RPG Thread XVI Supports Project Eternity's Kickstarter

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[quote name='kainzero']i would buy the ff13-2 DLC to support the akb48 member who designed it[/QUOTE]

Which one?

akb48+snh48.jpg
 
[quote name='Rodimus']Which one?[/QUOTE]
third column, third row from left.

that picture's old, half the people in it have moved on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KzIgxWRZU&feature=relmfu




i think i'm laughing at this because i don't think anyone has that much playing this game



ok so back to less vapid conversation


p4 limited edition for vita looking like a nice buy... guess it's time for me to get a vita.
 
Omoikane? The new design looks all right.

Raphael? NOO, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY BISHIE ANGEL DEMON PERSONA?!

As for the new demon additions, Kouga Saburou looks pretty good.
 
And that ends my experiment with playing FF V on the PSP Go. Too many glitches (game gets all spriety and jagged like an old dusty NES cart) when you go to the menu. After it happening in between an hour long no-save/suspend session and glitching the enitre game I don't feel like going back.

On to Yaggarda (sp) Union now. (Don't feel like playing two other scenarios of Aedis Eclipse)
 
Would you guys say the FFIV remake for PSP is the definitive version?

Also, I'm trying to fix my Planescape, Crotch. I went back to it but it still crashes on me.
 
[quote name='blueshinra']Omoikane? The new design looks all right.

Raphael? NOO, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY BISHIE ANGEL DEMON PERSONA?!

As for the new demon additions, Kouga Saburou looks pretty good.[/QUOTE]
Agree about Raphael, but mainly because his chest plate reminds me of the Batmobile.
 
[quote name='cindersphere']Agree about Raphael, but mainly because his chest plate reminds me of the Batmobile.[/QUOTE]
It has me wondering if any of the other angelic-looking demons (Principality, Michael, etc.) are getting redesigns...
 
[quote name='blueshinra']It has me wondering if any of the other angelic-looking demons (Principality, Michael, etc.) are getting redesigns...[/QUOTE]
Man I hope not, Principality has a fantastic design.
 
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/10/29/kickstarting-and-not-greenlighting-traditional-rpgs/

Kickstarting (and not Greenlighting) traditional RPGs

The rise of indie gaming has been fantastic for platformers, good for adventures and strategy games, great for puzzlers, but not exactly a windfall for role-playing games. There are certainly some out there, but RPGs don't have the level of variety that the genres I listed above do.

We can see how this manifests thanks to the rise of crowdsourced, publicized successes and failures. Two of these have garnered a great deal of attention so far this year: Kickstarter (and other similar ventures, like Indiegogo) and Steam's Greenlight. The former has had plenty of press, and this writer is certainly excited to see the end results of Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity, as well as Shaker (when it comes back) and the currently-campaigning pseudo-sequel to the Quest For Glory games, Hero U: Rogue To Redemption. But these high-profile funding campaigns are notable because of their profile – they're RPGs made by people with expertise and previous success in the genre. It's rare (but certainly not unheard of) to see this kind of single-player, epic, story-driven quest outside of blockbuster games.

A glance at Steam's Greenlight starts to reveal why. Of the roughly 30 games that have been "greenlit" so far, 13 claim to be RPGs. I decided to take a look at them in order to see what sort of RPGs were winning the crowd over. For a traditional RPG fan, the results are not encouraging – only one of the games actually seems to be about making a character or party, then going on a quest.

The biggest immediate problem with the "RPG" category is that most of the games aren't really RPGs by most conventional definitions of the term. Half of them are complex builder simulation/strategy/adventure/maybe-RPG? sorts of games, clearly inspired by Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress. I'm fond of this genre of game, to be fair, but a lot of it seems like Steam users really, really want Minecraft on the platform, and anything that looks likely to scratch that itch gets votes. And given the difficulty in assigning conventional genres to these sandbox/open world-style games, RPG seems as good or bad a category as any to assign them to.
Click to expand...
Thought I would share this here.
 
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I can't stop thinking that Suikoden V plays more like a PS1 JRPG than a PS2 one. Also, the constant loading screens are ridiculous.

BTW, I accidentally didn't get the item from beating
Galleon, during the mission to "kidnap" Lymsleia,
since my inventory was full and I somehow went past the "discard" bit without exchanging it. It was some kind of Rune, right? What was it? Half the Runes I've come across so far have been effect-related ones that aren't that appealing, so I hope it was one of those...

ETA: Oh yeah, and one of my people
died in the big battle beforehand. It was nobody I cared about though (Norden, I think? Was that his name?)...
 
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWWBDt2Bjlg

Let's talk about armor design. Taken on its own, armor design isn't of eminent importance. It's just one of many subsystems that make up Project Eternity. However, looking at it in detail can expose problems that can be found across our various subsystems: by making something work well in a new system and setting, we can often put it at odds with the nostalgia of the old games (and "realism").
Back in the days of 2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, we had all sorts of quasi- or non-historical armor types like banded mail, ring mail, and studded leather. You wore the heaviest armor you could because it typically had the best Armor Class. If plate mail was available, there weren't many reasons to wear splint mail or (horror of horrors) chain.The default rules limited the viability of certain character concepts because most characters of a given class were funneled down a specific equipment path.
IomY4.jpg


3E sort of solved this problem by implementing Maximum Dexterity Bonus, which meant that characters with high Dexterity scores would generally equip whatever armor gave them the maximum bonus to Armor Class without capping the Armor Class bonus they received from Dexterity. There were a few problems with this.
First, while it did help make previously "bad" character concepts (e.g., the lightly armored fighter) more viable, generally there were one or two choices per character build. If you had a high dexterity, you were not going to wear heavy armor. If you had a low Dexterity, you might wear light armor, but only for the higher movement rate it allowed.
Second, there was an equipment dead zone in medium armor -- the Maximum Dexterity Bonus caps and movement penalties of heavy armor without the nice Armor Class bonus. Also, if you were a ranger or barbarian, technically you could wear medium armor, but in practice you would never wear it because it disabled several class abilities.
The third issue is a common one with armor design: the ability to wear heavy armor has value (classes receive it as a benefit and it costs feats to purchase in 3E), but it's presented as something with trade-offs. This in itself is not bad, but as previously mentioned, typically the decision of what type of armor to wear can more-or-less be made at the end of character creation. If your character wears a chain shirt at 1st level, there's a good chance he or she will be wearing a +5 version toward the end of the campaign. This is sort of nice because it means that you can have a consistently viable character concept, but there's not a ton of decision making about armor types after your adventuring career starts.
Finally, there's a way of naming and progressing things in A/D&D. Once you get your "base" armors introduced (for our purposes, we will include plate armor and its 2nd Edition kin, field plate and full plate), upgrades are expressed as +1 versions. It becomes pretty easy to understand once the hierarchical relationship and spread of armor types are established.
What does this mean for Project Eternity? It means designing a new armor system that rectifies deficiencies of older systems while maintaining a familiar feel is tricky. Additionally, the more dissimilar the armor relationships are to those found in A/D&D, the more they will be re-evaluated for verisimilitude (i.e. "realism").
We would like our armor system to accomplish the following goals:

  • Make wearing different types of armor a real choice for the player based on both character build and circumstance. E.g. a swashbuckling lightly-armored fighter will tend to wear one of a variety of light armor types (maybe a gambeson or leather cuirass), but in a circumstance where protection is of utmost importance, the player may still choose to wear heavy armor with a loss in build optimization.
  • Disassociate armor value from class type in favor of different build types. E.g. a wizard can wear heavy armor and be a different type of wizard instead of just "a wizard who is bad".
  • Allow a character to maintain a character concept throughout the game without suffering extreme mechanical penalties. E.g. a character who starts the game in some form of light armor can complete the game in some form of light armor with appropriate gameplay trade-offs compared to wearing heavy armor.
Introduce new or upgraded armor types throughout the game instead of using ++ versions (which in itself would pose problems unless we directly duplicated A/D&D's d20-based attack mechanics).
Even with these three goals, there are a number of problems to solve. One of the biggest questions is how to break up and "advance" armor by type. In AD&D, you had something that looked like this:
Padded
Leather
Studded Leather
Hide
Scale
Chain
Splint
Plate (Tier 2)
Field Plate (Tier 3)
Full Plate (Tier 4)
Players typically couldn't afford plate, field plate, or full plate at character creation, but everything else was often within reach. It's not uncommon to see a hierarchy of armor types like this in many fantasy games, despite some of the questionable elements (did studded leather exist? Is raw hide armor actually better than cuirbolli leather?). You can get plate/field plate/full plate later in the game, but otherwise, you're getting +x versions of the base types at higher "tiers" of character advancement.
We could (as an example) structure some of Project Eternity's armor advancement like this.
Tier 1
Doublet
Hide Armor
Scale Vest
Tier 2
Gambeson (from Doublet)
Leather Cuirass (from Hide Armor)
Scale Armor (from Scale Vest)
Mail Shirt
Tier 3
Armored Jack (from Gambeson)
Leather Armor (from Leather Cuirass)
Lamellar Armor (from Scale Armor)
Mail Armor (from Mail Shirt)
Half-Plate
This could probably accomplish our stated goals (we can assign them whatever stats we'd like, after all), but it does raise some questions for us:

  • Should something like hide armor be supplanted/made obsolete by leather as an "improved version" or does that effectively kill the visual concept of the rough-hewn rawhide-wearing ranger or barbarian?
  • If armor types like hide (or scale, or mail) should remain viable on their own, how should that "upgrade" be expressed to the player? Functional descriptors like "fine scale", "superior hide", etc.? Cultural or material descriptors like "Vailian doublet", "iron feather scale"? Olde tyme numerical descriptors like "scale armor +1", "half-plate +2"?
  • Is it okay for an upgrade from a visual type of armor to maintain its relative position to other armor types even if "realistically" that upgraded armor is now probably superior in protection to other armor types? E.g. an armored jack or brigandine armor is probably more protective than even nice suit of leather armor... but mechanically, we're presenting it as an upgrade of a padded (doublet) armor type.
These are the sort of things we have been discussing and I have been thinking about. And while it is just one subsystem in Project Eternity, we will likely face many similar considerations as we approach the design of weapons, classes, spells, and other aspects of gameplay. I'm sure a lot of you have opinions on what you'd like to see, so please let us know on our forums!
Our next design update will be in two weeks and will focus on lore and story elements. Thanks for reading!
Fulfillment System

Fulfillment update from Darren Monahan
We’ve received a number of questions via our Support e-mail address and social networks about fulfillment, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what we’re currently working on!
First off, I wanted to announce that we’re developing a fulfillment site, which we’re hoping to have online in the next month or two (I was hoping to have it up sooner, but my first baby is coming into the world in the next few days, eeep!). Everyone who backed the project on Kickstarter and/or PayPal will be e-mailed details that will give you credit on that site. After logging in, you will be able to:

  • Confirm the tier of choice that you wanted. A few of you donated on Kickstarter, and then topped up via PayPal, so you’ll be able to select the exact tier you wanted.
  • Confirm any add-ons you wanted that weren’t easy to specify on Kickstarter or via PayPal.
  • Upgrade your pledge to another tier, or add on for, ummm, add-ons. :)
  • Update your e-mail address at any time.
  • Update your shipping address at any time. (Shipping address only needed for physical goods – we don’t need that info for digital orders.)
  • Indicate any specific details associated with your tier (T-shirt sizes, name in the credits, etc.)
  • If you live outside of the USA, it will also verify that you’ve added enough shipping.
We’ll keep you guys updated in future, ummm, updates, on how progress is coming along!
Here’s an update to our FAQ on some of the questions we’ve been receiving recently:
Q: I donated on PayPal and besides a receipt from PayPal I haven’t gotten confirmation from Obsidian directly.
A: Not a problem. When the fulfillment site goes live, we’ll be merging the Kickstarter and PayPal data together into our own system, and from there we’ll be sending out project updates. For now, as long as you received a PayPal receipt, we’ll have you on file.
Q: I need to change my e-mail address before you send out details on the Fulfillment site. What do I do?
A: Send us an e-mail at [email protected] with your old and new addresses (please e-mail from your old address if you can) and we’ll update our records before the fulfillment site e-mails go out.
Q: How do I add shipping? I missed being able to during the Kickstarter phase!
A: You can handle that in one of several ways:
You can hang tight for now and wait until our fulfillment system is online, or,
If you’d prefer to get it out of the way, you can visit our Shipping page and add it now (Amazon Payments and PayPal supported.)
Q: When will I get my backer badge on the forums?
A: That’ll come online with the fulfillment system.
If you have any other questions, feel free to visit our forums or drop us a line at [email protected]!
 
[quote name='blueshinra']I can't stop thinking that Suikoden V plays more like a PS1 JRPG than a PS2 one.[/QUOTE]

That's not a bad thing, it's a return to form.
 
[quote name='Rodimus']That's not a bad thing, it's a return to form.[/QUOTE]
It's not what I expect for a PS2 game though, especially one released when it was. You can tell Konami doesn't keep up with trends in the genre.

The cursor memory during battles and boat/teleport system (where you have to go back to your base before anywhere else) are pretty appalling time-wasters for a game of this vintage.

Anyway, no one can answer my question about what Rune I missed? I'd look it up myself but am afraid of being spoiled for future parts of the game (it's happened before).
 
After Suikoden IV was pretty much hated by fans I see V as giving the fans what they wanted in a Suikoden game. It's been a while since I played it, sorry I cant answer your question.
 
[quote name='blueshinra']Anyway, no one can answer my question about what Rune I missed? I'd look it up myself but am afraid of being spoiled for future parts of the game (it's happened before).[/QUOTE]

Think it's Rage Sword Orb:

Code: 
Rage Sword Rune
Level 1-Sword of Rage (Weapon Element becomes Fire 1.1x Damage)
Level 2-Fire Guard (Greater resistance/protection to Fire in Battle)
Level 3-True Rage (Weapon Element becomes Fire 1.2x Damage
Level 4-N/A
 
[quote name='Kazaganthi']Think it's Rage Sword Orb:

Code: 
Rage Sword Rune
Level 1-Sword of Rage (Weapon Element becomes Fire 1.1x Damage)
Level 2-Fire Guard (Greater resistance/protection to Fire in Battle)
Level 3-True Rage (Weapon Element becomes Fire 1.2x Damage
Level 4-N/A
[/QUOTE]
Thanks; that sounds about right. I do remember it being something that started with "R", and three words long.

Currently at the Dwarf Village again,
on our way to go to Sauronix and say, "WTF, Dragon Cavalry, Armes is helping the Godwins o_O;"

What gets me is that whats-her-face could've just teleported me there, but nope, gotta have a story event! /rpglogic
 
[quote name='TheLongshot']After all of this time, I finally finished Persona 3. 136 hours over about 6 years. One down, many more to go...[/QUOTE]

One of those back burner games. I've had them before.
 
i don't remember anything about Suikoden V feeling dated in terms of interface...

then again i prefer older games anyway.
 
[quote name='TheLongshot']After all of this time, I finally finished Persona 3. 136 hours over about 6 years. One down, many more to go...[/QUOTE]
Congrats, now time for Persona 4, you have just enough time to finish it before SMT 4 comes out if you try.
 
[quote name='blueshinra']I can't stop thinking that Suikoden V plays more like a PS1 JRPG than a PS2 one. Also, the constant loading screens are ridiculous.

BTW, I accidentally didn't get the item from beating
Galleon, during the mission to "kidnap" Lymsleia,
since my inventory was full and I somehow went past the "discard" bit without exchanging it. It was some kind of Rune, right? What was it? Half the Runes I've come across so far have been effect-related ones that aren't that appealing, so I hope it was one of those...

ETA: Oh yeah, and one of my people
died in the big battle beforehand. It was nobody I cared about though (Norden, I think? Was that his name?)...
[/QUOTE]

They did minimize a lot of potential in Suikoden V in an attempt to make something more like 1 and 2. On the plus side the game felt a bit more balanced to me than any other Suikoden I've played.
 
[quote name='zionoverfire']They did minimize a lot of potential in Suikoden V in an attempt to make something more like 1 and 2. On the plus side the game felt a bit more balanced to me than any other Suikoden I've played.[/QUOTE]
Guess that explains it.

As for balance, it felt like the difficulty curve ramped up somewhere in the middle, but other than that, it's been fine.

Currently near the end of the game, I think. My next RPG will most likely be Tales of the Abyss.
 
Wonder if Yggdra Union gets more interesting. So far, about 3 hours in it's all just about lining up my three characters in a Plus or Cross formation. That's it. Appearently the game keeps stuff locked (like your card's abilities) until later on.
 
[quote name='eldergamer']Wonder if Yggdra Union gets more interesting. So far, about 3 hours in it's all just about lining up my three characters in a Plus or Cross formation. That's it. Appearently the game keeps stuff locked (like your card's abilities) until later on.[/QUOTE]

Well, depends. It gets much harder, but not much more interesting. And more characters, and more formation strategies. I don't remember what the cards did though.
 
debating on P3 or Tales of the Abyss next. Really been liking the SMT games, but I haven't played a Tales game since Destiny on PS1 so I think I need to get on that.
 
[quote name='raiden_86']debating on P3 or Tales of the Abyss next. Really been liking the SMT games, but I haven't played a Tales game since Destiny on PS1 so I think I need to get on that.[/QUOTE]

Well, P3 was wonderful, and I haven't opened my copy of Abyss yet. That's the problem with a huge backlog of PS2 JRPGs.
 
I only have four PS2 games left in my backlog: Sakura Wars, Persona 4, Tales of the Abyss, and Valkyrie Profile 2. Debating on getting rid of that last one (it's still sealed) since I never played the first game and hear this sequel has a lot of references to it that one should be aware of. Hrm...

Oh, and I beat Suikoden V today.
R.I.P. Lyon, and Sialeeds' and Marcal Godwin's character development :cry:
 
My PS2 backlog sets at a even 30 because I never touch it, but I do have every game that I could ever want for that system, save for Sakura Wars.

And you should play VP. You can get it real cheap on the psp. The port is inferior to the PS version, but it's better than nothing.
 
[quote name='the crotch']future prediction time up ins: Am i going to buy a 3ds for lalaloopsy carnival of friends?[/quote]

ftfy
 
[quote name='blueshinra']I only have four PS2 games left in my backlog: Sakura Wars, Persona 4, Tales of the Abyss, and Valkyrie Profile 2. Debating on getting rid of that last one (it's still sealed) since I never played the first game and hear this sequel has a lot of references to it that one should be aware of. Hrm...[/QUOTE]

Don't have Sakura Wars, but have the other three.

Also have:

Suikoden III
Rogue Galaxy
Phantasy Star Universe
Digital Devil Saga I & II
Shadowhearts Covenant
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fantasy XII
Dragon Quest VIII

And that's just the RPG backlog.

The next one I'll probably finish of those is FF X, because I'm pretty close to the end on that one.
 
[quote name='blueshinra']I don't have a PSP, though :whistle2:|[/QUOTE]

You can pick up one of those on the cheap too.

[quote name='TheLongshot']The next one I'll probably finish of those is FF X, because I'm pretty close to the end on that one.[/QUOTE]

You can probably just throw that away.
 
FF X wasn't that bad. Voice acting aside, the story was decent, and so were the characters. FF X-2 on the otherhand.....

Out of those games, you should play Rogue Galaxy next IMO.
 
[quote name='Luxuria']FF X-2 on the otherhand.......[/QUOTE]

Was a much better game.

Okay, maybe not much better, but the combat was definitely on top.
 
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