ItinerantNomad

the weapons, their mechanics, and their specialization sound very much more complex and interesting than previous IE games. I approve.

Thanks Adam for doing this. Way to go.

point allocation system. rolling the dice is a waste of time, because people spend 30 minutes just trying to get a good roll in the first place: it determines the game difficulty without the developers taking it into account. Either your game becomes too easy, or (if you don't invest the time) too difficult. edit: should have read the rest of your post. Sawyer agrees with you so that's the way it's being done.

Part of the problem is this idea that dialogue should be quantified in some way. The example given about the +2 good/-2 evil, etc is really, in my opinion, the wrong way to be creating dialogue in the first place. A few thoughts. 1- Dialogue should generally toggle flags as opposed to numerical responses, and these flags should be followed for the greater characters in dialogue. Flags should toggle for certain things asked, said, or not said. then those flags should activate or deactivate certain dialogue nodes. 2- For the regular person on the street that offers few, if any, information a numerical scale might be fine, because that allows a general populace/faction reputation to be developed over time. However, these NPCs should also have a singular flag of LIKE/HATE/SPOKEN. So that if during the conversation, you say something to them that bothers them, they'll hate you. If you flatter them, they like you. If its neutral the flag is SPOKEN, so that they don't keep repeating the same introductory dialogue. npc dialogue should be affected by the fact that you've talked to them before. 3- i don't like dialogues that keep going back to a higher node. it should be a conversation with a beginning and an end. you shouldn't be able to ask 100 things from someone and keep asking them over and over again. dialogue should pay like a resource. you can get specific information from people, but only a set amount. if you want new information you have to ask a new person.

Call me crazy, but I think the genetic/spiritual influence of a godly bloodline is likely going to dominate the relevant influence of a mortal parent. If gods were equal to "mortals" there would be no differentiation, would there? I thought that we weren't sure if the "gods" were really divine beings versus beings with incredible control and power over their souls. Am I misunderstanding this bit of lore?

you can't do that. what if you create a male godlike warrior and obsidian's character keep on harping about how SHE's the best priest and most beautiful priest that ever graced the human lands.

I just wonder about whether Obsidian (I almost called you guys Black Isle for a second...) would be willing to share this information because afterall they spent a lot of time and money perfecting this technology and it can be considered "IP" for them. Coca-Cola doesn't share its recipe either.

perfect. as long as there is an overarching damage type. i'm happy. that means any damge could be described.

hunger and survival was a big deal in fallout new vegas. i don't see why you think this is ridiculous. there could be spells that cause hunger or hold hunger. as for status effects, some of these damage types lead to status effects as well as damage reduction equations. that's the whole point of the discussion: how do these damage types work exactly and are we forgetting any other interesting ones?

per josh sawyer, yes it partially was. he'd do a romance only if he could do it well and budget is a huge reason for this.

i think i need a handkerchief. i got sweaty just reading this.

"balancing" makes choices actually choices where there were none previously. it effectively gives you a wider range of options to pick because they become viable. also *degenerate* ... /e waits for the usual crowd to show up...

the issue isn't with the names as much as it is with the mechanics. "Shock" damage wouldn't necessary have the same mechanic in electrical, poison, concussive damage types nor would armors have the same values for these. as for fire and ice, i would imagine that these would have DoT effects that might negate each other. Similarly, I wonder if corrosive has a change to "break" items. these would be interesting mechanical implementations outside of just mere DT reductions.

crush damage doesn't really make sense with concussive. if you get hit by a blast of sonic waves you don't take crush damage, you take concussive damage. if you hit the wall you don't get crushed by the wall, you take concussive damage to your internal organs without breaking skin. crush damage usually means you have broken the skin. similarly, crush damage requires one to "fight through" a heavy metal shield or armor whereas concussion damage is caused by the body being knocked about in the heavy metal armor. it can make for interesting mechanical implementations outside of these pedantic arguments. As an example, I spoke about plate metal armor. If you take a mace to a person in plate mail, the mace must first travel through the metal to hit the person to cause crush injury (thereby reducing damage due to protection). However throwing a person in plate mail would likely cause more damage to them because the armor at this point becomes the weapon against the body. a simple analogy: take an egg, and put it in a bottle. now try to hit it with a spoon. then take the bottle and throw it against a wall. which one breaks the egg? more "info" on crush vs concussive damage. http://www.cdc.gov/masstrauma/preparedness/primer.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_injury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_shock https://www.dartmouth.edu/~dons/part_3/chapter_29.html - text on pathology and trauma. btw, answer: likely neither throwing nor hitting with a spoon would break the egg. it was a hypothetical experiment. stop wasting eggs.

i know it was hard and all, nanopaladin, but you've always left me feeling satisfied.

So Josh had a question on Something Awful Josh responded: I wanted to know a few things. 1- is shock considered electrical damage? 2- Why not have a concussive damage type as well. This would work well with explosion type spells, wing buffet type attacks, and even crushing attacks which occur in heavy plate type armor (person getting knocked about in armor). The mechanic could be made even more interesting by having a malus for players who wear heavy plate type armor and get attacked by this type. Padded armor might be better suited for concussive type damage. i just thought of the concussive damage type because Tim Cain had mentioned certain spell combinations causing increased damage and he gave the example way back during the kickstarer of fire and something causing an explosion. I just noticed there's no explosion-type damage. 3- can you go over whether each damage type has any other characteristics other than different DTs to different armors? 4- what would poison damage, hunger damage, curse, or magic damage go under?

I wanted to make a new thread about this because I believe this deserves a great bit of discussionand thought. I'm having some trouble with the godlike and although I don't have much information to work from, I wanted to talk a little about the godlike, their implications and the imagery used thus far to depict them. So far, I understand that the forgotten realms had a genasi, tiefling, aasimar lore and races that were very distinctive in their appearance and that Josh wanted to emulate this or was at least inspired by it. Furthermore, as far as we know, the godlike in this world as "touched" by the "gods" and thus have been variably influenced in their appearance for it. A few questions arise: 1- Do all godlikes of the same god have similar appearances? Do all earth godlikes have doe-like ears or are there variations on the location in which visual changes occur? For example, are death godlikes all known to be death godlikes because they have crazy face alterations or can others be more subtle with only godlike eyes, etc. 2- how common are these godlike? are people being touched by godlikes left and right, up and down? if so then are they building godlike communities separate from other communities? why or why not? as the population of godlike increases and they become more common, and are no longer ostracized or they are rare which brings me to the next question... 3- what are the devs doing to ensure that the godlike are not this games version of "drow" because they're "so much cooler than all the other races!" it becomes extremely irritating when everyone wants to be the singular godlike that lives out in the open. Are we going to have 50 godlike drizzts in this game? 4- can godlike mate to produce another godlike? this is an issue because other races cannot mate and so humans and aumaua cannot produce a viable species. however, godlikes can be from any race, so what happens? do godlike associate with their races or do they associate with their godlike status? 5- why did the devs choose to go for such fantastical depictions of godlike, while keeping other races fairly humanoid? even the aumaua are fairly toned down compared to the death godlike. i get conflicting messages when i try to juxtapose the two. is this what is meant by "making the common fantastic and the fantastical common?" a few thoughts to start off on. i'd like to hear the rest of what everyone has to say on this issue. thanks!

Josh, how many portraits, druid forms, godlike types, and areas are you expecting in terms of raw numbers at this point? I know this will likely change, but any thoughts on this?

Love the wizard's tower and blacksmithshop. Need more info about the godlikes - I'm liking the general idea, but I hope that the lore has a strong explanation for them and their ability to live in this world. As for the cat druid WIP - love the concept sketch, hate the implementation. 1- Too much red and brightness in the 3d model, the concept sketch sort of seems covered in shadow which gives it a sort of eerie feeling that the 3d model lacks. 2- the texture used for the cat druid isn't good - it should match the concept more as that seems more "natural" than "military cameo" 3- The head is what really throws it off, it doesn't really fit the concept. The ears in the concept start more posteriorly with a shortner neck. the eyes are more deep set and lateral in the concept. 4- the arms and legs are more "dextrous" on the concept art. This is likely a limitation on polygons, but I would imagine you could rework this a little more to fit the concept without adding too many polys.

another one

thanks josh. you're the best

So I was reading about sirenomelia and a thought came to me: what if some of the "monsters" in the world don't even really exist and are due to the misunderstanding of basic scientific facts, a la the salem witch trials of old. Here's an example. I read about "sirenomelia" also known as mermaid syndrome and I thought to myself "I wonder how the people of PoE would react to a mother giving birth to a baby with this condition?" Even in our day and age, ignorant people come to the wrong conclusions about the realities of their daily lives and I would imagine that in a world where fantastical creatures actually do exist, for there to be incorrect conclusions to be reached about natural phenomena. Perhaps the mother of this child would be shunned for adultery with a merman (or whatever you want to call that creature of the sea) and that she would be hounded for the rest of her life for it, where in reality these are just natural realities of even our world. That is to say, that mermen do not even exist! My proposition would be to have perhaps one quest line or something that explores this idea a bit further. Perhaps there is a certain chemical or compound that has affected a village and mothers within that village are giving birth to mer-children and are being ostracized for it and accused of sleeping with these creatures. The reality is that such creatures do not exist, but it is difficult to be sure because of the very nature of the world and that monsters do really exist in the world - who says that it is out of the realm of impossibility that such creatures really exist? I really think exploring our own ignorance when it comes to how little we know as humans and quickly jumping to the wrong conclusions can be a great theme or idea to explore. I really liked the half-ogre quest from Arcanum, for example. It was so well-done and really had a fairly decent understanding of the world and made it come alive for me. I am hoping that perhaps this is another idea that can be explored by someone on the design team. Other examples of real-life "monsters" are http://list25.com/25-extremely-bizarre-medical-disorders/ . Another one is elephantitis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantiasis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Merrick The point is that these have actual, scientific explanations for phenomena that occur. But I know that there are people out there who see such things and call these people monsters or come to the wrong conclusion and shun these people. Others are exploited in circuses. It's an interesting look into the human condition. The condition doesn't have to be a real-one: it could be one that fits the story and themes of PoE, but the point would be that people call "monsters" things that actually are not, and that neither the player nor the world (except perhaps one or two experts) really understand the reality of this. Perhaps clues can be given as to the reality of this, but leaving the conclusion vague would be part of the allure of such a quest, sort of like how we don't really know so much about souls. What do the rest of you think?

Can we get a video with the next update? I know it takes a little more time, but they're fun to watch (and rewatch). I'm currently rewatching all the videos so far since the kickstarter. BTW, how's the documentary coming along?

did you mean can only beaten by a few people on the development team? i was a little unclear.