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aVENGER
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Posts posted by aVENGER
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Since the Kickstarter has now officially reached $3.5M I'd like to make a suggestion. Instead of introducing new stretch goals, how about devoting the extra money on Quality Assurance (QA).
In short, make sure that the game is polished at launch and doesn't require a bunch of patches to become playable. No offense meant to Obsidian, it's just that a project of this scope needs thorough testing.
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I'd love Project Eternity spoofed the rat cellar quest, similarly to how it was done in Age of Decadence.
For reference, AoD has a quest where the player discovers a cellar full of rats. If the PC says that he wants to fight the rats for experience all the people in the area just give him weird looks.
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My stretch goal suggestion: $3.7M - Finishing Touches
At $3.7M (or some other amount set by Obsidian) they (significantly) increase the size of their internal QA team to ensure that the final product will be as bugfree and polished as possible.
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The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me.
There may be other ways to award the player for killing large quantities of enemies.
For example, there was a small detail that I really liked about the original Diablo (first game in the series). When you encounter an enemy of a certain type for the first time, you don't know anything about it. You mouse over it, and it just diplays the enemy's name. After killing a few of these enemies, you get some basic information like average hit points. By killing more of them, you eventually learn their resistances and weaknesses (i.e. vulnerable to fire, resists cold). Finally, after killing dozens of them, you get their full stats on mouse over. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Project Eternity.
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OH! That's AMAZING! Give "XP" that is used towards specific mechanics! Lockpicking more increases your lockpick skill. Speech skill increases your speech skill more. Combat increases THACO. Then XP can be used towards other things like unlocking PERKS and SKILLS.
And what prevents you from sneaking past enemies and getting the stealth bonus, then talking to them and getting the speech bonus and finally killing them and getting the combat bonus?
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Best way to improve your combat skills is doing combat, if you kill something, your combat skills improve, unless its like a little kid or a little dog or a baby.
Actually, XP is an abstraction, unless you are dealing with "learn by doing" systems like the one used in Oblivion and other TES games.
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So it's actually more practical and intuitive to assign xp to each instance of these "objectives" than having enemies hand out xp based on their challenge rating?
That will be a lot of work.. taking into account every possible encounter.
Not necessarily.
It doesn't mean that every single enemy group will count as a "progress point". For example, let's say that you need to get an item from a guarded building. The item is located inside a safe on the third floor. The first step would be to get inside the building. You can distract the guards at the entrance and sneak past them, disguise your group and talk your way in or simply kill the guards. Either way, you get the same XP amount for passing the first progress point.
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I'd just feel if you meet a random encounter of 17 brigands and whack them all with your rapied,
and then repeat that 48 times... well you really should be learning something right there.
In a goal-based XP system, you could still get experience for "Surviving an encounter with brigands". On the other hand, you'd get the same amount of XP if you intimidated them into leaving you alone or simply snuck past them.
A goal-based XP system doesn't penalize you, it just opens up more choices.
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For of course.
Also, some clarification for people who might not be familiar with goal-based XP systems:
- "goal" does not necessarily equal "quest"; you can have goal-based XP awards such as "Surviving an encounter with ogres" without it being tied to any particular quest; exploring an unknown cave might also count as a goal etc.
- you always get the same amount of XP for completing a goal; how you do it (stealth, diplomacy, combat, environment...) is entirely up to you
- one quest can consist of several smaller goals or "progress points"; that way, XP can be awarded during the entire duration of the quest, not just after it's completed
- a goal-based XP system prevents abuses such as completing one quest in all three possible ways (stealth, diplomacy, combat) and racking up a triple XP award
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- "goal" does not necessarily equal "quest"; you can have goal-based XP awards such as "Surviving an encounter with ogres" without it being tied to any particular quest; exploring an unknown cave might also count as a goal etc.
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In this example, it would be trivial to flag those bandits as no longer worth XP once you've persuaded them not to attack.
Even if there is an easy way to set XP/noXP flags in the engine (note: there wasn't in the IE games) it would still mean that the developers would have to do this for every single quest that has multiple solutions. In short, that would increase the development time by a significant margin.
Besides, a goal-based XP system already does the same thing in a simpler and much more elegant manner.
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One thing to note, even with an goal-based XP system, you could still get XP for exploring and dealing with powerful creatures, without it being necessarily tied to a quest.
For example, you are exploring a forest and encounter a pack of ogres by a campfire on the side of the road. The ogres not a part of any quest, they are simply loitering there, possibly intimidating travelers into paying them for "safe passage". You can sneak past them, talk your way out or kill them. In either case, a notice would pop up saying something like "Dealt with the ogres. +250 XP". In short, exploration isn't necessarily penalized by a goal-based XP system.
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It's still the responsibility of designers to set up mechanics that don't screw with the player's desires. BTW, this sort of XP bias can work in ANY direction, not just combat. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you earned markedly less XP from mission to mission if you didn't stop to hack literally anything you came across -- even terminals for which you already had the password!
Yeah, silly stuff like that is why I prefer goal-based XP systems.
It makes no sense to resolve a single quest through stealth (i.e. steal a quest item), then diplomacy (talk the guards into giving the item to you) and finally combat (kill the guards) and get the XP award three times. In a goal-based system, you get the XP once you complete the main goal (get the item) but how you accomplish that is entirely up to you. I'm glad that you and Tim seem to be favoring this approach as well.
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Tim and I would rather not give XP for general killin' because it leads to a lot of weird/degenerate scenarios, but I have no problem with having quests oriented specifically around killing and receiving XP for achieving sub-objectives/the main goal.
Awesome!
It sounds similar to the goal-based XP system which was used in VtM:Bloodlines. I really liked it as it gave players the freedom to resolve quests in several different ways (stealth, diplomacy, combat...) without being penalized for it.
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I like the health/stamina concept. It reminds me of Jagged Alliance 2 and I thought it worked pretty well there.
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Tim Cain: those rights are held by Activision Blizzard, who got them from a chain of buy-sell events occurring after Sierra closed. I have often thought of making a sequel to Arcanum, especially since Troika designed a sequel called "Journey to the Centre of Arcanum" back in 2001, but I don't own the rights and there doesn't seem much interest from the publisher to back such a project
Hmm, I wonder about that.
Considering that ex-BIS/Troika Leonard Boyarsky is now working at Blizzard (Lead World Designer on Diablo 3) maybe he could pitch the idea to someone in the management. However, knowing Activision, they would probably want to turn it into a FPS or something.
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Upped my pledge as well.
Here's hoping to that second big city!
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Waste of resources.
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If it's not too expensive, I'd like to hear David Warner in Project Eternity. Not necessarily in a big role, but something memorable nonetheless.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Ki7yp2XL0
Thanks to him, every self-respecting BG2 fan knows at least one of Irenicus' lines by heart.
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Hmm, looks like ImageShack doesn't like my BG2 UI manip very much. Let's try that again with a different host, unless Obsidian objects of course.
Eternal Gate 2
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Beautiful screenshot.
Love the stronghold stretch goal. I'm hoping that the management options will be similar to NWN2's Crossroad Keep.
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In fact I might *** install them right now *** (demonic cackle) and post screenies of my epic (saved) Epic Blackguard game of MotB (Chaotic Evil version, bloated on souls).
:brofist:
I recently finished MotB with a similar character. It was refreshing to finally see a game where playing an evil protagonist doesn't equal to being Chaotic Stupid. One of many reasons to bring George Ziets back.
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Wow, great news!
This shows that Obsidian really does listen to their fans. Kudos to you guys!
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BTW, some clarification from Obsidian's kickstarter page:
All the funding that we receive from Kickstarter and PayPal will be used to make the base game - No money raised will be used for funding the expansion in any way.Source: http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/obsidian/comments
Spend the extra money on QA
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
Looks like Obsidian might really invest the extra money into polishing the game:
Source