Orchomene

Mostly because I play it a lot on P&P, but the classless experienced based system of White Wolf (Vampires: The Masquerade, for instance) has my preference. I know it has some balance issues, but it gives as the same time more freedom than class based systems and more control (from DM or dev perspective) of power (less cheasing or unbalance because of a poor tactic of development that could easily ruin your game).

In the first area, you may want to do all the points of interest. Then, in Velehn, you should be less focused on this but more in following the main quest and the secondary quests around the area where the main quest leads you to. You can then look at the point of interests of these area without going too far. Around the tenth level, you go to the cities and the secondary and main quests around those areas until about the twenties where you can go to Skellige and follow main/secondary quests and the interest points. After that, you can go back to Velehn and clear the areas you missed. This way, you won't lose too much your interest as if you focus on finishing Velehn and its points of interest, it will become boring half way. That's my two cents advise. Points of interest are way better in Blood and Wine by the way.

If you kill everyone, in the main room (with the statue), there is the soul of the main protagonist that you can interrogate. You will then complete the quest and get the new quests.

The check made is if you have accepted a second quest from the Dozens, not if you have done the second quest. If that's the case, I think you need to complete it and go with them.

I've read all of it and many things are quite relevant (at least the issues). You should definitely have split your topic into one about gameplay and one about content. In a single player game with pause, I really don't like the 'tank/dps/heal' paradigm. I think that ranged opponents should focus on ranged enemies and not on 'the heavy armored fighter with a shield'. It would make more relevant to have defensive stats on rangers and mages. But if this is not the way the AI works, I will have to do with it. In this regards, the attributes and armors systems may need a bit of reworking. I just gives some rules I find important to keep in mind, not a specific distribution of systems. 1. Accuracy seems to be difficult to integrate into the attributes system without creating a mandatory stat. 2. Almost every stat should have an offensive and defensive bonus. 3. If there is either no offensive or no defensive bonus, add an utilitary bonus. 4. A defensive character should have viable builds linked to the same number of stats than an offensive. 5. Every offensive type of character (melee, ranged, caster) should need the same number of important stat, with maybe a bit less for melee if it requires a bit more defense to be viable. 6. Balance between type of damage dealers is not achieved through rough numbers only (dps) but also counting its tactical advantages (disabling opponents, distance of attacks, survivability...). The armor system is just bad because of the lack of "splash" damages to the non defensive characters and the way the AI selects the targets. I don't like at all the threshold effect of deflection : either you focus on it or you forget about it. If you have 10 deflection or 0 deflection, it's more or less the same. I don't have a lot to say about the other points that seem to me less important. Just one question : Why putting the stiletto into noble focus and the dagger into ruffian ? The dagger is a noble weapon, historically. It's made for game hunting which was a sport for the nobles. The stiletto is a weapon used because it can be hidden and used for assassination.

I confirm the boots of speed issue.

From a tanking perspective, Perception and Resolve are your main stats to get enough deflection. But it's important if you also take abilities to up deflection during leveling. As said before, you either tend to focus on offensive stats and consider killing opponents before they kill you or defensive stats to take the hits with your followers doing the damages. Mixing both gives more flexibility but less efficiency. Your choice.

It's easy to see which character is written by MCA, just count the number of "..."

As far as we know, when the Engwithian created their own gods, they destroyed all other religions through use of inquisition. Thus, all the established religions are the religions of the 11 Engwithian gods. Eothas being one of the established religions up to recent times, it seems obvious he is considered as an Engwithian gods by Thaos and the inquisitors. Otherwise, its religion would have destroyed 2000 years ago. That doesn't mean there is no other god, being unique or multiple. Just that Eothas is a construct god. That also doesn't mean that Eothas is dead for ever or anything like that. The fact there is no constellation of Eothas in Teir Evron is no proof there wasn't before he died. The constellations are appearing dynamically when you put the Adra into the machine. I too think we will hear again about Eothas, being that the PC is its reincarnation or anything else.

There is a check on your level of Honesty (level 1 or 2, I think).

This is true. I probably don't use them enough, but at the same time, non encounter abilities can only be cast once per rest. I guess in the end, what I'm ultimately saying in this thread is, I thought the barb would be decent at OT (with some hybrid gear), when in reality he's not. And, that 2 fighters seem to reduce party down time (and reloading) so much more than any other tank option - imo Barbarian is not an OT. Paladin is with the correct choice of talents and attributes. It's matter of balance : you can't have a melee AOE dps being too tanky. Of course, having two fighters or paladins will make your party more on the defensive side. On the other hand, a more offensive party relies more on the correct choice of mobs to target and the quickness. Roman legions against Mongol cavalry.

Oh I definitely think bugs when I think Bugthesda, just out of interest were you running an unofficial patch at the time? *edit* I ask because the only version that was available for a long time had a 100% crash issue outside Rivet City. I don't think so. It was pretty close to the release of the game on my first playthrough (so unmodded). With the console, I could tp into the lab of the boat to go on with the main quest, so there was a work around.

Crowd Control is your friend : fear, stun, confusion. Use it. Like a lot when there are too many enemies. A good part of the companions you can find have lots of crowd control abilities they can develop.

I remember playing Fallout 3 and having this issue where near the "city in the boat" (don't rember the name), my game would crash. Always. This was a game stopping bug, at least for the main story. Yet, people never think Bethesda = bugs When Obsidian releases a game it's always the same "this game is crawling with bugs". Sure, easy. Every game has bugs. A lot. So, I won't say this game has no bugs. But I have yet to experience a game stopping one and I'm on my second ply through. Btw, software proof testing can be quite heavy. One of my former colleagues went developing for military nuclear submarines sonars. One year of development. 6 years of testing. That's what you need if you want 100% efficiency. Of course, if you only want 99% efficiency, you can do only one tenth of the testing.

It's good you are not a music criticist, you would rate any new music a 6 because it far worse than Mozart. Besides, as it's been stated before, PoE is better than BG in some aspects, like story and dialogues. All in ll, if you don't like being criticized, don't write critics...

In Teir Evron, you can find a book for every of the 11 gods. There are 6 shrines that are related to (1) Woedica (2) (Skaen)/Rymrgand/(Ondra) (3) Wael (4) Berath (5) Hylea (6) (Magran)/Galawain/(Abydon) So every god doesn't have a shrine for itself. Only the gods that mean something for the Glanfathans, it appears. So it may be possible that Eothas doesn't appear on the ground because he is dead. Being a god mostly for farmers, he be related to another god for the Glanfathans, like Hylea, maybe (gods of sky/wind/light/air...). Like there is a shrine for Galawain but not for Magran, because those gods share some alliance/relation (through fire). The great "truth"/discovery of the Engwithians is that there is no god. Why wouldn't have they found Eothas but he is found 2000 years later ? Why wouldn't have Thaos destroyed the Eothan religion before if he wasn't an Engwithian god ? Many elements couldn't fit well with the psychology of Thaos if Eothas is not an Engwithian god. I think he is not in Teir Evron just because he is no more a god/alive. That's all.

KOTOR is flat and boring, never replayed it. KOTOR 2 has among the best written NPCs in a crpg, I replayed it a lot even with the poor Malachor V.

Sorry, misspelled it, it's the secret world, not sacred. Can't edit my post.

I played a bit of SWTOR recently, but got bored at the end. The HL content is a bit poor. The leveling is very good for some classes (like Imperial agent). I'm waiting for PoE and thus playing a new chracter of The Sacred World. I think it has very good points for a mmorpg : the character system is very flexible and allows for a lot of combinations (no level, you gain skill points and power points that allow you to buy every powers and every weapon skill in the end, yet you have to decide on a "deck" of 7 active abilities and 7 passives). The atmosphere is quite good to, lovecraftian, playing as a member of a secet society. There are some investigation quests that are pretty hard to solve, either because of the puzzles or the details. Fights are a bit more easy now (they lowered a bit the difficulty), yet you may have to be careful not to attract too many mobs. All in all, for a small price (this is a mmo you pay for the game and don't have to pay a subscription after), you get plenty of fun hours, even if you are not into mmos and group playing, lots of solo contents.

I really don't know what to expect at the moment. What I don't understand is the interest to have a mmo gameplay in a game that is not either pvp or raid instances oriented. I mean, having a strong balance and fact paced combat are necessities in a mmo for obvious reasons, but in a crpg, even in a DM setting crpg, it's not necessary. If I want to play a game that plays like a mmo, I play a mmo. But at the moment, I am not sure if this is really how the game will be played. We know that some demo can be quite far from the final game.

Paladin and ranger.

I loved the spell animations at high level. The Mechanus canon one is very impressive. I'm also in the crowd of "one of the best crpg".

"If I can play a dwarf, then I'll buy it." Who said that ?

On top of my worst RPG, I would put those that are not even playable (bad controls and things like that). Thus, it would be : Gods Lands of infinity Dungeon Gate. Yes, those games are not even refered anywhere, for good reasons. Then those that were playable, but I couldn't finish. Too boring : Planet Alcatraz Oblivion After that, games I couldn't finish because I was blocked by some mechanics at some moment and couldn't convince myself to go beyond the difficulty : Arx Fatalis (don't remeber completly, but there is a moment you need to run in some passage chased by a monster that OS you). Legend of Grimrock (don't remember which monster) And finaly, a game I've forced myself to finish but don't know why : Mass Effect 2

On sale on Gog : http://www.gog.com/game/goodbye_deponia