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curryinahurry

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Everything posted by curryinahurry

  1. curryinahurry
    It's far from pointless. The whole point behind a role playing game is being able to play a role. Part of playing a role is to be able to design your character along the lines of how you imagine that character to exist within the world. If that means following a particular archetype, then you would likely want to see if the game design can accommodate such a thing. If it can't you would likely try to approximate it in some way. the point here is that a certain attribute (strength) that is traditionally understood as the basis of creating one of the most common, traditional melee characters types no longer supports that build. And there is no other known way (as of now) of approximating it, then you have a fairly major problem. that is a pretty big deal considering how the developers of this game have touted their system as allowing for more viable builds, not fewer. And BTW, this discussion isn't really about Archetypes for me, its about identifying flaws in the system. This is a flaw that can be resolved fairly simply if Obsidian chooses to do so, but I guarantee that if they keep things as they are right now, it will lead to confusion and nerd angst (if not rage) later.
  2. curryinahurry
    You're missing the point. Lephys' example isn't about min/maxing or dumping other stats. His example is of a strength based fighter that uses Strength to do more damage. That currently isn't possible because Strength has no effect on damage. Certainly you can make a hard hitting characters in this system, but not the Brute Archetype, because Perception, Dexterity, Resolve are not Strength. Can they augment Strength? Certainly; and that would make the Brute Archetype Brute-ier. But because Strength is a passive attribute (as far as we know) it has no bearing on combat except survivability. The only way that your example could approach a Brute Archetype is if Strength allowed a character to wield heavier object wiithout penalties that delivered more damage. As of now, we don't know if that is possible.
  3. curryinahurry
    ^ The point Lephys is making in this thread still holds. In fact, his example of a character arch- type that currently can't be created within this new system; The Brute, is a pretty glaring problem. The system Obsidian has designed was created to make a wider variety of builds viable and to get rid of dump stats. If Strength is a passive attribute, that pretty much negates the concept of any traditionally strength oriented builds. So unless there is a skill or ability that models physical strength, Obsidian's system seems to have at least one major flaw. That was why Silent Winter and I had the discussion of re-naming Strength and intellect to something more appropriate and turning Strength into a skill. This would allow Lephys to role-play his brute. I haven't seen any other proposals that address this problem but would be interested to see if anyone has a concept that isn't wildly obscure or counter-intuitive.
  4. curryinahurry
    I like Acumen (or Acuity)...good word. I prefer Vitality to Fitness as the word has similar connotations to the skill Athletics. Vitality seems more like an innate attribute and could fit within the current system as it is being developed. Acumen likewise can slide in as an alternative to Intellect.
  5. curryinahurry
    Yes, absolutely. So, as you suggested, making strength a skill (which can add (%?) melee damage perhaps), would be a solution here. (And then renaming both strength and intellect to be more intuitive). If it were reasonable and balanced then you could have 'strength','great strength' and 'heroic strength' as progressive skills. I like the concept of tiers. For damage it could be +1 (or 2%) for every 3 points invested and new tiers at every 6 points. The cap would be 3 Tiers and about +8-10% damage (that might be too much?). Tiers could provide the movement bonus and have synergy with certain modes or abilities. this could be offset by certain penalties like a slower rate of stamina regeneration or penalties to Psyche (the 'roid rage factor) as a balancing mechanism.
  6. curryinahurry
    Yes, but that is why the health governing attribute should be called something other than strength, because what they are really describing is more akin to vitality. If Strength were instead a skill (as something developed like athletics or mechanics which is more accurate to how it works in life), then it could effect certain types of damage, movement rates with armor, etc. and the problem is solved. And btw, if Strength were a Skill, many of the people who like to play burly melee types could have that additional level of customization that would make them feel like they were getting a character more like those from the IE games. Especially with melee characters being less "hands on", this could be a nice compromise.
  7. curryinahurry
    ^ I think the key with your "effective strength" paraphrase is that it implies strength as an active attribute associated with work. Making it a passive attribute associated with a health resource works against most people's common sense expectations.
  8. curryinahurry
    Sorry to be posting late, but was travelling. Looking at this quote and reading some of the reactions and rebuttals hence, there seems not to be a problem so much with what these attributes do, but rather the words that are being used to encapsulate them. Particularly with the word strength and its juxtaposition with Intellect, there is a counter-intuitive feeling that many poster on this thread are trying to resolve. This may or may not be legacy issues related to attributes in D&D and what they signify to most on this board, or just what some might label, "common sense." Either way, it is a potential quagmire that I would consider best avoided. When looking at the actual descriptions of the attributes without considering the label words, the concepts seem perfectly fine so why not re-think some of these words? Instead of Strength, how about Vitality? That is more accurately what you are describing (the inventory slot issue is minor and could easily be associated with Constitution or resolve, so I'm not focusing on it). Instead of Intellect, how about Aptitude? Again, more accurate as a descriptor. That would leave us with this as the attribute labels: Vitality Constitution Dexterity Perception Aptitude Resolve Actually, if you just replace Strength with Vitality, that might go a long way to solving the problem. I would like to see Strength stay in some way, but maybe it could become a skill like Athletics, and investing points could increase damage with heavier weapons, or provide movement bonus in heavy armor, etc. .If it were me, I would do away with all the D&D legacy names and make a clean break, as it will cause less confusion and whining in the long run. I think something like this: Vitality Endurance Agility Perception Aptitude Resolve
  9. curryinahurry
    Absolutely disagree...this is the reasoning behind why we get crappy UI in games. Also, if they wanted real efficiency with the action bars, they would have vertical portraits with action bar as roll-out when one moved the cursor over the portrait. 2 clicks (action and object) and done. Now we have a minimum of 3 clicks and possibly more with sub-menus.
  10. curryinahurry
    Now I'm wondering if they do another KS for additional stretch goals, if we can get a BG2 style UI option for an Additional 500k raised. I would gladly contribute $100 towards that goal. Of course, this might be unfeasible from a technical standpoint, but I would take that over additional NPCs (although I would like more wilderness areas).
  11. curryinahurry
    I'm not sure if you read the Update 54 thread before you posted here, but you should because there are several mock-ups that meet this criteria. I'm including one of mine as an example, but look for others. I said before I like the idea of placing the portraits on the right, because IMO today we have far more horizontal space then vertical and we should use it. With that being said, I am not an expert and most developers go for a bottom UI.. As for your deign, here are a couple of notes caught with my untrained eye: 1. You will have the same "gap issues" I outlined in the previous post. 2. You ignored the presumably new mechanic to indicate status(the flags under the portraits) which has more space in obsidian bottom design. 3. That bar on the left and bottom are complete waste of space, which would only grow the higher res you go.(btw what many people here refer to as high-res is actually today common res). Other than that its just the same design only moving almost everything to the right, using already painted over elements and solving the actions issue with WOW like floating elements, which many said they dislike. Also IMO the veritcal health\stamina bars make more sense when they outlined horizontally as in obsidian version, which gives you a better tactical indication of where you party stands. p.s. Please use spoiler tags, I hate image spam thread As a note, this was a mock-up I put together as a response on the UI thread, so it is a bit out of context. You should look at that thread for other examples and read the discussion if you care to follow the rationale those of us who prefer the U shaped frame. The points that you bring up were addressed in that discussion, but they are all valid. This of course was a 10 minute re-working of the BG2 UI to fit with POE. If I were to sit down and actually design a UI for this game, it might look quite different. With regards to the frame being wasted space; you are right but this is the look that many think is the best version of the IE interfaces. It's an aesthetic preference. I had posted one version with a transparency slider for that frame, so one could do away with it if they cared to.
  12. curryinahurry
    I'm not sure if you read the Update 54 thread before you posted here, but you should because there are several mock-ups that meet this criteria. I'm including one of mine as an example, but look for others.[/url]
  13. curryinahurry
    To be fair, they didn't explain the "cost" of the new features other than money. A lot of people are concerned about them taking away from other features, and adding significantly more development time to the game. When the actuality is it's probably just more money for outsourcing environment art and to bring another writer onto the project. So the time difference will be there, but it wouldn't be very long I don't think People voting against will have a multitude of reasons, but all are based on a concern that scope increasing will create problems. I will be interested in seeing how Obsidian handles this issue. This isn't a question for the masses. It is being directed to stakeholders. It doesn't matter that the naming convention is backers, the people on this forum are a particularly invested group who have contributed more than is necessary in order to receive a particular benefit ( a game type we believe we have been deprived of over the past 10+ years); thus the term stakeholder; partners is also a relevant term. We are exploring a new paradigm, and I am very interested in how game developers approach this particular wrinkle as we have shifted the field quite a bit.
  14. curryinahurry
    @ JE Sawyer Possibly, but I think the data would have been useful in any case. User preference and experience would is a tricky thing, I know, but I really like data when I can get it to help establish an idea of the field. As an example, I'll be interested to see how you folks treat the poll results for the additional content in the announcements sub-forum. While its easy to say the an overwhelming majority are in favor of additional content at this point, one could also view the numbers as showing a significant group against added scope.
  15. curryinahurry
    And actually, the direction of travel for the mouse in your first two examples (counter-clockwise) vs the third (clockwise) is much less comfortable for right handed mouse users. Of course, as you stated, with mouse acceleration, its pretty much a non issue, as all of these movements become little more than hand gestures. I would really have like to seen a poll among KS backers as to UI preference - before we got the first glimpse in Update 54. I think BG-2 would have been the overwhelming favorit.e
  16. curryinahurry
    ^ This is why I have reconciled myself to the fact that we're going to get a fairly crappy UI. You hit the nail on the head with the last post. The problem I see with the whole discussion around UI design is that its supported by a bunch of assumption that I find highly suspect. It seems like there is a preference by the decision makers on POE to have a certain type of UI and the reasoning was tailored to that bias. BTW, the whole kinematics of right to left mouse movement is nonsense. That was based on old NIH research of straight mouse directional movement. The reality, is that the hand (and mouse attached to it) likes to describe an arc in its movements. This means that diagonals are extremely efficient, generally moving from upper left to lower right, but the opposite direction of mouse travel is negligibly less so. This means, that given the POE/ Karkarov examples, mouse travel to and from the center of the screen to the character portraits will be roughly as efficient as if the UI was U shaped in the BG2 style (which many of us prefer). However, once portraits have been selected, travel to the action key will be inefficient as it will be either down to up (very poor by the NIH test results) or left to right (also very poor). With right justified portraits and action bars directly below the portraits, as many mock ups UI in the Update 54 thread described, mouse travel would be roughly triangular / elliptical, and always in a clockwise motion which would ultimately be more efficient than what Obsidian is developing.
  17. curryinahurry
    @ Stun This leads me to believe that the Dragon's Eye tie-in is thematically; a deeper mystery/discovery that isn't initially apparent. Also, to be fair, the Durlag's Tower et. al. references were thrown around before we arrived at 15 total levels. At that size, it almost mandates a development that transitions in dungeon typologies (and morphologies).
  18. curryinahurry
    I've been trying with chrome/IE/firefox and none works. I ran IE-11 with no add-ons, logged in again, and it went through the first time. Also, as nikolokolus above stated, you could also clear your browsing history....good luck!
  19. curryinahurry
    Did you see this bit? I'd agree except this is a spiritual successor to the IE games. One of the defining qualities of those games was their massive scope, and if PE falls short in that department it'll cause a lot of disappointment. (which is rightly why the dev team is so nervous about it) No I did not, thank you. However, It doesn't change the fact that additional NPC's are a significant change in scope. Actual implementation of a thing isn't the issue, it is the planning and whether such assets fit into an overall scheme. This is a universal aspect that cuts across all design disciplines. I will concede however, that not knowing game development, and specifically Obsidian's own process, this might be less of an issue than it I might think it to be.
  20. curryinahurry
    @ Sensuki, thanks for the quotes. I voted no, but could change my mind depending on future clarification, and would likely contribute for the additional content/ stretch goal. Although I think Josh Sawyer's intent is great, I'm a bit wary of adding additional companions at this point. Of course, it could still be early enough in the process to make sure that they are integrated properly, but changing scope in this aspect of design would seem to be fairly tricky (though I have no real idea as I'm not in game development). The wilderness areas are less of an issue. One thing I would say, is that if wilderness size increases, that we get a few more creature assets in place to ensure that there is variety.
  21. curryinahurry
    Seems like Chrome was the culprit for me as well. The Obsidian folks might want to look into this.
  22. curryinahurry
    I will join others in asking for more information about parameters and the effect on the development timeline. If Obsidian chooses this content to go in as DLC or part of the expansion, then I'm all for it, but I would rather not have the game delayed any significant amount of time to add additional content. NPCs will take a good deal of work to integrate into the storyline (as others have pointed out); and new areas are super, but may become moot if it leads us to bump into the level cap earlier in the game.
  23. curryinahurry
    Video looks great as a first glimpse. I look forward to reading through the various linked interviews, etc. Thanks!
  24. curryinahurry
    I can get to the site with google chrome, but no content is showing up for me. I'll try again in a few hours...And my badge is missing
  25. curryinahurry
    That just got me thinking... I know they've said that "godlike" will basically be a subrace option for any character creation races, but... will we bump into godlike humanoid (or even non-humanoid?) creatures out in the world? I mean, if Trolls are intelligent, why would all of the gods completely refrain from affecting anyone but the character-creation races? That's a good point! How neat would it be to interact or fight with a godlike Troll King/Queen, not to mention godlike vithracks, etc.? Monster Godlikes? It would interesting if such boons granted followed the concept of something like a Drider. Something that would make the monster better at hunting and killing rather than just a cosmetic affect.
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