Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Excidium]

I really think people tend to blow these "problems" way out of proportion.

That's because you're fine with the way those things are handled in CRPGs, to me it's a p. big issue that's so easy to solve it blows my mind why it's perpetuated.

 

[deuxhero]

If there was no side benefit to taking points in Crafting besides being able to Craft. There would be no point taking Crafting on any character but one. There are people out there that would not figure that out or still do it anyway at the expense of spending those points elsewhere. This is something that Josh Sawyer does not like to see and believes that it is the designer's fault, not the player's and one of his mandates is to remove or lessen the impact of such choices.

I don't think Obsidian want an incentive for multiple characters to take Craft for this reason. I think it's because if there weren't auxiliary benefits, then it's a dead skill on all but one party member. You'd be biased against taking a Crafting NPC if your PC had Crafting, for example.

The ability to "aid Another" (help with, giving a bonus) on such skills is an easy fix, isn't an arbitrary restriction and depending on how the skill system works, can make it worth having on multiple characters (you can make better stuff or good stuff earlier), without punishing solo crafters.

 

[Logic_error]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

 

[Infinitron]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

Uh. It's an additional game mechanic? You need to make it through the dungeon with weapons that are gradually getting worse. That is an extra factor to take into account, an extra challenge.

 

[Logic_error]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

Uh. It's an additional game mechanic? You need to make it through the dungeon with weapons that are gradually getting worse. That is an extra factor to take into account, an extra challenge.

What.

Good AI is challenge. Limited rest is challenge. Spell components are challenge.

Degrading weapons are annoying. What makes them challenging?

 

[Infinitron]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

Uh. It's an additional game mechanic? You need to make it through the dungeon with weapons that are gradually getting worse. That is an extra factor to take into account, an extra challenge.

What.

Good AI is challenge. Limited rest is challenge. Spell components are challenge.

Degrading weapons are annoying. What makes them challenging?

What don't you understand? Your weapon is getting worse as you progress through the dungeon, ie, less effective in combat. It makes the fights harder!

Your weapon's durability isn't just a counter that doesn't affect anything.

 

[Logic_error]

What don't you understand? Your weapon is getting worse as you progress through the dungeon, ie, less effective. It makes the fights harder! Your weapon's durability isn't just a counter that doesn't affect anything.

So let me get you straight:

Your idea of challenge is randomly making your abilities/attacks drop with time? That sounds masochistic.

There are many other ways of making combat challenging that are actually concerned with good gameplay and complex planning. Useless mechanic of this sort seems like a lazy way to bypass carefully crafted encounters and enemy AI.

Also, this will be pointless in a game where every enemy will carry a +2 sword.


Follow up question:
Do you enjoy playing hack and slash a lot?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

What don't you understand? Your weapon is getting worse as you progress through the dungeon, ie, less effective in combat. It makes the fights harder!

Your weapon's durability isn't just a counter that doesn't affect anything.

A challenge is something that takes skill to overcome, an annoyance is something that's unaffected by your skill. Cain's version of item degradation is an annoyance because there's no way to adjust to it tactically (except not fighting), Arcanum's at least resembled a challenge because you could at least adapt to it to a degree: you could change tactics when confronted with armor smashing enemies.

 

[Excidium]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

Uh. It's an additional game mechanic? You need to make it through the dungeon with weapons that are gradually getting worse. That is an extra factor to take into account, an extra challenge.

What.

Good AI is challenge. Limited rest is challenge. Spell components are challenge.

Degrading weapons are annoying. What makes them challenging?

What don't you understand? Your weapon is getting worse as you progress through the dungeon, ie, less effective in combat. It makes the fights harder!

Your weapon's durability isn't just a counter that doesn't affect anything.

Technically it is since nothing happens until the durability counters are all gone and the weapon falls in the damaged state. I doubt it'll come up that often to be a challenge, except when spells and stuff that instantly break equipment are involved of course.

 

[Wizfall]

Can someone explain why at all weapon degradation is a good thing? What does it do in a game other than creating a skill that is made solely because degradation exists?

Uh. It's an additional game mechanic? You need to make it through the dungeon with weapons that are gradually getting worse. That is an extra factor to take into account, an extra challenge.

As they want to implemented it in PE weapons won't gradually getting worse.
So if you need to change weapon in a dungeon it would mean they are degrading way too fast and it's going to be annoying or the dungeon is really huge (i can only see it happening in the mega dungeon).
I don't hate a crafting skill nor degrading weapons and won't mind it in PE, i just think that it adds nothing.

 

[hiver]

Except that in PE the weapon DOES NOT deteriorate at all - until it reaches the status of "damaged". Which lasts fucking long - judging by the report.
- double ninjaed-

- Weapon degradation can be a good thing to expand on verisimilitude of the game world.
- It increases the plausibility of the setting. (if done right of course - as any other mechanic needs to be done right)
It can be a part of a crafting system - which apparently a lot of people like to do in games since they gave a lot of money for that feature in kickstarter.

- it could throw in, add some appropriate difficulty spikes into the gameplay, and variation into combat. Plus it influences the loot system considerably.

 

[Infinitron]

So let me get you straight:

Your idea of challenge is randomly making your abilities/attacks drop with time? That sounds masochistic.

What's random about it?

You start a dungeon with weapons at maximum duration and party members with maximum health.

As you progress, both degrade. Party members lose health, weapons lose durability. Your situation becomes more dangerous. Tradeoffs need to be made. Should you avoid using your best weapon, so it remains at full durability for the final boss of the dungeon? These are interesting challenges.

It's clear that Project Eternity is going to be a heavily dungeon-centric game, and that needs to be taken into account when assessing its design. Many aspects of PE's design rely on the existence of a "strategic context"/resource degradation of a long dungeon crawl. Certainly, durability is less useful in a game where you're constantly wandering around in cities, like BG2.

 

[Rostere]

I'm for weapon degradation, especially considering natural and magical circumstances which would sensibly degrade weapons, as mentioned earlier. It's been done earlier, and it was actually not that awful in Arcanum.

 

[Logic_error]

I see. When they mean IE games I guess they meant IWD1/2 hack and slash. Fine. Carry on.

 

[Infinitron]

I see. When they mean IE games I guess they meant IWD1/2 hack and slash. Fine. Carry on.

BG1 is probably closer to what they're aiming for. There are towns and a city and you can wander around the world and do stuff, but the ultimate objective in almost every chapter is a dungeon crawl or something similar.

 

[hiver]

There is no need for weapons to loose usefulness in one dungeon (although designing some critical effects in combat, gained by failing a defense check or something similar, like AoD has - that could accelerate the decline of weapons or items is a possibility).

Otherwise item degradation should last over longer game time - and be affected by how much combat you undertake - to present another layer of consequences to combative behavior of players who are just too use to it, as it is the only gameplay they ever fucking see in the game otherwise, while its always designed in obnoxiously pandering, cheap ways - as in, you always get a nice reward for killing those interesting looking sprites and little humans down there. Always. Forever.

Actually, making it an additional secondary consequence of combat sounds perfect for Torment.

:uses a meres: :Zap!: ksaun - CMcC - Adam Heine

 

[trais]

I like item durability when it presents meaningful choices, like: "should I buy more food or should I repair my gear at risk of starving to death later". As pure money sink it's one of the most annoying and pointless mechanics that can plague a game.
If you want to prevent players from getting too rich then adjusting money faucet works way better than adjusting the sink. But, IMHO, more important question is: why would you prevent that at all?

Adventurers (the succesful ones at least) in heroic fantasy are the rockstars of our world. They should be filthy rich. They should be able to buy every single piece of random merchant's stock and still have enough money to fuck every whore in town. Twice. Otherwise, what's the point of risking your life raiding the Tomb of Horrible Horrors when you can earn more money peddling cabbage on a street corner.
If you need to get rid of player's money because "consumables" or "store items" would totally destroy game balance - they you have problem with basic mechanics, not with the economy. Let players get rich and let them act like they rich - but scale the problems and obstacles accordingly. Give them options to meddle in local politics. Let them use their wealth to hire armies of mercenaries to clear goblin camps in the way without forcing them grind through those themselves. Make them face problems that can't be solved by throwing money at it - e.g. deadly curse that can only be dispelled by killing the guy who cast it.
I know those examples are shit - but better ones can be made. I know it hard to make such game - filling dungeons with trash mobs and towns with obvious money sinks is easier and costs less to develop. But I think it would be nice if someone made a good RPG for a change, without implementing same shitty mechanics over and over again.

 

[Excidium]

Filthy rich adventurers just retire.

 

[trais]

Filthy rich adventurers just retire.

Unless they have other personal goals. Like becoming a god. Or finding and killing some dude who murdered their pet dog. Or saving their home from Evil Bad Dude. Or getting their mortality back. The point is, it's not that hard to find some other motive to push player forward than "get rich". Especially in heroic fantasy.

 

[Excidium]

Indeed.

 

[Grunker]

As you progress, both degrade. Party members lose health, weapons lose durability. Your situation becomes more dangerous. Tradeoffs need to be made. Should you avoid using your best weapon, so it remains at full durability for the final boss of the dungeon? These are interesting challenges.

They are? I suppose that depends entirely on how you define interesting. For me, it sounds like a lot of needless equipment swapping to accomodate Yet Another HP Bar. Another system apart from the core mechanics.

Don't get me wrong. Durability can be interesting, especially as a key mechanic in a game where it plays a central role.

Here, it sounds like it's just another meter you have to watch that's put in the game to justify an otherwise useless skill. And oh look, Sawyer and Cain agree; both wrote that durability exists partly because otherwise Crafting on one character would be enough.

PE isn't a post apocalyptic "manage your sparse resources" RPG. It's not a nitty-gritty condition-management game like Conquistador. In those games, systems similar to durability are core components because they're central to the game's gameplay and themes. Thusly, they are given a lot of design attention.

In PE, it sounds like it'll be a simple aside to spend money and skill points on. Such "side-systems" that are basically just there to justify other systems always end up shit.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker I'm not saying durability is a good fit for Project Eternity. Personally, I don't care that much about it, although I do hope they keep it in, just to cause massive butthurt. I'm just explaining what it does.

 

[Excidium]

Let players get rich and let them act like they rich - but scale the problems and obstacles accordingly. Give them options to meddle in local politics. Let them use their wealth to hire armies of mercenaries to clear goblin camps in the way without forcing them grind through those themselves. Make them face problems that can't be solved by throwing money at it - e.g. deadly curse that can only be dispelled by killing the guy who cast it.
I know those examples are shit - but better ones can be made. I know it hard to make such game - filling dungeons with trash mobs and towns with obvious money sinks is easier and costs less to develop. But I think it would be nice if someone made a good RPG for a change, without implementing same shitty mechanics over and over again.

Takes actual design effort to change the scale of the adventure, though. Keeping the same nomad problem-solver gameplay from low level to high level is less work, just replace kobolds with dragons and swords with +5 swords and there you go

 

[circ]

Ohohoho. I hope they atleast have some sense and implement these LARP systems with fun in mind and not lulz. Food from Ultimas would be ok, Skyrim not so much.

 

[Excidium]

Food will accelerate stamina regen and give minor stat buffs.