nipsen

..so basically, it's not written by a European unable to admit that whatever larger context existed on different sides - normal people used an excuse to kill each other on a huge scale, and they let it happen. And, it's not written by someone using a beach-scene to illustrate how likable and normal soldiers of such and such army are. That in turn is used to suggest that the cause of the war, whatever it is, in reality is a better and more jovial because the soliders are great folks. The writers were admirably conscious of that, making any character have a personal reason or other to join up or fight. To the point where you start to worry that all the grunts you're laying waste to actually have lives as well. Or that however much you want the heroes to win, that their leadership is still rotten to the core. ..Jaeger from the DLC was a good stab at the same thing. Of course, in alternative Europa, pigs fly as well: "There is no evolutionary reason for porcavians to conceivably exist".

I suppose what Karkarov says makes sense. But my problem with the document is that you don't really have an opinion. You're listing all approaches to experience systems in every game, ever made, in any genre. And then arguing that an average slice compromise between all systems clearly must be the best and most valid approach. Which means that it results in arguing that any game, regardless of how well (or bad) an alternative approach would be, regardless of the reason it was chosen, regardless of argument in general - must conform to that average slice compromise. And you're giving no reason for it either. It's just a statement establishing in principle that anything not conforming to the average slice must be wrong. So do you find that to be a reasonable argument, or a good foundation for a compromise? You know... just throwing it out there. Randomly.

..the way the combat was intended to play out is that you're moving in range, using an ability or two to fit the situation, respond to a change, and then the combat would resolve. Pausing once between each comma or so. If you've been to the ruins and the encounters with three-four cultists at a time, you would get to see the entire range of tactical choices the game would give you. There's no encounter here, other than the bugged archers or the boss-fights, that would last longer than one engagement setup. Or - in any fight here, you attack this or that character first, you take the fighter off to the other target, you place the priest with the club closer to the enemy archer and hit a prayer, you throw some magic to weaken the flanked target, or throw a knockdown on the character you're swarming. And that's basically that. The most complex and the longest fight in the beta is over. The question you have to ask yourself is how deep into the catacombs you think you can go before getting exhausted, running out of spells, or too wounded to continue. How "long is the adventure day" was was described there, very well. Changing your party make-up, as well as your playing style, would have real impact. And that is when the gameplay is fun, when it's not really a chore. When things you do have meaning and actual impact on what you do in the game. That may very well have been the goal as well, I guess. There are two points worth making here, I think. 1. The entire game, until the next dialogue, consists of placing your characters well. And using their abilities once in a while to tilt the situation in your favor. Choosing a difficult route, or exploring an area is a tactical decision that you make if you can evaluate well how strong your party is. So.. without that part of the game, the combat might as well be replaced with an auto-resolving text prompt. A solution to "the problem" that Obsidian apparently is well on their way to actually picking. 2. The initial barrier to get into the game - specially at the level the beta starts - is incredibly high. It's higher than the beginning of Icewind Dale 2 by far, and you're expected to figure out most of the mechanics - completely unknown mechanics - without the help of a manual. And few of the popups describing what the stats do are there, and the ones that are give you very few hints to what they help with. There are still mechanics in the game that are unknown, complicating things further. You're completely blind, and it's a very tall order to understand what is going on - even for people who think they should breeze through the game after having aced BGII on every difficulty, with a one-handed elf deliberately limited to level 10 for the entire playthrough, and so on. And the final game won't have that initial problem. It will start at an earlier level, you will get fewer abilities and party members, it will be slower, it will not be inviting defeat by stone-beetle if you don't get off all the knock-downs in order, and so on. -------- In the same way - while the mechanics in the current game-builds admittedly are pretty damned boring and linear, and really do force players to serial pause in order to spam the abilities to compensate for the "war of attrition" setup most of the fights somehow got - a lot of feedback (now, just as when the beta started) is grounded in assumptions about different games than PoE, about the earlier IE games, and how they worked. People expect certain things to work, and will attempt to make those situations happen. And when those setups fail, the first assumption is that such and such system doesn't work, it doesn't have the right difficulty, the encounters are weird, the AI doesn't work, etc. And while the current build of PoE admittedly doesn't have a system that is very satisfying - actually enjoying the combat in the beta requires a great deal from the players before they start to see how the game is intended to be played. Most would be satisfied with saying either "hmm, there is something here, I'm guessing this could be interesting", or simply accepting that it's ok to not understand much of what is going on with the mechanics. But some would not be. This was the problem we had at the beginning here. Most of the categorical feedback came from people who went in blind, didn't adjust, and read themselves even blinder than they were on numbers and stats. Instead of - and this would have given you a better chance of success - simply assuming more abstract things about how you would expect a fighter to behave, and just made some random guesses about what the spells would do. I.e., "I'm engaging this guy with the greatsword with my fighter, because that makes sense! This guy has massive armor, so let's try to pierce it with.. frosty spike point lance of ICE STABBING PENETRATION, and hit him with that pointy thing in the secondary slot, and arrows perhaps! And look, the other guy's CRUSHING RESISTANCE blinks red! Hit it with the hammer! This spider moves really fast - slow and hobble! YAY for SUPER PLAYER EMPOWERMENT FANTASY!!". You'd get a lot further into the game by making assumptions like that, than to go with: "My tried and true Gilgamesh formation with potion spam from BG2, undefeated in over 300 playthroughs, DID NOT WORK! RAGE!". But you won't have to go in blind in the full game with an as high barrier as in the beta. And it is, like explained a few times before, a crying shame that Obsidian has taken the feedback from here - the very badly rationalized excuses people have for outright failing at the game - and tried to make the game play in a different way. Apparently intending to somehow simplify the mechanics in the game so that any random player should be able to start the game in the middle, with a full party, blind, with completely unknown rules and no introduction to anything -- and then be able to ace the game on the first attempt. If people really want that, then - good for you - because that's what the game currently seems to be an inexpertly made stab at. Still -- I really do not think it was necessary to put the threshold that low. Considering you don't normally start a game, and PoE would be no exception... blind, without any introduction, with unknown spells, with a fresh system, utterly obscure and unexplained rules, and so on. Though opinions seem to differ wildly on that point.

I don't remember anything about Pillar of Eternity being a dark gritty rpg. Or, that sinister cultists thrive in Dyrford, in the catacombs of the ancient city the settlement was built on top of. That is a ludicrous, paranoid idea.

Since we had this exact same conversation a while back - where you agreed that creating invisible combat rounds would not actually make combat either slower, more predictable, or more tactical. And that if the engagement limit is used - if this worked in any meaningful way, which it still did at that point - controlling combat would not involve extremely detailed input every millisecond. So no, Indira, I don't think you want to be convinced. Again - this forum ward stuff would be hilarious, if it wasn't for the fact that Obsidian and Paradox Q&A washed the feedback, and had Obsidian make serious changes to the game because of it.

There aren't many tactical choices to be made in PE combat. There's a lot of trap choices though - two of those are moving, and selecting abilities related to engagement. So let me get this straight. The last time you and Matt, and the rest of the regulars, entertained and regaled us all with fanciful stories about Obsidian misadventures - you were die hard pen and paper role-playing gamers, who literally think in AD&D rulesets when planning a trip to the mall. There is no tactical choice too hard, no problem that can't be solved by random chance! And would therefore have a select few hundreds of "natural" objections to how Pillars of Eternity was not turn-based enough, and not tactical enough - not mathematically /balanced/ enough. And that experience rewards should evidently be done in a certain way, as it was done in AD&D. Indeed, the mere thought of doing something different than AD&D was unthinkable. But now the argument you have is that any choice you can make that doesn't instantly benefit you - is a tactical trap. Because today, you are apparently a die hard DOTA and Starcraft player, and all games should evidently have combat where you really have no way to make bad choices, or good choices. Because that's just how games should be. And this conversion happens overnight. It would be hilarious, if it wasn't for the fact that Obsidian and Paradox Q&A really took stuff like this on board. And Obsidian made serious changes to their designs - because of crap feedback like this, washed through Q&A folks desperate to prove their job is valuable.

5000 words to get in this? --------- -Combat. Pillars of Eternity, at its heart, is about combat. Fighting offers a very obvious challenge with very obvious rewards – loot, EXP, quest/plot progression, new areas to explore, and fewer enemies in the area! Fighting is meant to be its own reward. -Nullifying locks or/and traps. The Baldur's Gate series had this. It was a welcome addition to get small chunks of EXP from using Thief skills instead of just casting knock to auto-unlock things or ignoring traps because they weren't the effort. Having a Thief get EXP for doing his job feltright, and it helped justify his place in the party, at least at low levels.

...hypothetically speaking.

The bonus was from perception, and some classes had better base values, or something like that. I'm trying to put a pnp version of PoE down on paper, but I'm not completely sure how I'm going to sort this out... Right, that's a very good approach. I'd do something like that too if someone asked me to come up with something right away. Even though I know that the "slice time even thinner" approach isn't really going to be all that great, even if the individual steps are logical enough. And its how you always do it in role-playing games, right - and then you have a computer to do the maths, so you just add fifteen thousand more variables. Success! Thing is that the idea Josh sketched up turns this on the head. Instead of calculating instances of mobs in range, and then whacking them in turn depending on a random roll - which is pretty sketchy anyway, also in pnp. Instead of that, you create a combat bubble where the fighter can punish mobs that turn their back on them, or cast a spell, or trigger an ability. But you're only engaging up to a specific amount of mobs this way. And range of the weapon and so on really only becomes about placement - so the actual number of actions and calculations you need to maintain this stuff actually drops. There's a huge number things like that that are sheer genius, and it's why I'm sketching up the pnp version right now. But it wasn't implemented extremely well in the first part of the beta - the AI didn't make a call on whether or not to risk attacks of opportunity when breaking through and then getting stabbed in the back by the fighter for free the next turn. No flanking attempts, or retreats. There was no mechanism for choosing which specific mobs that would be included in the engagement limit (even if the active attacker and the nearest few targets seemed good enough). And the severity of the hit typically was one normal attack (which can be really powerful in pnp, not so much in PoE against some 1000 stamina mob that can take 50 injuries and not flinch, and so on). And most classes at level 5 seems to have had an engagement limit of 1. But the basic things were there, and it worked reasonably well, it just needed tweaking. I don't know... Was I the only tester who made an int/perception/dexterity based fighter, so no one else in the beta got to see it or something like that? I don't know. The most common builds simply dumped perception, maxed might, and people complained about attacks of opportunity not working - or not working consistently. Even though these might-maxed characters would consistently hit extremely hard whenever they would actually hit, and at the end of their turns, and so on, which was their strength. Now that perception and any other stat essentially has no bearing on how frequent the attacks of opportunity are, it's consistent. It's too powerful. And now it's also broken, etc., etc. The other variant wasn't actually broken, but the presentation of it all wasn't perfect. But.. you know.. never going to see that in the game now.

..that's a good observation. And sure, with a flat bonus for all party-members, this begs to be exploited. So looogically, if Obsidian wants to keep the attribute system they have now, they would obviously need to change the disengagement mechanic. If the disengagement bonus was made lower, and we ended up with perhaps some sort of penalty as well, it would be less broken -- and identical to NWN and the IE games, with all the problems that system had. It's not my preferred solution. And I just wanted to point out that if you wanted attacks of opportunity with any sort of consistency - in the earlier variant - then you would have to sacrifice something else. And the engagement limit would be important, and so on. You would then have powerful interrupt penalties for some specialists, and the engagement block that Josh described with how a wizard would actually be defended by a skilled fighter, instead of being swarmed by mobs running past the fighter while blowing raspberries, like in the IE games -- would actually work. For example - an almost supernaturally perceptive priest, that isn't very physically impressive, and wields basic weaponry.. is a character type that would then get attacks of opportunity often. But because we'd have to choose between spell-power, weapon damage, perception and constitution, and so on, it's likely that this high perception character would use buffs to become extremely powerful for a short time. And then only be useful against fighters and well-armored targets for a short time. And depending on your build and the buffs, you could then use that character for a short while as a defender, or even as a striker. For example against soft targets such as spell-casters with magical damage that punch through the dt. While the fighters that would be built towards actually making solid defensive positions, who didn't dump perception, and so on, would then potentially become extremely valuable to control larger groups. Since their engagement limit, as class and through abilities and perks, would be high. And these characters - only those - would be the type of defenders that would draw in attackers and occupy them while the other party-members move in on the flank or prepare spells, and so on. Since the math doesn't have to be done on paper either, longer range weapons could easily preempt ability triggers and spells from incoming characters from longer ranges very dynamically. Same with action speed - a fast character with high perception (a rogue? A ranger?) would have all kinds of options to stun and crash a heavy fighter - but might be punished seriously if the initial attacks don't succeed. It fits together. A fighter designed to simply hit really hard at a single target would still be possible to make, of course. And properly buffed, it would still be stronger than most classes at stopping mobs. But without perception and accuracy from dexterity, the probability of landing an opportunity hit would be low. Even if the direct damage when homing in on a specific target would be high. The converse situation with the barbarian rushing through mobs is exactly as intuitive - he or she avoids a risky maneuver with a short desperate move, into a situation that hopefully resolves before the adrenaline rush wears off. This system makes a lot of sense, it would let designers easily tweak encounters on the high level, it avoids the "disengage and get an attack of opportunity landed by fifteen goblins" effect from NWN and the IE games. And I think that if the presentation of that system was made differently, and the variables and abstractions were hidden a bit better from the player - people would (and did, with ones I had test it.. people who would never, in a million years, post anything on a forum of any kind) think it would feel very natural. And that it would reward you and give you proper feedback when attempting to do something you think makes intuitive sense. Such as having that fighter defend the group. Instead of that the system is simply doing the usual video-game thing: telling you to throw all reason out the window, and learn the mechanics and obey them slavishly. The criticism against that system: it is complicated and casual people don't understand it, sadly also applies to the new variant. Perhaps to an even greater extent. But yeah, I you're absolutely right that the current system could be made less obviously exploitable, by reducing the bonus from disengagement attacks. And that it would just make the payoff from exploiting it lower - not actually "fix the system". It would still be broken. Meanwhile, I think it's worth pointing out that the reason why that "problem" now exists, and that the engagement system is broken, is that all classes have gained bonuses that didn't exist in the earlier variant of the rules. And that this is the direct cause of why it is at all exploitable. Like I said before the entire spat we had, and I had OE refund the kickstarter pledge (money that I donated away on OE's behalf) -- the insistent wish from "the community" has been to include IE and NWN-specific mechanics, specially the bad ones, for no reason other than that those specific mechanics are "known" and "familiar". While ignoring the overall goal of making an "IE-like" game that actually works, or at least hangs together in some way. And that the result of forcing in those mechanics - while it will give Paradox Q&A the boost in positive feedback they want to see on the forums - is going to break the game in a million little pieces, if any trace of the original design is left in the end. Said differently, it simply forces Obsidian to reimplement the entire game from scratch, throw out all their designs, and replace it with the very simplistic and unsatisfying set of abstractions we know well from the IE games. So when you know that - that this is where the extra development time went into, and how the internal testing led Obsidian - I don't think I'm unjustified in at least asking if it was worth it. Either for Obsidian, or for people who want to play the game later on. I mean, I've been part of programming projects that have had a similar turnover, where we scrapped parts of the program, bit by bit, until the foundation of the project couldn't be used. And ended up with a last-minute ditch effort towards a "working" solution that in the end no one were happy with. The project still fulfilled the overall goals (according to napkins in a lunch-meeting), but failed abysmally at being anything like what it was initially sold as, and what a technician could easily read out of the design documents. It's just my opinion - but I think the way Obsidian has gone about implementing things in the beta reeks of that conclusion to the project. From looking at it, I also think it's highly unlikely that they will retread anything, because the new implementations seem so intertwined with the rest. So I really don't think it's actually doable for them, technically, to go back, even if they wanted to. Doing so would also essentially admit that they've wasted several months for no reason, while then potentially decide to remake a solution that "the community hates". And I don't think anyone at Obsidian has the balls to do that now. *shrug*

I'm not thrilled about things like tuning a piano towards the one false note in the entire register either. But no, Sensuki, what I can't get over is that Paradox, as well as Obsidian, and then Josh defended the solution afterwards. That was disappointing.

Huh. Mind blown. So let's just establish that for the first time since the beta started, there is actually a meaningful disagreement around here. One side has the opinion that while a design may not be working as intended, it may very well be possible to get it to work, which might be when we see if the system has any value in practice. The other side says that if the current implementation is not good, the system should be removed and scrapped, the sooner the better, to avoid draining more development time. Well... you see - once upon a time, there was a variable in the attribute system that determined the chance to provoke an attack of opportunity (perception). The ability to trigger that attack of opportunity being a trade-off between hitting hard, or accurately, and other variables. If your character had class abilities to increase the engagement limit, perception might become very powerful with the right build. Buffing a fighter at the right time, or using the right abilities for just a fighter was a pretty interesting thing. And which one you would choose would be completely dependent on what sort of build you had. But "perception was a dump-stat", apparently - and thanks to invaluable feedback from the forum, Obsidian essentially scrapped the entire premise. Perception now controls accuracy. Attacks of opportunity is determined by something else, most likely a class table. So in the current build, all characters have high chance of provoking an attack of opportunity, possibly because the base (the non-dumped stat without penalties) gave you a relatively good chance in the first place..? Possibly because of a programming problem that still give characters bonuses based on perception, I don't know.. And the characters also hit hard, and hit accurately (since there are only two player variables that affect the hit-roll, it's easy to max that out). In practice, all the characters have been made massively stronger, or given extra ability points. They're very strong compared to before, at least if you max perception and might. Of course - and no surprise there - this did make Obsidian add a flat health bonus to a lot of mobs, so they wouldn't be too easy. Which causes what some of us said before this brilliant solution to "the problem" was implemented in the first place - that the fights become tedious, and actually that the risk of failing is much higher if you don't "manage your resources" with complete and dedicated care, turn after turn. Your aim before the game was changed was to do something semi-clever with the abilities and placement once in a while to change the battle to your favor. Now is to absorb slightly less damage than the enemy (or to switch damage-absorbers at the right time, just as in the IE games - identical, in fact) before the time runs out for both of you. So, this then causes possible fail states for parties that aren't set up right, that can't really be worked around with different tactics (unless you count exploits of the mechanics, which I'm sure we soon will, thanks to invaluable internet opinion). And there are other problems, such as that micro-managing becomes necessary to avoid failing even battles that you could win. The changes done to the game also of course took development time, which we now see how has been a good investment. With the delay, and how the earlier changes obviously made the game better in every way, and caused no other issues to compound at all. In other words, Shevek - Obsidian thinks your logic sucks. -------- Anyway. So now the engagement and disengagement mechanic is broken, and invaluable internet feedback suggests it must be removed altogether. But really, why stop with just that? I'm sure there are other things Josh has been doing that invaluable internet feedback will dislike. And that therefore should be removed altogether. What about removing the attack roll and replacing it with a binary switch, for example? It sounds mechanically simpler, so it must be fair when you play the game as well, right? I mean, it's a completely logical way to look at things! Also, I think there should be no skills! ..actually, that already was discussed as well, I guess. Skills now don't meaningfully exist, thanks to invaluable internet opinion. Maybe the system could be improved by removing all attributes in the game? Who needs more than one? I just want to put it out there, and insist that anyone disagreeing should read this 50-page booklet I've written, which proves - by definition - that everyone else is wrong. Maybe there should be trigger-effects like in DOTA? I feel another 50-page booklet of divine gospel and unjustified assumptions coming on. Who knows what will be removed next - so tune in for the next episode of "Obsidian lets random internet feedback trump fundamental game-design, and Josh actually defends it afterwards in person", right here, on the Obsidian forums! Which fundamental feature is going to disappear and cause re-balancing issues and implementation replacements that take months and lead to another release delay? Tune in to the Obsidian forums and be amazed, all day, every day!

You mean, when people decide something is broken, and then literally argue that the reason why it is broken - is because they have decided it is broken - as if it's the most evident thing in the world? I don't know, Sensuki - what do you think? You see, I always defer to random people on the internet when it comes to difficult decisions (like Obsidian does).

Will probably have something on that soonish, but the fact is it's like anything really - religion or politics for instance, fair chance that once you made your mind up originally you're not going to change it. Keep trolling nipsen I'm terribly sorry, but apparently my religious conviction about the fact that I'm right prevents me from making a rational argument about anything. I still have to spam the forum with my clearly correct opinions, though. (Countdown to "report for off-topic" in 3... 2... 1..) No, because it has serious problems even at the design level. Josh said (in a quote from about a year ago) that if they can't get it working properly they will probably cut it. Why waste even more time on a broken system when you can spend that time on better things ? Also, his circular arguments are better than yours. Why is it broken? Because it is broken. Because it is broken.

I find your sneaky insinuation about how a beta-tester does not intuitively know.. well.. everything, including how to design games from the bottom up, very insulting, Shevek. So I suggest you moderate your clearly abusive tone, and explain yourself in a more erudite and rational manner - or I will be forced to spam the report button, until I methodically and rationally wear down the mouse-buttons.

Welcome, first person on the forum who actually play games for fun :D No.. I think you're pointing out something very critical with the entire beta project. That the real problem you run into as a player isn't balancing, it's not lack of mathematical damage models that have a perfectly linear scale in each 1 vs 1 duel (which we have very few of), it's not how many skills there are, it's not about which attributes mean what, or how the character is built. The game wouldn't "feel" fair if the damage distribution was a perfect 50% hit ratio, and so on. No matter how much you simplify all of the mechanics to get them more "predictable" - the fact remains that game as it is presented is brutal. That's really all there is to it. So probably what's missing is an option to play the game without having to initially read pages and pages of rules, study the numbers, and then make a solid character - or, as it is now, a max/min build. To even survive the first fight on easy. I mean, it used to be possible early on to make any party survive ..three, four times longer by just knowing a tiny little bit about how the mechanics worked, exploiting the classes' strengths, and casting the right spells. But that too is a high initial threshold - even if everyone in the beta accepted that you're probably supposed to pick up a couple of things during act1 (which starts with a tiny party, and where you get to whack small minions, and use one power at a time, etc) - you can't expect that people will play the beta, somehow understand all of the meta-game intuitively, and then somehow make in-depth mechanical design critiques. That's not what we're reading here, and the first post in the thread probably is the most honest critique I've read on the forum. In other words - I think that if "easy" really was "easy" - none of the feedback bs we've had around here would have happened. (Another thing - the linear "level up and become overpowered if you're stuck" damage model system similar to what you have in BG is actually more difficult to understand for fresh video-game folks than something more.. action-movie like? Book-like..? Or compared to something a bit more narratively pleasing, I guess? Where a critical hit actually kills people, or where tanks can take more than one hit, things of that sort. "Ooh, you need to spam potions!". "Ooh, you need to pre-buff! And exploit how critters seem to ignore you for one round if you're kiting carefully!".. Things like that makes no sense to anyone who hasn't grown up on Baldur's Gate. I mean, try to understand that it doesn't make sense to people who play role-playing games on pen and paper either. If you put a good role-playing gamer in front of BG, he or she will likely think it's a bit dumb. That it is at best an ok, passable conversion of the pnp ruleset to a video-game - which is all it is. A system that incorporates some parts of the ad&d ruleset, with partial success. It's not the holy grail of either role-playing video-game mechanics, or of role-playing games.)

"The Integer DT system makes low damage/high speed weapons/spells/abilities really terrible and DT bypassing stuff like Stilettos, Maces and Estocs are without a doubt the best weapons of their type. It also makes increased attack speed worse than flat increased damage percentage." Yes. They are now, after the linear might-builds were buffed. As per requests by the internet masses. ..if you remember..

..so I suppose in general you could say that it's probably ok to have fewer skills - if they are all meaningful and have some sort of synergy with the character build, and they are used in different situations fairly often. And that having 20+ skills is probably not all that great if the skills are very specific and very rarely used, become mechanically boring, etc. [insert rant about early PoE build making the most sense so far here]

"Don't care about role-playing, but would like to see people choose the type of character they want to be". :D Yeah.. Or, it's a boon if several characters of the same class can have different types of focuses, and still make mechanical sense in the game. It's a good accent.

Now you're just saying things that my extremely casual gaming mind cannot comprehend. And I'll launch into a tirade about how overlap between skills and classes only proves that they are all redundant any time now. Because rhetoric is a tool to prove that I'm right, not to express something coherent. Seriously, though -- this is the direction they picked with the game. Specifically because complex, varied, and consistent characters - in relation to the gameworld, and the other characters, as well as the enemies - wasn't appreciated. Or so we've been hearing. Collapsing skills into a simpler class and perk system is a result of that. Just like when they collapsed all the character abilities into either fewer of the character attributes, or into the class card. The aim being to make the classes less difficult to deal with. The result unfortunately being that the characters aren't very interesting. While the huge "wall" with all the attributes and numbers still being there. I suppose next someone is going to suggest removing the attribute system. Which probably would also make sense at this point..

..turning the resolution down and hooking on v-sync at least makes it run smoother (when it runs). ..there were some weird resource problems on the earlier builds as well, that only happened if v-sync was turned off. Never figured it out, but it could have something to do with background threads not finishing when they should. Things like the AI script being forced to use nodes for the path-finding that weren't updated (but might be assumed to exist at the end of every frame). If that is a problem, a slower computer or a laptop in battery-mode and so on, would probably see crashes more often. I don't object to a game that is difficult when it is set to 'Normal', or 'Hard'... Call me crazy, but when you set the game to 'Easy', I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the game to be, you know - easy... My wife would never play the game as it stands --- she'd get her party wiped a dozen or so times and she'd give up and go on to some other game... I think there's a fairly large class of gamer out there who will not play the game if it stays this difficult even on the 'Easy' setting... ..so they basically did what I predicted after all..? That they removed the "puzzle-like" difficulty, where every enemy had weaknesses and strengths you needed to figure out (and if you found that weakness, it would always turn the fight around). Then turned them into IE style wars of stamina attrition. And then to compensate so the fights wouldn't be too easy for the might maxed characters the super-testers tend to have, they've upped the stamina again. To the point where the battles now really are too difficult, even on easy, to beat without a max-min'ed party. ..success!

Seems like the most clear cut thing in the world, right? That a well-presented, wholesome character system is actually a lot less complex than.. say.. a constantly changing and ever broadening abstraction for that "press here to roleplay" button. But, it's already been decided skills have to go, because reasons and most gamers. So the only question left is whether or not it's possible to torture in some rationalisation for it that makes a silly simplification seem to be "closer to" the older IE games. So let's go with the "d&d sure had a bunch of useless skills, so therefore none of the skills have any purpose" narrative.

Then again, I'm guessing the actual question was "do we need a separate skill-panel?". And that could be connected to the need a gm or a designer would have for differentiating characters with the same stats further. And perhaps weighted against the need of a particular demographic to not have to fiddle around with stuff. So isn't it a good question to ask - whether it is possible to make the skill-set derived from stats, or combined with a level up/exp mechanic, etc., without making the characters you get out of the system less different from each other? I mean, it's not a completely bonk question either. Arguably, in DnD, having a rogue simply pick between a "traps" perk and a "lockpick" perk early on, would effectively replace the entire skill-system. Wizards could pick between "sense magic" and the other perks, and it would pretty much replace skills for them as well. So for example, if the skills really have no purpose(other than adding more pointless numbers), or it's not an interesting way to differentiate the characters.. or people see no point with differentiating characters after they've picked the class (certainly, this is how the majority of the games out there are made right now) - couldn't skills be simply removed, with no negative effect?

On the other hand, don't you think they could angle in on a broader part of the games-market, by removing every complexity? I'm convinced that sounds like a brilliant idea, because someone with a very smart suit said it in a panel at an expo once.

Totalitarian slap-stick humor. ..you know, I still remember reading "In the Penal Colony" by Kafka. Came across it in the library a bunch of years ago, didn't know what to expect. Made me feel physically ill. Now, I read the news, and I get the same feeling.