Update #16: Reward Updates, Combat with Tim, Mods, and the Mega Dungeon Grows!

[Agelico]

Pet... I'd like to have some world-specific creature beside me, one that have no analogies anywhere, probably somehow connected to all that soul-stuff of the game. Or not. Simply endemic. And probably fluffy with big ears

[Dawn_]

Pet... I'd like to have some world-specific creature beside me, one that have no analogies anywhere, probably somehow connected to all that soul-stuff of the game. Or not. Simply endemic. And probably fluffy with big ears

 

That's when we should ask the marshmallow gelatinous cube as a pet (we'll probably end up with the wolf/fox/hawk/bat anyway..)

[Monte Carlo]

I think a marshmallow gelatinous cube would be terrifying. But if you killed it you'd have enough food for weeks.

[sesobebo]

"Fireball and stoneskin were medium level spells in D&D. "

 

DnD has 9 levels of spells. Fireball is L3 and Stoneskin is L4 which makes them relatiively low. Even tkaing away, at first level you have MM which cna do 5d4+5 damage making it do more damage than a great sword.. in this system you could spam the low level MM spell non stop. That doesn't seem right. And, people suggest they'll just make low level spells weak which defeats the purpose and stated goal that low level spells will be useful even at higher levels. So, unless they give you garbage low level spells this syetm is weak.

 

I don't know aboutt hat one guy who is trying to comapre the fighter to the mage as it is just sad. Fighters may able tos wing their sword more but the mage has magical powers at his disposal that can outright hold, murder, charm,e tc. the warrior. he has spells that make him immune to warrior's attacks. He has spells that can move him instantly from place to palce or even heal his wounds or summon monsters. Yet, youa re crying that the wizard needs to be give more power to match the warrior? r u serious? lol

 

i'd consider lvl3 and lvl4 spells mid-levelish.

or better said: for a mage, that has just learnd level # spells, those spells should be considered high level. (so i hope that's the case)

and even low level spells shouldn't be as trivial for low level mages as they are for high leveled.

 

oh, and great sword does 8d6+4xstr damage per magic missile q:

[Guest]

Re: the pet, perhaps a left-over soul fragment without much in the way of through-put, ala "Bit" from the original Tron.

[Agelico]

That's when we should ask the marshmallow gelatinous cube as a pet (we'll probably end up with the wolf/fox/hawk/bat anyway..)

...aaa... fluffy marshmallow gelatinous cube with big ears and huge loving soul that glows at night?

[curryinahurry]

Regarding the cooldown system; it sounds like they are heading towards a, "by level" spell point system. Casters would get an allotment of casts for a particular level that would change as the player levels up and gains new spell levels. Once out of spell castings for a given level, I would hope that the cooldown would be based on encounters and not time. 2nd level spells may recharge every other encounter, while 5th level might take 3 encounters to recharge and this would slide based on caster level.

 

I would also trust obsidian to balance this to prevent the "spamming fireball" comment above.

 

What is interesting to me is the grimoire comment...will they be customizable suites of spells or broken down by schools of magic?

 

Good update, and I like the concept art for the endless paths!

[Sugarjaye]

I don't really see the point of a basically 'useless' in-game pet, I mean It has to have some form of inter-activity..... But I still upped my pledge anyway... sigh. So I would really, really like a Cat. Now It could be a normal looking cat most of the time and if it calls for it be able to change/grow into a huge shadow cat or a flaming hell-cat... that would be awesome. That, or some kind of Dragon.

[Agelico]

Don't you have cats at home, people? They sleep half a day. And go everywhere they really SHOULD NOT. All the traps of Endless Paths will be theirs, seriously. Okay, the first nine, and then you're on your own. I mean, they are nice home pets, but the game doesn't sound like the Sims to me.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Agelico

[metiman]

Metiman,

Okay, Tim start off by saying this is their rough concept, but your basic low level spells will be subject to a level wide cool down, ie once you cast a certain amount of level 1 spells you won't be able to use them again until they recharge which he says should be longer than a small battle, but could concievably recharge in a longer confrontation. The Grimoires sound to me like a specific set of spells. There is a cool down when *switching* grimoires, but if I'm understanding what he's saying, the spell sets themselves do not regenerate until resting. I could be misinterpreting that, but that sounds like what he's saying.

 

I decided to make a transcript of the relevant sections:

 

[starts at around 6:25]

Josh and I have talked a lot about the resources we want the players to juggle...And one thing we realized is in infinity games, wizards and priests have kind of an unfair tactical disadvantage compared to fighters and thieves...in that they have resources that drain in a fight and they won't get them back until they rest. Nothing like that exists really for fighters and thieves. So what we want to do is find some middle ground where all classes have things that they use in a fight and other things that they can use as often as they want...that they will never need to rest for. An example we came up with for wizards...we're not sure we're gonna do this, but here's what we're thinking...is that when a wizard casts a low level spell, there's no limit on how many times he can cast that. He can just keep casting that over and over. It's the higher level spells that have a certain limit on how many times they can be cast before the wizard will have to rest. And we're going to play around with things like that to try to come up with a...really interesting strategy that you have to do before you enter into combat, and then tactics. Is combat going well enough that you don't need to really use that resource that will drain or do you think that it's time to pull out the big guns and let the enemy have it.

 

More specifically on cooldowns: [starts at around 7:55]

First off, there are not going to be any individual spell cooldowns. We don't want it to be the case where you cast a spell and then you can't recast it if you wanted to. You have to wait for some cooldown to go off. Where we will have cooldowns are in two different things: One. Spells of particular levels may have a cooldown on that level. So once you've done a certain number of those abilities at that level the entire spell level goes into cooldown. Now how long that cooldown lasts...we're going to play with that. On short battles you probably won't be able to use those spells again, but on long battles the cooldown will probably wear off and you'll be able to use those spells at that spell level again. But a different kind of cooldown exists on your grimoire. Your grimoire is a set of spells you've prepared in a book and you're actually holding that book. And those are the spells that the wizard can cast. In addition he has a few basic spells that he can always cast, but all of his other spells come from that grimoire and whenever you switch grimoires there will be a cooldown applied. The cooldown is such that you probably won't want to switch grimoires in the middle of combat, but if you do you'll be able to cast spells but you're going to have to go a few rounds using nothing but your basic spells until the grimoire cooldown is lifted.

Edited October 6, 2012 by metiman

[Sugarjaye]

Don't you have cats at home, people? They sleep half a day. And go everywhere they really SHOULD NOT. All the traps of Endless Paths will be theirs, seriously. Okay, the first nine, and then you're on your own. I mean, they are nice home pets, put the game doesn't sound like the Sims to me.

 

 

Yes I do have cats, I have two wonderfully mischeivious, pain in the neck, absolute sweetheart cats. Which is why I want one in game.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Sugarjaye

[Living One]

So...there are not enough resources for additional combat animations but they can afford to make(and possibly animate!)some virtual pet.Nice prioritizing Obsidian.

 

Also lol at inside-combat cooldowns.I don't know if I should hope for shorter battles(likely too simple but inside combat kool-downs should be out) or longer ones(more complex but with the annoying wait for kool-downs and possibly spammable magic).

 

At this point I'm seriously hoping non-combat solutions will be a prevalent option even if I was hoping to get some nice dungeon crawling fix out of this game.

Edited October 6, 2012 by Living One

[Sugarjaye]

Ooo, and I'll name it Snoogums, or fluffybutt.......

Edited October 6, 2012 by Sugarjaye

[morhilane]

I think I want an exotic small pet.

 

Maybe a small animated rock? As if a soul fragment moved into it.

[FakeKisser]

2 things:

 

1.) For the in-game pet, I would want a white wolf most of all. I honestly get very upset by how often wolves are portrayed inaccurately in games (i.e. attacking everything on site, acting ravenous and constantly aggressive). Therefore, I always appreciate when a wolf can be displayed accurately: loyal, cautious (thoughtful in purpose), and with quiet wisdom.

 

2.) If possible, can we get a $100 level with a cloth map instead of a T-shirt...or an add-on for a cloth-map to other (physical goods) tiers?

 

Thanks!!

[Damkyan]

A mindless Undead as a pet seems fun to me. Like this old Morte but without the sarcastic tone...

[ravenshrike]

"Fireball and stoneskin were medium level spells in D&D. "

 

DnD has 9 levels of spells. Fireball is L3 and Stoneskin is L4 which makes them relatiively low. Even tkaing away, at first level you have MM which cna do 5d4+5 damage making it do more damage than a great sword.. in this system you could spam the low level MM spell non stop. That doesn't seem right. And, people suggest they'll just make low level spells weak which defeats the purpose and stated goal that low level spells will be useful even at higher levels. So, unless they give you garbage low level spells this syetm is weak.

Um, running a basic 3.5 fighter in D&D, which is the ****tiest PC class available, including ninja, if you can't do more than on average 10 damage with a single swing, let alone the 2 you get at level 9, the first level at which MM does that damage, you shouldn't be playing D&D at all. That doesn't even include things like power attack and items increasing your strength.

 

In any case, given the way they've described the classes, look for fighters to play closer to 4th ed(bleargh, although 4th ed would make for a halfway decent computer game I suppose) or Pathfinder in terms of power. For ideas on variant abilities for all classes I would suggest the developers look at the Pathfinder structure and the variants available if they haven't already.

 

 

 

As for the pet, the answer is rather obvious... HONEY BADGER.

 

 

 

So...there are not enough resources for additional combat animations but they can afford to make(and possibly animate!)some virtual pet.Nice prioritizing Obsidian.

If you figure at a minimum 6 additional animations per creature when grappling vs the basic set of animations a pet will have, plus the pain in the ass of getting the animations to sync up with every creature in the game, making a pet is the equivalent of donating a quarter to the bum on the street vs grappling animations being the equivalent of paying for a new wing at an ivy league school. Edited October 6, 2012 by ravenshrike

[Ausir]

How about making Kerfluffles the player pet?

[general_azure]

Chocolate quasits for pets imho, I've been told they are delicious.

 

And yay for modding support, hopefully they'll integrate PE into that omnipotent nexus mod manager

 

Why not waste a turn when switching grimoires rather than a cooldown?

 

"Wasting a turn" as in the mage has to concentrate some time to get his new spells ready? Because a pure cooldown would allow you to bridge the time swinging a sword or something. But other than that, I can't really see the difference.

 

Concerning spell spamming, they can't obviously just copy the d&d spell list. Nobody would complain much if a lvl 9+ d&d mage could cast some crappy shocking grasp all day, but mirror image on the other hand would be severely overpowered. As are most protection or crowd control spells, I suppose. Guess that system might need a lot of balancing, but I don't think it's inherently broken.

[dunehunter]

In the update Tim said there would be prone positions in PE, I wonder what's that for? Will there be any plot that force you to move forward in a prone mode?

 

Or it can protect you from missile attacking?

Edited October 6, 2012 by dunehunter

[Kabraxis]

Pet - anything but a dog. Seriously, it's been done, then done again, then done and done and done. It must be time for a cat to have its day.

 

I fully agree.

Also I don't really like the idea of a (baby?) dragon or something as a pet... dragons should be rare, powerful creatures, right?

Cat is fine for me... or a elemental... like the idea of it. But it is probably missing personality then? Hmmm...

 

Maybe we can get a companion cube? Hrhr...

 

Anyway, I love the new update, great stuff. Modding support, horray!

[Althernai]

Obsidian, if you paid attention to the Wasteland 2 feedback, you'd recognize that people generally hate the idea of in-game exclusive content. People want the full game, and they want others to also have the full game. They don't want different pieces of the game floating around with different people. That stuff just gets under peoples' skin and is disappointing from the perspective that the work done for those exclusive preorder or backer items isn't enjoyed or recognized in longevity, as it isn't something that the majority of players of the game are ever going to witness and experience for themselves.

 

Having in-game exclusives is a disappointing tactic that is in line with the stifling large publisher attitude that people are so sick of and which is prompting the relief felt by the kickstarter movement. It's right there with generic mass-appeal gameplay and restrictive DRM in regards to items that the spirit of crowd funding is revolting against.

In general, I agree with you. However, keep in mind that they have promised a DRM-free version of the game and also "to release our file-format information and expose as much of the data in the game as possible for you to extend and edit". Unless they do something bizarre to specifically lock down the Kickstarter content, it's only going to be exclusive until people become comfortable with modding. This is no different from the Robe of Vecna merchant in Baldur's Gate 2 -- it was initially an exclusive, but was then modded in and finally officially added in a patch (or maybe with the expansion; I don't remember). I don't think this kind of temporary exclusivity is a big deal, particularly since the extra content has limited impact on the game (unlike the Robe of Vecna which was the single most powerful mage armor not only in Shadows of Amn, but also in the loot-overloaded Throne of Bhaal).

[ravenshrike]

In the update Tim said there would be prone positions in PE, I wonder what's that for? Will there be any plot that force you to move forward in a prone mode?

 

Or it can protect you from missile attacking?

I imagine it will mostly pertain to combat effects like in FO1&2. So a STR fighter can knock people over, a DEX fighter trip, and anyone who fails their saving throw or equivalent falls down on a grease spell.

[Zeyelth]

While I'm not against the idea of pets, I feel that these "aesthetical bonuses" tend to detract from the experience, rather than add to it. The reason being that since they are bonuses, they are often not integrated properly into the game/game mechanics/lore, and thus feel out of place.

 

For example, a pet dog (or wolf) which would not help you out in a combat situation is not a very good dog.

 

A properly implemented pet has to be treated as a character, and has to react realistically to a given situation. If pets aren't going to have a combat role, then it's probably better to limit pet types to non-predatory pets, or pets which are not suited for such combat. i.e. birds, or other avian critters, smaller herbivores, etc. That way, they could react to the combat without affecting game mechanics too much. In any case, there has to be a good explanation as to why they don't help out in combat.

 

Honestly though, I'd much rather see the concept expanded upon and added to the game proper, so that they can contribute to the game like other characters, and not necessarily in combat either; dogs/wolves could help you find traps. Ravens could help you find hidden treasures (shiny objects), etc.

[Bloody Hypocrite]

Metiman,

You may well be right. I was taking the level wide cool down to include all lower levels. I still don't see a problem with a basic low level magical attack for wizards, rather than equipping them with a sling. I don''t get the impression that the grimoires are supposed to regen until rest though. I think it could work, but it's all about balance. That's why I think it's important that you stay onboard. Obsidian needs to hear that some oldschool fans object to certain mechanics.