Urthor

It's nice for the lore. It's a pain in the ass in terms of convenience though. I click "buy health potion" "how many would you like," more clicks "what currency would you like to pay in" fiddle through a screen sorting that out. It'd be a massive drag. The compromise of "looting in different currencies but they're changed into coinage in the inventory" is absolutely the best approach to this I'm pretty sure, it means you don't necessarily knwo how much money you're looting from the chest, but it's irrelevant since you're taking all the money anyway. Dev team's hit the best mark.

Aloth the Shirtless! Reputation system, HOHHHhhh!!! Also, I know you you're probably mainly joking, but I sincerely hope that there won't be any "DPS" estimates/ratings on equipment or anything. I hate that. They don't make any sense unless the game expects you to just stand there, constantly attacking an enemy, with no gaps or patterns in your attacks/movement/maneuvering, etc. It kind of goes against tactical combat, since, in tactical play, all seconds are not created equal. 8P You're just described the most of the gameplay of World of Warcraft, so I guess that answers that question Obviously Dungeons and Dragons based games just don't work like that, the entire point of DPS is redundant for Mages who just won't be DPSing they'll be casting a lot of utility spells.

The concept art for Aloth has him wearing trousers and a cloak, so hopefully fewer bathrobes will turn up than you think. Will you be able to play through the entire game as a Wizard character wearing only trousers I wonder? Or will there be times that the loot drops force you to put on the dreaded skirt of 1.5x DPS

Yugioh with a touch of Hearthstone Second to my major card gaming addictions is Civilisation 5 since i got the complete edition in the 24h sale, and Mount and Blade Warband because it's hilarious. Faster and Light was a few weeks back. Minerva Metastasis was a few weeks before that, didn't' like it so much but I played a lot of it, basically a combat mod for HL2, which isn't as fun as they were in 2006.

I'd be almost certain they won't be. The only game that goes deep on standardised mounts is WoW and that's because it's an MMO with needs like loot/balance/all races getting equal opportunity.

Yes? Nice way of padding # of posts. Never understoon peeps obsesed with having posts in the thousands. Or

I was making the point that I meant it mechanically is like Skyrim because I said "oh it looks like Skyrim" as my first reaction to it, I meant that it plays like Skyrim not that the art is like Skyrim's. And ye it's significantly different to how DA:O and DA2 was is my point.

What i mean is they've recognised the importance of moving away from the DA:O formula. There's now mounts, jumping and vertical areas, exploration (hell there's even Dragon's as random bosses and they've invested a lot into that mechanic from the looks of things, tell me there isn't a Skyrim influence there). It looks like they've basically just made very new RPG with most of the Mechanics not being aligned that closely with previous Dragon Age and taking a lot from Skyrim/Assasins creed, altho not necessarily a complete clone you're right. Horses and Mounts and that kind of exploration in a Bioware game is really new. Moving from camp to camp, setting up viewpoints and having collectibles like he said, that's very much not Bioware's gig, Bioware's gig mechanically has been very much RPGs in corridors. You're right tho, the art style isn't very Skyrim, tons and tons of bloom and colour.

Dragon Age: World of Warcraft has turned into Dragon Age: Skyrim in the last 8 years apparently. NIce business plan EA. This is new. Looks like Skyrim with pause based combat happening, but it seems that companions following your around has been dumped for a party that turns up for combat and conversations?

Funny how you've just listed nothing but 3rd party games for a Nintendo system Both the OoT remake and A Link Between Worlds are stunning 3DS games. A Link Between Worlds isn't ambitious, but what it does it does EXTREMELY well. In my books A Link Between Worlds is the best Zelda since Majora's Mask. Pokemon, the two Zeldas, Fire Emblem and Default are absolutely top tier killer apps for the 3DS atm. Luigi's mansion and a few others site at a lower tier.

The problem is, even if level scaling the vast majority of questing is seen as a taboo because it takes away the entire point of levelling up and improving your character, Baldur's had a big problem with a reverse difficulty curve at the end of the day. You'd definitely have to look at the structure of the game before saying "you need this," but fundamentally you need to do something to stop the endgame getting very badly tilted just because of how RPGs work. Whilst its a very classic feeling running through content in BG2 that was designed for pre chapter 2 with Chapter 6 characters, and certainly with the Dragons they designed around that phenomenon by setting you up for a revisit, the fact is it did lead to some very patchy experiences. Even tho it's a general trend that Western RPGs don't follow the more Eastern path of providing defined "post game content," and instead let leave the hardest content to optional boss fights n dungeons that are off the critical path, it'd be much better if scaling was used along the critical path to smooth out the experience for people who went down the completionist line, and not just take the easy way out and say "you should increase the difficulty here." What'd be potentially better way to handle scenarios (in theory, obviously this isn't something that can be thrown at this stage of development) is if the critical path incorporated "stretch" goals/enemies/paths that demanded more highly geared characters. If you have a critical path quest that everyone does, so there's potential plot an optional way to do the quest that requires a highly leveled party, and can be shorter than a dungeon crawl or say provide the best outcome possible, that'd work. But yes on some level there should be some scaling, the critical path needs to cope with people who took the completionist line, as well as for the people who went straight to it. I'd draw a line between saying that level content outside of it is a good and necessary thing, because that isn't true, but for the critical path yes there needs to be some leveled experiences. Preferably not just end loaded as well, its not uncommon to say "oh we'll have difficult content in the main quest for the players who've done everything, look we've got all these difficult fights," then have all those in the last 20% of the quest line. The impact of your levelling and character improvement on your experience of the main quest has to be noticeable, but the main quest needs to juggle a balance between scaled and unscaled content, and it has to be more flexible than the rest of the game might be.

Itt another quiet period in the annual release cycle passes by. Which leaves waiting for the summer sale to turn up.

I think, as in rather than know, that it's for double handed use. Once you got that armored fella wrestled down on his back, take a reverse grip with one hand and put the palm of the other hand on the pommel and then thrust down as hard as you can with all your body weight. The first two would seem to suggest this, but the third one not as much. err not quite. The Rondel is basically a medieval screwdriver. If you want to kill someone with a screwdriver, you pick it up and you have to thrust it very quickly with a lot of force. If you're thrusting a greasy medieval screwdriver with a pommel that's mostly metal with some cloth wrapped around it into someone as hard as you can, it's pretty easy for it to fly forward out of your hand like a javelin. The pommel is like that simply because it makes it much easier to hold and helps stop it slipping out of your hand when you're using the Rondel for what Rondel's do, which is ram them as hard as you can through some chain mail. If you pick up a normal knife, put your thumb by the hilt and have the blade coming out past your pinky pointing down, you're gripping pretty hard at that point simply so you don't drop the bloody knife. If you pick up a rondel with that disk hilt, put your thumb by the hilt and your pinky by the guard, it doesn't fall out of your hand very easily and it's much easier to hold.

iirc at one point Sawyer mentioned that they were looking for wars of having "large negative outflows of money from the game economy," late game so you're not rolling in it as much and have something to spend it on. This seems like a decent method for that. Maybe make reputation changes consume a rare item, price that rare item at 20k in some store as well as make it a reward to a quest or two.

The question is though, does the fact that the game has expansion packs lined up to sell impact this decision. Obsidian's entitled to make a decision like "we don't want to spend much development time on an issue like enabling modding for this project." That's a perfectly fair thing to say. Beyond that however is the question of their attitude to user mods in general. Total War comes to mind, and there's a lot of dark rumours and complaints about the lack of certain tools in Skyrim's modding database, where developers have constrained modding for their games because they've shifted to a more DLC focused model and want people to purchase their post release content more so than use fan made alterations (how would you sell a $3 DLC for Rome Total War providing blood decals if modders could just add it themselves...) If Obsidian don't want to spend 90 man hours designing a modding development kit for this game, that's their right and it's pretty reasonable. But If they're exposed to decisions like "do we spend a small amount of time post-release making some non-proprietary assets that we have lying around available publicly to the modding community," that's a different question I'd kinda want to know the answer to. So what I'd ask is, both for Pillars and their games in general, do Obsidian have a Embracive attitude to user mods - Hoping to help where they can, don't want to invest developer time and energy into the issue or sacrifice man-power for it, but are happy to encourage it to succeed. Potentially make a subforum for mods on this board and other small things. Neutral attitude - Definitely focusing on making the game, maybe haven't thought about the issue much or come to a complete decision, happy to let the status quo prevail and move on to their various projects and responsibilities without intruding. Concerned attitude - Feel the need to maintain creative control over the release of the game. Feel that content for the work should flow largely from the developer and not the community, and feel maintaining a smooth post release stream of professionally designed content is worth taking steps that restrict access to third parties altering their game.

Sorry to double post, I'd edit this onto the end of my previous post and delete this if I could There's some things about game development we, as the peanut gallery, can provide useful input for. There are some things that we're not really able to provide useful input for. If Obsidian say sending two guys to E3 is cost efficient marketing, then it's a good idea. Not to mention E3 is in Santa Anna and Obsidian is in Santa Monica, it's not even a big deal in terms of travel, you just have to make the trailers which is a few man hours in the Gantt chart.

Yeah generally I find the people who've had two decade careers in the game industry not to mention marketing degrees plus years of experience in the area are have a better idea about this than the OP.

Ye you should really find something more productive to do with your life than stay up till 3AM for this. This is just a blog, it won't get stale, go to bed. If Sawyer & Co did these every two weeks the game wouldn't get made.