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

[hiver]

(...) they should also rework item durability to have mitigating factors outside of a single combat skill (crafting).

No. Fuck no. Item durability should not be tied to crafting skill at all. It makes no sense,

o_O

oh...its you again...

it doesn't enhance gameplay

it only is, because Sawyer thinks that having 1-2 dedicated crafters to fulfill whole party needs is bad.

thats what you falsely think, and many others who cannot seem to grasp basic reasoning capabilities.

And that all stems from his retarded axiom that all races, genders and classes have to be equal, no stat must be left behind and no build can be fucked up enough to be unviable. Which may arguably be good philosophy when designing competetive PvP or MMO games, but it sucks for singleplayer RPGs.

He has no such axiom at all. Fact. This is your assumption which is - lethe - completely wrong.

Looking at the bigger picture, I can see that Sawyer is trying to solve this dilema: "if you have a choice, where one answer is obviously good and other is obviously bad, then you don't really have a choice at all" - what you have is a problem with exactly one correct solution which you should pick every time. Instead, he's trying to present to players a set of choices in which every option is equally good.

No...idiot. he doesnt mean equally good for fuck sake... he means useful, viable - not exactly the same.

But what he misses in his reasoning is that when every option is equally valid, then you also don't have a meaningful choice - since everything leads to the same good outcome it doesn't matter what you pick.

Logic based on factually wrong assumption as noted above.


In fact, it means that the player must choose specific options for a specific build - out of a larger pool of options - to choose what is best for his own playstyle and his own gameplay he creates by all the choices he makes.

You're only picking a flavor of your success.

o_O

So, I can see why his designs might be cheered by idiots

Thats those guys who are all worse then you in every way, right?

who only want to feel good about themselves and don't like to frustrated by any kind of failure,

unlike YOU - THE MAN. right? arent you the super awesome hero aintya!?

but for a person who likes challenge and overcoming obstacles it can only result boring and tedious gameplay.

No, the gameplay should be great and more diverse then ever before. Whats missing is "challenge and overcoming (by re-rolling a char and starting again)" fucked up skills that provide no gameplay viable options.


Understand?

 

[Infinitron]

You'll always lose the same amount of durability (outside of the craft skill) regardless of how you play your melee characters.

False.

Make fewer, more powerful strikes and your weapons will lose less durability.

"Fast" weapons will have higher starting durability so they should wear at a similar rate of (real) time.

Uh? That's not really relevant at all.

If you defeat an enemy quickly using a melee weapon, said weapon will have lost less durability than if you defeated him slowly.

So fewer, more powerful hits ---> less durability lost. The difference in rate of attack between different weapon types has nothing to do with it.

 

[Rake]

"Fast" weapons will have higher starting durability so they should wear at a similar rate of (real) time.

Where?

 

[Hormalakh]

somethingawful.

 

[Hormalakh]

Uh? That's not really relevant at all.

If you defeat an enemy quickly using a melee weapon, said weapon will have lost less durability than if you defeated him slowly.

So fewer, more powerful hits ---> less durability lost. The difference in rate of attack between different weapon types has nothing to do with it.

what does more powerful hits mean? I don't know what you mean by that? is there another "non-combat skill" that gives you higher damage output with the same weapon?

in any case, you'd always want to kill your opponents with the hardest hitting weapons anyway. there's no reason to take a longer time killing them (unless the devs want to come up with a ridiculous round-about way of making item deterioration relevant).

 

[Infinitron]

what does more powerful hits mean? I don't know what you mean by that? is there another "non-combat skill" that gives you higher damage output with the same weapon?

Any spell, skill or ability that increases your damage output would have this effect. In D&D, anything that increases your Strength.

Another possibility is to get lucky and score more critical hits. There might even be spells or abilities that increase your critical threat range. So there's that.

 

[Starym]

Another potentially interesting (and extreme) aspect would be if you're getting attacked by a dual wielding fast weapon guy but your fighter's heavy armor is low on dura and even though it's extremely effective against that type of weapon combo you may want to let the guy through to your back lines to save your armor for the next big encounter. As I said it's an extreme example but that kind of thing definitely would add to combat rather than just be annoying as most dura systems usually are. I highly doubt they'll focus on this enough to make it worthwhile, though, but I really don't see it detracting much from the game either so: low chances of better gameplay and extremely low probability of actually making it worse. Seems like a fair deal to me.

Also, very early in the thread there was a discussion about how attrition was a huge deal for IE games and everyone seemed in favor of it. Wouldn't this potentially add to attrition (if you're that good and manage to get that far into a dungeon without resting/returning to town for consumables your dura starts getting low and you have to choose stuff like the above or have several weapons etc etc)?

 

[Rivmusique]

I still support megathreads, but I now think we should have opened a separate Project Eternity discussion forum on the Codex.

Wasn't there a backer-only forum that no one used at one point? What happened to that?

 

[trais]

And that all stems from his retarded axiom that all races, genders and classes have to be equal, no stat must be left behind and no build can be fucked up enough to be unviable.

False. It's about there being no dump stats or dump skills. It's about giving the player a reason to choose stuff. Equality has nothing to do with it.

It's quite simple really. There are two and only two options here.
A: there are no dump stats/skills (ideal situation)
This means that every stat/skill give comparable benefits to all classes. Which is cool, you're no longer forced to play high STR/CON figher or high INT Wizard right? Sure.
But it also means that character creation and development is meaningless. If you can't pick wrong, then you also can't pick right - as long as you stick with your 2 randomly picked skills and don't actively sabotage your game you will win.

B: despite best efforts, some stats/skills are better than others (more realistic situation)
It's business as usual, except along the way you've introduced annoying and tedious mechanics in futile effort to reach impossible goal. Players are still forced to go with "best" builds or you forced to lower overall game difficulty to allow gimped characters to progress.

You're only picking a flavor of your success.

What exactly is "flavor of success"? No matter what skill you pick, you still need to win at combat.

If you can pick between two weapons:
Long sword, which deals 4 points of damage and has 80% hit chance and has 2 attacks per round, or
Axe which deals 8 points of damage but has only 64% chance to hit and 1 attack per round,
would it be a meaning full choice? Or maybe you don't want any weapons at all, no problem:
your hand-to-hand attacks deal 2 points of damage with 40,96% chance to hit and you can strike 4 times per round.
Are they good enough to win your fight? Of course, I'm a good game designer, I want to give you lots of options without ever putting you into a position where you cannot move forward.
So, do you really have any choice here? No, you don't. Every one of those options is equivalent to each other and all of them will enable you progress with same effort, but you can pick which one you prefer. Or as I would say it: "you can choose your flavor of success."

Levelling up and choosing skills is not gameplay. It's not supposed to be a challenge. Combat is what's supposed to be a challenge.

Combat is a just a test of how well you developed your character or party of characters, and pretty straightforward too. There's not really that much skill involved in knowing that you should probably use your thief to backstab enemy mage, heal your dying party member or buff front line fighters. It's a matter of simple execution. The challenge lies in creating a well prepared, balanced and versatile yet synergistic party that can deal with different situations. And if you take that away by homogenizing characters too much - the only bit of it left is whether or not can you choose encounter appropriate to your level.

 

[trais]

hiver
I should have said this earlier to save you some effort, but I'm not gonna engage with you in sentence-by-sentence back and forth because:
a) you're tagged as DUMBFUCK!!!
b) you are a dumbfuck
VD can get away with this posting style, but you can't. Form your thoughts into coherent sentences if you want to discuss something.

 

[hiver]

coherent sentences he says

nah, its better if you dont answer. The point for point quoting is just my ... merry way of marveling at it.
this answer here more then suffices.




-
you people that are guided by tags are so funny.
blink, blink, blink! eh?

 

[Cosmic Misogynerd]

 

[Sensuki]

The logic of Sensuki and Hormalakh:

"My fighters' weapons can lose durability points and break, therefore all of my fighters must take the Crafting skill to avoid this."

Very funny. I almost laughed.

 

[MicoSelva]

What do You guys think of grazes in ranged combat? Am I being a craphead simulationist by thinking they don't much sense?

 

[Excidium]

What do You guys think of grazes in ranged combat?

I was wondering how ranged combat is going to work in PE. I like the four-grade hit classification (miss/graze/hit/critical) for melee combat, but I don't think it would make much sense regarding ranged combat.

Stopped reading here, Sawyer doesn't give the smallest of fucks about making sense.

 

[MicoSelva]

Stopped reading here, Sawyer doesn't give the smallest of fucks about making sense.

I wasn't asking what J.E. Sawyer thinks about this. I already know that.

 

[Sensuki]

I did ask whether they were considering using different ranged mechanics for P:E, but I guess since the IE games used the same for melee and ranged then P:E will as well.

I thought it would be cool if your shot could miss and hit someone else - kind of like how Siege Weapons work in Age of Empires 2, but obviously yeah haha, has no place in this game.

 

[Infinitron]

This means that every stat/skill give comparable benefits to all classes. Which is cool, you're no longer forced to play high STR/CON figher or high INT Wizard right? Sure.
But it also means that character creation and development is meaningless. If you can't pick wrong, then you also can't pick right - as long as you stick with your 2 randomly picked skills and don't actively sabotage your game you will win.

Wrong. You can still create a build that's less effective for some situations and more effective for others. What you can't do is create a build that's worthless and flat-out horrible in any and all situations.

That's the kind of game that Sawyer means to create. It's all about choosing and applying the correct tools in the correct combat situations. The challenge is in choosing which tool to use, not in knowing how to create said tool.

Combat is a just a test of how well you developed your character or party of characters

Bzzzt! Sorry, no, this is a common fallacy.

I've responded to this here.

 

[Excidium]

I thought it would be cool if your shot could miss and hit someone else - kind of like how Siege Weapons work in Age of Empires 2, but obviously yeah haha, has no place in this game.

Yeah, ranged attacks being intercepted makes sense which is incoherent with the other PE combat mechanics and encourages degenerate gameplay

 

[MicoSelva]

I thought it would be cool if your shot could miss and hit someone else - kind of like how Siege Weapons work in Age of Empires 2, but obviously yeah haha, has no place in this game.

I would be content with just being able to miss, instead of graze, with a bow and arrow.

 

[Cosmo]

Wrong. You can still create a build that's less effective for some situations and more effective for others. What you can't do is create a build that's worthless and flat-out horrible in any and all situations.

That's the kind of game that Sawyer means to create. It's all about choosing and applying the correct tools in the correct combat situations. The challenge is in choosing which tool to use, not in knowing how to create said tool.

Exactly. What's so absurd about the Sawyer-ragers is that they take every statement of his to the letter, when in truth he's pretty much a gameplay and iteration guy. This is far from the first time i say it, but just take a look at his F:NV mod people if you want to judge him, and you'll see that far from wanting to create a design where every character choice is equal and therefore meaningless, he just wants to implement a relative (and not absolute !) diversity in viable character builds. That means meaningful character choices, both mechanically and roleplay-wise, a purpose that would be rendered null and void if every single skill combination was equally valid.
To make a character build valid, it must stem from a combination of skills, abilities, etc ; the idea of choice being reinforced by the validity on terms of gameplay of each and every element taken separately, i.e. you can still screw up in a system where every skill is valid, by having a character build that is totally incoherent.

 

[Sensuki]

Do you really think that having Item Durability grouped in with Crafting is the best way to solve the "issue" with Crafting in their system?

The best you could do is say it's okay or you do not care.

There are better solutions.

Call me crazy, but this is the design decision I find flat out the most annoying so far, even if it is 'minor'.

 

[Cosmo]

Do you really think that having Item Durability grouped in with Crafting is the best way to solve the "issue" with Crafting in their system?

The best you could do is say it's okay or you do not care.

There are better solutions.

Call me crazy, but this is the design decision I find flat out the most annoying so far, even if it is 'minor'.

This is purely a matter of implementation : the question of it being a good or bad idea entirely rests on how it'll feel ingame (which depends on degradation rate, number and placement of forges and blacksmiths, prices, and many other ingame factors), whether you like it or not.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

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.

I'm as much against dump stats as the next guy, but it's an illusion to think you can ever completely avoid them and still make a good game. Your intelligence example shows that: all mages need intelligence, but only some types of fighters do unless you go full-gamist and start adding combat-bonuses to intelligence for no coherent reason. Even in Fallout, where intelligence was incredibly overpowered, it was pretty much a dumpstat for a pure melee character (you'd have unarmed or melee pretty much maxed out after a few levels no matter what the amount of skill points you had). The fact that Sawyer considers this a big problem has put him in the situation he has now: I've made stealth very important for each possible build, so now I need to do the same with other skills. The only way you do that is by "beefing up" specialist skills (crafting) by merging them with other specialist skills (alchemy, repair, etc.). That just ends up taking away way too much choice from the player. That's why I keep referring to Arcanum, because I think that game understood best how you make specialized skills interesting investments (especially with the skill-quests), even if it doesn't try to keep them from becoming potential dumpstats in certain parties. That was just my point: make specialized skills (i.e. potential dumpstats) more interesting/powerful without going against the holy tenets of simulationism = good, eliminate them because balance = bad.

 

[Roguey]

are u talking about PnP D&D or the IE implementation of it? I've already discussed how systemic benefits given in combat are different than scripted benefits given in combat. the examples you give aren't in IE games and the examples others have given aren't systemic.

at the end of the day, i don't have an issue with all skills having combat aspects. they should just make damn sure they do it right or should split out the combat aspects into COMBAT-SPECIFIC SKILLS.

Icewind Dale 2:
Alchemy and Knowledge: Saves you money/spell slots on identifying so you can use that money to buy combat-related items or cast more combat-related level one spells
Animal Empathy: Charms hostile animals.
Bluff, intimidate, diplomacy: Occasionally used to skip combat. There's one fight at the beginning of chapter 3 where you can convince a rock-throwing giant to back off, making the fight against his friends easier.
Concentration: Cast spells despite taking damage, also a prerequisite for the Maximized Attacks feat.
Disable Device: Combat traps.
Hide and move silently: Lets you scout out areas so you can form a plan of attack and/or move into a position for a backstab.
Open lock: Opens chests containing items that help you in combat
Pick Pocket: Lets you steal items from a few NPCs that help you in combat.
Search: Lets you find combat traps
Spellcraft: Identifies spells in combat, also a prerequisite for those magic feats that give you a 20% bonus to elemental damage and 5 resistance to that element.
Use Magic Device: Use scrolls and wands.
Wilderness Lore: Gives you a paragraph describing in broad strokes the types of enemies you'll find on the map so you can properly equip and ready your spells for them.