Amentep

It is the developers responsibility to develop a way to play the game that they believe will be something the player wants to play. They can create their systems to try and not encourage one play style over others (unless the game has only one play style) and not to require things that will be tedius, un-fun, etc. Once the developer puts the game in the hands of the player, they can't really be responsible for how the player uses the system, only for whether the system works/doesn't work.

But what about Winston Churchill? And I don't know who the redhead is so...how about Natalya Rudakova?

Sounds like you need a drink.

Not sure if its been specifically addressed since the beta started, but given that they've showed demonstrations of animation (like that sea shore) in other things, I'd imagine that they'll continue working over areas for animation, detail, etc. Could be wrong of course.

That's why puissance is the viable alternative, I'm tellin' ya!

And if you don't burn them, they've become zombies when you return. And if you DO burn them, they've become skeletal creatures when you return. Seriously though, I'm neutral on the issue. I understand why people like the persistance, but if its a pain for the devs to make it happen, I'm not going to miss it either.

What? Inventory Weight limits were a *huge* deal in the IE games. Most people did not "just drop things in any available slot until a limit was reached and then start dragging things over to the next character." instead, it was exactly as infinitron suggested. You made sure your high strength characters carried all the heavy stuff, and your weaklings carried the keys and scrolls and excess potion stashes. Can't speak for anyone else, but I'd pick up items with my strongest character, and then when s/he hit encumbrance I'd play inventory Tetris, spreading the weight through the party. Then after the strongest character was maxed, I started using the next available character who hadn't hit their weight limits...

Do your partners find your strikes fumbling and laughable? Do you find yourself feeling unsatisfied after the ministrations of your loving healer? Do you find your fortitude lacking and your ability to last outshined by your peers? If you answered yes to any of these problems, you may be impotent. You have a weak soul and yes, everyone is laughing at you behind your back. This happens when you view potency as a "dump stat". But now, thanks to a new miracle drug, we can guarantee* an increase in your soul power. Impress your partners with your might, show them how you can strike true, strike hard and keep on striking for a long long time. Now, for a low, low introductory offer, you can sample this mysterious new find in Animancy for yourself. Don't be the laughing stock of the adventure - be the life of the adventure! *Results not typical; if skin lesions form, discontinue use or risk becoming corporeal undead. Offer void in the Aedyr Empire. Studies have not been sanctioned by any local government and were paid for by the manufacturer Animancy & Gamble.

I didn't say they were better, just synonymous. Although I would probably slip Obsidian an extra fiver if they put "puissance" in the game.

Potency? Eficacy? Capacity? Energy? Moxie? Prowess? Puissance? Efficiency? Mastery? All are rough synonyms for might.

Just for your information, this is exactly how my muscle wizard spends his downtime. I demand a muscular wizard villain in the final product of Pillars of Eternity as an Easter Egg. Oh, and his catchphrase should be "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!" He should scream it while doing his finishing move on his enemies: the Snapmare Neckbreaker Mighty muscle wizard villian flexes biceps, its super effective.

Infinity Stones and stuff from Thanos is what I chalk it up to. Well the net holds the Dark Astor until Ronan uses his Universal Weapon to break it. The big gaffe on the Xandarian side was not really having a counterplan against the smaller ships since their smaller ships were caught up using the net. Hopefully Xandar's pitiful defence leads them to the creation of the worldmind and the superpowered Nova Corps. I kinda figured that was what they were setting up to be honest.

Kill XP vs Quest/Objective XP vs hybrid XP systems has been a topic for theoretical debate for a year now (probably the second most popular debate after Romance threads). has been a debate involving these developers for much longer than a year if one wishes to go back as far as the bg3 and fo3 development debates. same issues. same developers. HA! Good Fun! Well...I was mostly referring to this incarnation of it, but yeah.

Which I deduct because is Persona 4 instead of the infinitely superior 3. Disagree, Persona 4 > Persona 3 IMO.

No, I fully understand that. The problem with might is that it's abstract while the other attributes are concrete. The thing is souls aren't abstract in this world, nor are the ways they tie in to your overall physical condition/abilities. And in that case, I think part of the problem is the intellectual disconnect between physical attributes and soul / mental attributes. People think of might more in regard to the physical world. So a person just looking at the attributes would probably say PHYSICAL Might Dex Con Mental/Soul Perception Intellect Resolve I haven't given the stats much thought (its not an area I tend to focus on, to be honest) but it seems like the problem isn't really pure definition (ie who cares if might is strength is damage is whatever) but the fact that contextually some of the stats like Might seem to have situational meaning. In practice it seems to me from the descriptions that Dex and Con are the only truly physical traits. Intellect and Resolve the only purely soul/mental related. Perception and Might straddle the two and it isn't necessarily obvious (might can be physical might or it can be soul might, perception can be visual acuity and ability to sense motive with intellect/soul) based on concept what the intent is. This leads to questions over whether a high-might mage is musclebound or soulstrong; there's now an inability to visualize the character due to ambiguous relationships between the stats and the character being built.

Took me a bit to find it, but totally worth bringing to the discussion, I think! I think - if I understand Sawyer's position correctly - is that he doesn't consider combat xp to be "degenerate gameplay" but that combat xp as implemented in most games encourages (sometimes railroads) combat solutions - even when other solutions are available (or in addition to solving things in other ways - the "turn in quest, then kill quest giver" syndrome). It is when a game system has the unintended consequence of encouraging specific behaviors in players (rather than letting the player choose how they play within the framework that the game gives) that is the creation of degenerate gameplay. So I could see (and I've probably been more hopeful about the XP systems than most) that if the feedback ends up being negative with regard to the player experience in Beta with the XP system that there could be major adjustments if it becomes clear that the system isn't fun and can't be tweaked to be fun.

Its a good idea. In addition, to cover extreme builds, I wonder if a group of backers could co-ordinate testing some extreme builds together so that a wider group of testing can be done without everyone testing the same build) Perhaps using a thread to post which attribute will be concentrated on and with which class?

Or we could talk about Beta experiences with the XP system in PoE - that's actually on-topic AND constructive.

Kill XP vs Quest/Objective XP vs hybrid XP systems has been a topic for theoretical debate for a year now (probably the second most popular debate after Romance threads). Add in subjective qualities tied to how the IE games did it and how far the current systems have moved away from that, and that people pledged money for an IE successor game - yeah there's been a bit of controversy over the decision to go with Objective XP and a fair bit of passion (in both positive and negative senses).

I remember that post, either way I think that the xp system is just a numbers game. The only difficult thing should be to figuring out how much xp each quest, creature, action gives in order for the game pace to be fluid. Yeah I remembered it as well, which is why I've been interested in how the XP system works in practice in the beta. The theoretical discussion is fine, but I also remembered Sawyer saying a lot of his philosophy centers on how players play vs the systems themselves so that I figured the Beta would be important in terms of feedback regarding XP (much more so than the previous debates had been).

Sawyer implied early on in one of these debates it *was* something that could be changed late in development (how late is something I could only guess) -

RTwP is a given? I bet you had strong opinions about the new Torment eh? RTwP was at least as far as Project Eternity is concerned as it was stated be RTwP in the Kickstarter iteslef. That also said, the D&D rules were never on the table; to think that the rules were going to be a 1 to 1 duplication of D&D was never on the table either. I think most posters here are aware of that. I think what most posters are arguing is that there are some changes that are too far from the expectations created for them when saying that you're going to do an IE styled game.

The most important question, does it have per kill xp? Yes it does, but the ability to alter skills/equipment that comes with level up is locked until between missions.

To be fair, if it is a handicap, its one they readily accepted when they pitched the Kickstarter as a successor to the IE games.

I don't think a game should protect a particular play style. If you're playing a stealth person and flub a stealth check and beetles attack then its a valid consequence of trying to sneak around steely eyed beetles. If you're playing a diplomat and you're straying off the paths to explore - or even to do a quest yourself - then you're taking on that risk. I don't see that being a negative thing; being able to play the character of your choices shouldn't (IMO) be a free license to succeed at that style of play.