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

[Logic_error]

So... like party based diablo?

 

[Volrath]

So... like party based diablo?

 

[hiver]

DraQ

You forgot fighter mage.

- wears light or medium or differently matched armor. Concentrates all his capabilities to enhance his body, reflexes and all other combat relevant capabilities - through his magic specialized for combat purposes in all regards (attack, defense, avoidance) and usage of clever devious tactics - plus he uses magic additionally to achieve different negative status effects on enemies themselves, or to use environment to his advantage.

(in simplified DnD talk, from stoneskins, to mirror images to area effects - with addition of magically influencing your own body specific capabilities or properties and your weapon physical properties - all balanced with different appropriate limits or different other suitable negative effects)

- this of course means/requires/works much better with a more low key, smartly designed and written magic capabilites - not meteor storms spells and shit like that.

Another funny thing about Skyrim is that it involves pretty decent system naturally limiting swinging and casting - you need hands to cast spells. Some can be cast with one hand, some require both.

What would be much better is to remove that stupid "remove your weapons from your hands" shit and go with creating magic with wizards whole body and mind, while he is still holding weapons - only stops using them while he is creating a magical effect in reality - due to having to focus and concentrate on the process so much - while you could always simply stop "casting" (maybe with some small short negative feedback effect on your physical abilities) - and defend yourself, try to dodge - move away, or use weapons as they are used normally.

(naturally all spells will have different price in time spent on and difficulty/hardship of the "focusing" itself - with each having its own negative feedback costs and different effects if suddenly stopped or interrupted)

- boost your own neural wiring to become faster for a short time - then suffer the drawback effects when it wears off, learn over time to minimize that or to incorporate other spells - type of thing.

/
extrapolate all possible options and nuances yourself.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's the source for that btw: http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/413100989776686873

What are some of the incentives to using a lighter armor type in PE? Is it just an encumbrance thing? Is will your movement speed be affected even if you have the strength to carry heavy armor?

You will attack, cast spells, and perform most other actions (not including standard movement) more quickly. A character in the heaviest armor will likely have somewhere in the range of a 30% speed (again, not movement) penalty to his or her actions. In the time it takes an unarmored character to complete a given action 10 times, a character in the heaviest armor will have completed the same action 7 times (roughly).

We are using this trade-off because it seems to pose a more interesting problem for players than a combat vs. non-combat trade (e.g. protection vs. carry weight or non-combat skill use) and it's not as mathematically straightforward as a damage avoidance vs. damage reduction model (i.e. dodging vs. absorbing hits).

Characters that stay away from the front lines (e.g. traditional long-range wizards and archery-focused rangers) may tend to wear less armor because they are not subjected to as many attacks. Some front-line combatants may wear light armor with the strategy that dealing damage more quickly will make up for their relative lack of protection.

I don't believe this information has ever actually appeared in an official Kickstarter update though.

 

[imweasel]

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like Skyrim actually.

Funny you mention that because Skyrim makes a pretty good case for being able to use shit you aren't specialized in - you can get disarmed, enemy melee attackers not infrequently decide to grab their fallen comrade's ranged weapon when they have no chance of reaching you directly, despite not being good with it and so on.
Unless you have a readily useful natural weapon you may have a perfectly good reason to pick something you are not good with at some point.

Another funny thing about Skyrim is that it involves pretty decent system naturally limiting swinging and casting - you need hands to cast spells. Some can be cast with one hand, some require both.

Ability to do so also removes artificial contrivances from the picture when building quests and plot.
Want to put on faction's armour to impersonate someone or maybe a suit of armour that has been built enchanted specifically to allow survival in some sort death-zone no spells cast readily in the field can shield you from, or maybe need a hammer made and enchanted by long extinct mysterious race to whack the heart of dead god and a matching armoured gauntlet to be able to hold this hammer without your eyes boiling out of your skull?



Do note that two out of three examples above appeared in Morrowind, one as obligatory plot point too.

So a mage/fighter/rogue/ninja/cleric/everything fucking class must/can look like this fucker without any penalties?

Retarded Skyrim faggot fan detected. Draq, you're such a fucking moron, I am not even going to respond to this bullshit.

Nigga, pls. You're a mage, you can't use heavy armour or warhammers because your class restrictions say so.

Problem?

A mage can use anything if he wants, nobody cares, but he shouldn't be good with fucking a two-handed great sword and full plate mail. He shouldn't even be decent with it, he should fucking suck with it.
This isn't Skyrim you fucking retard, it's a class based and party based game with high magic. That is why a mage casts spells and only uses weapons as a last resort. No need to water this shit down.

But you're such a Skyshit loving retard you wouldn't understand anyway.

Why? Because a mage can do more damage with great sword, that he can hardly lift, than with a dagger? That would mean that the game doesn't need any daggers at all then, because bigger is always better under any circumstance.

You're retarded, seek help.

Even in degenerate damage centric systems there is far more to weapon selection than just damage - you have speed, reach, encumbrance, bonuses and maluses from ease of use, additional effects such as different knockdown chance or different damage types and their modifiers.

Yes, and all that is important except for... weight? That is what I am talking about you dipshit.

All of this bullshit preaching on how much Skyrim's system makes sense because it reflects upon a human's physical capabilities ("and is totally awesome") yet you cannot grasp the fact that items have weight.
Maybe in your fucktard world everything is feather light, but swinging around a 5-6kg two-handed sword is actually extremely exhausting, as it has been said many times, but your mental retardation apparently prevents you from grasping this fact.

But maybe mages should be able to cast "make this sword/armor fucking feather light so I can use it" so that you can have your mage look like a knight - and you finally shut the fuck up. "flame blade" and "stone armor" would be a better fit for a high magic setting though.

 

[Shadenuat]

30% seems like absolutely nothing, considering a ton of spells can be cast before combat and things like fireball are known to be battle changers in IE. Unless in PE fireball will do 3d6 damage and you'll have to cast 5 of them to see any effect, everyone will run around in full plate.

 

[Infinitron]

30% seems like absolutely nothing, considering a ton of spells can be cast before combat and things like fireball are known to be battle changers in IE. Unless in PE fireball will do 3d6 damage and you'll have to cast 5 of them to see any effect, everyone will run around in full plate.

Fireballs are relatively high level. Think Magic Missile or Melf's Acid Arrow.

 

[Logic_error]

I want to cast Mass Hold Person five times in a row fast enough!!!!!

 

[Shadenuat]

I want to cast Mass Hold Person five times in a row fast enough!!!!!

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%. Who cares if a wizard or two cast a bit slower than usual, when for that you gain an option to up your artillery from cannon on two wheels to an armored bunker?

Should be minimum 50%, I think. Maybe with talents to lower that penalty for particular spells, like buffs and touch attacks, so a battle mage build would be possible and will have it's own style of combat.

 

[Logic_error]

The tragedy is, in DnD the real role of a wizard/caster is NOT damage dealing even though that is what he can excel at as well. The real role is battle field/status control which has no real use of attack speed.

This is what really makes casters stand out and that is what such a design decision kills.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%.

What if they last long enough in this particular RtWP game? All signs indicate that PE is going for a more slow-paced, predictable and static form of combat, similar to some RTSes.

 

[Excidium]

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%.

What if they last long enough in this particular RtWP game? All signs indicate that PE is going for a more slow-paced, predictable and static form of combat, similar to some RTSes.

Why would anyone do that?

 

[Shadenuat]

What if they last long enough in this particular RtWP game? All signs indicate that PE is going for a more slow-paced, predictable and static form of combat, similar to some RTSes.

DA2 did that, with party slowly chunking enemy with melee and staff attacks. You should know how boring that type of gameplay is compared to chunks of meat shit disintegrated to dust fireballs flying IE provided us with.

 

[Infinitron]

Why would anyone do that?

You tell me. This forum is full of people who think RTwP RPGs are a horrible spawn of Satan that should not exist, but agree that some real time strategy games are good.

If you agree with that, wouldn't you want real time RPGs to become more similar to RTSes? I mean, it can't hurt, right?

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%.

What if they last long enough in this particular RtWP game? All signs indicate that PE is going for a more slow-paced, predictable and static form of combat, similar to some RTSes.

Errr, combat in traditional RTSes is more fast-paced than in RTWP tactical games. Starcraft is way faster than IE, for example.

 

[Infinitron]

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%.

What if they last long enough in this particular RtWP game? All signs indicate that PE is going for a more slow-paced, predictable and static form of combat, similar to some RTSes.

Errr, combat in traditional RTSes is more fast-paced than in RTWP tactical games. Starcraft is way faster than IE, for example.

I did say "some". I'm thinking more of in the direction of Total War, Myth, stuff like that.

 

[tuluse]

I want to cast Mass Hold Person five times in a row fast enough!!!!!

Yeah. Combat encounters rarely even last that long in RtWP to see any effect of those 30%. Who cares if a wizard or two cast a bit slower than usual, when for that you gain an option to up your artillery from cannon on two wheels to an armored bunker?

Should be minimum 50%, I think. Maybe with talents to lower that penalty for particular spells, like buffs and touch attacks, so a battle mage build would be possible and will have it's own style of combat.

Most encounters? Sure, but not all encounters. The ones that go by so quickly 30% speed reduction doesn't matter, would also be the ones where your mages could be wearing their birthday suits and still not take a scratch. The harder fights that last long enough for the speed reduction to matter will also be the ones where having armor can make a difference.

Also, who said magic users would have no penalties to wearing armor?

 

[Shadenuat]

The reason mechanics, damage types, HP and so on are a bit streamlined in RTS - because it lacks the "P" of RTwP... also, amount of units and building bases.
Not that I like RTS games, I prefer turn based and 4X strategies.

The harder fights that last long enough for the speed reduction to matter will also be the ones where having armor can make a difference.

"We don't have enough DPS here, so let's get naked".

Sometimes designers striving for balance create things which do not make any sense if you think about them at least for a minute. Now I can't get that "heavier armor => lower DPS" thing out of my head, like some sort of sticky pop song

 

[Logic_error]

There is no reason to get into this debate. It is but a straw man.

RTS and RPG are two different genre and a direct comparison between their combat mechanics is fallacious.

 

[Lancehead]

DPS

The game has DT, talking in DPS doesn't make sense.

 

[Infinitron]

That sentence looks familiar...

IP check on Logic_error:

• Captain Shrek (Jul 9, 2011)
• JamesBond (Jul 3, 2012)
• Logic_error (Jul 2, 2013)

Welcome back, bro.

 

[Excidium]

 

[Logic_error]

DPS

The game has DT, talking in DPS doesn't make sense.

err? Why not?

 

[Lancehead]

Because there's no fixed average rate of damage that a character can dish out. It varies with enemy armour DT, weapon damage type, other modifiers.

 

[Logic_error]

I have no idea why you think:

>Because there's no fixed average rate of damage that a character can dish out.

is implied by :

> It varies with enemy armour DT, weapon damage type, other modifiers.

These are two different things.

DT reduces the average damage dished out by a fixed amount. It does not control it.