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

[Infinitron]

How exactly do you define a combat skill?

I told you. To me, a combat skill is a weapon proficiency, armor proficiency, shield proficiency. Maybe stuff like a "Discipline" skill that prevents you from being knocked down. Stuff like that.

 

[Excidium]

It sure makes a lot of sense to have forges in every dungeon I'm adventuring through. Hmm this cave better have a forge or else it's a dumb cave.

How exactly do you define a combat skill?

Something that deals damage along with a secondary effect, duh. Welcome to Sawyer's design school

 

[Hormalakh]

Infinitron I'm telling you that a broken sword deals less damage. That's COMBAT.

I want to be clear. I don't hate item durability as a ~*thing*~. I hate the current implementation of it. Item durability can be an interesting addition. But it should not have anything to do with MMO-style crafting.

Either Obsidian sticks with its proposal of keeping non-combat and combat skills separate, or it's clear about it.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron I'm telling you that a broken sword deals less damage. That's COMBAT.

Not to me it isn't. It's not about causing damage and it's not about defending yourself from damage. It's a skill that if you invest in it, it maybe lets you attack at full power for one fight longer if you're going through a particularly long dungeon. It's too indirect to be a proper combat skill.

How about pickpocketing? Sneak up and steal the enemy's sword before the fight! He does less damage! Combat skill!

 

[Hormalakh]

Today I learned that combat isn't about causing damage and defending yourself damage.

 

[Infinitron]

Today I learned that combat isn't about causing damage and defending yourself damage.

What are you talking about

 

[trais]

Do you know that, if your posts are stupid to begin with, ordering people to read them again won't suddenly make them smart?

 

[Hormalakh]

Infinitron I'm telling you that a broken sword deals less damage. That's COMBAT.

Not to me it isn't. It's not about causing damage and it's not about defending yourself from damage. It's a skill that if you invest in it, it maybe lets you attack at full power for one fight longer if you're going through a particularly long dungeon. It's too indirect to be a proper combat skill.

How about pickpocketing? Sneak up and steal the enemy's sword before the fight! He does less damage! Combat skill!

today I learned that combat isn't about causing damage and defending from damage.

Your examples are fine, but these are not STATIC examples. They don't happen every time nor do they happen often. You could steal a sword, but can you do that every time? Can you even steal an equipped sword? Your persuasion example was the same way. It might work in a scripted environment. But not as a constant thing. Hit rolls are constant. Item durability losses after each swing is constant. Persuasion, pickpocket are scripted. That is the difference. If there are a few bosses or weapons ONLY that cause item durability losses that can be mitigated by craft, fine. I don't have an issue. If every battle causes item durability, then you can't use scripted examples. Because now it's a ~*COMBAT THING.*~

 

[Mastermind]

The renaming of the thread didn't give you a hint?

Or the nearly 800 pages.

 

[Infinitron]

Hormalakh

How does a skill that makes your weapon's durability run out slightly slower directly cause you to deal more damage? It doesn't. It's one input in a long chain of unpredictable events that maybe, later results in your damage output being reduced.

That's not a combat skill in my book. Deal with it.

 

[DraQ]

Sawyer is really taking this idea of "there should be no dump stats whatsoever" to an idiotic extreme. Isn't the entire idea of these party-based games that the various members of the party complement each others' weaknesses?

I don't see one following from the other.

Avoiding dump stats doesn't mean that intelligent fighter will supplant your mage, it means that you might want to have an intelligent fighter for reasons other than LARPing.
System heavy on dump stats might just as well drop the stats altogether and just have classes.

OTOH the implementation of durability and crafting seems pretty shitty.

First, crafting should take time. If you need significant amount of time to repair weapon, shield and suit of armour, then if multiple party members often have them damaged you might need more than one person to keep up with the repairs when camping. There, solved without shitty meta elements.

I could accept crafting skill giving durability bonus in single character game, assuming time to wear down a weapon is longer than what player may take between camp-outs - then it would simply be abstraction of knowing how to care for your gear.

Second, there should be inverse relationship between skill, proper use (no trying to slice diamond golems with swords) and degradation.

Third, there should be many tiers of degradation.

Fourth, probabilistic system with incomplete information (item may or may not get damaged on use, durability displayed is less accurate than durability used, so you don't know if the item got damaged with any given action, you only know once the damage accumulates) would work much better than deterministic herpaderp presented.

Fifth, amount of damage should correspond to amount and probability of armour damage.

Durability mechanics in general is desirable - one can never have enough money sinks in game that allows accumulation of money - but this particular implementation seems meh.

I missed that, do you mind explaining what happened there?

Some people threw a hissy fit when obsidian announced that they will not be able to kill all the questgivers for XP once they outlive their usefulness.

They'll probably need additional money sinks to balance out the fact that you can pick up every single thing in the game world, put it into your infinite stash and sell it in the nearest town.

I see that gamism thing working out really well.

 

[Hormalakh]

Hormalakh

How does a spell like Stoneskin that makes your characters stamina run out slightly slower directly cause you to deal more damage? It doesn't. It's one input in a long chain of unpredictable events that maybe, later results in your damage output being reduced.

That's not a combat skill in my book. Deal with it.

ok got it. lesson learned. everyone else understand? Sawyer? Cain?

 

[Infinitron]

Hormalakh

How does a spell like Stoneskin that makes your characters stamina run out slightly slower directly cause you to deal more damage? It doesn't. It's one input in a long chain of unpredictable events that maybe, later results in your damage output being reduced.

That's not a combat skill in my book. Deal with it.

I don't understand the analogy.

Look, what is so hard to accept? I don't consider a skill that affects weapon durability that way a combat skill. It's separated from combat by too many layers of cause and effect.

I don't see how it matters, it's just a fucking label.

 

[trais]

So, D&D saving throws aren't combat related, because they don't prevent damage directly, instead they only work under specific circumstances (i.e. when enemy uses attack that can be mitigated with saving throw). So it's totally not combat, because that specific attack can be only one input in long chain of unpredictable events.

 

[Infinitron]

So, D&D saving throws aren't combat related, because they don't prevent damage directly, instead they only work under specific circumstances (i.e. when enemy uses attack that can be mitigated with saving throw). So it's totally not combat, because that specific attack can be only one input in long chain of unpredictable events.

No, that analogy also doesn't work. When an enemy does use that attack, the saving throw definitely affects it directly.

 

[Hormalakh]

Buffing spells in previous games allowed characters to stay in the battle longer and take less damage. Crafting as a skill plays like a buff (even Sawyer acknowledges this - that's why he said damaged status is the same as sharpened, it's just setting a new bar for normal) because players with high crafting skills have weapons with faster speed and better accuracy, armors with lower damage thresholds, and shields with lower defense stats.

So now whether I want to choose between herbalism and magic missle has become whether I want to choose between herbalism and crafting. No melee character would choose herbalism.

 

[Dreaad]

Infinitron I'm telling you that a broken sword deals less damage. That's COMBAT.

Not to me it isn't. It's not about causing damage and it's not about defending yourself from damage. It's a skill that if you invest in it, it maybe lets you attack at full power for one fight longer if you're going through a particularly long dungeon. It's too indirect to be a proper combat skill.

How about pickpocketing? Sneak up and steal the enemy's sword before the fight! He does less damage! Combat skill!

today I learned that combat isn't about causing damage and defending from damage.

Your examples are fine, but these are not STATIC examples. They don't happen every time nor do they happen often. You could steal a sword, but can you do that every time? Can you even steal an equipped sword? Your persuasion example was the same way. It might work in a scripted environment. But not as a constant thing. Hit rolls are constant. Item durability losses after each swing is constant. Persuasion, pickpocket are scripted. That is the difference. If there are a few bosses or weapons ONLY that cause item durability losses that can be mitigated by craft, fine. I don't have an issue. If every battle causes item durability, then you can't use scripted examples. Because now it's a ~*COMBAT THING.*~

I can see how it can have an EFFECT on combat but it is not solely a "combat thing".
You want a non static example? Ok how about a sneak skill. In most games if your sneak is high enough you can sneak up on every enemy and cause extra damage, but that does NOT make it a combat skill as it also has uses outside of combat... unlike say longsword specialization which ONLY effects the combat aspect of the game. Do you see the difference?

 

[Infinitron]

Buffing spells in previous games allowed characters to stay in the battle longer and take less damage. Crafting as a skill plays like a buff (even Sawyer acknowledges this - that's why he said damaged status is the same as sharpened, it's just setting a new bar for normal) because players with high crafting skills have weapons with faster speed and better accuracy, armors with lower damage thresholds, and shields with lower defense stats.

So now whether I want to choose between herbalism and magic missle has become whether I want to choose between herbalism and crafting. No melee character would choose herbalism.

*shrug* I'm sorry if it breaks your immersion.

Personally, I anticipated that this would happen a while ago. It was pretty obvious that the traditional implementation of non-combat skills in RPGs was completely unacceptable to the PE team's design philosophy.

I can't wait for Sawyer to reveal the game's ability scores. I'm sure they're all kinds of weird.

 

[Rake]

So now whether I want to choose between herbalism and magic missle has become whether I want to choose between herbalism and crafting. No melee character would choose herbalism.

Why do you say that? Herbalism affects potion duration and effectiveness...

 

[Hormalakh]

I can see how it can have an EFFECT on combat but it is not solely a "combat thing".
You want a non static example? Ok how about a sneak skill. In most games if your sneak is high enough you can sneak up on every enemy and cause extra damage, but that does NOT make it a combat skill as it also has uses outside of combat... unlike say longsword specialization which ONLY effects the combat aspect of the game. Do you see the difference?

I do. And I've already addressed this. Sneak isn't a non-combat skill. Sneak isn't a skill that you use outside of combat. It's a combat skill. It doesn't have many uses outside of combat. If they made a separate skill called "item maintanence" that allowed players to put points in it, i wouldn't have a problem.

 

[Excidium]

I'm p. sure he'll just copy the ones from D&D.

I can see how it can have an EFFECT on combat but it is not solely a "combat thing".
You want a non static example? Ok how about a sneak skill. In most games if your sneak is high enough you can sneak up on every enemy and cause extra damage, but that does NOT make it a combat skill as it also has uses outside of combat... unlike say longsword specialization which ONLY effects the combat aspect of the game. Do you see the difference?

A craft skill in a game where all you can craft is combat gear and equipment maintenance only has any relevance during combat, with equipment durability also being directly affected by your ranks in said skill hit-by-hit is most certainly not a "combat thing"

 

[Hormalakh]

So now whether I want to choose between herbalism and magic missle has become whether I want to choose between herbalism and crafting. No melee character would choose herbalism.

Why do you say that? Herbalism affects potion duration and effectiveness...

Exactly! See. I dont' have a problem if they want to make skills that are both combat and non-combat effective. That's fine. But that's not what they marketed. They said combat and non-combat are separate skills. They did this because not every skill will have a combat component. It could. But then they've lied to the non-combat fags out there.

I've mentioned this stuff all in OEI's forums and I couldn't be assed to rewrite everything here. This is the main problem with their design. This is why I can't really make a fully informed decision about their design. I bet that's why we have skills like mechanics instead of lockpick.because it's broad enough to cover several things at once: both combat and non-combat things.

Other example I came up with was Skill:language. I can see how this is a non-combat skill because it can be used to read books or whatever (telling you about the world or a new location for a quest). But it can also be used in combat if you have a chanter. If you have points in skill, then the chants that are in outside languages give you a bigger buff.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm p. sure he'll just copy the ones from D&D.

Nope.

"A little unconventional". The butthurt will be massive.

 

[Sacred82]

Where the classification of crafting as a combat skill falls flat is that it won't affect your combat performance at all until a certain threshold is reached. This may cause you to pump a certain amount of cash into your front liners for repairs, which would be akin to consumables.

One thing I like about durability as it is presented is that you can have various members with their gear in different states of usability. I.e., your main tank's armor might always be impeccable, while the heavy armor on your priest is dented but still protects to some degree and also confers its magical bonuses, while your mage may be in ragtag leather because it really doesn't matter with the little enemy contact he gets.

 

[Rake]

It was pretty obvious that the traditional implementation of non-combat skills in RPGs was completely unacceptable to the PE team's design philosophy.

Fun is the most importand thing in Sawyer's design philosophy. And for most people item durabillity isn't fun.
Who cares. If it manages to be in the final game, it will be the very first thing to be modded out