prodigydancer

If you ran for President, I'd vote for you.

I hope there'll be special ammo in the game and it'll be in limited supply. But I thought the topic was about plain arrows/bolts.

E,g, in The Witcher series where personal relationships are a significant plot element. When romances are a part of what is considered "canon" they can be implemented without their usual awkwardness. But this idea isn't not very helpful because few games are based on famous literary works.

Would be if bows could work without arrows. But they can't and there's nothing to decide. Annoyances don't make a game more hardcore. They make it more annoying.

The problem with making a spiritual successor game is that you can never please the fans of the original.

I'd prefer customizable (floating) HUD elements so that I could re-arrange it as I prefer. And fully customizable keybidnings. It's a real shame that so many games don't let you bind something like SHIFT+Q or don't let you customize keybindings at all.

When developers completely remove inventory (ME2) or severely reduce it's functionality (SRR) or remove armor slots (DA2) - those are examples of unnecessary streamlining. But I honestly can't recall any game where inventory management was fun. It's a necessary evil but why make it any more boring than it has to be? Limited ammo makes sense in a survival horror game. In a CRPG it's unnecessary.

Those are not deformities. Quoting from wiki: "Godlike manifest their divine heritage in a variety of ways: wings, horns, strange birthmarks, talons, odd eyes - but they always manifest it somehow." I'm not sure how common godlike are but I'm under impression that they're a bit too common for an odd curiosity. So I'd expect derogatory comments more along the lines of "hey, it's another one of them freaks" rather than "whoa! get a load of that guy's mug!"

Turn based combat sucks. This is my honest and final opinion on the matter after playing a lot of turn-based games. I know TBC fans will never admit it but we - people who prefer RTwP - do exist. And we do want to play a game that suits our tastes once in a while. TToN going TB was a huge disappointment for me.

I'd like to see at least symbolic amounts of XP for kills too. But in the end - who cares where those points came from if you get enough of them to reach the level cap? The lack of inventory space is potentially much more annoying (depending on how many items you need to carry). If there's one thing Larian did right in D:OS it's unlimited inventory space (they sort of ruined it with all the clutter and nonexistent auto-management though).

Indeed. Random spell failures (like anything that is completely random in nature) promote save scumming. That's how people played wild mages in BG2: "Oh, I just blew up my party. Time to reload." Randomness is good as long as it doesn't affect anything important. E.g. random encounters are usually OK.

I know what itemization is. So let me clarify: itemization doesn't exist on its own because what items are theoretically obtainable partially depends on how you can obtain them. Random affixes based itemization implies random drops and random drops are insanely annoying unless the game in question is an ARPG with full on-demand respawn (aka Diablo clone), As long as meaningful items aren't randomly generated it's OK with me. DA:O did it right, for example.

The "easy-to-grasp" part can be achieved with a comprehensive tutorial. But "well-paced" and "well-arranged" are rather subjective definitions. So I doubt anyone can answer you without knowing what exactly you have in mind. Random drops and random affixes? No thanks. I'm fresh from D:OS (actually I'm still playing it but nearing the home stretch) and random itemization was one of those things that killed all the fun little by little. It's every bit as bad as vanilla NWN and even worse.

Pure fighters were terrible because much better options existed. Paladins and rangers outclassed them in melee (partially due to itemization) and ranged weapons just weren't that good in BG2 (although they were very powerful in BG). But the main problem was that fighters were simply boring. While casters had all kinds of spells and rogues at least had to position themselves for backstabs fighters were auto-attack zero trick ponies. ToB brought HLAs and addressed itemization issues. But it was a long walk from Irenicus dungeon to the Grove of the Ancients.

I think I agree with the OP. Being an interesting and original race godlike should stand out a little. Elemental or metaphysical affinity needs to be more pronounced. E.g. Moon Godlike could have perception and/or combat bonuses at night compensated by similar penalties during daytime. Any such advantages (and disadvantages) should be situational but noticeable. Helmet restriction feels awkward. I understand how it's justified from the development perspective - creating concepts and renders with so many different head shapes would be tough. But some sort of protective headgear should be available (though perhaps at a high price).

First, romances were not "discarded". They were never promised in the first place. Next time you might want to read before you sign, so to speak. Second, you should realize that your opinion on what qualifies as a comparable experience is just your opinion and nothing more. --- At this point my biggest disappointment with PoE is that Obsidian didn't put an announcement on KS and the forums in huge bold red letters. Something like: "There won't be any romances in Pillars of Eternity. BSN is that way." I don't want to sound obnoxious but this thread is nothing but 17 pages of incessant whining, whimpering and subtle (or not so subtle) hostility. OK, we get your point: any CRPG that doesn't feature romances is a mindless Diablo clone and an affront to your feelings and therefore it must forever burn in the deepest pits of hell. We get your point but - for better or worse - Obsidian has already made a decision and it certainly seems to be final. So maybe we all should politely agree to disagree and give this thread a much needed rest.

Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Powerful main character in BG2 could carry the party. Otherwise the game was noticeably harder (especially early fights on higher difficulties). Pure fighters were terrible in BG2 because of nerfed grand mastery and because of how magic users damage output and utility scaled at higher levels. Wizard Slayer went far beyond terrible locking the character out of most magic items without offering anything useful in return. Of course, if you wanted to gimp yourself without inventing any artificial rules WS was the way to go.

It's hard to answer this question out of context. Varscona qualified for a superweapon in BG because you could get it very early without too much trouble. But I think it was acceptable. On the other hand Drizzt's scimitars were seriously overpowered (though practically unobtainable without cheating or abusing summons). Indeed, level requirements suck. It's just lazy design.

Hah. Any reference to BG famous voiceover would be grand. Despite not being fully voiced BG had truly epic voice acting.

This isn't so different from my own thoughts on the matter. But when you advertise "no bad options" without delivering it you fall into another trap - people start QQ on the forums. "Hey, classes were supposed to be equal and now class A is way more powerful than class B. Why?" And if you surrender to their demands and nerf class A things certainly get even worse.

I didn't mean that. And - myself being a developer - I assure you there's no need to out of your way to make your code buggy. It'll happen naturally on its own despite your best efforts to the contrary.

This is an interesting reading but I wonder - when every option is as good as the next one doesn't it make choices less exciting? If there are no bad builds what stops player from clicking through chargen screens with their eyes closed picking things at random? If there's no bad gear how can there be good or great gear? Things are good and bad only in comparison with each other. Padded armor may be weak but it lets other armor types shine. Especially if it's very common and dirt cheap. Conversely, full plate tends to be rare, valuable and highly sought after precisely because it provides superior protection. If padded and plate are effectively equal due to trade-offs, why seek either? You can just use whatever drops first till the end of the game (or till the next tier of gear becomes available). Even the possibility of making a mistake (like spending skill points on a seemingly useless ability) may add to player's experience. In some cases you can discover a trick or exploit that makes an otherwise trash skill very useful. OK, bugs and exploits are evil but sometimes they're also amusing and memorable. Of course most things should work as intended but perfection is simply boring. Finally, trade-offs are dangerous. Particularly the example from the article (i.e. higher armor <-> higher speed) tends to be near impossible to balance. Higher speed is almost always preferable because it means you can kill your enemies faster and dead enemies do no damage (usually . So I have my doubts but the idea of no trash options is intriguing nonetheless. I want to see how it'll work in the context of the game.

Personally I think they're ugly in a good way. Generic or animesque "pretty" faces we see almost in every RPG these days are starting to make me seriously sick. Enough is enough. Facial features are always a nice touch but I'm not sure the effort would be justified in a 2.5D game. There are character portraits for that.

Don't let the door hit you... I'm mostly insensitive to trolling but 1-post accounts who go straight to badmouthing the entire community always freak me out. On any forum. What the hell makes you people think you have a right to do that?

*inserts a facepalm pic here* I close my eyes and I can almost visualize a guy telling a story like that at some kind of Anonymous Romancers meeting. If I could draw I'd now have an idea for a comic strip.