Please don't make character effectiveness overlu gear dependent

[limaxophobiacq]

Meaning: I'd rather my character actually be a strong warrior (or whatever) and not have all his/her power come from having awesome gear. A good example of what I don't want is something like skyrim where without magic weapons and armour made from super-materials your supposedly great warrior character is actually a worse fighter than the average city-guard if they have the same stuff.

 

The old IE games did this pretty well and I hope it is something that doesn't change.

 

Edit: No way to edit topic (for spelling, obviously)?

Edited October 23, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[mrmud]

Another game that did this poorly is diablo 3 where 100 % of your power comes from your gear

[Hellfell]

Diablo 3 *cough*

 

I'm sure there will be balance between character power and item power.

[svartelric]

Well, Diablo is not an RPG, so it's not an example...

[Vaesark]

Hopefully, there will be a balance between magical items and personal skills/abilities/spells to decide how powerful a character is.

[Darkpriest]

I agree... good items should make things easier, but with high level party you should be able to get through the game even with fairly mundane items. Unless the plot requires a story specific item to be wielded (for example NWN2)

[Sensuki]

Gear does make a big difference in BG/IWD but it's on a totally different scale to an ARPG. I wouldn't worry about that.

[nikolokolus]

So what would you guys like to see as a percentage of total effectiveness be derived from gear vs abilities? In my head I'm thinking about 1:4 or 1:5 as a decent ratio.

[Utukka]

Well, Diablo is not an RPG, so it's not an example...

 

Just because it's fast paced hack n slash with all customization out the window doesn't mean it doesn't get the point across. Yes it follows a linear story but your character is 100% gear dependant. They could've easily made BG1/2 and any of the other "rpg" gear dependant if they wanted to.

[scipioafricanus]

Hi there, I kind of agree and disagree with this one, I think warriors and suchlike are expected to be clad in Dragon's armor or whatever by higher levels, other classes such as Monk/ Mage /Rogue rely on spells or skills to avoid and evade damage during combat. Afterall a warrior traditionally relies on brute strength to smash his enemies to pieces and needs armor to trade blows head-to-head.

[limaxophobiacq]

So what would you guys like to see as a percentage of total effectiveness be derived from gear vs abilities? In my head I'm thinking about 1:4 or 1:5 as a decent ratio.

 

I don't really think it's possible to state it as simply as a ratio. I mean I'm fine with something like Crom Faeyr being in the game as long as it feels like something rare and special and the game isn't balanced around having it, and comparing fighting with Crom Faeyr to using a regular un-enhanced warhammer is a pretty gigantic difference, but it doesn't make you feel like your character just exists for the gear to have someone to carry it around.

Edited October 23, 2012 by limaxophobiacq

[nikolokolus]

Hi there, I kind of agree and disagree with this one, I think warriors and suchlike are expected to be clad in Dragon's armor or whatever by higher levels, other classes such as Monk/ Mage /Rogue rely on spells or skills to avoid and evade damage during combat. Afterall a warrior traditionally relies on brute strength to smash his enemies to pieces and needs armor to trade blows head-to-head.

 

That's not really the question being asked. You can still have that wyvern skin studded leather armor or adamantine full plate armor, but what some of us are saying is that character level should make the man, not gear level (mostly). In Baldur's Gate 2 for instance, if you had some +5 full plate armor (I actually don't remember if there was + full plate? Anyway, it doesn't matter ...) which is definitely a high level item, it only improved the base item by about 50%.

[Amyrantha]

Good gear shouldn't make character progression meaningless. Ideally, it should enhance, but not overshadow your characters stats, imo, so I tend to agree with OP about this.

[mokona]

Agreed with the OP.

[HereticSaint]

There should be a happy medium. I don't want gear to instawin the game, nor make it feel like if my character were reduced to mundane or entirely non-magical, masterwork gear that I'd be useless but at the same time if I find a sword imbued with the soul of a demon or dragon or some such nonsense I expect it to have a noticable effect on my killing potential.

Edited October 23, 2012 by HereticSaint

[nikolokolus]

So what would you guys like to see as a percentage of total effectiveness be derived from gear vs abilities? In my head I'm thinking about 1:4 or 1:5 as a decent ratio.

 

I don't really think it's possible to state it as simply as a ratio. I mean I'm fine with something like Crom Faeyr being in the game as long as it feels like something rare and special and the game isn't balanced around having it, and comparing fighting with Crom Faeyr to using a regular un-enhanced warhammer is a pretty gigantic difference, but it doesn't make you feel like your character just exists for the gear to have someone to carry it around.

 

Sure you can have a ratio, all RPGs are at their heart and soul a system of values with modifiers. Besides, I'm not asking for a hard cap ratio, I'm just soliciting opinions on the general feel people would like. For example -- just guessing mind you -- I'd say Baldur's Gate 1 probably had a ratio of about 1:4 by the end of the game for how much special gear enhanced your characters' combat effectiveness. A high level fighter with just a basic long sword and no armor was still pretty damned deadly, just because of high saving throws, and numbers of attacks per round.

Edited October 23, 2012 by nikolokolus

[DocDoomII]

I'd like to remind you that in the old IE games if your enemy was immune to normal weapon, I'd need at least a weapon +1 to even hit him.

[JallaAllah]

So what would you guys like to see as a percentage of total effectiveness be derived from gear vs abilities? In my head I'm thinking about 1:4 or 1:5 as a decent ratio.

 

I don't really think it's possible to state it as simply as a ratio. I mean I'm fine with something like Crom Faeyr being in the game as long as it feels like something rare and special and the game isn't balanced around having it, and comparing fighting with Crom Faeyr to using a regular un-enhanced warhammer is a pretty gigantic difference, but it doesn't make you feel like your character just exists for the gear to have someone to carry it around.

 

Sure you can have a ratio, all RPGs are at their heart and soul a system of values with modifiers. Besides, I'm not asking for a hard cap ratio, I'm just soliciting opinions on the general feel people would like. For example -- just guessing mind you -- I'd say Baldur's Gate 1 probably had a ratio of about 1:4 by the end of the game for how much special gear enhanced your characters' combat effectiveness. A high level fighter with just a basic long sword and no armor was still pretty damned deadly, just because of high saving throws, and numbers of attacks per round.

 

Well, I don't know if this ratio guessing is doing this thread a favor. For instance I want to point out, that in the late-game of BG-series weapons got much higher "ratios", since you could only harm enemies with certain boni etc.

 

So ratios in general are far more dynamic during the game than it is suggested here. A low level hero will struggle for his life by a single "goblin-strike" when wearing no armor, but an armor itself should give heavy advantage compared to naked fighting. Also this doesn't consider the influence of possible, certain weapon types vs. different armors: I wouldn't like to see a sword giving just a minimum of advantage vs. unarmored enemies compared to a hammer. Every (possible) aspect of fighting has to be represented properly in this game, please!

I guess we should let Obsidian do their job and hope they will make it in a realistic and balanced way!

[Ieo]

When I think of "gear dependency," I think of the MMO eternal hamster wheel grind. Character progression is essentially the same as gear progression. Um, yeah--none of that. PS:T was the least gear-dependent IE game that I can remember, then BG1.

 

I suppose the trick to avoid a strong gear dependency implementation is to ensure a narrow range of effectiveness. That is, the strongest weapon I remember in BG1 was a +2 sword, and you start out with +0 weapons. But the level cap in BG1 was, what, 6-8? Then BG2:ToB went up to level 40-ish with weapons that ranged from +0 - +6. You don't even get armour to switch out in PS:T and there were few switchable weapons.

 

I hope Obsidian balances for this such that there's interesting gear around--perhaps more reliant on additional effects--but it should be significantly less of a focus than the actual class build. With crafting, perhaps we can keep our old gear and just incrementally upgrade when we feel like it--that's something else to balance as well, huh.

 

 

As a side thought, I hope the level cap, if there is one, doesn't fall into a level bloat trap because this is supposed to be the first of a franchise, and it'd be kinda silly to have levels that compete with MMOs (level 90? meh).

[Darkpriest]

@Ieo

 

You mean you do not want to see Diablo 2 like 99 levels of power? R U MAD?

 

But joking aside... The guys at Obs need to decide with the first game, whether they want to go with the Franchise in a similar direction as BG progression, or they want to go with it like IWD / Fallout...

 

Both have strong and weak points.

 

The problem with any game is that to progress the franchise it is best to:

 

a) either limit the ending branches in the first games

 

b) enforce canon endings

 

The more freedom you give to players with the endings in the first part, the more work will have to go into future games if you want to have all decisions to carry over one way or another.

 

BG had basically 1 ending, but BG2 - last in the series - gave much more to it...

 

Fallout gave you different possibilities, but the action of Fallout 2 was separated by some good time and put in a slightly different area, with only a few things overlapping and on top of that using a canon ending (Shady Sands into NCR comes to mind)

 

IWD 2 had some loose references to IWD, and it was also plausible...

 

The worst that can happen is to pump expectations like Bioware did with DA and ME and then fail to deliver a full package...

 

Once you have this settled, then you can think of power level and possible cap in a game. Then you also build items around that.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Darkpriest

[SunBroSolaire]

Since this game will have crafting, I think equipment should make a decent amount of difference. Not to the point where it overshadows character's strength, but enough to encourage tinkering around with the crafting, and also enough that finding new items is rewarding.

[Katrar]

I think the typical p&p inspiration of the IE games did a very good job of tying gear and character together in a reasonable manner.

 

I think the disparity between a mundane longsword (1D8), a simple magical longsword (1D8+1), and a very powerful magical longsword (1D8+4+extras) is reasonable and doesn't overshadow the power inherent to the character. IE games and other D&D inspired games have generally not had a problem in the gear department, and I feel comfortable that OE doesn't plan on turning PE into some kind of Diablo knock-off. The very thought is pretty ridiculous actually.

[Gromnir]

Meaning: I'd rather my character actually be a strong warrior (or whatever) and not have all his/her power come from having awesome gear. A good example of what I don't want is something like skyrim where without magic weapons and armour made from super-materials your supposedly great warrior character is actually a worse fighter than the average city-guard if they have the same stuff.

 

The old IE games did this pretty well and I hope it is something that doesn't change.

 

Edit: No way to edit topic (for spelling, obviously)?

 

...

 

ie games did a good job?

 

take a halfling with all stats being 8. in bg2, give him red dragon armour,helm of constitution, hammer o' t-bolts... whatever else. see, by mid levels, starting stats in ad&d and d&d becomes almost negligible... character actual abilities not matter. is all 'bout gear. so, while we agree with initial premise that the clothes should not make the man, the ie games were hardly the example we would be wanting to use.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Karkarov]

It is highly unlikely this game will be "gear dependant". Every character will be effective to a certain extent even if they have normal non magical stuff I am sure. That said a warrior type character is certainly going to get a noticeable benefit from using a +5 two handed sword of ass kicking instead of a generic two handed sword. Also non magic users likely will need new gear to stay up to par with casters when it comes to being effective.

 

That said I remember that insane whirlwind implementation they did in BG2:ToB and I know that regardless of what weapon I used when I popped that skill on my main character unless you were a serious bad ass you pretty much were going to fall down.

[el pinko grande]

ie games did a good job?

 

take a halfling with all stats being 8. in bg2, give him red dragon armour,helm of constitution, hammer o' t-bolts... whatever else. see, by mid levels, starting stats in ad&d and d&d becomes almost negligible... character actual abilities not matter. is all 'bout gear. so, while we agree with initial premise that the clothes should not make the man, the ie games were hardly the example we would be wanting to use.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

A 1st level character with all that gear will still get his ass kicked by a higher level character without that kind of gear, though.

 

Regardless, I want gear to matter enough that I'm happy about finding the cool new magic sword. I think a similar level of gear dependency to D&D 3.X/Pathfinder is fine, or maybe a bit toned down from that level.