Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir Discussion

[Tigranes]

Heh, not a bad cover.

 

And the funniest thing with Stand Your Ground, for me, is that when you have PC selected and say stand your ground, then later you switch to Neeshka, the SYG never applied to the PC, so the PC ends up following Neeshka around. Not to mention it's hard to know how long SYG lasts, and sometimes it just seems to turn off.

[Sand]

It sounds like your AI problems could be solved if you use this one little mod that Tony K made: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2H...tail&id=141

[GhostofAnakin]

"Why does it have to be snakes?"

[Leferd]

even so, we once again put forth notion of called plays... 'cause no matter how smarty the jnpc ai, it is gonna seem stoopid eventually if their behavior not take other party member behavior into account. in absence o' some kinda effective group-think ai we suggests the "play": 1 command to makes multiple members take pre-determined & sychronized actions.

 

adds whole new level o' tactical sophistication... 'special if it were a customizable feature.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Funny you should mention that, because apparently, Dragon Age will have "plays". I believe Dr. Z brought it up during a video interview, which brought back some memories of a seemingly endless discussion of it years ago on the Bio forums.

[Gromnir]

even so, we once again put forth notion of called plays... 'cause no matter how smarty the jnpc ai, it is gonna seem stoopid eventually if their behavior not take other party member behavior into account. in absence o' some kinda effective group-think ai we suggests the "play": 1 command to makes multiple members take pre-determined & sychronized actions.

 

adds whole new level o' tactical sophistication... 'special if it were a customizable feature.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Funny you should mention that, because apparently, Dragon Age will have "plays". I believe Dr. Z brought it up during a video interview, which brought back some memories of a seemingly endless discussion of it years ago on the Bio forums.

 

hmmm. thanks for the info. having been booted from bio we hadn't heard such news... so thanks. is one o' those ideas we (and others) repeated ad nauseum and only got very minor positive response from developers. am genuine surprised they decided to implement. 'specially since there only seemed to be a handful o' genuine boardies who were really in favor o' the idea.

 

'course now that Gromnir gots positive/negative reinforcement, am gonna be as relentless with obsidian... or not.

 

will be very curious to see how the concept gots implemented.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps if called plays suck, am gonna claim that we got idea from leferd.

Edited July 29, 2008 by Gromnir

[Zoma]

Third new class is semi-revealed in the new interview with NWN vault with Tony Evans:

 

However, I will risk Kevin

[Pop]

There was some Red Wizard sub-PrC that specialized in demon summoning. Can't remember what it was called.

[Volourn]

"ps if called plays suck, am gonna claim that we got idea from leferd."

 

L0L

[taks]

Heh, not a bad cover.

 

And the funniest thing with Stand Your Ground, for me, is that when you have PC selected and say stand your ground, then later you switch to Neeshka, the SYG never applied to the PC, so the PC ends up following Neeshka around. Not to mention it's hard to know how long SYG lasts, and sometimes it just seems to turn off.

exaaaaactly. short answer: pain in the arse. you're right, sand, and i did not know about the AI mod till recently, but i'm done playing NWN2 for a while. BG for now. gawd i've played that one an awful lot of times... sheesh!

 

taks

[taks]

all bets are off during battle as they'll always rush in to do their thing after 1 round of staying put.

eh, battle is painstaking. you have monsters to fight, and then you have the members of your own party to fight as well, trying to make sure they don't trigger traps or run off down the corridor past the three monsters that are ganging up on you to engage a whole new set of enemies...

can't count how many times neeshka would begin to disarm a trap, then give up and run to battle the approaching baddies, setting off the trap SHE KNEW WAS THERE! comedy gold. tony k is definitely going to get a DL out of me in the future. perhaps SoZ will have some AI mods of its own?

 

taks

[J.E. Sawyer]

ps if called plays suck, am gonna claim that we got idea from leferd.

They can call them "gambits" instead.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII#Battle_system

[Starwars]

Interview http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Inter...tail&id=333

[Xard]

Awsum

[Gromnir]

ps if called plays suck, am gonna claim that we got idea from leferd.

They can call them "gambits" instead.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XII#Battle_system

 

 

is considerably after Gromnir first suggested at Bio, but as long as is in game, Gromnir satisfied. independently inspired... even got the American football reference? well, such an approach makes sense, so is not too unrealistic that somebody would come up independent-like.

 

anybody that has played ff xii can tell us how goodly/badly it works in that game?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[newc0253]

anybody that has played ff xii can tell us how goodly/badly it works in that game?

sorry, but i don't think there's many japanese schoolgirls that hang out on the obsidian boards.

[Tigranes]

I resent that newc, I'm not ashamed of my japanese schoolgirlness.

 

 

FFXII gambits are essentially conditional scripts. As you progress through the game, you use points to buy new conditions - you set things like "If Health < 50%, use Health Potion", or "Attack Nearest Enemy", "Attack Enemy with Highest HP". Gambits can be turned on or off; gambits can be prioritised, so that higher priority gambits override or fire first. I can't remember anymore but I think there were also different gambit 'groups' to use in different circumstances? Not clear on that though.

 

In terms of gameplay, it made FFXII very easy and very passive for me - with the right gambits you could essentially sit there and watch your entire party go through efficient motions to wipe out most enemies. This is of course related to balance issues (if things like immunities, special attacks were more varied and the enemy AI was intelligent, the same gambit scheme wouldn't work so well on everyone), but yeah. The advantage, I suppose, was that compared to NWN2, it was a lot less stressful and very painless: once you got the hang of it, you were very rarely seriously inconvenienced by the gambits, and they didn't do anything too stupid.

 

There is no friendly fire in FF12 of course, and the spell/saves/etc system are a *lot* simpler, so it's much easier for the AI not to screw up. With a system like D&D (I dont know about 4th ed).... well, its a tough ask. (Oh, and its probably a bit different from Gromnir's 'plays', in that the gambits are individual and don't really work together. You just make them work together yourself. I think there are also options like Heal Other when Other's HP < 50%.)

[Tale]

anybody that has played ff xii can tell us how goodly/badly it works in that game?

It works so good that the only input you need to make for most battles is to move closer to the enemy. The game plays itself.

[Leferd]

hmmm. thanks for the info. having been booted from bio we hadn't heard such news... so thanks. is one o' those ideas we (and others) repeated ad nauseum and only got very minor positive response from developers. am genuine surprised they decided to implement. 'specially since there only seemed to be a handful o' genuine boardies who were really in favor o' the idea.

 

'course now that Gromnir gots positive/negative reinforcement, am gonna be as relentless with obsidian... or not.

 

will be very curious to see how the concept gots implemented.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps if called plays suck, am gonna claim that we got idea from leferd.

 

Then it better not suck. Wouldn't want such a black eye on my web reputation. You're still banned from the Bio boards? They actually perma-banned you?? Too funny.

 

It'd be interesting too know if there are any flanking maneuvers in DA, and thus its associated attack, defense, and morale bonuses/penalties and whether such factors are tracked in the rulz system.

[Gromnir]

the great thing 'bout a crpg over a pnp rpg is that all the numbers crunching in a crpg takes place instantaneous. bizarre flanking rules and grapples and seemingly endless modifiers can be dealt with by a game engine in the fraction o' a second. what becomes tedious and unwieldy in a pnp rpg can go largely unnoticed in a crpg.

 

am doubting that bio goes for any sorta genuine complexity. their general design philosophy embraces a notion o' maximized accessibility. a highly complex combat system, even if the rulez is being accounted for behind the scenes, is probably considered too hardcore for bio. keep rules relative simple to understand is what Gromnir foresees.

 

that being said, simple & streamlined is not a bad thing. rulez o' chess is very simple, but clearly there is great opportunity for complex strategy in such a game.

 

am expecting da to be broken. pretty much any new rpg rule system is broken when first released. d&d 3e got considerable play-testing 'fore release and it managed to have some rather curious broken rules that called for an almost instant errata release. da gots not only new rules, but unlike pnp rules that can be changed with a released pdf, change game engine is tougher... which is probably another reason to keeps simple. hopefully game is enjoyable 'nuff that they gets opportunity to fine-tune... 'cause initial release is gonna be kinda the first opportunity to beta test rules & game engine with large scale genuine playing.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Volourn]

Link:

http://dragonage.bioware.com/forums/viewto...m=135&sp=15

 

 

"Dragon Age (roughly, don't take any of this for granted)

 

(a) Weapon Base Damage

(b) Attribute Modifier

© Class/Level Modifiers

(d) Weapon Material

(d) Character position and facing

(e) Weapon AP

(f) Opponent Armor DR

(g) Talents

(h) Effects and effect interaction (e.g. fire damaged reduced by if currently frozen, shield spells, etc.)

(i) Item Properties

(j) a bunch of additional factors on both sides

(k) Damage Type Resistance (% based)"

[Bos_hybrid]

Interview http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Inter...tail&id=333

 

Damn, the more I hear about this game the less interested I become;

 

In Storm of Zehir, we intend to take interaction to a new level. One way we are doing that is reducing the amount of lengthy un-interactive scenes and adding maximum reactivity to conversations. Cohorts help us to achieve this goal. Though they lack complex conversations of their own, and none of them will be love interests, they offer special responses in conversations that the player can choose, or not. The end result is that cohorts always give you more choices rather than sometimes

[Xard]

Well duh, this has ment to be old skool stuff from day one. IWD's are great games even if they lack companions (and they aren't even very old scool anyway)

[Tigranes]

Damn, the more I hear about this game the less interested I become;

 

Well... nobody played IWD for the complex dialogue with companions. It doesn't mean that the main story itself will be throwaway though.

[Bos_hybrid]

Well duh, this has ment to be old skool stuff from day one.IMO IWD's are great games even if they lack companions (and they aren't even very old scool anyway)

 

Old skool doesn't = great

 

Well... nobody played IWD for the complex dialogue with companions.

 

No one played Oblivion for that either.....

 

It doesn't mean that the main story itself will be throwaway though.

 

Agreed and that's why I will still get it. Just stating my disappointment in this design choice.

[newc0253]

You're still banned from the Bio boards? They actually perma-banned you?? Too funny.

all the kool kidz are perma-banned from Bio.

 

as a great man once said, you're nobody in this town till everybody thinks you're a barstard.