prodigydancer

Mass murder opportunities have never been in short supply. I could do mass murder in BG in 1998. I can do mass murder in Dishonored today (the Conspiracy members are off-limits but everyone else is fair game). The funny part is I never did. I know that pixels don't feel pain - just somehow I'm never in a mood for a pointless virtual killing spree. Anyway, Hatred reminds me of Carmageddon. I like its punk attitude and I love how it stirred up the hornet's nest. Again all those sanctimonious moralists will burst their lungs crying about a video game. And thinking about their futile efforts makes me laugh. And I like things that make me laugh.

The TC needs to understand that if all video games followed the same design document they would all be clones of Pong. Age of Decadence has some very ambitious goals be so does PoE. Those are different goals but that's how you enhance a genre and ultimately set higher standards - through having your own unique vision, through trial and error. I doubt that AoD or PoE will be perfect. But they both have potential to become great games. Being different from each other doesn't inherently diminish either of them. And, dear TC, again and again - you TB fans have a lot of new games already. SO PLEASE DO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WE, RTWP FANS, EXIST AND DESERVE TO HAVE GAMES THAT SUIT OUR TASTES. (Caps intended because I'm really, really sick of TB fans coming here and telling me how PoE would be better if it was TB. I played dozens of TB games and I don't like TB. At this point I'm pretty certain I'll never like TB. Sorry.)

Too bad the rest doesn't live up to the standard set by Cyseal. Choosing between sloppy introduction to a great game and great introduction to a game that gets progressively worse after the first zone I'll pick the former and that's why I rate WL2 higher than D:OS.

Fast travel is unlikely because the game is a race against time first and foremost. "It's a game where you can’t save everyone." But faster run speed is possible because they're going to expand the game world and add things they planned for the original but couldn't do back then.

Not sure, maybe this has already been posted, but Pathologic KS campaign was a success. If you like art-heavy indie games this may be something you want to follow. Pathologic project is a remake of a 2005 game by the same studio. The original game was quite unique (formally it was survival horror) and the developers promise many improvements including a better English translation.

Well, what did you expect? For all their "we will listen to our fans and mend our ways" rhetoric, BioWare is still a EA-owned company and there's only one authority they will listen to. Co-op sells your game and customizable attributes don't --> co-op is in, complex attribute system is out. Look through the hype wall and don't let your judgment be clouded by marketing sweet talk. Inquisition may end up being a good game but anyone who expects to get another Origins is on the way to a sore disappointment.

So EA is ready to do anything if it helps persuade me to install Origin, eh? *remembering a scene from the Simpsons* Well, I don't know... maybe if one of their sales managers will dance for me on the phone... /yawn Seriously it's just pathetic. Not that I like Steam but EA and Ubisoft should give up already. They missed the boat and now it's gone.

Go for it! He's deeply involved in the main plot and he's a well written character which is particularly nice to see in DA2 because writing isn't the game's strong point.

I think you misuse the term "arcade" here. Arcade genre is all about reflexes, so it's real-time only. When you can pause at will to think and make tactical choices, it's not arcade. This being said, I understand what you're trying to say but you need to find a better word. P.S. Personally I think that DA2 combat system was nearly perfect (except the lack of the tactical camera). Hope they won't change it too much for DA:I as I'm absolutely looking forward to more DA2-style fights.

http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/14/ was added a week after DA:O release.

Well, I'm enjoying early game so far but if it can get even better - why not?

The poll seems a little silly because in a fantasy world any source of XP can be "justified" with enough imagination. Still, the discussion revolves mostly about what people want and I must confess I hardly want XP in the classic sense. Meaning it's hardly something fascinating no matter where it comes from. Too many games have it and it's almost always the same thing. What I want is a brave new concept. One thing I liked about the Banner Saga was how renown was both XP and currency. I guess it was a step in the right direction. Merging XP and currency may be wrong (depends on the setting) but the idea that character progression can be more exciting and involving than filling a bar until you "ding" is right. Imagine a system where progression is tied, for example, to finding various "mutator" items that increase your magic affinity or make you harder to hit, etc. Maybe even changing your appearance little by little in the process. It's been done, I know. But combine it with a skill usage based system for skill progression and the end result is something rather uncommon and more interesting than plain old XP. And the choices the player has to make can also be more meaningful than the usual "more" vs. "less. It's off-topic of course because PoE will have a classic XP system anyway. But if you ask me what I dream of - well, anything but watching the same bar to fill slowly 20 times over.

AFAIK you can't create any custom replacements for your initial squad members. There are three "emergency" followers available on the Ranger Citadel map who you can recruit if you have less than four rangers but they have preset stats and names.

This may work if buffs are powerful enough to make a difference but generally "no pre-buffing" means you want to rely on passives instead of buffs. In a hard fight spending time on buffs is a luxury you can ill afford. And in an easy fight buffs are superfluous.

I couldn't think of anything original and went with FMJ. Now if only I have time to play on weekdays...

I think a post-apocalyptic world should be reasonably ugly. So WL2 graphics is nearly perfect for the setting. Though of course it wouldn't work for PoE or any fantasy game. The only people who got the impression of a cheap game are dumb kids who we can safely ignore because they were never intended to be WL2 target audience. The actual reason why WL2 got such low ratings is that it's not exactly like Fallout (X-COM, JA2), i.e. not a carbon copy of another game it has nothing to do with. This yielded it a ton of "red" rating on Metacritic. Yes, people are that stupid. And I predict that PoE won't get a high rating either. For precisely the same reason - it's not exactly like BG2 or IWD. Now don't bother telling me something like "hey, I like PoE and I'll give it a 10." For every you there's a guy who will rate it 0/10. You'll see how it works. So this is the problem with creating spiritual successor games. And It's not really a problem because it doesn't stop you from making an awesome game (WL2 is awesome IMO). It just prevents you from getting high ratings.

No, thanks. The artwork is amateurish at best. And stylistically it's just terrible - details destroy the composition instead of building it.

They tried but it was impractical. With Win2k you had to say "2k server" or "2k workstation".

No enough drama ITT. Need moar drama.

No. In a well-balanced system if you miss too often you're doing something wrong (most probably attacking an enemy who is too powerful for your level). Conversely, attrition is a constant stream of low (but nonzero) damage that under certain conditions may be a winning strategy on its own. Usually the conditions are: 1. very high overall damage reduction and/or deflection on everyone in the party (often also crit immunity); 2. combat system that reduces incoming damage to negligible levels when condition 1 is met. If you don't take any noticeable damage and still deal some you're probably going to win the fight. Maybe later rather than sooner but still. In fact, even if you do take damage but always in predictably low amounts, it's no different. As long as you're certain you can kill them before they kill you, it's just calculated losses. And "calculated" is really the key word here. An ultimate attrition-based party may be godmode powerful (if the system allows that) but playing such party will be boring as hell because it removes all surprises, pressure and tactical choices from combat. I'm not in beta so I don't know how much the above applies to PoE at the moment. But grazes spam in combat log is a bad sign and a cause for concern. Why? Because what looks odd and unnecessary on lower difficulties may easily end up being the only way to go on higher difficulties.

Pretty much what happened to me though I still completed act 2 and most of act 3. D:OS has a few strong sides and I still think that it's worth playing (even if you stop after Cyseal). But it has so many problems that combined they totally outweigh the pros towards the end. Characters and conversations are cliché and the main storyline is more or less a rehash of NWN2. (And NWN2 had incredibly weak story. They could copypaste the story from almost any other RPG and it'd be better.) Fights become too easy too soon. Inventory is a chore. Loot is mostly generic random items. I could make it a long post listing everything that annoyed me (screen shaking in too many places for too many reasons, flashy oversaturated colors, that stupid rock-paper-scissors minigame, etc). But let's just say that the biggest issue was "why the hell should I care if nobody else cares?" By nobody I mean the NPCs. It's evident even in Cyseal. The town is besieged by undead and orcs but most of its inhabitants think it's business as usual and plan to live like that forever. Well, they probably know what's good for them. It's the weary apathy of the game world that ultimately snuffs every spark of player's curiosity and fun.

I disagree. In BG some zones were mostly empty and still it was fun to explore them. I've had it up to here with modern CRPG design (as seen in SR:R, D:OS and WL2) where almost every location is a series of narrow tunnels and everything that isn't populated is blocked off by invisible walls (not that visible walls are much better for that matter). I'm not claustrofobic IRL and yet I feel like I'm suffocating. Give me some room to breathe, dammit!

Yeah, CI is king. You can have (reasonably) low AP/turn but you don't want to sacrifice CI for any other stat. On Supreme Jerk you practically have to have 20 CI on every team member thus totally gimping your party in everything non-combat. Which is the main reason why I play on Ranger.

That's because inXile's idea of patching issues doesn't include anything like identifying the root cause. Players complain that combat doesn't feel tactical? OK, let's give mobs unfair advantage. In this case it's the ability to teleport 80 squares away from their position if they don't have any PCs in sight. (Adding insult to injury they don't actually teleport but run so you have to wait for them.) So I'm a bit disappointed too. I expected better. XD I think that WL2 is a good game by today's standards. Comparing it to IWD2 feels awkward because they have so little common ground (3D vs 2D, post-apocalyptic sci-fi vs classic fantasy, RTwP vs TB). But saying that IWD2 was worse and overall bad... *I'll finish this sentence once I stop laughing*