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Mr.Pibbleton
Feb 3, 2006

Aleuts rock, chummer.

GreatGreen posted:

Usage-based perks are horrible. Think of Oblivion and Skyrim and how crappy and "gamey" the whole thing was because everything you did counted toward character development, so ultimately players aiming for specific builds held back from a lot of otherwise natural behaviors because it would literally mess up their characters.

In my opinion all character development should happen because of direct spending of upgrade resources on the part of the player. That way, you're free in-game to do whatever you want with minimal meta-game consequences.

I disagree, while leveling skills by using them was poorly implemented in Oblivion due to how the world react, as in leveling up your non-combat skills would result in tougher opponents and leveling up your skills in a specific manner and not the ones you specialized in so you could get the most stat bonuses so you wouldn't screw yourself over time. Vs Skyrim's perk system which required you to invest your perks was nowhere near as bad as Oblivion's. Then we have the example of Alpha Protocol and New Vegas where you got xp, leveled up, assigned skill points and THEN through gameplay got bonus perks for doing stuff you'd do naturally, it was a really good system since the bonuses, while nice, were hardly necessary to avoid gimping a character.

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Harry Joe
Jan 15, 2006
My name be neither Harry, nor Joe, but Harry Joe shall do

Mr.Pibbleton posted:

it was a really good system since the bonuses, while nice, were hardly necessary to avoid gimping a character.

This is the crux of the usage based leveling system I would say. It should not be possible to totally gimp your character, even completely non combat based characters should have certain advantages (the better equipment gained from smithing/enchanting in skyrim works this way to a point) that should make any combat doable as long as the player fully uses whatever advantages their choices have given them.

Oblivion was absolutely terrible at this but Skyrim i thought was a pretty solid step in the right direction, you would have to be deliberately going for a non combat build for like 20+ levels before it really started to become an issue.

coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

Harry Joe posted:

This is the crux of the usage based leveling system I would say. It should not be possible to totally gimp your character, even completely non combat based characters should have certain advantages (the better equipment gained from smithing/enchanting in skyrim works this way to a point) that should make any combat doable as long as the player fully uses whatever advantages their choices have given them.

PE's solving this problem by eliminating non-combat characters and stats. Possibly non-combat skills as well, but I'm not as sure on that.

lordfrikk
Mar 11, 2010

Oh, say it ain't fuckin' so,
you stupid fuck!

GreatGreen posted:

Usage-based perks are horrible. Think of Oblivion and Skyrim and how crappy and "gamey" the whole thing was because everything you did counted toward character development, so ultimately players aiming for specific builds held back from a lot of otherwise natural behaviors because it would literally mess up their characters.

In my opinion all character development should happen because of direct spending of upgrade resources on the part of the player. That way, you're free in-game to do whatever you want with minimal meta-game consequences.

Alpha Protocol hardly falls into this category. You can grind those perks anytime in the Bethesda games but in AP most of them are one-chance kind of deals, you don't get them for usage but rather for choosing something over something else, and if I'm not mistaken you don't even know beforehand that you will even get anything at all.

SurrealityCheck
Sep 15, 2012

rope kid posted:

Players will play the way that they enjoy playing. If we judge that stealth is more interesting than combat or combat is more interesting than conversation and decide to alter the rewards players receive for engaging in that gameplay, we're putting two desires into conflict: 1) the desire to complete quests using the gameplay they enjoy and 2) the desire to achieve a maximally beneficial reward. I don't think that's a good conflict for us to set up because it often, demonstrably, results in players grinding through activities in ways they don't want to because the game incentivizes them to do so.

That's not quite what I meant, but that is absolutely true. What I meant is more that in the absence of some kind of fine grained response to what the player is doing, if there are multiple ways to do something (some interesting, some less so interesting, with varying degrees of difficulty), then players will default to the obvious easy solution. Using reward mechanics to tease players into finding interesting ways to do things can be a good way to get players to break themselves out of their comfort zones a little. However, this applies less to RPGs with decent gameplay balance than to, say, action games.

quote:

In-world reactions are something we will always emphasize because those reactions are purely for role-playing purposes. Sometimes the reactions are positive, sometimes they are negative, but they are intended to typically (though not always) align with the role the player sets out to play among the world's characters. If you're playing Alpha Protocol and Mike just starts blasting marines at the Embassy, I doubt players are negatively surprised by the reaction they get from other characters for it. You start blasting marines because of the reactions you're going to get!

Agreed!

GreatGreen
Jul 3, 2007
That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.
Ok, if a usage-based perk becomes available as a bonus on top of everything else in the game and 1) is not considered for game balancing purposes and 2) can be opted out of by the player, then it should be fine and will probably be a fun addition to the game.

I guess a subtle example would be something like an in-game event giving you some permanent stat bonus, and a non-subtle example with both positive and negative effects would be Elder Scrolls vampirism.

That kind of system would be awesome, actually. What I'm talking about being a bad design choice would be something like the usage of swords increasing your Swordsmanship skill, which uses experience currency that could be more exactly and methodically distributed by the player through a UI menu.

GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Jan 16, 2014

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

rope kid posted:

The response was not intended to be snarky, but 100% sincere. If participating in a specific type of core gameplay is not enjoyable on its own, our game is bad and I sincerely encourage people to not engage in it/not play the game. There is one main thing we want to reward with XP in our game: pursuing and completing quests. Our quests are unique, they cannot be repeated, and they typically can be completed in a number of different ways using a number of different gameplay mechanics. If you get tired of talking to people to solve quests, start provoking fights. If you get tired of fighting, start sneaking around. If none of those things are fun anymore, then the game's not fun anymore. I don't want to motivate people to grit their teeth while using gameplay mechanics they hate because there's an XP incentive for doing so.
Players will play the way that they enjoy playing. If we judge that stealth is more interesting than combat or combat is more interesting than conversation and decide to alter the rewards players receive for engaging in that gameplay, we're putting two desires into conflict: 1) the desire to complete quests using the gameplay they enjoy and 2) the desire to achieve a maximally beneficial reward. I don't think that's a good conflict for us to set up because it often, demonstrably, results in players grinding through activities in ways they don't want to because the game incentivizes them to do so.

But surely it doesn't need to be so black and white? Core gameplay mechanics have to be enjoyable - sneaking around, speaking with people, fighting, casting spells, etc - and if you gently caress that up you're boned no matter what else you do. But the reward system - loot from your enemies, XP for achieving things, new powers and spells, etc - is also fun too. They go hand in hand in a well designed RPG. I don't understand why you seem to be rejecting the relevance and utility of the latter (obviously you're not entirely, it's going in the game, but what you're saying here seems to be discounting its relevance).

In BG2 the game mechanics were fun, but I also really enjoyed when a character got their little yellow + on their character sheet and the level-up sound effect played. Browsing through new spells as a sorcerer was great fun.

GreatGreen
Jul 3, 2007
That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.

Wingless posted:

But surely it doesn't need to be so black and white? Core gameplay mechanics have to be enjoyable - sneaking around, speaking with people, fighting, casting spells, etc - and if you gently caress that up you're boned no matter what else you do. But the reward system - loot from your enemies, XP for achieving things, new powers and spells, etc - is also fun too. They go hand in hand in a well designed RPG. I don't understand why you seem to be rejecting the relevance and utility of the latter (obviously you're not entirely, it's going in the game, but what you're saying here seems to be discounting its relevance).

In BG2 the game mechanics were fun, but I also really enjoyed when a character got their little yellow + on their character sheet and the level-up sound effect played. Browsing through new spells as a sorcerer was great fun.

Plenty of in-game rewards will be provided. He's just saying that incremental experience gains that come from doing small, isolated events like opening a hidden chest or killing a nameless white mob are dumb because they encourage very specific playstyles, and discourage others, which is not exactly desirable from a "let em do what they want" design philosophy.

fez_machine
Nov 27, 2004

Wingless posted:

But surely it doesn't need to be so black and white? Core gameplay mechanics have to be enjoyable - sneaking around, speaking with people, fighting, casting spells, etc - and if you gently caress that up you're boned no matter what else you do. But the reward system - loot from your enemies, XP for achieving things, new powers and spells, etc - is also fun too. They go hand in hand in a well designed RPG. I don't understand why you seem to be rejecting the relevance and utility of the latter (obviously you're not entirely, it's going in the game, but what you're saying here seems to be discounting its relevance).

In BG2 the game mechanics were fun, but I also really enjoyed when a character got their little yellow + on their character sheet and the level-up sound effect played. Browsing through new spells as a sorcerer was great fun.

One thing that's been happening in Pen and Paper RPGs is moving away from combat rewards, such as XP and Items, and moving far more towards getting rewards for completing an objective or story action. This is usually because it encourage greater flexibility than running into a room, killing everything, and looting all the chests. Try reading Burning Wheel or something.

You want DINGS, go play Diablo, or Torchlight, or Path of The Exile, or Van Helsing. They're probably the Skinner boxes you're looking for.

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

My first comment on the topic was about awarding XP for finishing quests in different ways, so I don't get why anyone would assume I want per-monster XP or something, I didn't say anything of the sort.

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

I think what's unclear is: do you want XP incentives to be higher for a given approach in order to encourage people to do the objective a different way? The response to that seems to be "then that's the optimal way to do it and people will feel discouraged from taking the other X approaches."

Woebin
Feb 6, 2006

Wingless posted:

But surely it doesn't need to be so black and white? Core gameplay mechanics have to be enjoyable - sneaking around, speaking with people, fighting, casting spells, etc - and if you gently caress that up you're boned no matter what else you do. But the reward system - loot from your enemies, XP for achieving things, new powers and spells, etc - is also fun too. They go hand in hand in a well designed RPG. I don't understand why you seem to be rejecting the relevance and utility of the latter (obviously you're not entirely, it's going in the game, but what you're saying here seems to be discounting its relevance).

In BG2 the game mechanics were fun, but I also really enjoyed when a character got their little yellow + on their character sheet and the level-up sound effect played. Browsing through new spells as a sorcerer was great fun.
What he's saying is basically that quests will give the same XP rewards regardless of how you complete them. So the quest to find and return the golden trousers will give 100 XP if you sneak into the place where they're hidden and take them back. It will give 100 XP if you kill the guy who'd stolen them and everyone associated with him and then pick up the trousers off his dead body. It will give 100 XP if you convince the guy that it'd really just be better for him to return the trousers willingly. And so forth. I'm not seeing how this would make the game any less rewarding.

Furism
Feb 21, 2006

Live long and headbang
Should the game provide the same XP rewards no matter the way the player chose (regardless of the difficulty of each way) and also provide item rewards in relation to the difficulty? Or should the XP reward be higher? Or a little bit of both?

Wingless
Mar 3, 2009

Woebin posted:

What he's saying is basically that quests will give the same XP rewards regardless of how you complete them. So the quest to find and return the golden trousers will give 100 XP if you sneak into the place where they're hidden and take them back. It will give 100 XP if you kill the guy who'd stolen them and everyone associated with him and then pick up the trousers off his dead body. It will give 100 XP if you convince the guy that it'd really just be better for him to return the trousers willingly. And so forth. I'm not seeing how this would make the game any less rewarding.

Yes I understand that. I commented on how it is difficult to balance rewarding players for novel solutions/extra effort with ultimately identical rewards for all variations, he replied "If it is not rewarding enough to play on its own, stop playing our terrible game", as though game mechanics should be reward enough without XP/loot etc. Which was weird. I think I'm going to bow out of this because I seem to be chronically incapable of making myself understood.

Militant Lesbian
Oct 3, 2002

Wingless posted:

as though game mechanics should be reward enough without XP/loot etc

The 'reward' is that the game mechanics should be 'fun'. The mechanics themselves should be well enough designed to be entertaining. Your reward for playing (and using these mechanics) is having 'fun'. If you are not having fun playing the game, it is a bad game and the answer is 'you should not play it', not 'I need the devs to give me gold stars and tell me I'm special'.

GreatGreen
Jul 3, 2007
That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.

Furism posted:

Should the game provide the same XP rewards no matter the way the player chose (regardless of the difficulty of each way) and also provide item rewards in relation to the difficulty? Or should the XP reward be higher? Or a little bit of both?

I'd say the items should stay the same. Otherwise you get into weird balance issues. Giving a character a more powerful item would make him more powerful than he'd be on a lesser difficulty. If that's the case, fighting "harder" enemies with a stronger character probably wouldn't be any tougher than fighting "medium" enemies with a slightly weaker character. In that situation, the difference between easy and hard would basically be that an easy playthrough would provide the same sense of challenge while giving you more boring looking loot.

Also I'd imagine the XP rewards will always be the same regardless of methodology, otherwise the entire point of checkpoint-based xp would be moot.

Io_
Oct 15, 2012

woo woo

Pillbug

Wingless posted:

Yes I understand that. I commented on how it is difficult to balance rewarding players for novel solutions/extra effort with ultimately identical rewards for all variations, he replied "If it is not rewarding enough to play on its own, stop playing our terrible game", as though game mechanics should be reward enough without XP/loot etc. Which was weird. I think I'm going to bow out of this because I seem to be chronically incapable of making myself understood.

Because unless your novel solution just gives you a meaningless trinket akin to an "Employee of the Week" certificate all that ends up happening is whichever path (novel or not) that gives the "best" reward for a given objective is going to be the one people choose regardless of whether or not they would naturally choose to play that way.

Having a flat reward structure encourages variation so people have less inclination and incentive to min/max how they complete objectives.

Super No Vacancy
Jul 26, 2012

Ideally the reward for accomplishing a quest a non-standard way (using diplomacy or stealth instead of combat for example) is not merely more experience gain for some gamey reason but rather the experience of approaching it in a way consistent with your imagined character and the resulting reactivity from reputation differences from collateral damage or similar variables.

People are going to powergame because their minds are broken. Variety and path exclusivity shouldn't be entirely sacrificed to lock the mentally ill into a predictable progression.

Super No Vacancy fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 16, 2014

signalnoise
Mar 7, 2008

i was told my old av was distracting
The appropriate reward for a novel way of doing a quest should be an appropriately novel plot element or character interaction

GreatGreen
Jul 3, 2007
That's not what gaslighting means you hyperbolic dipshit.
Basically, rewarding any single playstyle means punishing all others. The only answer to this is to flat out reward all possible playstyles equally.

The only way to do that is to give experience only at checkpoints that every character must pass through, and everybody always gets the same experience for the same checkpoint no matter what.

GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jan 16, 2014

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?
Game design around non-intrinsic value is the blight of the modern videogame!

namad
Nov 7, 2013

Woebin posted:

What he's saying is basically that quests will give the same XP rewards regardless of how you complete them. So the quest to find and return the golden trousers will give 100 XP if you sneak into the place where they're hidden and take them back. It will give 100 XP if you kill the guy who'd stolen them and everyone associated with him and then pick up the trousers off his dead body. It will give 100 XP if you convince the guy that it'd really just be better for him to return the trousers willingly. And so forth. I'm not seeing how this would make the game any less rewarding.


I agree entirely. In BG/icewind I would often try to complete quests in whatever manner gave me the maximum reward. If every possible gameplay method gave the same reward then I could be finally free to roleplay how I wanted. Often though you'd get say 1000 experience for handing in the mcguffin and 1000 experience for killing the mcguffin holder; which made killing the mcguffin holder the mechanically superior choice. If both asking the mcguffin holder to please return the bauble OR murdering him both gave 1000 experience I'd do whatever I felt like. I'd still be chasing those rewards and still enjoying those yellow level up symbols, but I wouldn't be meta-gaming my game as much.

The player is still free to never discover the existence of some sidequests. Or to go about murdering everyone only to realize they're not sure what to do with the mcguffin because they didn't bother to ask anyone about it. That might be an interesting balance point between different solution methods. Maybe the rewards are all the same but certain methods might result in more interesting story, or more hints, or clues, without which events can still occur but the player may end up not doing them out of ignorance.

namad fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jan 16, 2014

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
I personally am only going to play PoE for the experience points, so I hope there are a bunch of experience points for me to earn and collect.

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?

namad posted:

I agree entirely. In BG/icewind I would often try to complete quests in whatever manner gave me the maximum reward. If every possible gameplay method gave the same reward then I could be finally free to roleplay how I wanted. Often though you'd get say 1000 experience for handing in the mcguffin and 1000 experience for killing the mcguffin holder; which made killing the mcguffin holder the mechanically superior choice. If both asking the mcguffin holder to please return the bauble OR murdering him both gave 1000 experience I'd do whatever I felt like. I'd still be chasing those rewards and still enjoying those yellow level up symbols, but I wouldn't be meta-gaming my game as much.

What a miserable way to play.

SurrealityCheck
Sep 15, 2012
Thinking about the example of DX:HR and it reminded me of an interesting bonus of the PoE system - the more you explicitly reward and differentiate between the atomic actions the player can take the more you control those atomic actions. In the case of Deus Ex, everybody was gently nudged towards the stealth action because every single non stealth kill came with opportunity cost, and you were explicitly reminded of that by little text notifications!

The greater the distance between the xp and the mechanics the better in an RPG like this, probably.

turn off the TV
Aug 4, 2010

moderately annoying

Rinkles posted:

What a miserable way to play.

There's nothing wrong with powergaming, actually it's a lot of fun and is one of the things that made me stick around with Morrowind for so long. Sure you could play the game from an in character perspective, or you could get magical armor which let you fly, have infinite health, magic, and stamina and then kill the strongest (and plot critical) characters in the world by summoning dozens of extremely low level enemies, and then still complete the main plot anyways because the developers just let you do that. Or you could not, and just play the game normally without worrying about people hitting the final boss so hard the engine crashes or beating the game in ten minutes.

A Dapper Walrus
Dec 28, 2011
Ropekid, be honest. Is PoE simply a vehicle for sharing frog helmets with the world?

marshmallow creep
Dec 10, 2008

I've been sitting here for 5 mins trying to think of a joke to make but I just realised the animators of Mass Effect already did it for me

Part of the problem, at least to me, is not that one action or another is worth more XP, but that XP is the gate to getting levels, which open up abilities. If I want to have toys to play with, I need to have a certain level to get them. If one way objectively gets me access to more toys because it gets me to a higher level, then if I want the toys I have to play that way until I have them. At that point, whatever, but until they stop withholding my toys I play the way that will get me the toys sooner rather than later.

That's sort of a general guideline, sure; I mean no one plays a 100% optimal way unless they're a kind of crazy person, but that's basically my rationale for when I find myself playing in a way that isn't what I really want out of the game. Other times it's because there's a very good story incentive, like, people will be angry with me for getting caught and call me stupid (I'm sensitive and don't want imaginary people to think less of me :saddowns:).

In DX:HR, for example, I usually played stealthily until somewhere in China because it wasn't til around that point that I realized I had all the toys I wanted to play with and it was time to just let loose. At that point I don't remember anyone giving a poo poo if you got caught, either, so just blam blam blam mother fucker.

edit: to clarify which Deus Ex I meant.

marshmallow creep fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 16, 2014

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?

Fish Fry Andy posted:

There's nothing wrong with powergaming, actually it's a lot of fun and is one of the things that made me stick around with Morrowind for so long. Sure you could play the game from an in character perspective, or you could get magical armor which let you fly, have infinite health, magic, and stamina and then kill the strongest (and plot critical) characters in the world by summoning dozens of extremely low level enemies, and then still complete the main plot anyways because the developers just let you do that. Or you could not, and just play the game normally without worrying about people hitting the final boss so hard the engine crashes or beating the game in ten minutes.

Yeah Morrorwind in particular seems to be designed around letting the player break its back (cross-country jumps, seeing whilst running in the boots of blinding speed, etc.) and I hope we see more games that aren't afraid to let their mechanics be torn open by enterprising players. But trying out every/most permutations of every quest on a first playthrough just sounds tedious, and in many cases won't suffice since you need to figure out how to break stuff on top of with what.

I also don't think many games come close to being as fun to powergame, so Morrorwind is almost an unfair or irrelevant analogy.

Hbomberguy
Jul 4, 2009

[culla=big red]TufFEE did nO THINg W̡RA̸NG[/read]


The fun of RPGs for me is playing things my own way. It's stupid to get bogged down trying to get points unless you specifically need them for something. People who try to game the dialogue trees so everyone likes them maximally are boring. gently caress you Morrigan, if you don't like my choices you can leave. The point of an RPG is you define your own reward and style, you don't need to get strung along by experience points. Low-level runs of games are a prime example of why experience points or whatever aren't necesssary - if anything, they maximise the reward of beating the game in the first place. I don't 'need' to be given experience points for my specific choices, just like I don't need the points enough to do what the game expects. The more invisible the points system is, the better, because it means players won't get bogged down in something that's not 'the game,' as it were.

Bettik
Jan 28, 2008

Space-age Rock Star
This is only mildly related to the award-xp-for-different approaches topic, but the Alpha Protocol and perks chat reminded me how awesome Planescape Torment was in how it rewarded the player - I was amazed at the time that I could get a permanent stat boost 'just' from doing a quest. Or that there were teeth for Morte that had some amazing abilities.

Basically, I just wanted to circle back to the 'rewarding' part of the discussion, rather than the 'for specific approaches' part. I think it'd be totally rad to accrue all kinds of character-altering rewards over the course of the game. Some of them useless (being hailed as the Savior of Little Keep or having your hair turn an unnatural colour of red), some of them seemingly hugely powerful (permanent infravision, the ability to breathe underwater, additional powerful items for sale from a merchant at a steep discount after you saved her son, a permanent companion like a dog, a partial resistance to lightning, et cetera). I think that stuff all just goes to highlight that while it's really fun to shape your character in the way you intend, it's also awesome to be given boons you can't directly control.

VanSandman
Feb 16, 2011
SWAP.AVI EXCHANGER
Can I do the following?
Step 1: Sneak in and steal the quest object.
Step 2: Walk in and ask the guy who has it to return it.
Step 3: When he realizes he no longer possesses the item, beat him up for not having it?

If so, game of the year, all years.

Masonity
Dec 31, 2007

What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'Malle?

VanSandman posted:

Can I do the following?
Step 1: Sneak in and steal the quest object.
Step 2: Walk in and ask the guy who has it to return it.
Step 3: When he realizes he no longer possesses the item, beat him up for not having it?

If so, game of the year, all years.

How unambitious.

For Game of the Century we need to be able to do the following. For the example, my quest is "Wake the Snorlax with the Pokeflute".
Step 1: Sneak in and steal the Pokeflute.
Step 2: Walk in and convince the guy to lend it to you.
Step 3: When he realizes he no longer possesses it, convince him to hire you to find it in exchange for being able to borrow it, and a hefty gold fee.
Step 4: Return it, take the gold, take the flute and wake Snorlax.
Step 5: Return the flute, then when he's lulled into a false sense of security murder him and take it from his cold, dead hands.


edit: That'd be a great way to gain favour with a rich/noble house actually. Mask up and kidnap and blindfold the Duke's wife. Take the quest to rescue her from the Duke. Stage a fake battle while she's still blindfolded. Return her home, get paid a reward and be their BFFs seeing as you saved them.

Masonity fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jan 17, 2014

LogicNinja
Jan 21, 2011

...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...
Hey, speaking of sneaking, have we heard anything about how stealth is going to be handled in this? I didn't find the BG2/etc implementation very satisfactory.

The Chad Jihad
Feb 24, 2007


epitasis posted:

People are going to powergame because their minds are broken.

I downloaded the Irenicus Dungeon Begone mod for BG2, but then realized the NPC it added, that gave you the items and gold and then teleported you out, was really easy to kill and had all that stuff in his inventory so I could get doubles.

I like to think I'm better now

rope kid
Feb 3, 2001

Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.

Something I don't think I've mentioned about the AoE increase from Intellect: it's actual area that increases, not radius, which helps keep sizes in the "helpful" rather than "insane" category.

LogicNinja posted:

Hey, speaking of sneaking, have we heard anything about how stealth is going to be handled in this? I didn't find the BG2/etc implementation very satisfactory.
We've talked about it a bit before but I don't know if we've gone into great detail. It's a little more involved without being Commandos-level (though Commandos is a cool series).

All characters can invest in the Stealth skill, though rogues and a few other classes start with a bonus in it. When you enable Scouting mode (which is used both for stealth and searching), you will see circles of varying radii around your characters (exact visualization TBD, but we want it to "fit") based on their Stealth skills compared to a relative average of creature perception ratings on the level. There is both a minimum and maximum base size for these circles. If the characters are bunched up, at the places where the circles overlap, they merge together to essentially form what looks like a "cloud" of no-touch-zone. While Scouting, all party members move at walking speed.

AIs also have circles around them, an inner and an outer. Touching the outer circle of AI will cause it to investigate (move toward you). Touching the inner circle blows THE RUSE and they either initiate conversation or go hostile based on their AI state. In many areas, creatures have static positions or short wander radii, but we try to include one or two patrollers to increase the challenge of navigating through areas.

We don't use light-level, facing, or other mechanics as part of stealth because it becomes extremely complicated and difficult with six characters. However, even this simple implementation is enjoyable and feels much more consistent than what was in the IE games.

In one quest I recently played through, I knew where I needed to go but there were some guys arguing outside. Instead of seizing the initiative, I waited to see what they were talking about before going in. Once I realized I needed to move, they started to go on patrols. I belatedly attempted to back out but I bumped into one of the guards' outer radii. He moved to investigate, I couldn't get away fast enough, he initiated combat, and my party was sort of caught in the lurch. It made the battle much more challenging, but it was fun to play with and when I failed, I knew exactly why and it totally made sense.

LogicNinja
Jan 21, 2011

...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

rope kid posted:

Something I don't think I've mentioned about the AoE increase from Intellect: it's actual area that increases, not radius, which helps keep sizes in the "helpful" rather than "insane" category.
Thanks for the info! We've talked about it a bit before but I don't know if we've gone into great detail. It's a little more involved without being Commandos-level (though Commandos is a cool series).

All characters can invest in the Stealth skill, though rogues and a few other classes start with a bonus in it. When you enable Scouting mode (which is used both for stealth and searching), you will see circles of varying radii around your characters (exact visualization TBD, but we want it to "fit") based on their Stealth skills compared to a relative average of creature perception ratings on the level. There is both a minimum and maximum base size for these circles. If the characters are bunched up, at the places where the circles overlap, they merge together to essentially form what looks like a "cloud" of no-touch-zone. While Scouting, all party members move at walking speed.

AIs also have circles around them, an inner and an outer. Touching the outer circle of AI will cause it to investigate (move toward you). Touching the inner circle blows THE RUSE and they either initiate conversation or go hostile based on their AI state. In many areas, creatures have static positions or short wander radii, but we try to include one or two patrollers to increase the challenge of navigating through areas.

We don't use light-level, facing, or other mechanics as part of stealth because it becomes extremely complicated and difficult with six characters. However, even this simple implementation is enjoyable and feels much more consistent than what was in the IE games.

In one quest I recently played through, I knew where I needed to go but there were some guys arguing outside. Instead of seizing the initiative, I waited to see what they were talking about before going in. Once I realized I needed to move, they started to go on patrols. I belatedly attempted to back out but I bumped into one of the guards' outer radii. He moved to investigate, I couldn't get away fast enough, he initiated combat, and my party was sort of caught in the lurch. It made the battle much more challenging, but it was fun to play with and when I failed, I knew exactly why and it totally made sense.

Sounds interesting, and definitely better than the Baldur's Gate style "hit the Stealth button and we roll a die behind the scenes and find you or not".

I'd like to get a clearer picture of how this works with individual vs party (some characters will be awful at stealth, probably, and would ruin it for everyone if everyone went together)--you seem to suggest that all six characters will be sneaking together? I'd expect something more like the party hanging back and one guy moving up to scout.


What does it take to be "good" at stealth, besides investing in the relevant skill? Do you need to be patient so you can figure out what enemy wander/patrol paterns are? Do you need to have quick reaction times so you can get away (probably not, if it's RTwP, since you can just pause)? Do you need to be careful when moving around?


e: Also, how about the intersection of stealth and combat? In a lot of games sneaking up on someone doesn't give you much of an advantage--you make the first move, essentially, but you can't put a sword/gun to their throat/temple. Let's say there are a bunch of guards on patrol and I totally have the drop on them--how does that help me vs. just hanging out somewhere and attacking as soon as they get in range? What about if I've sneaked past the guards, into the castle, and sneak up on the lord of the castle and his guards?

LogicNinja fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Jan 17, 2014

Rinkles
Oct 24, 2010

What I'm getting at is...
Do you feel the same way?
I frankly can't name a single RPG were I enjoyed the implementation of stealth. Maybe Skyrim, but because of how overpowered it was at high skill levels rather than how well thought out it was. I think it's an information problem. A dedicated UI element making detection ranges explicit sounds smart.

How do you steal if all AIs have an inner circle?

rope kid
Feb 3, 2001

Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.

LogicNinja posted:

Sounds interesting, and definitely better than the Baldur's Gate style "hit the Stealth button and we roll a die behind the scenes and find you or not".

I'd like to get a clearer picture of how this works with individual vs party (some characters will be awful at stealth, probably, and would ruin it for everyone if everyone went together)--you seem to suggest that all six characters will be sneaking together? I'd expect something more like the party hanging back and one guy moving up to scout.

What does it take to be "good" at stealth, besides investing in the relevant skill? Do you need to be patient so you can figure out what enemy wander/patrol paterns are? Do you need to have quick reaction times so you can get away (probably not, if it's RTwP, since you can just pause)? Do you need to be careful when moving around?

e: Also, how about the intersection of stealth and combat? In a lot of games sneaking up on someone doesn't give you much of an advantage--you make the first move, essentially, but you can't put a sword/gun to their throat/temple. Let's say there are a bunch of guards on patrol and I totally have the drop on them--how does that help me vs. just hanging out somewhere and attacking as soon as they get in range? What about if I've sneaked past the guards, into the castle, and sneak up on the lord of the castle and his guards?
Whether you're in Scouting mode or not, you can choose to move characters one-by-one or in groups. It also depends on what you're trying to do. If you just want to get a character or two into close range for the start of combat, you could/would leave the others behind. If you're trying to get the entire party through/around a group, then you'd move the whole party.

To be good at stealth, you need to determine the way between the AIs that will keep you the safest distance away from them. Moving will also slightly "grow" your circle, so knowing when to stay put and when to move is important. A lot of it comes down to observation, planning, and timing. It is unlikely to be ultra-complicated, but should make you think.

Positioning is often important for how combat starts/goes down. If you just barrel into a group, the enemy "linebackers" (forward melee folks) will Melee Engage your dudes to prevent them from rushing toward their wizards, rangers, etc. Being behind that enemy line to begin with can be very advantageous, as it can be to flank the group.

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rope kid
Feb 3, 2001

Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.

Rinkles posted:

How do you steal if all AIs have an inner circle?
Picking pockets only happens through conversations for specific purposes (e.g. swiping a key or a little trinket). It's not a general mechanic to randomly use on folks.

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