Lord_Mord

So what? The film "The Dragonslayer" revolved entirely around a deus ex machina and it worked pretty well. I don't know anyone who does not like it. I'm tired of seeing the same "scientific" kind of "magic" again and again. Dr. Strange feels like Inception, which feels like Matrix and so on and so on. Movie and game magic these days has become nothing more than a physic simulation demo reel. There is no real difference between the Hobbit movies and transformers. Big beasts, impressive stunts, particle effects, something big crashes into something big and the physics are very believable. That is not magic. That is not even the Hobbit I read. Just compare it to LOTR 1. Burton even managed to turn Alice in Wonderland into something rational. I read it (that was when LOTR1 came out, so I dont remember everything). Creating the world from a song is not what I would call a rational and scientific approach. Of course there is a logic behind everything, but it is an irrational one. Again: I'm not speaking about "no rules at all". But "Say Beetlejuice three times and he will appear" is a clear rule. We don't need an explanation how exactly he does the appearing. If I have a dragon in a game, I don't have to know that dragons evolved from lizards, I don't have to know how it breathes fire or why it eats virgins. It's totally sufficient to know that it does. Did you recognize that dragons these days don't even eat virgins anymore? And why? Because there is no rational explanation for it. That is so incredibly boring.

Magic has to have some kind of rules to provide "drama", but not necessarily rules based on physics or something else from the real world. Just look at David Lynch movies. Everything that happens there actually makes sense and has clear rules. That rules are not always obvious for the viewer, but you always know that there are rules. One example for "irrational" magic that noone mentioned is LOTR. We never get a real explanation what happens there, we don't really know how mighty Gandalf for example really is. When he commands the Balrog to not cross the bridge, what was that? A simple command or threat without any magic involved at all? A spell? What kind of spell? A barrier? A mind trick? When he talks to Bilbo and does that Evil-Black-Gandalf-Thing, is it an illusion? Does he mess with Bilbos brain? Is it some kind of insight into Gandalfs true nature? Has Gandalf any magical powers at all? What is it whith that Gandalf the Grey/White thing? Is there some kind of hierarchy and how does it work? How do you become "the White"? And: Do we really need to know any of that?

I honestly thought, that someone is taking the "too much loot" discussion to the limit.

I don't know what I do wrong, but everytime I really try to contribute something useful to a discussion I become involved with troll people and suddenly am an active part of this downward spiral to madness. So it's not that easy.

I know

That is a funny spelling error. I have a cat named Slon.

I have two cats and a dog. I had animals my entire live and love them very much. But I don't upload pictures of them, don't watch cat videos, don't read any animal stuff on social media and passionately hate the idea of pets in computer games, computer games about pets or any depicition of pets in media just for the sake of being there. I hate oversized pokemonesque wolfs or foxes with fancy hair, unnaturally colored fur, animals with magical attributes or overly intelligent animals. The only acceptable animal in a game is a dog, given that it has a realistic size and shape. If we are to get a pet room on this ship, I sincerely hope that there is an option to turn it into a torture chamber. So keep in mind, that I will do those animals as many harm as the game lets me to and it will be your fault. If the game won't let me, I will roleplay to do so. I'll skin those little ****ers alive. I really needed to say that. Edit: I don't want to scare anyone. I really love my real life animals and I treat them as well as I can.

Yeah. I built websites for a company that still uses their home-built 20 year old, crappy Typo3-derivate. It is far past the point were minor changes can disguise the fact that it is old. It should have been rebuilt from the ground or better totally replaced years ago. But as my boss always says: "It may have it's flaws, but it works. Why should we change something that works?" To improve it, of course. To see, if it can be made better. To be the ones, that do the next step and not always the ones that crawl over the finish line after all other competitors. To have a unique piece of software and not another clone. And last but not least: Just to find out, what works best and not be satisfied by the first solution that kinda works. Why do a sequel and not try to make it better? Just compare BG1 to BG2. In my opinion "Never touch a running system!" is a mantra for calming down lazy developers.

Where can I back that game?

From my observation so far, Obsidian are the only ones working on improving systems others just copy out of pure lazyness and lack of imagination. I think this is a good thing, even if it should mean that they accidently took a step backwards. Which at this point no one can say. I'm really looking forward on how this turns out. And even if it does not turn out that well, I will enjoy the game anyway and will have something to look forward to in PoE3: Seeing what they come up with next. Be a little more adventurous, guys!

Edit: Originally I wanted to post a bartitsu video, but they look pretty lame

Noone except for you would use that feature.

That's exactly the way I played BG. I agree that the game not always allowed that and probably wasn't designed that way, but oftentimes it worked. As a kid i understood this game in a sandbox way. My hope was, that PoE would find some in-between-sollution and they kind of did. But I would still like to have more creative, not predefined options.

I like the term "anti-walkers"

And what would that be? The process of creating NPC portraits is basically the same. A character, created by a writer, described to the artist by an art director or something, drawn with other peoples vision of the game in mind and then changed multiple times based on feedback from the team and the players.

@ Sedrefilos: Does your signature say: "Devil! Ghetto Tomahawk!"? Because that's what google says it means.

Definitely. Maybe not all dwarves. That is a sea-dwarves only thing. Edit: We need more different dwarves after all. The more kinds of dwarves there are, the more people will find their kind of dwarves. Elf-dwarves for example (called a dwelf), romantic dwarves (dwarcy), dark-dwarves and light-dwarves (dwark/dwight), LGBT-dwarves (dweer) and japanese schoolgirl dwarves (mini-san) all pretty much hated by the conservative living-under-the-surface dwarves (simply called dwarf or cisdwarf).

You know tentacle hentai movies? Those people. Let's call them cthulhuphiles.

Be that as it may. I'm totally aware that most people don't like that, as most people do not enjoy to be frustrated. But it is not necessarily an improvement. Just a different approach. And it doesn't matter if it's an RPG or not. Games have to be abstract by nature. So as a gamer you will have to live with abstractions. I'm still waiting for Obsidians Planescape... Less combat. More thinking. More surrealism. More puzzles. More dead ends.

Well for me BG always was a trial and error puzzle. If I get beaten in PoE it always sucks. I just have to repeat the fight and be quicker and more focused. In BG it often meant: You did something wrong; try again and change your tactics. It was just the way things worked. In my opinion this was a remnant of the early games. Many text adventures revolved around getting killed over and over and always start again from the beginning. Kind of like Planescape Torment but more frustrating. Some of those games were really punishing. Either you like that or you don't. But bad design? No. Just different design. Better design in my opinion as it really made you use your head.

So all the text adventures revolving around dead ends and trial and error were bad?

OK, look: I'm on your side. I do like prebuffing, but it is a totally valid argument that prebuffing creates a lot of busywork. And it is also true that either it is a thing everyone has to do or it is useless. If the choice of prebuffing or not does not affect the fight, there is something wrong with the buffs. So in my opinion this is enough counter to your points.

What's the problem with those maps? For me they look perfectly normal. English language and stuff. The only difference is the URL.

We are bored enough to stalk Josh Sawyer on his bike trips. Time for an update... Or let something explode ingame and post the video at least.

Than I would be glad to hear which tomboys he was speaking of. Besides: Does he really think that your average housewife would be a great addition to any adventuring group? Planescape Torment. Annah was a tiefling thief with daggers. As I remember, she sweared a lot.