Warren

Seeing as everyone has 2 or 3 things that they would personally like to see, how about stretch goals where you can contribute to funding a particular part of the game? For example, I might donate $20 specifically for wilderness, $10 for companions, and $7 for class quests. Personally, I would really like more wilderness. When I played BG2 I thought that it was too small. If we are currently looking at something smaller, I would happily pitch in for a larger area.

I recommend going back a couple pages and reading my multiple responses to exactly this argument. With particular regards to Skyrim, I think that the crafting system was overpowered and a bit of a grind, but the game balance was generally bad. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim, but it is 1000x more difficult to get through a dungeon as a thief than a fighter (I'm talking about the first 20-25 levels here, not level 50+). You were practically forced to use crafting in order to even compete on normal let alone hard. So I think that having OP crafting was kind of necessary.

@ JFSOCC You're right. One problem with my system is that it could get repetitive. I've been putting some thought in on that regard and I have a partial solution. Lets say you've been researching heavy and light armor. There could be synergy effects between the two skills that are only available for people with those two skills. E.g. "Your research into light armor has made the underarmor you use in heavy armor crafting more resilient. Critical effects against the wearer of the heavy armors you make are ignored 20% of the time." Fundamentally, that doesn't solve the problem. Researching heavy and light armor would be the same across characters, but it would make the system more dynamic. I mean, you might have more than one character that likes heavy armor, but are you really going to make another character with the exact same skill set? That said, I think that a tree/web research system is really the only game in town. I admit it is not perfect, but any other system either has large drawbacks (like you pointed out) or misses some of the benefits (no sense of discovery). Finally, I think that this kind of system is easy and time efficient to code. All it really does is put a shiny cover on a very basic recipe based crafting system. Compare this to some sort of really realistic research system where research into chemistry might have surprising implications in engineering, medicine, or whatever. A super realistic system would have some sort of stochastic process where discoveries were made and implemented incrementally over the course of decades. Suffice to say that I don't have that kind of time to invest in a game and neither do the programmers.

@JFSOCC I don't think you understand the system I'm proposing. Imagine a tree, with discoveries either at forks or located along the branches, but what you get from researching a branch is hidden. Lets say you want heavy armor, so you invest gold/time and a little research vine creeps down the heavy armor research branch until it reaches a discovery. The discovery could be a recipe, ability, spell, whatever, but, and this is key, you can't craft or use the ability until you have conducted the research. In other words, you cant just mix dwarven ore, leather, and cloth in the right amounts and get dwarven armor. You need to have unlocked it first. This means that I cant just go online, find a recipe for an endgame item, and make it. Actually spending in game time on trial and error could advance your research, but you cant just happen to combine the right components for an adamantium golem and make one. In fact, the whole reason why research costs gold is because I'm assuming your character uses trial and error to some extent in order to make discoveries, and this is expensive. Like I said earlier, there may be other in game ways of making discoveries. For example, you might kill a necromancer, read his books, and then become able to continue his research. Trainers can also unlock branches so that you can research down them by teaching you basic principles. You want to know how to sew an elven cloak? Find an elven sowmaster and he might be persuaded to give you a crash course in elven arts (which you can later expand upon with further research). Discovered an ancient civilization? Compile their burned scrolls to and invest in research to rediscover their lost technology/magic. Consider further the necromancer example. Continuing the research might have costs: blood of virgins, corpses, souls, etc. How are you going to get them? How will the NPCs respond to you becoming the enemy? How will your barony be affected when you start demanding the children of your peasants? Early research might not be very expensive in the blood/gore department, but it might be very useful. All you need to kill the dragon is a little bit of an edge. What is one child, one soul, compared to a kingdom? Surely the benefits outweigh the costs... As illustrated in the previous example, this kind of system can open up entire new dimensions to a game.

@JSOCC Dont be ridiculous. If we follow your argument through to its logical conclusion there would be no point in having plot twists because everybody looks it up on the wiki before hand. Why not just give PCs detailed maps of all the dungeons complete with trap locations and monster weaknesses? They will just wiki the maps anyways. Hell, lets just give them all lists of what is in each treasure chest because they could just find out on the internet. This kind of argument is completely inane. If some people want to ruin their sense of mystery then they can do that, but that doesn't undermine the sense of satisfaction everyone else gets from discovery.

Ok, so I should point out to all the devs that are reading this: the combined brainpowers of jamoecw, Lephys, jethro, JFSOCC, myself, and several others who are very much deserving of mention given their significant experience and intellect all have reached the same conclusion: We need a research system! (My apologies to any whom I did not explicitly mention. I'm too lazy to go through the entire thread and come up with a complete list) Back to the needless bickering about minutiae: @Lephys It might not matter particularly much to you who physically combines the ingredients to make the epic item, but it does matter to me. This might just be some weird eccentricity on my part, but it really does make me massively happier if I put it together myself than having someone else do it. @jamocew I am sympathetic to skill tree advancement that has little to do with Skyrim or 3E "skill points". My guess is that you might suggest a crafting system that is roughly analogous to The Witcher experience system. (Which is awesome.) The difference is that I don't think spending 200 points in rapier use as opposed to 100 points in rapier use and 100 points in rapier craft should amount to the same thing. If crafting rapiers requires more diligence on the part of the player, he shouldn't end up on the same power level as the person who just levels up the weapon skill and doesn't spend mental energy optimizing his character progression. I also agree that the sword of gods should beat what some guy from the countryside is able to crank out on a Tuesday stroll through the woods. But the PC is not some random dude, he/she is (by necessity) extremely excellent. If the PC (who is by all accounts astoundingly incredible) isn't able to create the sword of the gods (once) after a lifetime of trials and tribulations, then the story is a tragedy. My ideal crafting system does not include the ability to spam Godsbane the Fatescythe. (I'm just guessing here, but I think that you are opposed to everyone being armed with the same ridiculous weapon.) You should be able to make it once, and only under very specific conditions when you have fulfilled various obscure and difficult quests.

Jethro, I couldn't disagree more. The PC should definitely be able to make some of the best gear in the game. He just shouldn't be able to make all of the best gear. If you have maxed out light armor smithing, your light armor should be legendary. If it is any less, than you run into the whole obsolete skill problem. I just spent all kinds of skill points, gold, and questing on becoming the best light armor smith possible, and you are saying that I still wont be able to compete with the true masters? Thats not just un-epic, it is also cruel to make me jump through so many hoops and then serve me with: "here is a light armor better than anything you could possibly do". (I run into this in almost every crafting system and it makes me cry every time.) If thats the nature of PC crafting then screw it, get rid of the system all together and hire lackeys to do the stuff for you. But again, this is also not as cool since you don't get the satisfaction of killing the dragon with the sword you made yourself. I get that real life has various constraints that prevent you from being a pro boxer and a chemical engineer at the same time, but I'm playing a game specifically so that I can avoid those constraints. I'm not saying that the PC should be able to master all the skills and be some sort of max level Skyrim character. I'm saying he should be world class in 2-3 things outside of his chosen profession of kicking butt and taking names. If I killed a dragon to use the tip of it's tail for the shaft of a staff, at the top of which I put a fist sized ruby stolen from the crown of an emperor, and then bind 1000 tortured souls into the gem using ancient arts I uncovered from deciphering the grammar of creation, the staff BETTER BE THE BEST STAFF EVER.

Exactly! Its kind of ridiculous how little is actually being changed with such a massive increase in satisfaction. Instead of having recipes being generated into merchant's inventories and then buying them on the "shopping screen", you go to your bookshelf/anvil, spend time and money on the "research screen". Same result but for some reason naming the screen "research" and making you not know what you are effectively buying makes the process 1000x more interesting. Just mentioning how little is actually different makes me feel stupid about how much more I prefer one system to the other. To dovetail with your minecraft suggestions, you could have a system where you deconstruct loot that you don't want/need and get and gain a gold equivalent investment in a particular knowledge branch. I mean its not that crazy. Want to figure out how something works? Take it apart. Although, you shouldn't be able to gain knowledge from deconstructing things that you have made, nor should taking apart a basic iron sword be at all helpful or interesting to a master swordsmith.

To keep it interesting, we might make the research tree "blind". I.e. you can invest time and money into heavy armor crafting research, and you will discover heavy armors. You wont know exactly what kind of heavy armor you will get, but it will probably be useful. E.g. "you have improved on your chain link technique, making your heavy armor plating sit more comfortably. Heavy armor penalties on armors you make are reduced by 2" or you could also get something like "through your diligence and experimentation in dwarven smithing you are now able to craft Master Dwarven Plate". The amount of research you can do in a particular branch can be limited by your characters respective skill, and some basic recipes and abilities might be awarded just from improving your skill through leveling, but if you want the really good stuff you have to invest. You can be a master smith in terms of your literal point based skill value, but your real specialty would be in, say, swordsmithing and the lost art of bloodstone armors. However, if someone asks you to make a spear, you can do it, and it will be good, but it wont make it into the bardic tales.

I like what you are getting at, but I think that will complicate the system without making it more fun. My idea is that you have research trees where all you have to do to get a particular knowledge is invest a certain amount of money (representing raw materials lost in experimentation) and in game time (i.e. the game clock moves forward). Certain research branches of the skill tree can be unlocked by training with a master smith or by finding ancient tomes. This gives a sense of progress greater than "my smith knowledge went from 10 to 11". It creates a system that rewards diligence (finding all the hidden branches), contains the power of crafting powerful items (by making them expensive), and it helps maintain the good feeling you get from making something you thought of yourself (without having to think of it yourself). You can also add an element of replayability or control the power of crafting further by making certain research branches incompatible. (E.g. you can learn dwarven or elven smithing but not both.)

Yes, research is absolutely necessary. I was (swear to god) staring at the ceiling loosing sleep over exactly what was necessary to improve crafting, and I got out of bed and logged in just to make this exact post but it seems Lephys beat me to it. Gathering blueprints is bad because it takes most of the crafting out of the players hands. There is a huge difference between researching a better sword and getting a diagram for the same thing. If crafting is based on diagrams, then it takes all the responsibility away from the PC. On some level, you are just fulfilling someone else's designs. It is far more satisfying to build something you thought of yourself, even if the difference is purely symbolic. That said, there is some room for blueprints. It would be totally cool to rediscover the forging technique based on some musty tome unearthed from a ruin, but the key is in the narrative. Diagrams shouldn't be Diablo 3 style where the things just fall out of enemies pockets. They should be impressive and have stories or plotlines/quests of their own. They could even unlock entire new paths of research! Why stop research with crafting? Extending it to magic would be similarly awesome. It would be fantastic if you could research new spells in your tower. It is bizarre that all the NPC casters spend all their time reading books, but, for some reason, the PC caster gains knowledge by blowing things up. There are, however, a few things where I disagree. I disagree with the notion that the player shouldn't be able to make some of the best items in the game. This reasoning is problematic because it effectively makes crafting a waste of time at higher levels. Why bother with armorsmithing when everything you do will eventually become obsolete? This is a big problem in almost every crafting system I have seen. The satisfaction you get from making your own gear is quickly eliminated when the things you make are replaced three loot drops later. Obviously, player made gear sholdn't always be better, but crafting can be controlled by requiring rare ingredients. Furthermore, ingredients just make it more satisfying. The process of climbing mount olympus to gather lightning motes to put in a staff makes the staff much more impressive. Also, there is alot of talk about how it isn't realistic that adventurers can spend all kinds of time saving the world and be master crafters at the same time. I have two responses to this. First, one needs to consider the rule of cool. It is much cooler that you forged the soul harvester blade out of meteoric steel in magma of Mtn. Kir'Maadur and quenched with the tears of angels than having some lackey do it for you. Second, if your concern is realism you should start with the fact that it is impossible for dragons to fly given their weight and wing design. Furthermore, it isn't reasonable for people to shoot lighting from their fingertips. Getting bogged down in how many hours you need to master skills X,Y,Z and be savior of the world is ridiculous when you are willing to accept the notion of a sentient rock pile (a.k.a. earth elemental). Its a magical world, and some people are unreasonably awesome.

Something I loved in Morrowind and have not really seen since then, was the disappearance of the dwarves. No one knew what or why it happened, and finding out wasn't really a proper quest. The only way you could find out was by stumbling over the, apparently useless, books in the dwemer ruins and bringing them to the correct people more or less by accident. All you knew was that you had these crazy looking books from mysterious ruins and you really needed to know what they were and what was going on. This created a kind of self-motivated detective/archeologist scenario where my mage (who obviously cares about these things) travelled the width and breadth of the land searching for long lost knowledge and collecting strange arcane artifacts and wisdom along the way. And of course, when I finally found out, that knowledge was incredibly rewarding. This was the first and last time I have ever seen something like this in a game. Oblivion came pretty close with the Aylied Statues but there was no real mystery there, and it wasn't a personal quest: it was built in to the whole objective/waypoint questing schema that is so common now. It is difficult to get invested in discovering something if my hand is being held. Similarly, most of the supposedly fulfilling things you do in games now (get a big house, get a big sword, master skill X) are all routinized. There is very little mystery or discovery other than opening treasure chests. I want a game where collecting scraps of information can lead to understanding bigger game themes. I want a game where I can explore a series of dungeons and pick up clues to the location of a bigger/better dungeon. I want to compile copies of burned books and put them together to find a lost fire spell. I have to give some credit to Skyrim and New Vegas where they both try to a certain extent to recapture the mystery. In NV there is the shared history between the various NPCs that can be gleaned from obscure conversation options and paper scraps. In Skyrim you can learn master spells and collect dragon masks. But neither of these things really come close to the disappearance of the dwarves. My hope is that there will be some (preferably several) elements like these in project eternity.