp felt. Just a few more ideas where the party may split and even DO something : Market place (Party members should have some money of their own, they could buy things sometime) When they know someone living nearby Temples If you get into jail (you or one of your party member might end up there, they could come to get you out for a change) Random moments, a Rogue for example might break up for a few moments to go scout ahead on his own initiative.

I actually thought abnout this mechanic in cRPG a couples of time before and I don't hink any cRPG I have tried got it right yet. I don't even think my solution is good but here it goes. 1st part : Identifying the target. Opening a menu when you pickpocket is lame, most items a character carries are imposible to pick pocket. What I suggest is a different approach. From afar you can ''take a peek'' at what you could steal from the target and select it. For exemple, you sit in a bar and you ''take a peek'' at different NPC. You notice that one of them carries a big purse. You select it for your target. What is cool about it is the fact that sometimes you don't know anything about what you'll end up with. This part is also without consequences. 2nd part : The ''pick'' Now you know what you want. It's just a matter of geting it. You make an attempt (diffenrent method could be applied here) , and either fail or succeed via an opposed roll agaisnt your target appropriate ''defense'' on an equal Pick-pocket vs defense you get this probabilities (based on the P:E hit roll mechanics) 1-5 % : Grab the item but get noticed by the NPC 6-50 % : Failed to grab the item (You thought it was too risky to get caught) 51-95 % : Suceed, but don't stay around for too long or the target may get suspicious. 96-100 % : You weren't seen at all. The target may actually think it was another NPC 3rd part : Getting away with it. With this system, most of the fails doesn't give any penality. However if you fail and the target notice you they shouldn't turn hostile. They may actually start a conversation and ask for what you took back. This person disposition toward you would then be badder but you may have the option to be forgotten for what you did. Could actually be a nice side quest. This way, sometime a failed pick pocket attempt might end up as a reward, this could be an interesting way to encourage the player not to reload, cause you never know what good can come out of a bad action.

I disagree. I think it adds some variation to the reward system. Part of the things I hated about NWN2 was the way all of your characters levelled up at exactly the same time. I always preferred 'Ooh! Xan has levelled up, how does that change the party mechanic?' as opposed to 'Oh, the entire party has levelled up. Guess the mechanics stay the same but we're a bit more tough.' Ymmv, but I would be deeply disappointed if all classes levelled up at the same time. This is a good point, I prefer uniform tables for growth but giving small xp bonus for good character use based on their skill usage could bring some variation.

just for future reference, the "I took an arrow in the knee" frase, according to the lore of TES, is nord slang for "I got married" Yeah I knew that my friend told me it's an old Viking proverb but I am unsure of his sources, I was just pointing out the fact that you can't buy the goods on the table in TES. Nor you can ask anyone if you could buy something they own etc etc.

You do know that the chance to miss isn't fixed, right? In other words, if you have relatively low accuracy, and you're fighting something with low defense (whichever of those 4 you listed, depending on the attack type), then you're pretty much "evenly matched." So you get the 5%-45%-45%-5% (miss-graze-hit-crit) scale. However, essentially for every point of difference between your attack accuracy and your opponent's defense, the scale shifts. Is your foe's defense 3 higher than your attack? Then you might have 15%-45%-40%-0% (no chance to crit). Or, if his defense is 3 points lower than your attack, the reverse would occur; 0%-40%-45%-15% chance to crit. Now, I don't know the exact math that will be used. The graze and hit ranges could stretch at a different rate from the miss and crit ranges (so that if you have a really high attack accuracy, you're getting something like 0%-10%-70%-20%, instead of 0%-5%-45%-50%). *Shrug*. I'm not sure on the specifics. But, I just wanted to make sure you knew about the sliding scale, since the base 5% miss chance I could see looking to be too low, if I didn't think it changed significantly in different situations. Yeah I already knew about the sliding effect. I do hope the maths are changed a bit, or I might get my hands dirty with a mod what I would like would be something more like this : Equal Defense and Attack : 40 % Miss, 15 % Graze, 40 % Hit, 5 % Critical Slinding up to : 75 % Miss, 15 % Graze, 5 % Hit, 5 % Critical or the opposite : 25 % Miss, 15 % Graze, 50 % Hit, 10 % Critical As you can see with my math, only the miss and hit are changing. It gives the effect that if you fight someone with a high defense you'll do more graze than hits. This reflect better the reality of a fight IMHO. Also, the 75 % maximal miss chance would still give low level criters a meaning if they are somewhat in massive numbers.

Agreed, although I think it's six of that and half a dozen of desperately deviating from games I disliked. I might well be grognarding, but to my mind one of the symptoms of activated abilities is that it gives the feeling that everyone gets a mana-like substance and starts playing like a mage. That matters less in MMOs because you tend to be playing a single character and there is a need to make that exciting for all classes. It's a bit different in a strategy rpg. I'm not particularly against activated abilities, because I think they're basically included to prevent rest-spam, which was a pretty bad loophole the IE games left open. I only hope that they are well-implemented, leave the classes feeling like they play very differently to each other, and have a recharge rate that is practical for a six-person party game. If all six characters are using powers with a 1 second cooldown, as an extreme example, then combat slows to an unnecessary crawl. In the same way, unless your class has long charge times on their powers, then you need to make their cooldown powers limited and/or not a replacement for normal attacks. Yeah I hope they prevent the rest spam somehow in P:E, one good way to do that would be to decrease the individual encounter difficulty and making it more a ''Dungeon'' difficulty. Ressources are drained, fighter are hurt but you still menage to win that battle. Having to fight every battles in top condition is a bit anticlimatic. A short in between fight rest could be a good solution, this ''short-rest'' might bring you back to maybe 75 % of your resources, so you don't have to make a dozen trip to town to finish a given dungeon. In reality, it represent the usual post fight med.

I agree with you that minuses and pluses for attributes isn't best way to go. And I also think skill bonuses or exclusive skills is better way to differentiate races from each other. Although I think that you could make some attributes cheaper and some more expensive to obtain for different races, for example intelligence (or equivalent) could cost orcs more than it cost humans, but strength (or equivalent) is cheaper. And this is to reflect that fact there are more likely be strong orcs than intelligent ones, but you could still make intelligent orc if you want, but it could mean that you may need to let some of your attributes to be lower than what would be "typical" for orc build. This system of course works only if you buy attributes instead of throwing them. I do have to agree that a Perk aproach to diferencing races is superior. Having equal stats remove the dump race problems. For example an elf might get a Nimble perk which allow them to move a bit faster and dodge better but render them a bit more frail while an Orc would get the ''Brute'' perk which would make them hit harder and last longer at the expense of concentration. The way I see it, Stats are very ''situational'' I'm pretty sure an Orc would have a better ''survival'' Intelligence than a human. So I think all ''playable'' races should have equal stats, it gives freedom in design.

I also take the wait and see, but give my opinion aproach I'm also open the new systems, in fact I wasn't satisfied with DnD so I had to design my own system from scratch. But I do enjoy playing it from times to times for a refreshing change.

Huh, this is new to me. Do you happen to have any sources on this? I'm a bit dissapointed somehow. I thought that we'd be able to make an interesting choice in every level. A new class ability is surely a good thing in order to make leveling way more exciting than in DnD with its dead levels, but I had hoped for some customization at every level. I have to agree that I also think every character level should contribute somehow in it's customisation. However this aproach is very hard because you don't want too much scaling in power. I hope the power scalling will not make the first critters irrevelent. If for exemple you encounter 30 golblins when you are very high level, they should still be dangerous. If they are made obsolete from power scalling, we will be caught fighting dragons at every corners making some creatures that should be epic fight boring.

I also have to admit that a D&D ruleset is hard to beat. After all, even if it's not a cRPG it's probably one of if not the most loved system in all RPGs. What I like so far that have been revealed : The 4 defenses : Deflection, Reflex, Fortitude, Psyche The engagement mechanic The classes and their design What I have mixed feelings about Attack resolution, I think that the chance to miss is too low. For me when you get hit with a Sword it IS a graze, else you would be dead. The armor scalling and damage system, from what we have seen the range will be really wide. Why ? I mean why would a basic leather armor be a waste at higher level ?

What I would give to be able to actually ask a merchant : Hey that's a nice sword on the counter there, why it's not in you inventory menu ? I want to buy it, do you really want me to steal it ? ... Then I took an arrow in the knee...

Basically, what you want are Fetch quest that in fact are not Fetch quest If there is development after the fetch quest, it stop being a fetch quest don't you agree ? Unless you think that the Lord of the Rings is just a big Fetch quest to bring the ring back to mount doom

I do trust the devs on this anyway. But I like giving my opinion. It also serve to give them feedback ! Also thanks J.E. for taking the time to read all the comments and respond to them. Your dedication is impressive !

Most of my fear lies in how the rules make the game world credible. I remember being able to do Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 without any magical equipment. Also whats the point of having 3000 hp when no one do 1 damage anyway? Sometime concepts are good but the execution is strange. What I mean is not having rules that are exactly like pnp, but rules that do feel like PnP. Just an example : In Dragon Age : Origins, you have a system which I think is not that bad on the first look. But after a while you begin to wonder how having 89 in an attribute relate to the world around. It does not ''tell'' anything it's just a number used for calculations. Fallout was very PnP in my opinion even if it was never an actual PnP game. This is an example IMHO done right. Also very easy to convert to PnP. I ran a few game with the rules back in the days.

Appart than the speed of attack, I don't think that having PnP like game mechanics will dimnish the result at all. In fact, ALL cRPG I have played which were adaptions of PnP mechanics had superior results gameplay wise. This is one of the reason why people remember so fondly about games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter and Icewind Dale. By comparison, who still plays the first Diablo anymore ?

Fetch quest are lame, no matter how they are handled. Quest should be meaningfull, end of the story. Removing fetch quest doesn't means you can't do small things here and there. Your character might be able to get a job as the blacksmith apprentice, who needs herbs just once anyway ? If there is an alchemist in the city, he might want to pay you to gatter ingredients, but this should be a job not a one time quest. Of course having to work for someone may have advantages : The smith you worked for will do better price for you. It may turn out that joining the guards will make your grand heist of the castle a bit easier latter. That Alchemist might be a key person in a ''real'' quest, if he knows you this might changes how he react.

Generic dialog could be an answer for that so unatural feel about the generic nps in the world. I don't think it would sky rocket the developpement time and the game world would feel soooo much much more immersive. In a usual generic encounter situation : Me : '' Hello, could you help me find a good place to have a drink ?'' (Okay that's the role play version of me clicking on the gard at the town entrance.) Guard : ''Welcome to our city'' (Generic dialog # 1) Me : ''Hey, your not helping !'' (Clicking again on the guard) Guard : ''I used to be an adventurer like yourself, but then I took an arrow in the knee'' (Generic dialog # 2) Me : ... With a location/function based generic dialog system it could go like this : Me : (Clicking on the guard) Guard : Can I help you with something ? (This may be most human used one liner ever, so why not just include it ?) Me : 1 - I'm looking for a place to... 2 - Hey, I just noticed a crime ! (Persuade check) (Could be a good way to create a diversion) 3 - Wow, you city is nice can you tell me about it ? (The one I'm choosing) Guard : Can't you see I'm working ? If you want to chat you might go at the tavern it's just further down the street. Me : ... Of course, this generic dialog approach could be random and location dependent, at least we would be able to ask directions when lost Also please don't make everyone repeat themselfves over and over. A few hundred lines would probably be enough for use to get bored speaking with generic folks before it can runs out. One more idea, dialog of you pc might be selected before you approach someone, this way the conversation would feel much more realistic and I'mmersive. Me : (Click on the dialog button) 1 - I'm sorry to disturb you but... 2 - Hey you're really cute you know that... 3 - Give me your money or you're as good as dead (Intimidate) 4 - ... Etc etc.