On the confirmed attributes for PE

[curryinahurry]

I posted in the Update thread that I would like to see Stamina associated with resolve.  I don't like the idea of one attribute covering both Health and Stamina, And both Resolve and Perception need to be bolstered a bit in terms of usefulness.  

 

The only issue I see with doing this is that Obsidian is using Resolve as a proxy for Charisma, but that shouldn't prevent them from associating Stamina with it.

[Lephys]

I noticed that, too, about the "only bonus modifiers from stats" thing. However, when you think about it, it's kind of a po-tay-to, po-tah-to thing, assuming the resulting numbers are still accurate.

 

Example:

 

If they did it the -, 0, + way, then maybe 1 Intellect gives you -30%, and 19 Intellect gives you +30%.

 

Well, if the base AoE range of a given spell is 10 meters, then the minimum you could possibly have would be 7 meters, and the max would be 13 meters. So, if you take that 7 meters and make it the base of the spell, then shift everything to the positive-modifier range, then you'd get... +0% for an INT value of 1, and +86% for an INT value of 19, resulting in the same 13-meter AoE range result.

 

I'm not good at coming up with super-conveniently clean math examples, so... that's the best I can do.

 

But, yeah, I guess just from a psychological standpoint, I think I prefer the negative, 0, positive approach, even if all the resulting numbers are the same. Gives you a better idea of what the average is just from looking at the modifier. I mean, you could have 5 INT, and see (+10%), and you're like "YEAH! BONUS!", but you're still one of the dumbest people in the world. It's a bonus to absolute ignorance? Heh.

[Sensuki]

I like Stamina and Health on CON and having them at the same values by default, YMMV.

[WorstUsernameEver]

It'd be really helpful if the attribute threads were condensed into one so one wouldn't have to go through 3/4 topic to be up to date on the discussion, especially when dev replies are involved. Would probably make it easier for Josh and whoever else from the dev team wants to answer to chime in too, just a thought.

[Sensuki]

Meh. Some people like reading large threads some don't. Theres people on different wavelengths as well. There's a lot of Simulationists and borderline LARPers here as opposed to the gamist and combat stat centric discussions.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Sensuki

[WorstUsernameEver]

Meh. Some people like reading large threads some don't.

But I don't see how the solution is opening three or four threads on the same exact subject. It just muddies the discussion.

 

Theres people on different wavelengths as well. There's a lot of Simulationists and borderline LARPers here as opposed to the gamist and combat stat centric discussions.

But I don't see how that has any bearing on this, unless you're suggesting that people with different preferences should stick to different threads, which would effectively kill most of the discussion. If one's not interested in the subject, anyway, they can just avoid a topic on it.

[Sensuki]

Well if you didn't notice two of the threads are mine (I was the OP). The first one was stating my theory of what the attributes were going to be before they were announced. That thread took a turn for the worse where the simulationists, character concept/LARP people came in and started discussing attributes in that manner.

 

I then started the Attribute questionnaire thread which asked some questions of the forum posters about things they did or didn't like about attributes - the attribute revision we have seen has taken some of the preferences stated in that thread to bear (which may or may not have been a result from reading the thread) - such as a single attribute for Stamina/Health and revising the combat stats being used by attributes. We haven't heard anything about inventory slots being related now in the latest iteration either.

 

This thread is about the newest revision. So they are all on different topics about attributes.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Sensuki

[WorstUsernameEver]

Might have been at the beginning, but now the discussion about the latest attribute revision is going on through 3 threads. For someone who's interested in the topic it's tiring to have to hop on three topics just to see the points people and devs raise, it's all I'm saying.

 

And yeah, I genuinely didn't notice the threads were yours, I'm not really interested in who starts the threads as much as the ongoing discussions.

[Sensuki]

This thread is the only superfluous one really.

[IndiraLightfoot]

It's not superfluous in the slightest. This is about the confirmed attributes and not so much about attribute theory.

Your great thread on that has run its course (it's nearing the 500 post mark and had derailed a bit), but can of course be renewed. Please, dig out Josh's replies in it, and the core of it, if you have the time, and just fire up Atrribute Theory part II.

[Sensuki]

In his eyes it is. I don't care about multiple threads.

[Jarmo]

I don't think resolve would need any other benefits, it'll be super important for frontliners as is.

 

Seems a heavy armor fighter with high might and constitution but low resolve,

would be butchered by lightly armoured dextrous combatant with faster attacks.

Fast attacks connecting and breaking the slower moves of the heavier fighter.

[Adhin]

@Lephys: Yeah I kinda like the -/+ approach but then you have to come up with some bottom out for the negative side which is one of the reasons I always stick to the base-10 approach when I've ever had to come up with some stuff like this. Nice thing about base 10 is, 10's average, that's easy to understand, and 0 is a death-like-state. Be a little weird if 0 is average. I guess 10 could still be average in that scenario but then whats 0? below average? animal level? If it can go below 0 what's that mean, when does it stop?

 

Also like Fallouts 1-10 approach, 10 being the cap though I feel like the 10 should just be the cap of natural levels and they should (but don't) account for attributes above 10... which just kinda makes augments being pointless if your already there. Which is odd when you think about it, if your 10 strength muscle man and you get strength augments it... has no effect, sorry your muscles are already to amazing, enhanced machinery is nullified by said awesome.

 

Now then as for all this resolve talk, I doubt it'll be that big of a jump. It will help, I'm sure, but there's no way they're going to make you 'need' a massive resolve score to fight effectively front line. They need to make it useful but not mandatory. I mean if an average resolve score results in a fighter being interrupted 'all' the time because hes constantly taking on multiple opponents that's going to make him incredibly useless at his base role which is something they've already stated they're avoiding. You know, each class having a role they excel at regardless of how you build them but your attribute/talent choices let you mold it in 'additional' ways. Additional being the key word, not 'giving up entirely to try to do something else'.

 

And that's enough rambling for me.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Adhin

[WorstUsernameEver]

I don't think resolve would need any other benefits, it'll be super important for frontliners as is.

 Seems a heavy armor fighter with high might and constitution but low resolve,

would be butchered by lightly armoured dextrous combatant with faster attacks.

Fast attacks connecting and breaking the slower moves of the heavier fighter.

But as long as the frontliner doesn't totally dump res and isn't in a situation where she's fighting a really high-per enemy, she should be fine. And if we're talking about a burly, dwarven defender-kind of fighter, meant more to attract the enemies' attention and mitigate their offensive utility than actually inflicting a lot of damage herself, resolve really doesn't seem all that useful right now.

 

Anyway, much of it will depend on the implementation, but I think it's more of a concern than Perception, which is about as reliant on hitting things as Might and Intellect.

[Sabotin]

Lots of guessing but: The Concentration number is flat, while the Interrupt is a %. This would lead me to believe that it will be DamageDone*Interrupt vs Concentration check to determine if the skill is interrupted. So the things that interrupt would be the big hitters, not the fast nicks. And it'd be hard to break the concentration of anything with heavy armor. That paladin on the picture would have to lose like a third of stamina in one hit if it works like that.

 

Depending how much hard cc (total loss of control) is in the game this cold be a secondary use for something like rogues or rangers and whatnot that can produce big hits, while others can do it on squishy characters only. Assumptions upon assumptions, but that's what we do, right? :D .

[Jobby]

So i take it the whole magic/physical damage = one stat (Might/Power) is set in stone? That was my only gripe with the attribute system but if its over I'd rather not continue to beat a dead horse and perhaps contribute something productive.

[PrimeJunta]

Dunno if anything is set in stone, but the main design idea does seem to be to have stats do the same thing for every class. I can see why, but it does make them a little less "relatable." However personally, given a choice between mechanical robustness and relatability, I'll pick better mechanics. I can understand why someone else would see it differently though.

[Jarmo]

So i take it the whole magic/physical damage = one stat (Might/Power) is set in stone? That was my only gripe with the attribute system but if its over I'd rather not continue to beat a dead horse and perhaps contribute something productive.

 

The same. And it pretty much is set in stone. And I guess it's time to move on.

 

 However personally, given a choice between mechanical robustness and relatability, I'll pick better mechanics. I can understand why someone else would see it differently though.

 

My opinion mirrored. I'd pick relatability but understand how functional game also has it's appeal.

[Lephys]

The same. And it pretty much is set in stone. And I guess it's time to move on.

To be fair, that's nought more than a guess. Unless you know something the rest of us don't. I could just as easily say "it's definitely NOT set in stone, and everyone should keep discussing it because it's DEFINITELY going to affect what finally DOES get set in stone! 8D"

[Ganrich]

I agree with Lephys. The system changed over Christmas break from Intellect governing damage and healing to Might governing them. Every iteration (that we know of) has had a generic Damage Attribute, but with this changing as much as it has I wouldn't say it is set in stone. This is why I have voiced my issues with the current iteration of Resolve because I feel it is pretty close to a possible dump stat for some situations. Will I have any effect? Maybe, maybe not. I will keep voicing that concern until I hear something from the developers on the subject.

[Silent Winter]

I've changed my mind on having a problem with might affecting bows+guns damage. (bare/bear with me, depending on clothing/animal preference)

Nothing says PE world needs to have the same laws of physics as our world. If they say that, in PE, you can add more strength to a bow to make it more powerful, then ok. Pulling the bow back further does give it more power.

The same could be said for crossbows (maybe they have more notches to pull the string back to, coincidentally representing Might-points).

Guns (this was harder) -> Recoil -> when a gun is fired, some of the energy is transferred into pushing the gun backwards.  A Mightier person can hold the gun steadier against the recoil and thus more energy is transferred to the projectile. ... ... ... don't judge me

 

I don't care if this is official, it works for me

 

*feels the collective rolling of eyes* -> sorry, I just like to be able to make internally-consistent sense of fantasy worlds.

 

---

 

On the topic of relatability v. fun+balanced gaming mechanics, I'll lean towards the latter (but hope for both)

[Silent Winter]

^ I thought the same thing -- about health and stamina being separated -- at first. But now, when I think about it...

 

Look at the different ends of the spectrum:

 

If you have 10 Stamina, and 100 Health, how useful is that health, really, if you're 7 times more likely to not-"survive" (stay above 0 Stamina) a single fight, anyway? I mean, you can make it through more fights without having to rest somewhere, but that doesn't help you actually make it through those fights.

 

Then, the opposite... 10 Health, 100 Stamina. Well, that's obviously pointless. You can't even use the whole stamina pool before you're dead. So, that means the minimum health would be, what, 25? For 100 Stamina to actually be usable? And that's still with absolutely no room for Stamina regen; even if you take 50 damage, then get back up to 100 Stamina in the same battle, you could still only take 50 more damage before you died.

 

So, that's the minimum, and I don't really know what the opposite threshold of feasibility would be, but, that doesn't leave a whole ton of room for benefit from the variations. Not to mention, you're never going to rest with part of your party, and not with the other part. In that regard, it's a bit like passive move speed; If one person can run 1.4 times the speed of everyone else, then you're just going to move that person less often so everyone still moves as a group. Likewise, when 4 people get down to 10 Health, the fact that that one guy still has 40 isn't really going to make you say "Let's just NOT rest, then! 8D!".

 

*shrug*. It could still be interesting, but I don't know that there's much of a feasible range for Stamina versus Health values.

Ok, (though I was thinking of less extreme examples - it would be tougher to survive an individual fight, not certain death, and you'd often be closer to zero stamina at the end).

 

I'm sure Josh has looked at it though and decided that grouping them would be better (rather than arbitrarily moving them) so as long as it works together then I'm good.

[Adhin]

Just for the sake of bull****ting a reason for might to effect guns there Silent Winter, actual physics. One of are currently slowest rounds, .45 ACP is about lets say 900 FPS (depends on the load but 900s a good average for a 45). That is 3 football fields in 1 second. I'm not entirely sure the length of most wheellock's barrels but for arguments sake lets say 20 inchs, im sure some of them where near or at that mark (Barrett's at the 20+ mark).

 

Ok, so, 900 feet per second, that's 10800 inchs per second. That's 10.8 inchs per millisecond. That's pretty fast for one of are slowest moving rounds, amirite? So your looking at slightly less then 2 milliseconds of travel time before that bullets waaay the crap outa that barrel. So, physics wise bullets long gone before the recoils built up enough for the shooter to notice it. But! Here's where the might part comes in... powder load. More powder, bigger the recoil and faster the bullet, more speed = more damage. Now, weaker persons going to stick to less of a load just due to recoil, you don't go big unless you can personally handle it. Granted with guns it mostly just takes some know how and good positioning so your body takes the force but that's where the semi-pretend part comes in.

 

Least that's how ill be thinking about it, even though I don't think guns or xbows should gain a bonus from any stat. Bows I can understand, as you mentioned. It's actually how pull strength works with bows, further back you go, the more pounds of force required to hold/pull it back further. Granted some of that has to do with arm length just to be able to manage that and still shoot the things but whatever heh. Just one of those things we have to deal with for the sake of balance.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Adhin

[Lephys]

Nothing says PE world needs to have the same laws of physics as our world. If they say that, in PE, you can add more strength to a bow to make it more powerful, then ok. Pulling the bow back further does give it more power.

No, nothing does. But, you can't have bows and guns work with one set of physics while everything else in the world works with another.

 

Besides, you can already draw a bow farther and add more power to it, but it's limited by the design of the bow. Either the material (and string) is strong enough to flex properly and not-break, or it isn't. At a certain point, you can't pull it back any further, though, without lengthening the arms of the bow (and the string). Which is why there are larger bows with greater draw strengths, and smaller bows with lesser draw strengths. It has nothing to do with whether or not physics allows strength to be transferred into the bow. That's all a bow is. Instead of throwing an arrow, you put all the strength of your arm into the bow and its string, which then releases all that energy in the form of launching the arrow.

 

Sorry, I know you were being a bit whimsical with that (especially the guns thing), and I came back with a big serious response. I mean no harm, though, . I just want to emphasize that you can't just lightly change physics, altogether. And, even if you do, it doesn't work like that.

 

*shrug* A better way to accomplish that without changing base physics is to use magic. Maybe you use your physical strength just as you do in reality, to draw the bow, but you also pour your soul-essence (or what-have-you) into the bow (because all weapons are designed to be conduits of such energy?), which then acts to further boost the missile's propulsion when released? Like a bow firing that then fires a little electromagnetic tube, like a rail-gun or something. Only with fictitious soul energy instead of magnetic force.

 

I dunno. But I certainly wouldn't base a game world largely on regular physics (humanoid folk, walking around, with gravity, and mechanical engineering all the same, etc.), then just change physics. I mean, adding magic isn't even changing physics, really. You've still got actual, regular physics from reality. PLUS magic. You're amending it, is all. Magic is just something that doesn't exist that still interacts with regular physics.

 

I mean, in reality, we're always going "agh, you COULD make a force field (for example), but there's no substance that would sustain the reaction enough to make it feasible, etc.", then discovering some new substance/allow/element that does what we thought couldn't be done before. Magic is like that. IF some other energy existed, it could very well accomplish things within the realm of physics. Just the energy itself (or the generation of it, or the access to it) not having been discovered yet. In a fantasy world with magic, it's just as if it was discovered long ago, and people for some reason were born with the ability to access it.

[Silent Winter]

Just for the sake of bull****ting a reason for might to effect guns there Silent Winter, actual physics.

 

... powder load. More powder, bigger the recoil and faster the bullet, more speed = more damage.

works for me

 

<snip> (it's just above)

oh, no, I know, no worries

As for bows - the limit is less about the actual ability to pull the bow until the ends touch as it is about the effective limit on where the speed of the bow 'snap' comes in (and arrow length but, ya'know).  You can pull it back further but it's not proportionally more powerful.  But that's to digress and is essentially the same point.

I was actually thinking of the 'soul-power' thing on the way into work.  I agree with what you said there.

I'll liken it to Qi (/Chi / Japanese-Ki) - a swordsman extends his/her qi to the end of the sword and uses it to increase speed/damage etc, same for a staff.  Perhaps in PE, you can extend your qi into the bow/etc and increase it's power that way. (irrespective of how you think it works in 'the real world^TM' , it's valid for a fantasy world).

 

(and I agree that if you change one bit of physics, you have to deal with the fallout.  So, yeah, it's better not to change it just to half-a**sed explain one situation)

Edited January 17, 2014 by Silent Winter