Matt516

I'm a little confused by what's so confusing about the current or suggested systems - could you elaborate on what in particular is confusing for you? Might makes all your damage and healing do 2% more per point, Constitution gives you 2% more health per point, Dexterity (will soon) give all your actions 2% more speed per point, Intellect (just going with our suggested for now) makes all of your AoEs 5% bigger and all of your Durations 5% longer per point Perception gives you +1 Accuracy per point (maybe Interrupt as well, TBA), Resolve gives you +1 Deflection (AKA physical defense) and makes you less likely to be interrupted per point. The only mechanics that aren't clear are the Interrupt-related ones, which Sensuki and I acknowledged. The rest is even clearer than D&D, in my opinion - we're going from a somewhat unintuitive "bonus modifiers to various skills and checks for every 2 points in a stat" to a straightforward "every stat point does this exact thing" system. It's clearer, not more complicated, in my opinion. But I'd love to help you understand it better if you're still confused - can you give more details on what aspects of the current system you find obtuse? Also (this didn't fit anywhere else) re: your comment about whether a high Might or high Int fighter performs better: neither! They perform differently - that's the beauty of it. A high Might fighter will do more damage because Might increases your damage. A high Int fighter will have longer lasting knockdowns and such because Int augments your abilities. A high Con fighter will take more hits because Con increases your health. There is no "best" way to build your fighter - that's the whole point of this system. You look at the stats and build a character specialized to your own personal tastes and desired playstyle.

Good to see Sawyer explaining stuff, er, somewhere else. This answer is disingenuous, to say the least. How can you build the character you want to build if the underlying systems are too opaque? Just trust in Josh that everything will be awesome whatever you choose? To elaborate and hopefully elucidate Sawyer's point: This kind of complicated math analysis needs to be done at a design and balancing level. The reason for that is so the player doesn't have to. If the attributes are properly balanced, than the player can get all complicated if they want, or they can just go "look, this one says +% Damage, I'll put a few points there.... ooh, this one says +% Duration, I'd like a few there..." without having to worry about if they are screwing themselves over by picking the "wrong" stats. If you're not fond of the level of detail we've gone into on the mathematical interactions between the stats, that's totally fine. Not everyone will be. But just know that the whole point of going this in-depth at the design level is so the player doesn't have to. EDIT: This guy explains what I'm trying to say pretty well.

Do remember that the number of levels per talent is subject to change. I made a prediction (that I still stand by) that by the time the game comes out it will be 1 talent for every 2 levels, not 3.

Maybe I'm misunderstaning you - Fireballs have no duration for example - or do you mean all builds will benefit in some way from duration?Don't always need the added AOE, true - but if everyone's clumped and you can use the fringe as ally-safe nuke-zone, you could cast fireballs freely. I wonder how this tallies with barbarian's 'carnage' AOE - do some AOEs originate with the 'caster' - so barbarian would need to run away behind enemy lines to benefit from the fringe (or are their AOEs party-friendly anyway? Good point - what I meant to convey was that every time you cast a spell with a duration, you are benefiting from your % duration bonus (getting more Dot, longer buff, etc - it's pretty much never wasted). But sometimes when you cast an AoE, you don't benefit from the extra radius because you would've been able to hit all your targets anyway. So Duration is always helpful on spells with a duration, but AoE is only selectively useful, even for spells with an AoE. I think Carnage is no friendly fire by default. EDIT: said duration when I meant aoe

Awesome! The reason I ask is that if we can be sure to emphasize those 3 things (as a unified group), the game should be in an insanely better place than it is right now, attribute design wise.

*refreshes forum* "Is the top post... really?" *checks watch* "Yup, it's combat XP o'clock again..."

Not the same thing, it reduces your effective DPS if you're doing damaging actions and effective durations on non-damaging actions But are you taking into account the length of combat when comparing it to other stats? In general, the length of combat shouldn't make a difference over the long term (i.e. many battles) when comparing stats that increase effective DPS. The frequency with which you get interrupted (i.e. your effective DPS loss) should remain relatively constant over the course of a battle. In the same way, effective DPS increases from other stats such as Accuracy and Might are also relatively constant in the long term. All the changes to effective DPS are battle-time independent by nature - they're changes to effective damage per second, so they scale with battle length. Yes, with shorter battles there will be more individual variance with variables like Accuracy and Concentration, but again - from a long-term statistical perspective, DPS loss is DPS loss. So the length of combat really isn't a factor when comparing stats that affect your effective DPS. The magnitude of those effects is important - but as I've mentioned, actually determining that for the Interrupt-related stats is really difficult because it depends on so many variables. The strength of the Interrupt mechanic will likely have to be tuned more by "feel" than by algebra for that reason.

This would be better from an intuitive-ness standpoint, and it really doesn't change the mechanics a whole lot. Coding healing to check if you have enough health could be slightly difficult, but I'd imagine it could be done without too much fuss. Good suggestion.

Just wanted to take a minute to say: Thanks everyone for reading, and for your awesome feedback so far! 10,000 views in 24 hours - wow. Really making me glad we put the time into this, that's all I'm gonna say. And thanks for replying, Josh! If you happen across this post but haven't read the rest of the replies from after you left, I would highly recommend doing so (even though there are a lot). For the most part, the quality of discussion in this thread has been top-notch, and I think you'll find there are a ton of great ideas being presented from all sides.

Well as I've said - I still think our system is more elegant and I prefer it. But this proposed split would be my 2nd choice. It's certainly not bad, and miles ahead of what's in place now. I could get behind this even though I prefer Intellect to remain unchanged. I think those of us who prefer what you're suggesting or what Sensuki and I have been suggesting should try to form a united front. Josh Sawyer seems willing to go with one of the two, and from what I can tell most people who prefer one or the other still acknowledge the benefits of the other system. We just need to keep Accuracy with Interrupt, get Deflection and Action Speed implemented, and keep Might and Constitution the same (IMO). If those three are implemented, we'll have a good solid base to playtest and tune from there.

I can appreciate your perspective, but don't really see how someone rolling for 30 minutes "punishes" someone who uses the fixed point distribution. Maybe if this were a multiplayer game I could see that. But what happens in my game on my PC in my house shouldn't punish, reward, or otherwise affect what happens in your game on your PC in your home. And to that point, there will be people who decide to give all their characters an 18 in all attributes, thousands of health/endurance, etc, etc. I'm not "punished" if I choose to play the game with the balance that the developers intended. If anything, the cheater is punished because they have spoiled their game experience, arguably. Well yes, but how do the developers determine what to balance for? The easiest way would be to take the statistically most likely roll (i.e. in the middle of the distribution since it should be symmetrical) and balance for that many attributes - but c'mon. Even "casuals" (I mean no disrespect) will reroll a few times. It's just not fitting for a computer game IMO. I would be in favor of a "cheat code" that allows setting your own stats - but I think such an ability shouldn't be included in the "core" game mechanics, simply because of the balance issues.

Yeah - as I've said, splitting Duration and AoE wouldn't be the worst thing ever, but it's certainly not optimal IMO. I think there have been a lot of good suggestions in the thread so far, and I'm loving the quality of discussion and variety of good, constrictive feedback and debate going on. Josh, if you see this, you should know that anytime you drop into a forum discussion, even for an hour or so, it provides a huge morale boost to us. That said, I still prefer the original design presented in our paper for the most part. Granted, I'm biased - but still. I haven't really seen any alternatives that do a better job of achieving those two design goals while still making sense from a RP perspective.

The problem with stat rolling is that it rewards being tedious in the worst possible way. People who want to just play will get punished because they'll have a stat total of say ~70 to distribute amongst their scores. Then there are people who will sit there for hours just to get a high total (85+) before playing. This is like the reverse of how it should work - more casual players should not find themselves immediately handicapped before playing the game for such an incredibly tedious reason. It's also more interesting if players are forced to make trade-offs. A game system that says "hey, you can have it all... so long as you are willing to sit here for 30+ minutes clicking 'roll' over and over again" is broken, IMO. Of course, the impact of stat rolling will be a bit more muted in PoE because PoE doesn't have insanely stupid stat thresholds like AD&D does (e.g. an 18/xx strength was worlds better than 17 strength, and a 14 constitution was useless but a 15 constitution was highly meaningful). It *would* be interesting however, if there was like a Pen-and-Paper-style stat rolling; kind of like the iron mode (one death = kaput), you get only one set of dice rolls to determine your stats, and you're stuck with it. This would ideally work best if you set your stats before you set your class so you could try to adapt to it if, say, you got terrible intelligence and your aoe-based character was no summarily handicapped. On a lighter note, while rolling a wizard in BG2EE, I ended up with the most stupidly awesome natural roll I've ever gotten in my life: 15/18/16/18/17/12 (yes, the 18s naturally landed on Dex and Int for my wizard and a perfect 16 for con, which would've been super great in a setting where I would not be allowed to arbitrarily move points around). I sat there dumbfounded for a while before shouting "BUT NO ONE WILL BELIEVE ME." Pretty much my opinion. Rolling for attributes (or rolling for anything, really) only makes sense if it's enforced, if the player can't simply reroll until they get the result they want. That's why I like combat systems based on rolling, but not character creation based on rolling. The fact that you can just keep rolling (or even in Iron Man mode, keep starting over since its the beginning of the game) until you get a high value basically punishes those who aren't willing to sit there rolling for 30 minutes and make the game too easy for those who do. Rolling for stats is great in PnP. Not in cRPG.

Agreed. Even with Josh's selective fringe idea (which would buff AoE considerably), AoE is still much, much weaker than Duration simply by virtue of the fact that benefiting from increased AoE is very situational, whereas you always benefit from increased Duration. Not that AoE needs to be buffed to be on a level with Duration (if that's even possible) - it's fine how it is or slightly buffed by Josh's idea. It's power level should just be taken into consideration when pairing it with other attributes. It needs to be paired with a "strong" attribute (like Accuracy, Deflection, Duration) rather than a "weak" attribute (like Interrupt or Concentration).

Someone on the RPGCodex had a similar comment haha... You're right - this is engineering rather than math in the strictest sense. xD 2 things: 1) We're really not dealing with the magnitude of attributes at the moment, just the effects. If all the attributes are balanced with X stat boni on X attributes, then tuning is mostly a matter of applying a simple multiplier to everything. Some stats may scale nonlinearly in power, but most should be close enough to linear to allow for that kind of balancing. 2) Interrupt and Concentration on one attribute would be a bad idea both from a thematic perspective (IMO, YMMV) and from a mechanical perspective - as we go into in the paper, the efficacy of Interrupt is so heavily dependent on Accuracy that pairing it with anything else would mean that the two attributes are then coupled - in order to make a "good" Interrupt build you would also require a high score in the Accuracy attribute. Additionally, the effects of Interrupt and Concentration are hard to quantify, so putting both on the same attribute would make the worth of that attribute somewhat difficult to evaluate. Lastly, if these were combined you would then have 1 attribute governing one single system in combat. All the other attributes are beneficial for a variety of combat situations, but a combined Interrupt/Concentration attribute would be extremely specialized. Well, separating AoE and Duration wouldn't so much increase build variety as it would make it more difficult for casters to build a good statline. YMMV though.

It seems to me that a lot of people are taking "all attributes should be useful in some way for all classes" to mean "all attributes should be useful for all characters". Those aren't the same thing. Yes, Constitution is not as useful for back liners as it is for front liners. That doesn't mean it fails to meet the design goal though, because all classes can benefit from increased survivability if the player chooses to build and play them that way. The meaning of this design goal is that systems such as the Infinity engine stats, where certain classes literally mechanically do not benefit in any way from some attributes, should be avoided. But let us not fall into the trap of trying to make all attributes useful for all character archetypes. That is simply a nonsensical goal in my opinion.

Lulz.

We address this in the paper (pages 17-18), but here's a paraphrase: Although many actions in combat are fairly fast (mainly basic attacks), some of the higher level spells in PoE can have up to a 6 second cast time. With standard recovery time and in heavy armor, that's 18 seconds of total action time. Granted, that's in heavy armor - but even naked (12 seconds) that's a very long time to be tied up with one ability. Additionally, the following factors (beyond speed) are also contributing to a frantic and "out of control" feeling for the combat right now:  High per-hit damage of enemies combined with normalized attack resolutions  Underpowered Backer Beta characters (due to lack of gear)  The movement speed of all units in combat is too fast  Lack of visual, audio and UI feedback in combat  Player unfamiliarity with the game’s systems  Higher level of micromanagement required due to more active and modal abilities for all classes So we don't believe the frantic feeling of the combat at the moment is entirely due to game speed. Once the various UI and feedback issues are fixed and players become more used to the game's systems (remember that the BB throws you into a 5-member lvl 5 party with no tutorial or learning time), we anticipate that many will feel that combat is too slow in some aspects. Additionally, even if IAS ends up making the game too fast, the default speed of all actions can always be turned down to compensate - still preserving the freedom of choice to build a "fast" or "slow" character but not breaking the game speed in the process. That's a paraphrase, but we address it more in-depth in the paper. Pages 17-18 will have what you're looking for (but please everyone, read the whole thing! It's worthwhile, I promise! :D) https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29325716/Pillars%20of%20Eternity/Sensuki_Matt516_Attribute_Rework.pdf

Josh's suggestion about shuffling INT stats around is very INTeresting. I think it could definitely work. While I'd be loathe to lose the symmetry, as I said: I've come to realize through these discussions (especially seeing other viable ideas for tweaks presented) that in my opinion (like I said, Sensuki might disagree when he wakes up) the three most important suggestions to take from our redesign are these: Deflection and Action Speed should be on attributes (but not paired with each other or Accuracy) Might and Constitution should be left alone Accuracy should be paired with Interrupt (if Interrupt exists as a stat)

I don't have strong feelings about this one way or the other, tbh.... I mean, I'm not a big fan of crafting/enchanting systems in cRPGs in general, as they are generally either gamebreaking or worthless. But at the same time, some people really enjoy crafting, and it's not impossible to balance. If it is in the game though, a merchant/special place (maybe in stronghold) makes more sense to me than being able to craft anywhere. As with most games that include crafting though, I'll probably just ignore it if I don't like how its implemented.

Partially because recovery time is a little slow (that one's more Sensuki than me, I don't really care), partially because it would be fun to be able to build a "fast" character (impossible in the current system), and partially because another combat stat is needed to round them all out, and IAS fits very well because it can work thematically with DEX or RES and it provides some good "all-around" character improvement without beating any attribute at its own game.

Haha thanks! I didn't back at that tier (was there a tier for that? O_o) but I certainly wouldn't turn it down if it were offered. ;P I'm glad you like the symmetry and the flexibility! Those are the strongest elements of our design IMO. And while this symmetry still causes me to prefer our design to the others presented in this thread thus far (not that those are bad, mind you), this discussion has brought me to realize that I'm really most concerned about three things at the moment. If these three suggestions are implemented, I'll consider it a win: Deflection and Action Speed should be on attributes (but not paired with each other or Accuracy) Might and Constitution should be left alone Accuracy should be paired with Interrupt (if Interrupt exists as a stat) Beyond that, I'm not too concerned as to what goes where - as long as Deflection and Action Speed don't go on the same stat with each other or Accuracy, of course. That would be crazy overpowered. As for which stats "fit" with which attributes - I think a case can be made for pretty much any of DEF, IAS, or ACC going on any of RES, PER, or DEX (except for ACC on RES and IAS on PER). So I don't really care about that too much. As long as the three above are implemented, I'll consider the core purpose of our paper accomplished (though I'm not putting words in Sensuki's mouth, he may feel otherwise).

Potato potato. :D

Actually no. The risk is faaaaar more likely that it will be OP than UP. Generally, in CRPGs, any attribute that increases the number of actions one can take (i.e. action speed), unless carefully balanced, is a no-brainier to pump. This is true in turn based and round based games - less so in real time, where attack speed can be completely granular. As Sensuki and I mentioned in the paper, when you run the numbers, 2% IAS ends up being significantly weaker than MIG against any kind of DT at all. This is made up for by the fact that IAS helps everything, but it's still hardly a no-brainer to pump.

When compared to any other attribute, it will be underpowered. However, because it helps your character do literally everything faster (and therefore better), it ends up balanced IMO. If IAS was added to DEX, it would be the very definition of a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none" attribute. We went into this a bit in our paper, but you might have missed it. And the attack speed bonus can always be increased if it is too weak.