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The most important thing on the map is still the Lake of Drow Nerd Tombs.
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Dec 11, 2013 06:49
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1stGear posted:Convenient that matches cleanly to the real world word for the part of the Christian afterlife that people typically associate with going down! They're both stealing from the same source material.
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Dec 12, 2013 18:01
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FRINGE posted:For stats and damage bonii (come on bonii is fun to say out loud): Because you're doing it wrong. The Latin pluralization of "bonus" would be "boni", pronounced "bone-eye." What you wrote would be pronounced "boney-eye" and would be the plural of bonius. That is not a word. Everything you know is wrong.
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Dec 19, 2013 04:42
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Upmarket Mango posted:I can see how having a high intelligence could determine how well someone performs in combat due to understanding anatomy/tactics/which end of the sword is the pointy one, but yeah, having that translate into raw damage dealt seems weird. I personally think having intelligence increase a characters chance of a critical hit makes more sense. Smarter person understands how to make someone really hurt via an understanding of "weak points", pressure points on the body, and generally knowing how to handle a weapon really well. Strength seems like a more logical choice for straight up increasing how hard a character hits all the time. Okay, so separate Intelligence (capital I) from experience in this analogy.
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Dec 19, 2013 04:50
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coffeetable posted:If deriving weapon damage from intellect is the greatest crime against intuition PE commits, then it's leagues ahead of any competition. It is a game mechanic. You have all dealt with far less intuitive ones before just fine, especially if you've played D&D. All true. I agree that giving a character a bonus to melee damage based on the Int stat doesn't have a terribly 1st/2nd Ed. D&D feel, but gently caress it. It's better this way. If you were running a D&D campaign and one of your players wanted to make an Int-based fighter, you'd let him, if you were cool. Obsidian is cool dudes. Smoke a bowl and enjoy the revolution.
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Dec 19, 2013 05:05
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At this point, I'm praying they keep Intelligence as the damage stat just to see all the nerd 
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Dec 19, 2013 06:34
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In FY:SYD:JSPDRPGE, will you use Cadwallon's dispositions-as-stats rather than everything else's attributes-as-stats? My $100 is riding on this. Also, I vote you change Intellect to Acumen or Sapience or something even more obtuse but specific just to shut the butt-pained up. This has become the lamest of trad games conversations.
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Dec 19, 2013 16:14
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So why even have a +damage stat? If damage increases linearly, won't it become less and less relevant all game? Why is a +damage stat more interesting or valuable than getting bonus damage based on your class? Isn't having a +damage stat a system mastery trap? It's easy to think, "Well, 1)I don't know how useful having more bag slots will be, 2)pumping health is a losing game, 3)these other stats are kinda esoteric, so: I'm gonna make a big-damage druid!" And then the druid does marginal-to-moderate damage instead of marginal damage using the few skills he has that actually inflict damage. Why not make Intellect do something cooler anyway? It's such a generic quality you could get away with making it do almost anything.
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Dec 20, 2013 17:19
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xthetenth posted:Somehow despite my faith in the ability of goons to have awful opinions, I don't give them quite that much credit. Orc babies. It's always okay to kill orc babies. Green skin = less than.
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Dec 21, 2013 04:46
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FRINGE posted:Where did all these "kill the orc babies" anecdotes come from? Was it a specific game or just the general idea of RPG races? Ancient D&D meme for DMs to thrust moral uncertainty about actions and motive onto the players. In the history of time, it has never worked.
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Dec 21, 2013 09:39
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CottonWolf posted:How does alignment actually work in D&D? No! No! Go back to the cave, all of you! This thread shall not be yours! YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
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Dec 22, 2013 05:03
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DatonKallandor posted:Oh yeah Crossbows were hated too - A Pope even banned them because it really let the poor gently caress up the rich. Wikipedia tells me that pope also banned slings and bows, but all of them only against Christians, rather than some medieval class warfare. So [citation needed]. As to guns vs plate armor, yes, steel plate makes soft lead bullets ablate right off them. See conquistador armor: that seam in the middle is to make sure bullets slide off to the side. Most guns PE is probably using are going to ones that fire a single lead ball or grapeshot, which is basically shrapnel. Metal armor is going to stop those very well.
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Dec 27, 2013 08:36
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GetWellGamers posted:Well, it's worth noting it's an Action-RPG with couch Co-op, which seems to be becoming a rarer and rarer thing these days. I enjoy it too, but all the things that make it great aren't what make a great game. That is, gameplay is slow and kludgey, animations take too long and the pacing is more like Baldur's Gate than Diablo. I find it fun in spite of these things but no Diablo-clone is going to look to DS3 for gameplay ideas. The things that ARE good are the things you already know Obsidian is good at: it's not a story about killing God, it has politics that have interesting reverberations in the world, your characters have a real place in the world rather than being a small-town boy whose village is immediately destroyed, and it has legit moral grayness. ("Legit moral grayness" means that they have made a complex world and populated it with identifiable characters rather than the Bioware-style easily-explained world that they then try to throw complex situations into, that of course seem out of place and awkward.) The character building choices are also interesting but far from earth-shaking. But if you've played DS1 or DS2 it is absolutely hilarious to compare all the world-building Obsidian did to the earlier games.
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Jan 2, 2014 04:43
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I forget: we got guns and some kind of possibly magical gun powder, so do we get Ye Olde Skoole hand grenades?
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Jan 5, 2014 15:18
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So, eyes being windows to the soul, wouldn't an undead creature's eyes decompose last? I'd love to see some skulls on the ground with eyeballs that follow you around, like they are the last of some undead dudes who have had the rest of their bodies decompose and can now only stare hungrily.
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Feb 26, 2014 14:53
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Drifter posted:The moral justification is probably that a wounded and dying animal is still far more dangerous than a dead animal. No, it's a deterrence strategy. You forfeit to wookiees when you play them at space chess because otherwise you get your arms ripped off. You surrender to these guys because otherwise they kill everyone you know and salt the fields behind them. They are mercenaries that save lives and money by being the Death Star. Only the completely insane and desperate fight the Death Star. They are the nuclear option - you hire them to force your enemies into a corner. If your enemies know that you've got Bleak Walkers on your team, they know they have no option to surrender. They have to fight or forfeit. If you were a soldier with a family, friends and a job and your commander said, "Let's fight these pillaging, merciless rapists!" what would you do? How sure are you that you would win? 'Cause if you lost, you WOULD die. No surrender accepted. Then they'd kill everyone you knew. Do you wanna fight that battle? Or would it be much, much wiser to just capture your commander and hand him over to the enemy with some gold and send them on their way? People who hire the Bleak Walkers are probably looking for a settlement, not a war. You wouldn't get much out of a war. Bleak Walkers are probably the least popular people in this continent.
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May 17, 2014 23:21
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Oo Koo posted:Isn't that part of the whole balancing thing? Percentage per percentage interrupt chance might be worse than bonus damage or accuracy or whatever, but that doesn't matter when a single stat point buys you +6% interrupt versus +2% damage or whatever the final numbers end up being. They don't all have to scale at the same rate. I'm pretty sure that it's possible to crunch the numbers so that the average damage mitigation over time from the increased number of interrupts matches the amount you get from increased healing or health or whatever. We won't know whether Obsidian manages to successfully calculate those magic numbers until the game is out. But at least in theory it should be possible to reach a state where a stat point has roughly equal utility value regardless of where you put it. No, stats will never be equal. Interrupt chance is an aggressive/utility option that may let you stun lock enemies. Reaching that point may let you make some encounters trivial in ways that extra damage, extra health or whatever else just can't match. On the other hand, any number of enemies may be immune to interrupt, making all those points worthless. We don't even need to know if there are a huge amount of interrupt-immune enemies or that it's incredibly broken to stun-lock enemies, or any other contexts that the game developers will add. It's gonna be a complex system and people will find ways to break it. Balance is a myth. But Obsidian will probably make it feel balanced to people who don't experiment (or read the gamefaqs page). That's one of the things that matters. Another, and more interesting thing, is giving us multiple ways to break the system. That and arbitrary restrictions are what make games really cool. You all are ready the FF5 Job Fiesta thread, right?
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May 26, 2014 23:32
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How do we know they won't release the same presentation to the backers the day after E3 is over? Of course they want to make it exclusive to the press so the press can say "A Super Exclusive Preview!" on their webpages. If that hypes the game more, that'll probably mean more sales, which you should want as a backer.
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May 29, 2014 06:34
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Sleep of Bronze posted:I was about to defend the battle models, then looked up the rubbish vanilla ones and remembered I played with mods from my first playthrough because I hopped on the FF7 train years later than everyone else. Have a bunch of FF7 backgrounds: http://imgur.com/a/shRaP Yeah, they're cleaned up a lot from what it would look like on a PSX, but look at the art direction: the camera angles, the details in the small scenes, the scope of the large scenes, the creativity in the architecture. It's still light years beyond most games. Compare to Dragon Age 2's Kirkwall, where this district is brown and gray, that district is gray and brown, and that other district is brown and browner. Ten years of technology simpler but infinitely more give-a-gently caress.
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Jul 29, 2014 01:08
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Do monks get any kind of "duel" ability? Like, when they are attacking one guy they take reduced damaged from other enemies, or they can slough aggro real easily from all but one guy? Something where they can fight and gain Wounds without being overwhelmed. It's so necessary for them to be front-liners and take a lot of damage but they seem so much squishier than other melee types.
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Sep 11, 2014 07:05
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Flagrant Abuse posted:What why she was the coolest one aside from Pallegina. Yeah, but think of Atris from KotOR 2, she was still well done and cool without being a party character. Maybe Cadegund will end up being all old and manipulative and awesome, like Kreia, Ravel Puzzlewell or Nefris from NWN2. Man, the two most important women in video game writing are Amy Hennig (who wrote the best three Legacy of Kain games and the Uncharted series) and Chris Avellone's mom.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:56
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Comstar posted:I would hope you can execute the hirelings should they choose to fail you again. Keep executing till you find someone who CAN do your job. A Sheriff of Nottingham to your Prince John as it were, or a Admiral Piett to your Lord Vader. This is my new Christmas wish. So, rope kid, how do folks execute the doomed in Eternity? Guillotine, ritual strangling and stuffing the body in a bog, wicker man? Gotta get me some hefty witch-crushing stones for my keep!
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Nov 18, 2014 03:57
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Scorchy posted:- Lay on Hands doesn't feel quite useful enough, and it's due to it being a HoT. I know it's a differentiator versus the Priest spells, but as a single target ability with limited casting range, it should be have more oomph behind it. Using as an oh-poo poo spell on a low stamina teammate, it's lacking especially if they're being focused; they often just fall over dead anyway. I guess you're suppose to 'pre-cast' them on teammates, but that's hard to tell sometimes who's about to get poo poo on and how hard. Again I know the Priest is suppose have the stronger spells, but the party might not have a Priest. It sounds like enemies do too much damage for a HoT to be useful anyway. Maybe HoTs should also add a buff, like mitigating 50% physical damage while it's running.
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Jan 6, 2015 13:07
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What if they had one pip per (e.g.) 25 Endurance? So warriors would have a bar with, say, 8 pips that would darken as they take damage, and a back-liner would have 4 pips in their bar. It'd be a good indicator to you of how dangerous it really is to leave that rogue unattended while fighting two or more guys. And it would make the barbarian feel really burly.
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Jan 21, 2015 23:51
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GuyDudeBroMan posted:Is the PC "better" than all the NPC's? Like extra stats or abilities or something? That's usually the case in most of these games. No, you're comparing this to the wrong games. In these type of games, the PC is the only one you have full developmental control over and so his power is determined by your system mastery, with no locked in abilities that might help or hinder you as the NPCs will have. So the PC will be better than others if you know how to make him that way or get lucky and hit on a broken part of the system. In other words, everyone is playing by the same rules and it's up to you to break them. Edit: I guess the PC in BGII got unique super powers after a while. And it seems like PE's premise is ripe for giving this PC the same kinda things. Nothing's PC-specific has been spoiled, anyway. MartianAgitator fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 21:20
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The problem with having to activate modals every combat is that when combat begins, you don't get to go, "Ooh! A fight! Time to plan a strategy." You're obligated to stop thinking about the challenge in front of you and instead go down the START COMBAT CHECKLIST. And if you don't and you lose, there's less of a feeling that you lost because of your tactics and more of a feeling you were gotcha-ed because you forgot to enable your passives. If it's something that's beneficial for every combat ever, has no resource cost (besides one attack), and lasts indefinitely within combat then having to turn it on manually every single combat bites.
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Feb 5, 2015 08:10
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SunAndSpring posted:I like it so far. poo poo's kind of wonky, but there's a good groundwork. I think people who are really into AD&D and D&D 3.5 games will be a little let down, though. Why? What more could they possibly ask for? This is the most D&D game since Skyrim, which is the most possible D&D game ever because it is maximum murderhobo in the land of Generica, which is literally the same thing as D&D.
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Feb 25, 2015 00:46
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Sensuki posted:The way I play the Infinity Engine games is to minimize the amount of rests, and that is the indication of my performance in the game - rather than how easily I was able to cheese an encounter. The longer I can go without resting (and not using exploits) - the better I have played / the more I have succeeded. This playstyle promotes using the resources available that the game gives you that people probably just ignore because they can install the rest anywhere mod and spam resting - I know lots of people that never use potions, for instance. You get given a metric gently caress tonne of potions in BG2 - quaff a few of those and you're back to full HP, no worries. No need to rest. Well, you clearly know the system well and are engaging with it. But the combat system is not the only part of the game. People play RPGs for many different reasons like plot, exploration, and so on and so forth. Combat presents itself as both trivial and obtuse in BG2 (the one I played) so the max enjoyment I got out of it was watching the animations and seeing all the rad D&D monsters live on screen. If the game was Kaizo Forgotten Realms I would have dropped it like hot trash. The combat system was fun as far is it provided light challenge and was over fast enough. You might feel like a WWII codebreaker when you first learn Ruby Lash or whatever spell to strip magical defenses, but until then you are fighting rear end in a top hat wizards that bubble up and auto-win. Combat was bizarre, untrustworthy and unforgiving. If it was one of your first times playing through the game and you weren't resting nearly every chance you got, you were obviously and objectively making it much, much harder on yourself. If you find that fun, ask for a harder difficulty setting in PoE. But c'mon. You can recognize that rest-spamming was integral to the enjoyment of the game for many, many people. And PoE is not just for the hardcores who scoff at it.
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Feb 25, 2015 08:47
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Sensuki posted:Only if you didn't do anything about it. I liked that control of the battlefield in the IE games required active player input - that is how it should be. Engagement doesn't really require you to do anything except move and forget, and is a system with many downsides/limitations. I don't believe that systems should or need to be created to facilitate stickiness in these types of games whether they be RTS games or RPG games. Crowd control abilities and AI targeting are enough. The Infinity Engine games had crowd control abilities, but the front line characters did not have them. I like that Pillars of Eternity has these abilities, but I think that the engagement system combined with the underdeveloped AI targeting confounds them a bit. If there is no way to lure enemies to another character so they suffer disengagement attacks and enemies always stick to the first person the see, then that half of the engagement system doesn't matter. If your characters would suffer disengagement attacks if they went after the back line, and you want to go after the back line, and you have to use abilities to slip away from engagement to do that, then that's a system at work. If you never want to go after the back line then that half of the engagement system doesn't matter. You seem to be arguing that (a) the AI isn't complicated enough to ever suffer disengagement attacks, so that half isn't needed, and (b) that when a front-liner drops there should be a good chance to cue the Benny Hill music while your strategy collapses and your other front-liner has to get aggro from the marauding enemy using aggro mechanics not visible to the player, while also dragging around whatever other enemies he happened to have aggro on, hoping that they don't suddenly switch targets thanks to the invisible aggro mechanics. Well, (a) doesn't invalidate the system because of the other half: having party members slip through aggro to assault the enemy back line is very cool conceptually, is very role-defining, and may matter often in actual combat. (B) is the fallout of having no engagement system: when your strategy fails it more often fails hard. Aggro mechanics, like taunts, are used to mitigate that catastrophic failure. Yes, it's not an activate-able ability but if you are conscious of it then you can still use it strategically, like other CC. Here's what you've never proven to me: that there is less strategic depth to placing your characters where you need them to be at the start of the fight and determining your actions from there versus constant juggling. PoE characters are vastly different from 2e D&D characters. Your front-liners are turrets just like mages, rather than just being CC DoTs. In IE games, moving your front-liners was almost literally their only action that could have an effect on combat. PoE might have a system where maneuverability is less common but why are you saying that's bad? Your front-liners do stuff rather than chase stuff. Why do you think it requires less attention or strategic thinking?
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Feb 25, 2015 15:12
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Sensuki posted:Among other things - tactical retreating, re-shuffling the frontline, tactical blocking, target switching mid combat - using movement to your advantage basically. This seems to be the crux of your argument: IE games had your fighters do this by moving around whereas PoE has your fighters do this by using actions. PoE may not allow allow front-liners do this out of the box and it may not allow all front-liners to do all these things, but PoE makes it clear that it's possible to do these things by making them distinct powers. It's clear from the confusion of many people here that IE games did not communicate well that it had these possibilities in the engine. Do you agree that PoE's system is easier to grasp for new folks, at least? You said it's your preference for the old-school method, which is fine. But you've also said that the engagement system is limited compared to IE and I think I've got you there. PoE has all these same tactical maneuvers but it gates them with CC powers and what not. That means that you can choose to have all these abilities at the opportunity cost of other unique powers. Each fighter you have can do any of these tactical maneuvers if any of your characters can CC enemies - which means that you can make your fighter knock down someone or have your mage CC or whatever, first. Then, your fighter still has options. IE front-liners basically only move and attack. In toto, it's hard to see how this new style constricts gameplay significantly. The greater versatility of melee PoE characters comes at the cost of maneuverability requiring setup. On paper, that seems like an amazing trade-off in terms of interesting character builds and determining strategy, and you seem to agree. The down side is that combat maneuvering now needs CC first. Is that what you mean? Is this your argument? If so, I think we might need to get into actual, specific battles to show how limiting and uncomfortable the new system is compared to the old free for all. At the very least, it seems by having more moving parts that PoE will allow for even greater challenges to a player.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:15
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So special attacks that give high interrupt chance can be used to break engagement? I guess it would be important it CC weren't common or if CC has a chance to fail. Is that in PoE? Do CC attacks have the chance to completely whiff, like Hold Person: Will Negates? Because that's one of my pet peeves. Battle-shaping powers might have semi-resistable effects but watching a non-boss enemy completely ignore my rad new stun or whatever is cinnamon challenge as gently caress. See: JRPG status effects.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:29
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Krowley posted:You mean there's more to it than this feature was not in BG2? This isn't fair. It's clear that the majority of people in this thread who played IE games played them by moving in their front lines and micro-ing their back lines with as little movement as necessary, which PoE ostensibly rewards. But if a minority population enjoyed a challenge or depth invisible to the majority, and that depth was easy to implement, why not implement it? I realize it's a little late to ask Obsidian to repeal the engagement system, but it's absolutely worth the chat. Unless we could talk about Aarklash Legacy instead. I loving love that game.
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Feb 26, 2015 20:13
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SunAndSpring posted:So do they kind of cancel each other out or do people think you've got some really bad mood swings? If you don't think someone can be both benevolent and cruel at the same time, play KotoR 2.
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Feb 26, 2015 22:40
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Sensuki posted:You can game around engagement through planning and strategy and avoid it's consequences, whereas it limits your tactical options in combat, or punishes you in some way - either being forced to use something to specifically break engagement or suffer damage because of it. This is what I mean about engagement really placing emphasis on encounter strategy, rather than tactics. These are the points I don't believe. Yes, gating maneuvering behind CC or interrupts adds an extra step which does hamper one play style while rewarding another. But I don't see how the IE method has more value in the real terms of PoE. In Aarklash Legacy, the game is built around a fair amount of movement in combat. And part of why that's great is because you have only four characters who have four abilities each (or fewer, as some of those abilities can be made modal) and those abilities have cooldowns. The decision-making tree seems much, much more vast in PoE than in Aarklash and especially IE games. This is why I asked to see real examples of battles where the IE method offered more tactical decisions or offered more elements of gameplay than the engagement system. You need tactical maneuvering for specific reasons, can the powers of PoE characters substitute and solve those reasons themselves? I think the two most important reasons for tactical maneuvering are focus firing and shoring up defenses. In PoE you can do those things by using special abilities or you can do those things by maneuvering - if you use special abilities first. Clearly, abilities in general are the currency of PoE combat. (And character development, which is why I believe you are saying the game focuses more on strategy than tactics.) With this zoomed-out view, it's hard to believe that the IE method offers more opportunity for tactics; what PoE characters need powers to achieve, IE characters are all born with, but they are both jumping the same hurdle. In fact, by requiring powers to maneuver, PoE is adding action economy to its fighters, which IE move-attackers never had. Action economy is one of the most tactical features of combat I can think of. It's another currency of combat. Now, I can see the point that making maneuvers cost more time and effort devalues maneuvering. But that may be the point: the game may be wanting you to focus as much on beating enemies via laser blasts and hurricane punches and clever use of powers rather than tactical maneuvering. It doesn't remove tactical maneuvering, it just makes it equivalent to a special power. The game adds complexity and agency to each character compared to IE games and maneuvering needs to be one more star in the constellation without being too powerful. And I'm unconvinced that subtracting engagement creates room for a playstyle that was not already present - different from IE games, but still represented. To be any more productive on this topic, I think we would have to get into real examples. It may even be that in PoE low-level characters lack enough battlefield control to feel like they have any tactical options and high-level characters have so many that maneuvering becomes trivial, but hey - at least the world-building is second to none. Way to go on that, rope kid.
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Feb 27, 2015 13:22
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Cool. I think we've taken it to logical conclusion at this point without analyzing real, specific encounters, but thanks for the conversation.
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Feb 28, 2015 00:16
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Sensuki posted:The fact that the mundane loot is random isn't the problem - it's just that it's inconsistent. This is ridiculous. Having inconsistent loot drops is a drat fine design choice, especially for very long games. They change the difficulty in unpredictable places in the game which creates a more varied game experience. Having a paucity of consumables in a difficult area or an OP weapon that lets you waltz through a dungeon changes gameplay in engaging ways, and long games with inconsistent loot will most likely let the player experience some version of both while in the end evening out. That makes playing the game a more story-like experience, especially in replays because the game retains unpredictability. In other words, I think you are calling frustration unfun. That's wrongheaded. Frustration is a valuable reaction to playing a game. As is the rush of victory and contempt for your electro-byte enemies when you get some Hell Katana and gib them. Too much of either is of course self-defeating, but as has been noted it's a very long game where everything is likely to balance evenly, for whatever given value of "even" rope kid has. Low variance loot tables don't allow for the same drama. They may be necessary if the challenges in the game are already very swingy. But it doesn't look that way. Why take away the excitement, challenge, uniqueness and replayability of high variance? That sounds terribly unfun.
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Mar 3, 2015 00:20
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drgnvale posted:If this is trolling, it's quite good. Rogue-likes are basically the trolls of video games, so in a way, yes, it is.
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Mar 3, 2015 01:11
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The Sharmat posted:Winning is only fun for any significant period of time if there is a distinct possibility of losing. But you don't need to create a distinct and complex system that allows for failure in order to engage players. See JRPGs. There's often so much going on under the hood that there are many PS1 era JRPGs that have mechanics the community still can't reverse engineer. But even if they have a ton of moving parts, players' actual strategies are very limited or don't matter. For example, Final Fantasy 7 is an easy game that allows for some customization of characters. The character stats are virtually identical, so the only thing differentiating them are their sprites and individual Giant gently caress You attack. The player can tailor each character however he chooses using the distinct (but low-complexity) Materia system, with virtually no chance of ever losing a battle (outside of a couple of stupid bosses). And that was great for FF7! That game had other axes to grind. It was revolutionizing the way video game stories were told by using dramatic camera angles, incredible graphics that had never before seen levels of detail, and a complex, convoluted plot. It knew its focus. That focus on filmic qualities is obviously not relatable to whatever PoE's focus may be. I would guess that PoE's focus is on world-building. (Which I think is good; it seems to me that games may be much better at narrating the story of a setting than of a character.) What, say, inconsistent loot drops does for PoE is that they make gameplay easier or harder in unpredictable parts of the game. This can obviously have bad effects, like when you invade Princess Cupcakes Bouncy Castle and the cotton candy fairies surprisingly kick your rear end, or when you assault the Deep Hells and the Red King of Eternal Spite is a pushover thanks to your Bardiche of Nope +99. Those are bizarre, nonsequitur experiences. But when the game is surprisingly hard it makes you go back to the drawing board and rework your mechanical choices. Do the mechanical aspects of characters say anything about PoE's setting? Check out those chanter abilities, friend. Forcing a player to learn the mechanics of PoE in turn teaches them about the world.When the game is too easy theoretically that means the player will be spending more time doing the other actions the game allows: chatting with NPCs and searching for loot. All these things are (or can be) setting-focused. And difficulty spikes in either direction add spice. It sounds win-win. Of course that doesn't mean that the game should be only too easy or too hard or anything stupid like that. I just want to (a) illustrate the challenge I believe the PoE designers have set themselves up for: making a game whose systems feed back into the world-building, and (b) show that random difficulty spikes are great for that. Its the designers' job to allow for that variance as much as they see fit. Enough so that they get as much as want out of it without so much that the extremes make the game unpalatable. MartianAgitator fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 16:07
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Inspector Gesicht posted:What promising games are there that have been ruined by the developers putting in too much time and effort into fringe detail? You know, features that seems neat or cool but is pretty irrelevant to playing and enjoying the game, like NPC schedules or a highly-realistic economy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akitoshi_Kawazu
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Mar 3, 2015 16:10
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Ladolcevita posted:Either way, as per Rope Kid, they've already implemented a loot seed system since the last beta and save-scumming chests is no longer an option. I'm satisfied. It's such a waste. The people who would save-scum are engaging in the systems of the game in their own way. They see a way to manipulate the game to their advantage - that's perfect! It's player-generated behavior. If they find it tedious or not as advantageous as they hoped, then they'll change their approach to the game. But removing that option kills that emergent gameplay. Ahh, well. It's more dev time opportunity cost than a great loss for the game itself.
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Mar 3, 2015 23:56
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