[Pax East Stream Feedback thread]

I could be mistaken, I might have it confused with another IE game. The 4th wall breaking thing is definitely IWD1 though.

Not an IE game, but Warcraft 3 also had the fourth-wall breaking lines if you 'poked' a unit for long enough. Unique ones for every unit type with a voice and rather fiesty too, but Blizzard's always been quirky that way.

[Spell queue]

No, i understand it perfectly- but it does influence the rest of the game. Basically, a queue can only be usable if the times it can be used at all are common.

 

This, by itself, imply that you can predict what your character will do in 4/5 seconds after the current action and the recovery time in a reliable manner.

 

Basically, in order for a queue to work out, the tactical challenge must be dimnished. This is compounded by the semi-Vancian system, as it enables degenerate gameplay where you just spam abilities and thus are forced to rest more and more.

 

This obviously also apply to "useful things" like moving around to not get into engagement attacks, as it presupposes that by the time your character get to the first 'endpoint' of the queue the enemies will not have adjusted. In a decently done game, this actually would kill your characters, not help them (i am obviously not talking about stuff like in a RTS where you use this for pathfinding/ambush after minutes of walking).

 

 

I don't think you really do understand how it works. A shift+click queue is optional, not the default method of issuing commands. Why must the game be dumbed down to accommodate it? It is an ease of use feature. Tactical challenge is a mechanics issue. There's no need to change one because of the other.

 

My statement about engagement attacks applies equally well to persistent AoE effects like Cloudkill. Queuing basically allows you to micromanage pathfinding, which I still think is a valid use-case. Again, it's something IE games have worked fine without, so it's not necessary, but it's definitely not something which will kill a game, like you seem to suggest.

 

(But then again, it's been a long time since I've played an RTwP so I can't say I'm 100% sure of what I'm saying. At least I think queues will be useful...)

[Spell queue]

I think a lot of people here (Arkeus in particular) don't quite understand what the shift+click RTS-esque queue is - if you want to issue two/multiple commands instead of one, you hold shift+issue those commands - you do not cancel single items in a queue, you either execute the whole queue or cancel the whole queue by issuing a new command. I don't see how this is going to make the game unbalanced in any way. Either you use this feature for something stupid like chain fireball-ing and make the game harder for yourself, or use it for something more useful like moving units around enemies in a queue of short steps to avoid engagement/disengagement. Not an essential feature by any means, but it isn't game breaking either.

[The Obsidian Order of Eternity (part 7)]

Just upped my pledge - "Oneiromancer of the Obsidian Order", if you would be so kind. I love alliterations

[Guess the release date!]

Meant 8th of December.  Don't know which month's calendar I was looking at there...

[Guess the release date!]

December 7th is my guess. Though I'd rather it be on a Friday so I don't have to wait through a work week to play

[Thoughts on damage types]

...It's the principle of the Faraday cage.

 

Faraday cages have been mentioned before - the argument invoked was that suits of armour are never perfect. An imperfect suit of armour will still provide "safe" conduction channels while not acting as a Faraday cage.

 

In all honesty (as I've said a couple of times before), I understand that this is an abstracted system and actually don't mind a minor DT penalty just to add variety. Lephys seemed to suggest that there might be circumstances where my Plate-clad Black Knight might take more damage from a shock attack than my Spandex-clad Dark Knight, which was what I was objecting to in my previous post. The actual numbers are of course up to the devs, but this scenario seemed a little inane to me.

[Thoughts on damage types]

And yeah. Like Josh said, it's unlikely you'll remain perfectly grounded the whole time in combat...

 

 

*sigh* OK, I'm getting a little tired of repeating this, but being grounded should not even enter the discussion. I guess I'll go into this in a little more detail (inspired by AGX-17's poison chemistry up there!).

 

"Grounding" is an approximation. Metals have a very low resistance as compared to non-metals. When you have an unbroken link of low-resistance material to the "ground" (the place where all stray electricity goes) then you can approximate the potential at the top of this link to be the same as the ground, i.e. zero. This means that any electricity striking the top of this link is effectively going straight into the ground, ignoring any other alternative paths (through your adventurer's body). This protection is not going anywhere just because a piece of the metallic link to the ground is replaced by a non-metal. The approximation only becomes a lot worse. The metallic parts of your armour are still much lower in resistance than the human body, however sweaty. You will get shocked at those points in the link where the "grounding" is broken, but you will not feel a thing in those parts which are covered by metal. Contrast this to an adventurer wearing Enchanted Elven leather armour - the sweaty human body is probably always a lower resistance pathway for electricity than the armour. The more metal your armour contains, the fewer the parts of your body that get shocked. Sit in a car in a thunderstorm - the metal protects you from a significant amount of HP damage even though cars have rubber tires.

 

Josh's point about Accuracy bonuses is not exactly valid IMO. True, the more metal your armour contains, the more attractive it becomes to being struck by a bolt of electricity. But it also provides more protection from damage, even if it is not grounded. If the accuracy bonus translates into a DT penalty, the "protection" I'm talking about should translate into a high DR bonus. Does a DT penalty cancel out a DR bonus? I have no idea. I don't see how it leaves you with a net DT penalty though.

[Thoughts on damage types]

Would it be more accurate to give Shock-based attacks an Accuracy bonus...

 

Well technically the accuracy bonus should only apply when the suit of armour is perfectly grounded (a non grounded piece of metal is just as likely to be hit as an insulator)

 

But it's good to know that the DT reduction won't make plate weaker than other armours to shock. I guess that works as some sort of a compromise...

[Thoughts on damage types]

it's magic ... Metal is less resistive...

Which is it? Magic? Or Physics? If it's just an arbitrary "plate is weaker to shock magic just because it's magic" (like Runescape, but only for shock and nothing else?) then sure, it shouldn't bother anyone.

If it's physics then there's a problem there. The lightning is going to go through your armour, through you and into the ground no matter what - and if you're wearing plate then there will always be metallic bits of armour in parallel with parts of your body, reducing the amount of electricity flowing through those parts of your body. Even if we drop all those details due to abstraction, I don't see a physical reason why it should suddenly make you more susceptible to shock damage.

[Thoughts on damage types]

...a lot of interruptions to grounding, IMO.

 

While I'd normally argue that a lightning bolt which arcs through the air from mage to target should be able to bridge any interruptions to grounding in a suit of armour, I agree that it doesn't make sense to dissect this in an abstracted combat system. The idea of plate being "weak" to shock worries me though - is this still going to be included? What is the justification (or necessity) for that?