Can I even handle a game like PE any longer? Well, I sure hope so!

[Sarex]

(1) Why? What's wrong with increasing combat difficulty only?

(2) Can't you think of any ways to increase overall difficulty? I sure can. Off the top of my head, here are a few easy ones you can do simply by tuning numbers, with no added mechanics whatsoever:

 

- (stealth) increase radius of noise circles

- (stealth) increase radius of enemy detection circles

- (stealth) decrease radius of party detection circles

- (stealth) shorten detection lag if present

- (stealth) make stealth buffs rarer or more costly

- (stealth) raise lockpick check thresholds

- (stealth) raise trap disarm thresholds

- (stealth) reduce availability of lockpicks

- (talk) raise ability check thresholds

- (talk) raise faction reputation check thresholds for factions

- (talk) raise personal reputation check thresholds for individuals (e.g., something that requires "Merciful 20" on Normal becomes "Merciful 50"

- (talk) raise costs associated with talk solutions (e.g., if bribery or payment is involved, raise the price)

- (talk) make talk buffs rarer or more costly

- (overall) raise buy prices in shops

- (overall) lower sell prices in shops

- (overall) reduce loot

- (overall) reduce XP rewards

 

Srsly, guyz. This isn't rocket science.

 

Because talking and stealth ties in to combat, thus they are part of it.

 

Stealth mechanics I can even see being balanced and being hard to pull of on higher difficulties. But as for talking it simply doesn't work and here is why. When you play the game you usually have one character in whom you max out persuasion (for me it was always on my paladin (group leader)), so if one character has max values on that skill no matter how high the difficulty he will have enough skill points to chose that dialog option. So that leaves us with the mechanics of it, which will always be just clicking the dialog option. So we come to the xp, which we surprisingly agree on, reducing the xp rewards on talking and stealth is one way to balance it.

Edited January 22, 2014 by Sarex

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

Stealth mechanics I can even see being balanced and being hard to pull of on higher difficulties. But as for talking it simply doesn't work and here is why. When you play the game you usually have one character in whom you max out persuasion (for me it was always on my paladin (group leader)), so if one character has max values on that skill no matter how high the difficulty he will have enough skill points to chose that dialog option. So that leaves us with the mechanics of it, which will always be just clicking the dialog option. So we come to the xp, which we surprisingly agree on, reducing the xp rewards on talking and stealth is one way to balance it.

 

I agree that the simplest way to go is to reduce the objective xp if sweet-talk solutions were involved (proportionally, of course, depending on how many they were). It makes sense too. A few clever words versus melee with plenty of eager opponents and damages and perhaps new abilities experienced from those same opponents and what not. The latter certainly should entail more xp rewards somehow, at least in theory.

Edited January 22, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[PrimeJunta]

Stealth mechanics I can even see being balanced and being hard to pull of on higher difficulties. But as for talking it simply doesn't work and here is why. When you play the game you usually have one character in whom you max out persuasion (for me it was always on my paladin (group leader)), so if one character has max values on that skill no matter how high the difficulty he will have enough skill points to chose that dialog option. So that leaves us with the mechanics of it, which will always be just clicking the dialog option. So we come to the xp, which we surprisingly agree on, reducing the xp rewards on talking and stealth is one way to balance it.

First off, I believe there won't even be a persuasion skill in PoE. Attributes and other skills will be checked however. I also believe it's likely that these will be for your main character only, i.e. you can't spread them across the party. I agree that if, indeed, it is possible to spread the required "talky" skills across the party, this aspect will get a great deal diluted.

 

Second, two of the points I listed aren't about ability/attribute checks at all: they're about reputation mechanics. These aren't subject to this problem.

 

And third, the other two points are about raising the cost of talk solutions.

 

The upshot of these adjustments is that you'll have to work harder to be able to resolve things through dialog. If reputation mechanics are solid, you won't be able to max out your rep among all factions and all personality traits. This means that you'll have to play more strategically if you want to resolve things by talking: make hard choices about which factions or personal reputation traits to cultivate and which to ignore. Screw it up and these solutions simply won't be available, and even in the best case, you'll never see all of the talky solutions in a single play-through as some of them will be mutually exclusive.

 

So yes, ultimately you will click on a dialog option, and that single click as such can only ever be as interesting as a single click can be. The interesting part is making that dialog option available in the first place. That's strategic difficulty, which is every bit as important as tactical difficulty.

[Sarex]

First off, I believe there won't even be a persuasion skill in PoE. Attributes and other skills will be checked however. I also believe it's likely that these will be for your main character only, i.e. you can't spread them across the party. I agree that if, indeed, it is possible to spread the required "talky" skills across the party, this aspect will get a great deal diluted.

 

Second, two of the points I listed aren't about ability/attribute checks at all: they're about reputation mechanics. These aren't subject to this problem.

 

And third, the other two points are about raising the cost of talk solutions.

 

The upshot of these adjustments is that you'll have to work harder to be able to resolve things through dialog. If reputation mechanics are solid, you won't be able to max out your rep among all factions and all personality traits. This means that you'll have to play more strategically if you want to resolve things by talking: make hard choices about which factions or personal reputation traits to cultivate and which to ignore. Screw it up and these solutions simply won't be available, and even in the best case, you'll never see all of the talky solutions in a single play-through as some of them will be mutually exclusive.

 

So yes, ultimately you will click on a dialog option, and that single click as such can only ever be as interesting as a single click can be. The interesting part is making that dialog option available in the first place. That's strategic difficulty, which is every bit as important as tactical difficulty.

 

That would be interesting, connecting reputation to talking your way out of fights. It would provide a mechanics (you need some work put in to it for it to work), a choice (not every reputation would work on everyone) and a way to balance it (gaining a reputation could be harder on higher difficulty). I like it, kudos.

 

I think Josh mentioned that the party is gonna work like in IWD2, that means that you can change the party leader and that everyone in the party can specialize a different skill, so there is no need to pool resources apart from something like stealth.

[Yonjuro]

 

First off, ....

That would be interesting, ....

 

 

 This is an interesting idea. I replied in the new thread.

[Lephys]

As for the metaphor, "If I'm in a store, with $10, and each individual item in the store costs $10, then I have the ability to buy "any" item in the store. Doesn't mean $10 lets me clean the store out.", 10$ you have = 10 skill points in persuasion, items in stores = fights, 10$ price sticker = how many points you need to circumvent a fight. So if you have 10 skill points, you can circumvent any fight in the store that has a cost of 10 skill points and because they all cost 10 skill points you can get past all of them. Now I know what you meant to say, but this metaphor in the context of the discussion is, as you can see, wrong.

If you knew what I "meant to say," then you'd know that I wasn't using it in that context. Using a hammer to stitch a wound shut is wrong, but I don't go around telling people who use hammers that when they haven't said anything about using them in such a fashion.

 

I'm not really worried about it anymore. I realize you're probably not intentionally being difficult here, but you clearly misunderstood what I was saying and/or are confused about what, specifically, I was responding to and what I wasn't. So, no worries. You don't need to comprehend the exact nature of those few posts. The world will spin on.