nipsen

Oh, yes. Very cool.

Neat. But what impressed me with the example they had was that it doesn't look like they're just adjusting the lighting. And that the shadows cast on objects, adjust downhill, that sort of thing. Same with the lighting, that it looks like it's cast into the models, instead of changing the lighting intensity. And that it gives off the impression that everything is in 2d, with neat hand-made and complex animation - while it behaves as if moving in 3d. And that's not trivial, if you don't actually have hyper-detailed 3d models running around in the environment. Um. So criticism, I guess - don't think we've seen if moving objects (...dragons?) cast shadows on other moving objects like players and so on.

A lot of people at least behave as if that was, and always will be, true. Anyway. Problem I have with this discussion is that a lot of the time, internet people simply behave as if they can't get along with anyone who has a slightly different perspective than them, on anything. And many gaming communities actively encourage people to behave like that. That doesn't have anything to do particularly with girls, colour or candy preferences, really. In my opinion, it doesn't have to do with mutual respect for all, or morality, education or upbringing either. Instead it has all to do with people taking deliberate advantage of how there's no one else immediately present to force them to moderate themselves. Because games are power-trip fantasies. And you can see it in the way games are promoted, and how they're presented by community people. So how can you really clamp down on rude, random and annoying behavior on the forums, when the banner on the page basically reads: "Kill all enemies really fast with bros while swearing a lot"? Official sites often are the worst because of this. And that's really the basic level we're stuck at.

..funny you should mention Kotor2 as an example of mechanics breaking with the narrative. Because I always thought that game made a lot of sense when playing it.. over and over again a while back. And then I started playing it again now. And realized that the reason why the game made sense was that I always chose a high wis/dex sentinel. Without that build, very little of the role-playing worked, I ran around in power-armor, didn't care about the force, aspired to conquer the universe, destroy the entire world, and destroy my enemies with my mind, AHAHAHAHA. Then again, maybe that was the entire point, what would I know. That the game was written to allow both the destructive and the seeking path, without the character committing to either by choice of actual dialogue in the game. And that it encouraged you to decide what the ambiguous dialogue would actually mean. The Visas arc is probably the best example of that in any game I've played. In that you can convincingly intend to trick her from the beginning, and the dialogue makes complete sense. You could also just guide her along, until she sacrifices herself of her own will. Or, you could genuinely be trying to figure her out and connect with her. Etc., etc. Only problem with this approach is that you always end up with some situations where the writer knows what is supposed to happen, so they don't introduce you carefully enough into the scenario. Have had that problem several times when writing role-playing scenarios - that instead of the story being dynamic, it just seems vague and random. Then again, make things more pointed, and you start gating people.. Not easy.

Hm. That screenshot looks really good. ..am I getting hyped about the game now?

Haha! You're such a funny person! People who don't like to max-min builds, nor experience spiritual transcendence when watching numbers jump up and down on the screen? Whatever will you come up with next?

Hm. Could it be you are speaking of this elusive and possibly mythical "gamers who play for fun" clan?

Josh Sawyer's coffee is... Don't tell me he creams his coffee? All respect lost. No, I mean, point is that you don't balance the coffee. You mix in things to make it taste less of bile, or differently from a cup of black coffee, or whatever. Or you make something else, that isn't a black cup of coffee - like a Cappuccino or a Café Latte. But you don't "balance" coffee. It just is coffee, and if it's well made, then that's that. Only degenerate philistines would actually think that the milk taste cancels out and balances the coffee. That's.. absurd. It mellows the bitterness, perhaps? It hides the taste of coffee, for which I do not care in the first place - ok, entirely passable for brutes. But you don't "balance" the coffee. It's like insisting on having two blends, and then balancing the first with a different one. That's not what happens. You're just mixing two blends to get a third one that has even less character than either of the ones you started with. So then comes the smartarses and say: oh, but as long as it's black and tastes vile, it's fine! You said so yourself! So what if I mix arabica and malabar, grind it all together in a dull smoothie maker, and soak it with luke-warm water in a filter! It looks just fine, tastes I'm sure less vile than before - and now we've balanced arabica and malabar! And it doesn't work like that. Never will. Kind of the same with betatesting. Whenever you hear the word "balance", you can be approximately 99% certain that what is really being talked about is fundamental changes to the way a mechanic works, that will remove any point with having it in the game from a design standpoint. And if made consistent with the rest, requires every feat and weapon, spell and equipment piece be made into "generic item 1-900". And the ones who want their suggestions to happen haven't the slightest idea of what that design intended. Which they will use as an argument for how the game is broken and must be changed. Since they don't understand what the intention with the design was. And so on.

Oh, but I feel that the coffee flavour isn't balanced with the milk flavour... Honestly don't know how many balancing threads like this I've read in beta-tests. People insist that their personal point of view is the only angle you can approach anything. And several others - who have different points of views that they also think are the only one - agree with each other on balancing mechanics. Or if they don't, they compromise on nerfs around the board. Basically, they feel that a certain ability is overpowered when it takes out something else with ease. Or underpowered if it doesn't explode something you put the mouse cursor on. If that is because of good planning, luck, intention and design - that doesn't matter, because these testers and their opinions are intrinsically important, and game-mechanics doesn't matter for the perception customers have of the game, etc., etc. Coffee should taste black and strong.

Right. Because it's always more consistent, doesn't take any wizardry to do reasonably well, and so on. But since it was possible to learn to do it reasonably consistently on 30-50m - I'm wondering if the combination of close quarters and rifle ranges that I guess must have been common with slower firearms, made the idea of a sight seem like a very strange one. I mean, a complex sight (however high tech) can be an obstacle of sorts on short ranges. :D Krag-Jørgensen as well, of course. .. still have some sort of unhealthy fascination with rifles like that. Or, you could just guide the bullet around the corner, with your mind, and wrap a lightning field inside the iron ball. See, no need for scopes then either

I had been shooting 6.5mm semi-seriously for a while, and was a good shot to begin with. But I didn't learn to do it before I spent a year in the military. Didn't really think it was possible at first. And you're so used to thinking about accuracy in terms of lining up a shot in the sights with the right correction, that distance and angle doesn't come into it any more. Most will also learn to squint over the 100m sight when wearing a gas-mask. Instead of using the shoulder and the muzzle as point of reference. But it's possible, and I did some pretty fantastic snap-shots that way on the "popping targets while walking up the road" range we had. Same with automatic small arms in building breach scenarios - sights don't help you here. Even if you will correct your fire often, and it's not something you would bank on when covering sectors 10 degrees beside someone's head. Or when shooting competitively, and it has to be consistent. But it would probably be how you would survive in a huge dust-cloud with a mask on.. Then again, I know a guy who shoots lynx, but actually isn't left-handed.. eyes are weird, crazy dominance problem.. who does the same with a shotgun. And he can't hit anything if he tries to use the sights. Does reasonably well without it. So I'm wondering if maybe we've lost some sort of commonly learned skill with ranged weapons from the reliance on good sights, that was a given before. Not really sure. But like you say, recurve bows use sights now. And you definitely could line up a solid crossbow with a sight. Absolutely is more accurate to aim through a sight.

..it's not as game-specific as that. It's more of a game-mechanical problem that comes along with not very careful design, imo. "Kiting", is a thing in mmos, for example. Where you hit an enemy, walk backwards, and hit it again, then dodge, and so on, to prevent the enemy attack animation from triggering. Specially when soloing. It's probably seen as something that has to happen, even if some games avoid the entire "wear down the automatic mob that can't be interrupted" thing and then suddenly don't have that problem where kiting is necessary. Other approaches is just to punish people when gaming the system. Adding a penalty when breaking combat, for example. NWN did that. So you couldn't really run away or place people differently - it just became a brawler with a turn-based system. Which was pretty good. But still, it wasn't an abstraction of the d&d ruleset - it was an implementation of it on a computer. And it was very obvious that the combat could have been done better had the hardware target been a bit better, but that this never would happen, until we saw some prototype designs for what would become DA:Origins, that then in the end didn't actually have that much of a different approach anyway because the game has to have a hardware target that is pretty low, and... this kind of seems like an endless loop, for some reason. Maybe people are a bit nervous about this entire stance blocking thing, because no games really does path blocking or node-generation for traversal or ai all that well. Same with the IE games. But we rarely see even an attempt at something more than a "shortest path" travel, or for example AI that spots new openings or punches down a wall to get around, etc. And if we do see that we're talking about a game that locks up or becomes unresponsive while it refills the node tables. The AI gets stuck in games more rarely nowadays because the terrain is less narrow, and all the characters move through each other, for example. Also, there are fewer characters on screen most of the time. Basically, when you create a defensive stance, an incoming ai warrior should detect it as an obstacle or a threat. How fast will it do that? Can you simply cheat the system and consistently kite mobs into the warrior's reach this way, with a bonus, and without the enemy ever retreating? Will you never see an AI group just stop, stand there and taunt you, while hitting you with arrows from a distance? What about having the AI moving around you, kiting you towards your mage, that sort of thing? Can the AI set you up, engage your defense with a tank, move a mage into the sphere behind the tank, and hit the archers in the back now that they can be reached? Will an enemy that had a chance to break through never do so, because he always tries to minimize the damage done to them in the short run? Will there be any sort of ai between the characters in groups of mobs? Will they determine a threat based on the ability to smell your stats and see your weaknesses instantly? There's a lot of "probably not a great idea" going on back there if you've played games at all lately. So you probably wonder if this is a case of a good vision, but something that will inevitably fail in some way or other when it's implemented. I am not completely sure there's a reason to be all that concerned, though. Because 1., the core engine and graphics probably don't need a huge amount of horsepower to run -- so there will be room for adding something on top apart from more graphics and shader operations. 2. Judging from DS3, Obsidian has discovered curves. Mobs move in not completely straight lines, and differentiate behaviour on the start of the engagement this way. Very sexy. They should copyright this "curves" thing, and probably 3rd degree equations as well, before EA does it. 3. They have people who program in things in the mob AI that has a troll stop, let a smaller minion go in before them while they wave the club as a taunt, before running in and attacking. It's stuff like that that makes games Obsidian make interesting to play, even if they're not technically polished. Obviously, no one in the games-media in general know anything about programming, maths, node-generation, threads, or logic of any kind. And have people literally complaining about the character in Shadow of The Colossus not having as good animation as Altair in Assassin's Creed. Because the only thing that matters is, of course, that the game is so simple mechanically, that you can get away with three different animations for the entire game. And that they can all be triggered as one-shot animations from what essentially is a quick-time event. After all, more dynamic and complex means less interesting and more confusing to gamers! Anyway. Point is that from what they've shown us and from what it looks like, the core system is going to be advanced and complex enough to allow some simpler gameplay mechanics to be designed over it. That in turn will cause emergent gameplay that feels intuitive. That the **** you do makes sense, and that the game seems to respond to intentions rather than smaller minute mechanical changes. But we'll see if that works out soon enough. I am sure that they actually have a studio that's skilled enough to pull this off, though. And that they don't have studio leads that will say: "yes, replace that complex thing that would have been great - with a simpler "placeholder" AI, because the other one causes response problems in debug - and go work on modeling some lifelike trees again".

I guess they could always announce their attacks on beforehand. (Bonus points if you recognize the voice-actor). https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=s2q0IQN-ruI#t=297 But I really hope they avoid the IE game feeling of how you're trading blows, and wearing people down, hit-point after hit-point. Instead of playing a game where you're trying to stay one step ahead, so you don't receive the critical hits (or spell-damage you're weak to). Or where using the abilities you have is going to make the entire difference, instead of just slightly tilting the odds one way or the other. Not completely sure if that makes sense, but I got the impression that this was the goal as well, when listening to the stance and battle-ability explanations so far. That it's supposed to be possible to play a high-stakes game where you could get wiped out fairly easily - but if your plan works, it goes the other way.

That's probably not what Molyneux would like. But at least it works.

Ok, then. Next on the list of topics Obsidian is probably dying to hear our input on: "Should men wearing no armor be depicted with nipples?"

Mordor still not taken off the blacklists? Prejudice, in this day and age..

...because it would literally break anyone's back if they tried? (Btw, for the record: I still suspect the boob-plate is some sort of cross-dressing fetish. And I still think it's perverse.)

Josh: "If you don't mind me going off on a tangent he..." Jeff: "..not at all!" :D

Just to type down something sensible for once. We don't really know how they build their models or the armor on top of them, so this is a bit difficult to make up a cost/benefit argument from. But assume they are creating armor that exist from model references, that then are handcrafted to look more or less reasonable after they're worn by models of different heights and sizes. That it's similar to the backgrounds - that the models are real 3d models, just like the armor. But that they are pre-rendered and scaled for size, and not actually fitted to the exact model below. Likely there'd be classes, which is where female and male comes in as well. In this case, making the models seem more reasonable and natural would mean the same or less work as before, and differentiating on female and male armor when not really needed would be more work. Reasonable things such as elven chain on elves and elven chain on humans looking different would have to be fixed anyway. If they are creating a character creator where you are allowed to choose dimensions on the model, and the armor is just fitted on top of it -- that would still need some fixing if it should look reasonable. With measurements that break the armor joints, with fill-outs that look weird. Likely the aesthetic they're looking for wouldn't work with this approach without heavy hand-crafting anyway. In either case it will take some effort to make the models look right. And it's a question of aesthetics. So, I guess the problem would be, would anyone notice the designers' metal boob fetish? From looking at this, in low res, the answer is probably yes. You would have all kinds of neat flowing armor of all stripes and measurements -- and plate and chain for the girl warriors with boobs. Should it be like this? Do we enjoy this? I hereby invoke the following argument: boobs? I'm sure this discussion has been had before in every single fantasy d&d role-playing dungeon several times. And in games-media of different kinds. And forums all over the internet. I don't know, I don't really care. If people like it, go ahead and defy common sense and physics, it's a video game, so what. But I really don't see how "just a little bit of bosom to differentiate the models" is some sort of compromise between fantasy and reality here. Heave on the boobs, by all means - I just don't think they should make an effort to create somewhat realistic looking armor - with dimensions on heavy plate that hides boobs measured in tonnage. Or make an extra effort to create armor that probably can't be worn without magic to suspend it. It's disbelief problem, in other words. (And yes, it annoys me when I see "realistic" chest-plate designs like that in fantasy art as well. Freaky witch-crafted semi transparent half-chain peafowl plumage woven steel webs - fine. But a normal plate - with boobs - that's just idiotic. Imo, fantasy should be kept classy, so everyone should have an obligation to have some imagination at least when breaking the laws of physics).

Gonorrhea? Anyway, just saying that the female warriors wearing plates, splint and chain mails (that actually are supposed to be worn in battle) might need another rendering pass before release. Any amount of semi-transparent wizzard and cipher armor for the girls would be great, though. Same with sashes and waistband supports for monks and assassins, or other types of close quarter specialists. Huge boobs on chainmail, though - that's perverse.

...King Henry had boobs?

I had not heard of this, I was aware of the Viking warrior class' vanity, with the importance they placed on fine clothing, armrings and other jewellery and decorated combs for their hair, but I hadn't read of braiding being a cultural element amongst them. Most illuminating. One imagines though that even these stout fellows who bathed more regularly than Christian men, were sometimes irritated by their long locks. After all their sweat stained and lice infested gambesons must have been quite odorous on the campaign trail, and their hair similarly filthy and infested compared to our modern day cleanliness. I imagine that with the Aventail helm they often wore it might become frequently caught as well, though the far more common basinet might benefit from the padding. Edit: For a full visored helm however i'd still say that extra heat is a consideration, during the midst of combat when ones breathing is frantic and desperate heat will of course be a consideration, and it is well known that medieval knights would keep their visors up until the very moment of combat for this and vision reasons. Add long hair under the arming cap, coif and helm itself and I imagine that it becomes fairly stifling. Of course vanity must still be rightfully considered though. I'm not completely sure about "braided in an elaborate manner". :D Even if there are examples of kings and men-at-arms who are vain, also sometimes in a physical sense, in Snorre's Sagas - they are generally complimented on having strong, flowing hair, rather than for petty village signatures and gifts from their wives. That's for old men, it's not a sign of status for others. But I think you'll find the answer to how this hangs together if you consider that "Vikings" would generally stay in a village for most of the year -- and then go out on one or two campaigns a year. In other words, they didn't live in their armor, or constantly in battle. And their typical choice of armor and helms, as well as non-regular army look, reflect that. Being light chains (the best ones for the kings they didn't want to get killed so easily, I guess. Or for one of the sons of Magnus when he helped chase the danes across Jylland when he was 14.. Specifically mentioned that he throws away the armor and just wears the chain, while chasing danes southward with a two-handed axe, while the sun is rising out of the sea from the north.. aah, such beautiful imagery ). Or cheaper leather armors with inserts. Half-chains, or partial chain for the chest and upper arms seem to be preferred by more experienced warriors in the sagas at least.. and that could make sense. That they'd sacrifice some protection for mobility that way. And you can actually wear an armor like this for a day without having your chest and arms ground down to meatloaf. A full chain has to be cushioned carefully, or almost any movement is heavy and painful. Try it out if you can - you'll get a new perspective on elaborately planned "campaigns" for 200 troops, and ornamental armor if you do. Helms would usually be half-helms with thick leather covering the back of the neck (none of the coonhead winged bs, gods knows where that came from). Shields were made like bread boards, to be thrown away after use. But the armor would be functional and solid enough to have some chance against most things used at the time except arrows hitting straight on target. Long, thick spears in formation or on horseback as well would very likely not be a great match, like the arrows, which probably explains why King Sigurd vanished for good when he decided to attack England for some reason or other in 1130. Aiming along the barrel, like you'd do with a shotgun on snapshots. Both eyes open. Not.. incredibly accurate, but doable for "half-figure" accuracy up to some 30-50m even with a long rifle. Even if you would prefer using the crosshairs on a pistol, for example - any reasonably competent pistol marksman knows how to do this. Agree a crossbow..er.. crossbowmarksman(?) :D would be unlikely to wear a full helmet, though. But then again, if they were used in formation, to launch a volley. And then be required to launch volleys while under fire. On very short ranges. Against people throwing chamber pots and farming tools the other way. Could be it'd actually make sense. Same with platemail. Useless against bolts - better against arrows and improvised missiles.. Like the aiming outside the crosshairs on a rifle -- to my knowledge you actually don't find old crossbows that are accurate enough to ever be useful with a crosshair. And even if we can make a near perfectly consistent crossbow today - zeroing in a bolt on one specific distance is problematic over, say, 50m. In fact, crossbows were preferred for unskilled marksmen because you wouldn't need to account for the bolt flight as much as with an arrow and a bow. Basically, they'd be consistent on the short ranges where you could aim easily along the arrow, but without any firing discipline needed.

it is amusing when folks don't even realize they is indulging in hyperbole. the poe scale armour, which is 'posedley made of strong and heavy metal capable o' stopping enemy weapons, is no less form-fitting than the above uniforms. if the complaint 'bout b00b plate were that it were ridiculous & implausible, then the scale should fail for same/similar reasons IF people is being honest. due to the... uh... scale o' the image, am thinking it is perhaps ez to ignore how fulsome the armour is. then again, perhaps your expectations has been tainted after years o' extreme violations o' physics and good taste... lineage 2 and aribeth from nwn has ruined you? *shrug* am not suggesting that the poe scale armour is gratuitous or is appealing to the prurient interest of players, but the armour IS functional ridiculous and it is ridiculous to accommodate a female figure. is insulting that we would give scale a pass where plate were subject of derision. now, we gots no doubt that many female gamers is likely to be in favor o' poe b00b armour. after all, we suspect that the average woman gamer don't wanna looks indistinguishable from male counterparts. nevertheless, if we is gonna complain 'bout full-coverage b00b plate, then pretending that the poe scale is significant less offensive is impossible. HA! Good Fun! That was very eloquent, and I agree with everything you say. Nevertheless I will have to argue that: boobs. Furthermore: boobs. Seriously, though. It's ridiculous. Why would you even let someone get away with this on the concept level? Like ^ says, it's not really physically possible to smith an armor like that. Or even wear one (without the girl having steel boobs, which would be a real disappointment anyway. Or maybe if she wore a copper frame corset, that would break her back if she's actually hit, or if she falls over). So.. no to steel boobs. They suck.

Not sure how this is a very difficult thing. But Broken Age is a bad example to pull up, because 1. the pitch was so vague it essentially amounted to "Schafer and team should make an adventure game again". And 2. they had a few community managers running around shaping the feedback into fitting with their preconceptions of how casual gamers work. So in the end, can anyone really complain about the game? No, it was made (at least halfway), and the idea was realized. But, of course, the way it was adjusted towards the end of the project may have caused a few problems. And the way the game was pitched when part 1 was released, that wasn't very wise. First because of some of the puzzle designs and the need for "continuity", even if you were never stuck, and couldn't move on to something else, etc. Some of the control elements weren't picked up and fixed. Making it some sort of compromise between simple puzzles and fidgety controls. And second because the game was pitched as a modern casual variant of an adventure game. As what an adventure game would look like if it was made after Call of Duty showed up. And that's basically the opposite of what people who backed the project wanted. And by all accounts, the opposite of what Schafer wanted as well. And that combination of an a bit out of touch, "modern", community manager bunch, and a PR office a little bit too much hung up in old release dogma, with magazines and IGN and so on - has probably hurt the release of that game more than no press at all would. But the criticism of the game is shaped by that. After all, the game isn't as horribly casual as it might appear, specially in some of the pitches. And there are complex puzzles in the game - they just don't take the form of "use monkey on pump to drain river, so as to get access to hidden anachronistic drainage pipe that in turn opens up unrelated next solution to second unrelated quest". So when someone actually do complain about the game being difficult, or the controls being fidgety - then it's "go back to COD!". Because BA has been pitched as being as easy as buttering loaves of toast. I don't know.. Somehow I don't see the same problems happening with PoE.

Mm. I don't see the problem either. As long as we simply agree that DA:O is a great game in every respect that counts, all will be well.