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Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]
- Thread starter Anthony Davis
- Start date
Too late for a 
?
?
Putting all that kickstarter money to use. Outsource PE development.
Arkeus
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2012
- Messages
- 1,406
It's as if they somehow gained faith in kickstarter. Wonder why.
Dexter
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2011
- Messages
- 15,655
LeStryfe79
President Spartacus
It is kind of funny how they weren't prepared fully for the 1st and last days of KS but were pretty damn good all the days in between.
Brzęczyszczykiewicz
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2012
- Messages
- 1,205
$117K in PayPal 3,532,523 in Kickstarter which gives around 3,649,523$
LeStryfe79
President Spartacus
DFA: $3,336,371
Telengard
Arcane
One of the oldest PnPs, Runequest (1978), is still around, just now doing their 6th edition. Runequest is a level-less game that uses a checkbox experience system. Each skill has a checkbox beside it. When you use a skill, you check off the box. Further use of the skill gains you nothing. Neither does getting a check assure you that the skill will go up. At the end of the adventure, you roll for each checked skill to see if it goes up or not.
Chaosium uses the same system for it's other PnPs, including Pendragon and Cthulu, both also popular.
Another old game is Recon (1981), also still active. Recon does use experience for killing or subduing enemies, but the experience awarded is a flat number determined by whether the enemy force was small, medium, or large. There is no experience awarded for individual kills.
Another old game, Twilight 2000 (1984), also level-less, which made it to 2010, granted skills mostly by character age. Unless the campaign skipped over some time, your character wasn't going to be getting much better than you started. A small amount of points were awarded at the completion of an adventure, and that's all.
This list being limited to old games that are on my shelf. There are many others.
I'm a tad late to the party, but after giving it some thought I wanted to put in my two cents on the proposed stamina/health system. In summation, I like the *concept* of a mixed system, but I'm not crazy about the discussed implementation. To explain why, I will use as an example my favorite implementation of a combined health and stamina system; no, not Betrayal at Krondor, not Darklands, but Quest for Glory.
I consider QFG something of a paragon of great game design, and while it's obviously not completely analogous to a pure RPG such as PE, I think the basic lessons of how the system was implemented apply. My first relevant issue w/the PE system: Stamina and Health are too close to being the same thing. Obviously I don't know the exact specifics of the proposed system, but it sounds as if Stamina is just a slightly easier to regenerate buffer on health. Ok, fine, but why? In QFG, Stamina was a universal resource. Basically everything you did used some stamina (including getting hit), and that worked well. Health would only be lost from being hit (or doing things that would obviously damage health like falling), or if you had no stamina, anything you did would damage health. If you're going to have a dual-system, have an actual reason and separate purpose for both stats, not just that it's a solution to a meta-design problem.
And speaking of the primary issue here: rest scumming... QFG provides a nice guide to how to prevent it: simply don't allow it. I'm sure most people here are familiar with the system, but in QFG it went like this -- a short rest could be taken to restore a small amount of stamina and no health. You could rest for a while, but eventually you'd stop being tired, and couldn't rest. How hard would a system like that be to implement in an RPG? Not hard at all. You could only restore your health with a full night's rest, which you could only do after you became tired, not at any time. I mean, the IE games already had a fatigue system built in. If preventing rest-scumming is the primary motivation behind this system, then it should be reconsidered.
Finally, the question of the rate at which you can restore health/stamina. As mentioned, there was a fair bit of attrition in QFG, though nothing unmanagable. Health potions were difficult to come by (except in 2, where you could buy like a billion) and were often prohibitively expensive. All this necessitated was intelligent use of resources, not resting all the damn time. Why? Because the rest of the game was intelligently designed to make the attrition both manageable and challenging. This is what Josh Sawyer and co should be aiming for; intelligent encounter design, well dispersed resources, and a system that encourages good use of those resources.
Again, I'm not set against a stamina/health system, but there should be a solid design reason for having stamina as an additional resource, not just preventing excessive resting. Maybe they do have that and just haven't expanded on it yet, but just having the system for the sake of having the system and being different is lazy design. If you want to make health harder to restore, that's fine -- but having a second health stat with no other explained in-game purpose (yes, that's basically what it sounds like) is just redundant.
I consider QFG something of a paragon of great game design, and while it's obviously not completely analogous to a pure RPG such as PE, I think the basic lessons of how the system was implemented apply. My first relevant issue w/the PE system: Stamina and Health are too close to being the same thing. Obviously I don't know the exact specifics of the proposed system, but it sounds as if Stamina is just a slightly easier to regenerate buffer on health. Ok, fine, but why? In QFG, Stamina was a universal resource. Basically everything you did used some stamina (including getting hit), and that worked well. Health would only be lost from being hit (or doing things that would obviously damage health like falling), or if you had no stamina, anything you did would damage health. If you're going to have a dual-system, have an actual reason and separate purpose for both stats, not just that it's a solution to a meta-design problem.
And speaking of the primary issue here: rest scumming... QFG provides a nice guide to how to prevent it: simply don't allow it. I'm sure most people here are familiar with the system, but in QFG it went like this -- a short rest could be taken to restore a small amount of stamina and no health. You could rest for a while, but eventually you'd stop being tired, and couldn't rest. How hard would a system like that be to implement in an RPG? Not hard at all. You could only restore your health with a full night's rest, which you could only do after you became tired, not at any time. I mean, the IE games already had a fatigue system built in. If preventing rest-scumming is the primary motivation behind this system, then it should be reconsidered.
Finally, the question of the rate at which you can restore health/stamina. As mentioned, there was a fair bit of attrition in QFG, though nothing unmanagable. Health potions were difficult to come by (except in 2, where you could buy like a billion) and were often prohibitively expensive. All this necessitated was intelligent use of resources, not resting all the damn time. Why? Because the rest of the game was intelligently designed to make the attrition both manageable and challenging. This is what Josh Sawyer and co should be aiming for; intelligent encounter design, well dispersed resources, and a system that encourages good use of those resources.
Again, I'm not set against a stamina/health system, but there should be a solid design reason for having stamina as an additional resource, not just preventing excessive resting. Maybe they do have that and just haven't expanded on it yet, but just having the system for the sake of having the system and being different is lazy design. If you want to make health harder to restore, that's fine -- but having a second health stat with no other explained in-game purpose (yes, that's basically what it sounds like) is just redundant.
LeStryfe79
President Spartacus
We owe Shaffer a HUGE debt. I'll remember him when I pirate his new game.
I think the one thing that we have learned from the kickstarter trend is how heavily reliant developers are on design okaying from publishers and pitches it as such.
Why the charade? We all know you're the #1 high roller in this donation drive, and god knows how much you personally invested.
Digital Monocle
Augur
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2010
- Messages
- 442
It would be funny if he mysteriously shows up with a custom MCA Troll
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 100,120
Post this on Obsidian forums.
It isn't even that mysterious, just look at who is the top dog of the donor list.
My wife's going to kill me.
Just kidding! I'm not married, so I can spend my money on whatever I damned well please. The Race Traitor thing seems to be a separate endeavor, so....
Just kidding! I'm not married, so I can spend my money on whatever I damned well please. The Race Traitor thing seems to be a separate endeavor, so....
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 100,120
villain of the story
Arcane
Digital Monocle
Augur
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2010
- Messages
- 442
Waaaaah, those trogs.... we should unleash VoTs on them
They're getting scared that Obsidian is going to do what they want and not listen to the Order... :declining:Captain Shrek
Guest
The order thing is basically Bioware people. This entire drone attitude about a company that makes things FOR YOUR MONEY is really what made bioware so sustainable. Thankfully they got purged by their own mistakes.Waaaaah, those trogs.... we should unleash VoTs on them
You mean like this:It would be funny if he mysteriously shows up with a custom MCA Troll
I can't register at the Obsidian forums as for some reason it marks my IP as a possible spammer. I don't really want to go through the hassle of contacting their sysadmin just to post one message, so feel free to post it yourself if you think they need to hear it.
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