Betabackers: Are racial bonuses important?

[PrimeJunta]

That's an interesting thought.

 

I think the problem with it is that "what humans are" is a really thorny question. We don't really know, other than "social primates." That leaves a huge amount of room for variants, and determining which one is "right" is a value judgment. When looking at really existing societies both today and historically, it's clear that we've organized ourselves in a blinding variety of ways, each succeeding and failing in different areas.

 

Science -- physics, chemistry, to a lesser extent biology -- is relatively easy. There's a manageable amount of variables to deal with. Social studies -- social psychology, sociology, politology, psychology, historiography and so on -- are much harder because there are too many moving parts. You just can't demonstrate things to anywhere near a similar degree of certainty. 

 

Science is a poor lens to look at politics. Engineering is a much better one. We can look at what we have, examine what's working and what's not, and try to devise something better based on that. Either patch up the systems we have, or try to design something new based on what we've learned. (I'm generally speaking far in favor of the former, as designing societies from the ground up usually ends in disaster. I.e., I'm more of a Eurocommunist/Bernsteinian revisionist than a revolutionary, despite occasional bouts of Trotskyite fervor.)

 

Edit: "and not necessarily humans as a whole; this could be unique depending on any amount of biological factors individual to population" -- Do you actually believe that biological differences between 'populations' have some bearing to political structures? If so, all I can say is   .

 

(Hint: There is no such thing as a 'population' in the biological sense in humanity today. We're not reproductively isolated, and haven't been for a long, long time. As much as you may dislike it, we're all one population bearing a big ol' mess of genes from all over the world.)
 

Edited January 21, 2015 by PrimeJunta

[archangel979]

I mostly agree with Luckman.

 

And to design a better society we always have to look at history. And history is full of people with too much power bullying those with not enough. Be they kings, lords, rich merchants or just a guy with a better sword.

 

We have got rid of kings and guys with bigger swords (mostly, or at least within one country), but lords and rich merchants are still bullying others. Until we also curb those, there will never be a good society.

 

And we are pretty Off topic by now :D

 

EDIT

Something on topic: I don't agree racial bonuses and penalties represent any kind of racism. I am also a person that would give bonuses and penalties based on sex as well because no matter how much SJW complain there is science behind it.

Edited January 21, 2015 by archangel979

[Gorbag]

Edit: "and not necessarily humans as a whole; this could be unique depending on any amount of biological factors individual to population" -- Do you actually believe that biological differences between 'populations' have some bearing to political structures? If so, all I can say is   .

First off, dropping into an ongoing discussion is a terrible thing to do, and I am sorry.

I agree that biological factors hardly matter now because, as you said, "individual population" is not based on biology for a long time. Whether it mattered in the past and when, is a different question, going far and away from the topic of this thread. What it can be based on IMO, is environment. Even though it is at present a lesser factor than it was in the past, environment has always shaped political behaviour as much as any social behavoiur of the affected group. Furthermore, as any living things, people adapt to environment or move out or die, so you could say that people who lived for a long time in a certain environment are somewhat physically changed to accommodate adaptation. In this train of thought, returning to the topic at hand, if any generalizations could be made for the sake of innate bonuses, they should be made based on where (and therefore how) people live, rather than who they are (not to mention that such approach is significantly less politically loaded than a race-based one). This, I think, is how the "subracial bonuses" work in PoE anyway, although to some extent (as we have Island Aumaua, but not Island Dwarf for example, as if dwarves cannot live on an island and therefore develop differently than their coastal/mountain/etc. cousins).

 

As for "racial bonuses", I guess if we take different types of beings (such as "Human", "Aumaua", "Orlan", "Dwarf", etc.) and compare them as mathematical averages, we could reach some conclusions based on in-game made-up scientifical data, such as "Humans are generally faster than Aumaua", "Aumaua are generally stronger than Orlans", etc. It may not be correct for *any* Human or *any* Orlan, but then again we have all skills and attributes to play around with, so that *our* Human and *our* Orlan may deviate from the arbitrary "norm" however we like. 

[h3st]

 

 

Supporting communism in games is un-American and bad. Capitalist democracy for all. Don't mess with Texas.

I never even noticed any anti-communist bias. I never played Dragonfall though.

 

You encounter a orkish Communist policlub calling themselves the Arbeiters. Turns out they're just a bunch of thugs spouting vaguely Marxist dialog lines. You can express sympathy for them but the dialog lines read like whoever wrote them had a manager standing behind their back going "Write them! Write them or you'll never work in this town again!"

 

Isn't Shadowrun supposed to be cyberpunk, i.e. vaguely dystopic? Given that, and that authoritarian thugs have spouted vaguely Marxist rhetoric in real life, it seems to fit in the setting fine. And the other group you can help there is a bunch of loopy mages who are letting spirits wreck the buildings for poops & giggles … the Arbeiters might be thugs, but at least it sounded like people were able to use the building under their rule. I can't say I encountered any «good guys» in Dragonfall the way you might in a classic high fantasy setting.

 

It's striking how different their portrayal is from the F-state anarchists. It's quite clear where their sympathies lie.

This, however, I agree with completely. They're keen to show off nasty people using various ideologies for their own ends, but when it comes to the anarchists, somehow stuff's just peachy keen. Ah, at least I can think of them as turdbags for blocking all the bike lanes …

[archangel979]

Isn't that neighbouring area also anarchist? They steal your stuff and you need to get it back.

They didn't show it bad as a whole but that is the whole point of the system. It is supposed to self regulate and kick out bad apples that are always acting alone. Unlike current system where these bad apples can use the system to corrupt others.

[h3st]

Yeah, and the Arbeiters incident to some degree shows how anarchism is susceptible to being overrun by a group of thugs—sort of like how we've now hijacked a thread about a certain game mechanic and turned it into a political discussion.

[Kjaamor]

I'm still waiting for a game that explores multiple political perspectives, and showcasing them all as reasonable (at least on the surface). However, further into the game it's shown that they're really all quite terrible and most agendas are motivated by the personal gain of those that lead them.

 

I suspect that would get overly complex, tho...

 

Fallout 2, and absolutely none of the other Fallouts.

[Namutree]

 

Regrettably, the most politically interesting game in recent memory has to be Bioshock, which is sad because Bioshock is actually not that good of a game.

 

 

I never played Bioshock. I heard that you can't die; that instead you just get moved to a previous checkpoint. I also didn't like the way the game looked.

 

 But it did explore the idea of political objectivism in an interesting (and largely reasonable way; objectivism really is that insane) package; the Bioshock 2 counterpoint of runaway collectivism - as much as I hate it - while not inappropriate, was banal and hamfisted by comparison, likely because it was created as a counterpoint, not because the developers had any deep insight or interest in the concept itself, or a real drive to explore the issues.

 

Ayn Rand is weird.

[DigitalCrack]

Something on topic: I don't agree racial bonuses and penalties represent any kind of racism. I am also a person that would give bonuses and penalties based on sex as well because no matter how much SJW complain there is science behind it.

To expand on this, races in PoE are different in the way a man and a woman are biologically different not in the way human races (white, black, latino, etc..) are different.  Not to say there aren't slight differences as far as general physical build for human races.  The difference between a man and a woman is far more pronounced and distinct biologically, being more than some minor physical differences.  Each gender has some completely unique parts (for instance) that they don't share with the other as well as differing physiological limits.

[h3st]

I'm still waiting for a game that explores multiple political perspectives, and showcasing them all as reasonable (at least on the surface). However, further into the game it's shown that they're really all quite terrible and most agendas are motivated by the personal gain of those that lead them.

 

I suspect that would get overly complex, tho...

You're in luck, the game has already been implemented. (Typing that accidentally made me lose quite another game.)

[nipsen]

What is your experience, from playing the beta?

Don't worry. Since after the second beta update, the stats, regardless of difficulty, makes no practical difference. What matters is class bonuses and abilities.

[Lephys]

Don't worry. Since after the second beta update, the stats, regardless of difficulty, makes no practical difference. What matters is class bonuses and abilities.

He's right. When you essentially roll a d100 for attack resolution, having -15 from crap Perception, or +15 from awesome Perception, makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. 8D!

 

Also, it doesn't matter what buttons you push on your keyboard while playing, or if you even push any at all. You can just sit at your PC with your arms folded the whole time, and the game will beat itself!

[PrimeJunta]

@nipsen you requested a refund? 

 

LOL at nerdrage.  

[Luckmann]

 

Don't worry. Since after the second beta update, the stats, regardless of difficulty, makes no practical difference. What matters is class bonuses and abilities.

He's right. When you essentially roll a d100 for attack resolution, having -15 from crap Perception, or +15 from awesome Perception, makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. 8D!

 

Also, it doesn't matter what buttons you push on your keyboard while playing, or if you even push any at all. You can just sit at your PC with your arms folded the whole time, and the game will beat itself!

 

 

Bad example, though, since apparently they have removed Accuracy from the Characteristics now, so... yeah.

[Lephys]

Bad example, though, since apparently they have removed Accuracy from the Characteristics now, so... yeah.

Touche on that detail, . The point was more that math apparently doesn't work in the world of PoE. Because, for the stats to not matter,

 

A) The differences between 2 and 18 in a given stat would not have to produce any noticeable effect, and

B) There would have to be no situations in which your stat score opened up dialogue/scripted-interaction options that would've been otherwise unavailable.

 

He's been going on about "the stats don't matter" ever since the first major stat-details update, so I'm curious to know how he defines the word "matter." I mean, if he just doesn't like them, that's one thing. It's not like the only two possible states of the system are "perfect" and "pointless." But... yeah. 8P

[nipsen]

It's still not wrong that the stat bonuses has almost no impact on combat with the system they're using now. Even for the stats that are still there to be tweaked, and won't be completely governed by the class. So you don't get 10% bonus damage if you chose resolve instead of might. Which means that even if you attack with the right damage type, or if you still beat the damage threshold, means the difference, at the most, between something like 12 and 15 damage per hit? So I'm not sure how it's not the case that the class abilities and the class variables matter massively more than anything you can do with the attributes.

 

So I guess their idea is that you should simply pick the attributes that describe your build for the unexplained old system, so you get the dialogue options you want? Good job..?

[Lephys]

It's still not wrong that the stat bonuses has almost no impact on combat with the system they're using now. Even for the stats that are still there to be tweaked, and won't be completely governed by the class. So you don't get 10% bonus damage if you chose resolve instead of might. Which means that even if you attack with the right damage type, or if you still beat the damage threshold, means the difference, at the most, between something like 12 and 15 damage per hit?

A) Numbers can always change a lot before release. Thus is the nature of a not-yet-finished game.

B) Even just rolling with that example, that's the difference between 12 damage multiplied by every hit you ever get in an entire playthrough, and 15 damage multiplied by the same. That sounds like a pretty big effect to me.

 

So, yeah, still curious to know what your definition of "matters" is. 'Cause, it still sounds like "isn't ideal/super-favorable to me." Which, again, is fine. But call it what it is.

 

If the sky is falling, then show me the pieces.

[nipsen]

Ok, a little bit serious for a change - what happened was that in the original build, it was possible to specialize every class. I've made a few different examples from it, but the fighter class could end up in a slow-moving tank, an extremely fast but lightly armored striker, or for example a skilled defensive swordsman. The base class was intended as a normally armored defender, considering the abilities you started with. I made a Witcher character of some sort that was a fast fighter wielding a greatsword - buffing dex (that used to be accuracy, to boost critical rate), resistance (to avoid status attacks), intelligence (to boost athleticism and other skills, to better use potions, and increase stamina, etc.), and perception (to increase attacks of opportunity rate) - and he would rely almost exclusively on the buff-skills for defense, but then focus the feats on striking ability. So I would have a fighter tank (the bb-fighter) being defensive with increased armor buff, and the Geralt mutation almost always running with increased engagement limit.

 

So from that one class, you could make completely different characters, and all had a role to play if you configured your party well. None of the characters would have incredibly debilitating weaknesses, but they would have super-specialized attacks and ways of bypassing or bashing through certain types of defenses.

 

What made the combat interesting was that you would then have to figure out how to focus your attacks. Some weapons and some attack types, with such and such buffs, would bypass some types of armor, other weapons wouldn't make a dent. So now you had the opportunity to super-specialize your characters, not to maximize their damage bonus, but to maximize their effectiveness when you figured out the weakness of the monsters. If you then dropped a stat and got negative bonuses, you would get a few really nasty surprises.

 

This was too difficult, some argued. What they did was for example maximize might - but neglect resistance and perception. And they'd get trashed by the first venomous spider in the forest. Others balanced their characters evenly, and did perfectly fine. But it was not good enough. There were /trap builds/.

 

So the solution was to remove perception as a variable, remove interrupt opportunity and resistance as a separate stat. And then simply move all the critical attributes into the class table. 

 

This caused two things. One, all the specialized variations of the classes are now impossible to create. Two, the stats don't matter any longer. If you now have a party that's too specialized towards one area - which is completely possible to make, but also to inadvertently end up with if you assign your priest to a certain role, or your mage to another - you end up with impossible fights. 

 

And so the solution would be to turn the difficulty down. And that's what actually happened. They made the classes flat and one-dimensional to please a particular slice of their customer base. Creating one-dimensional attrition warfare out of every fight in the process (and it is tedious and similar and the same every time). While failing to understand that the problem really was that the ones who complained simply didn't understand how the game was supposed to work. And now the game was just tedious and boring, like people remark. It's not really very interesting, and you don't get the feeling of actually being powerful in this "no-magic fantasy" world, where magic doesn't really exist, and blabla.

 

So what do we get now? It's the mages that need a buff. If you don't understand how this hangs together, I'd recommend giving BG2 a spin, and see how laughably easy that game becomes if you simply have a few extra wizards in the party and spam damage spells. It's not much more complicated than that. You have a small core of people who played the IE games in an extremely particular fashion, cannot imagine anything else - and all the feedback is geared towards that: if the game isn't identical and favor their particular way of playing the IE games, then the game is broken.

 

And that's where the feedback for "improvements" comes from. I'm sure it's not malicious, or intended to ruin the game for everyone, including Obsidian and Paradox. But that's the result anyway. And like I've said, it's not the fault of the superfans for being passionate about something. Good for you. It's Obsidian's fault for not realizing what they were doing to their completely functional system, and understanding that even if they spent 100 years on perfecting that system -- it still wouldn't be any good.

 

So yes, I'm holding out for a way to turn the difficult level down to "enemies have armor made of origami paper". So I can skip past the bs as quickly as possible to get to the dialogue and story-telling. Which my characters will be specialized towards with intelligence (the most useless stat in the game, as well as in the real world as we well know), resistance (another stat that has no use of any kind apart from resisting cutscene torture, I guess), and dexterity (to climb ropes in side-quests well). Outside of that, there's no point whatsoever to do anything with the combat. Because it's so flat and boring I can't imagine who in the world would write off on it and say: "GOOD JOB!".

 

It just doesn't remotely make any sense to aim for something like this. It sounds impossibly exaggerated. At least until you actually see the thing in action. Then you see for yourself what they've ended up with. And it is so disappointing in so many ways that it just can't possibly escape comment. We've all thought, I think, that developers are held back by evil corporations and nasty publisher spawn. And surely they are. But what happens when a developer has to deal with the publishing responsibility themselves? They do the exact same thing as their publisher overlords: they cave to simplistic solutions in order to please the first and best customer in the most superficial way you can imagine.

 

And that's disappointing.

 

Still, sure, will be playing the game, and wanting to get to the plot and the dialogue. But if it turns out that "the book was better" than the game, I'm not going to exactly laugh of the irony, to put it that way.

[Sensuki]

Uhhh

 

nipsen I think you might be making some stuff up or possibly having delusions about what the 'original system' actually did for characters. Go find a v278 screenshot as proof. And no, there were no hidden benefits, as much as you claim that there were.

[nipsen]

*sigh* It's not finished yet, but my pnp adaption of the original rulset is in the works, yes. It'll be released on a creative commons license. And it will be different enough from Obsidian's released game that they would have had to fish up the design documents and make complete asses of themselves if I released it commercially. But I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to make available a good role-playing system that me and friends enjoy playing with, so more can enjoy it. If that eventually motivates someone to make a computer game that uses a similar system, I will obviously be back here to gloat.

 

But hey, feel free to think what you want. I'd have it no other way.

Edited January 23, 2015 by nipsen

[Lephys]

Uhhh

 

nipsen I think you might be making some stuff up or possibly having delusions about what the 'original system' actually did for characters. Go find a v278 screenshot as proof. And no, there were no hidden benefits, as much as you claim that there were.

Yeah, I could be mistaken, but I don't recall anything ever affecting your chance to make an attack of opportunity. Ever since its conception, engagement was "you leave the circle, you get attacked." And what stat is "resistance"?

 

Apart from some potential misunderstandings of the system, you have some perfectly valid observations and comments, but you're drowning them in a sea of dramatic exaggeration. "But then they changed it a little, and now everything's ruined completely and nothing even has any effect at all." Orrrrrr it's just a little worse in some regards, true. The individual classes got a little more rigid with their specializations, I'll give you that. But this "stats don't matter" nonsense is just that. You either know that isn't true, or you're just not even bothering to know before you decide anything.

 

Not only that, but you're acting as though everything in the game is in perfect tune, but the mean old stat system is at fault for everything. Everyone does too much damage because stats. Low fantasy isn't as fun as high fantasy, because stats! Negative. There are some things out of whack at the moment (at least in the current, outdated beta build), but a lot of them don't have much to do with stats. Or, rather, if other things were tweaked, the stats would be fine. Maybe not heavenly glorious and sparkly and perfect. But fine. Somewhere between the pinnacle of RPG goodness, and utter useless crap, as most things are.

 

So, if you wanna be constructive, then, by all means, call out the things you'd improve. But by the power of Greyskull, please get over the fact that you really, really super liked an old stat system iteration (with a few fictional add-ons thrown in), and the current system is far less to your liking for various reasons, and the devs "ignored" your suggestions (because they just sit around, not reaching any conclusions of their own, until some people in the forum tell them what to do. Then, there's a suggestion Battle Royale, and the last one standing gets implemented, no questions asked. *snicker*).

 

What you're doing is the reason the saying "making a mountain out of a mole hill" was coined. I have no problem with you disliking the game/systems. But, at least do so accurately and without exaggeration, please. It solves nothing and helps no one.

[PrimeJunta]

@nipsen wat

 

None of what you say makes sense. 

 

In BB278, fighters were hyper-specialized, totally locked into the "defender" role. They were useless with ranged weapons, they had no talents supporting any other tactics than tanking. Same applied to the other classes. Attributes made virtually no difference to effectiveness, you could leave everything at 3 and still have a perfectly playable character. People did that to demonstrate it.

 

Now you can make ranged, defender, or damager builds of fighters, and they do play materially differently. I've tried.

 

Srsly bro you've been playing some imaginary game in your mind, not the real one that's actually here. 

 

Also if you think Josh has caved to the grog brigade, go listen to the grog brigade. If anything they've caved to me – most of what I asked for is in the game now, some of to the grog brigade's chagrin.

 

(Also going to qq for a refund is epically childish. I'm really surprised you have the gumption to show your face here afterwards, especially with that sad paternal tone you're affecting. Grow up @nipsen.)

[Sensuki]

yeah f u PrimeJunta, you goon.

 

And you shoulda seen his thread about asking for a refund, it was pretty gold: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68843-official-appeal-to-refund-kickstarter-pledge/

Edited January 23, 2015 by Sensuki

[Namutree]

@nipsen wat

 

None of what you say makes sense. 

 

In BB278, fighters were hyper-specialized, totally locked into the "defender" role. They were useless with ranged weapons, they had no talents supporting any other tactics than tanking. Same applied to the other classes. Attributes made virtually no difference to effectiveness, you could leave everything at 3 and still have a perfectly playable character. People did that to demonstrate it.

 

Now you can make ranged, defender, or damager builds of fighters, and they do play materially differently. I've tried.

 

Srsly bro you've been playing some imaginary game in your mind, not the real one that's actually here. 

 

THIS! I wish I could give two likes!

 

I still remember how pissed I was that the fighter had to be an active defender because that's all fighters were good for when the beta came out. Now the system is much more flexible and I can make my fighter focus on offence with passive talents rather than active abilities. Like a fighter should be.

Edited January 23, 2015 by Namutree

[nipsen]

 

Uhhh

 

nipsen I think you might be making some stuff up or possibly having delusions about what the 'original system' actually did for characters. Go find a v278 screenshot as proof. And no, there were no hidden benefits, as much as you claim that there were.

Yeah, I could be mistaken, but I don't recall anything ever affecting your chance to make an attack of opportunity. Ever since its conception, engagement was "you leave the circle, you get attacked." And what stat is "resistance"?

Mhm, you're mistaken.

 

And Sensuki is hung up on a suggestion I made - that was to skew the critical hit table for spells and strikes with the intelligence bonus, so you would get more severe sideeffects like bleeding or shocks, or stuns, etc., when a critical hit would occur. This would make a lot of sense in the ruleset as it was then. But as Sensuki argued: it's not in the reverse-engineered code that has to do with displaying the stat-sheet card, so it's not in the game, and should never be either and ...things.

 

I still think it would have been a good idea - if it wasn't already in the game in some form or another via the tables and the logic for the actual attack rolls, that we still really know nothing about specifically on the code level, in spite of some people insisting otherwise.

 

Resistance was the "dump stat", remember? The one that "no one picked", because it was "unneeded". Also, "waah, the crystal spiders are hard".

 

 

 

@nipsen wat

 

None of what you say makes sense. 

 

In BB278, fighters were hyper-specialized, totally locked into the "defender" role. They were useless with ranged weapons, they had no talents supporting any other tactics than tanking. Same applied to the other classes. Attributes made virtually no difference to effectiveness, you could leave everything at 3 and still have a perfectly playable character. People did that to demonstrate it.

 

Now you can make ranged, defender, or damager builds of fighters, and they do play materially differently. I've tried.

 

Srsly bro you've been playing some imaginary game in your mind, not the real one that's actually here. 

 

THIS! I wish I could give two likes!

 

I still remember how pissed I was that the fighter had to be an active defender because that's all fighters were good for when the beta came out. Now the system is much more flexible and I can make my fighter focus on offence with passive talents rather than active abilities. Like a fighter should be.

 

I'm in some ways sorry to provoke people who seem happy enough in spite of their disabilities. But you guys realize on some level or other that "more flexible", and 'it now fits the limited role I think a fighter should have, perfectly' - are not two statements that could reasonably be said to have the same meaning?

 

Meanwhile, I have demonstrated, in detail, how you could vary your builds on the original schema. I'm not making that up. Seriously, "I don't accept that it exists, and violently scream that it doesn't until you go away", isn't a valid point of view. Nor is it someone's "valued opinion" (in spite of Obsidian apparently insisting on telling the rest of their fans otherwise).