Gairnulf

Alright, let's avoid subjectivity on our end as well and compile a list of features we want in and which would constitute our feels. I wonder how much we'll be able to all agree on. It would be a nice experiment. It would put us completely in the game designer's shoes, asking ourselves "What defines "IE feels"?" I'm not defending anyone's position, or hiding myself or the devs behind a subjectivity excuse. Why would I hide or be their advocate, I actually think of myself as of a client. I'm just trying to explain the actions of the developers as best I can. Let's make a thread with a link to a google document for example, ask that it be pinned, and use that document to create a list of features we want. If it's not too late to ask for most of them to be implemented.

I don't have to explain that "feels" are subjective and that declaring commitment to "feels" is just enough to set off everybody's wishful thinking without putting down promises of specific features or how the game would work? I hope I don't, because I won't try to explain it Josh is a humanitarian, I'm sure he chooses his words well during a public presentation. I agree with you, combat hardly feels like the IE games. I guess I'll have to live with it though. They won't go back on things like engagement, I don't believe they will. The best I'm hoping for is sensible combat enemy AI (as for ally AI, they can leave everything on manual control). I'm undecided on whether engagement is bad or good for what it's worth. If the goal is to get combat as close to the IE games as possible, then yes, engagement it's not a step in that direction. But I also doubt they would tell us that, not so directly. After all they are people who have spent lots of work on something and are looking for returns on their work. I can't be mad at them for that. Me, I can live with engagement. After all I've been through with the Dragon Age games, I definitely can't be put off by something like engagement, engagement mechanics next to the combat mechanics' choices of many modern RPGs is like Relativity theory compared to Hesiod's cosmogony haha.

I've listened to it, what I meant was that unless these two points translate into a list of specific features, they are just a declaration. And translating them is something I'm pretty sure the developers have been avoiding at all costs, because they'd like some freedom of expression as well

OIC, you made him chase your wizard while being engaged to other party members? EDIT "engaged to" - lol

Let's be realistic, the last two bullets are just selling points, they allow too much interpretation without being elaborated further.

What, that you haven't taken damage? That the rogue has Carnage?

I thought the point was that they don't reacquire targets after someone bugs them the first time.

It's similar to what I do with my BB Rogue carrying an arbalest (I think that's more damage than anything the wizard can do atm). I had a curious thing happen today. I attacked some spiders that way, killing the first one with a sneak attack. The rest of the spiders chased the BB Rogue, but to reach him they had to pass by the BB Fighter, so some of them got hooked to him because of Engagement. The others kept on chasing the BB Rogue, and caught up with him quite far from the rest of the party. They killed him, of course, but after that they just stood there and didn't join in the fight of their fellow spiders against my other characters. I guess it's because they were out of their line of sight and hearing. Either that or they decided to take a little break after the BB Rogue

Judging by the log, some fingers must have been lifted.

Should we judge an action by its consequences or by its initial motivation?

I'm telling myself off for spending so much time on the beta honestly. It's attracting me, but I've got work to do as well

Actually, scratch that. I went through this procedure again and I noticed I only get acces to my stash after I've selected a room at the inn. I guess that's how it should work.

Heh, I don't want to think the rest of the game has the same density of bugs, but I fear it does. I'm a web developer (although I haven't gone to school for that), and I've spent some time as a QA on commercial software, and also finding bugs, for now, really isn't that hard Sensuki has studied programming as far as I know.

Hmm, I watched your video and now I see what you mean. I wonder if this is related to having an animal companion. I can't reproduce it.

I submitted a bug about the sound inside the mill, but that one is fixed now. Actually I noticed there are two stages of the mill's sounds heard inside, and it was the same for the sound heard outside. Turn up your volume and adjust your view so that the wheel is in some of the corners of the screen. It works for me - I hear it quiet when near the edge of the screen and loud when closer to the center.

This has been fixed in 364

Is this the intro when starting the game or the intro when starting to create a new character?

Half of developers not even making it to the first big city kind of implies that considerable portion of content is not main quest related. We don't know enouh to say, but it does sou d pretty big.

While it is up to the player, if the difference between doing that or not doing that amounts to a level of experience for your party, that's a rather large difference in difficulty come the hopefully-reasonably-difficult final boss fight. So the player who chooses to not do so is handicapping themselves which means that the designer is actively encouraging you do so. It's up to the player in the same way that deliberately using weapons you're not skilled with is up to the player. Yeah, it's a choice, but you are deliberately discouraged from doing so by the game. Tab-search is its own beast, but I will say that the "effort" that tab-search removes is not an effort I am looking for in any game. A good rule of thumb is to first ask "Does the effort constitute an effort for the players skills, strategy or tactics?" If the answer is no, and let's be clear that in the case of replacing tab-search with manual pixel hunting that is most definitely a "No", then it's almost certainly best ditched. My proposition about tab-searching is not that it be removed but that it highlights hidden containers based on a behind-the-scenes check that the characters preform, but that's a different subject. By extension of your logic, killing the first gonlin is as much a player's choice as hunting down the last one, and it affects your later capabilities in the same way.

Fixed in 364.

Whether or not that will be his play style is up to the player though. And scanning the map for the last goblin requires more effort than another gamey habit I've quoted in the past - scanning rooms for loot with the press of a key.

Am I too old, I thought people would know the quote source

No! Nevah! seriously, what is there, after the last IE games? The general tendency of streamlining is the only thing that comes to my mind, and we shall never surrender to that. We backed this game because there was a guarantee it would follow the spirit of the IE games. Of course, I would be happy to see improvements as well. It's a bit far fetched example, but compare Age of Empires: The Conquerors to Rise of Nations. That's the kind of improvement while preserving the spirit of the original that I'd be happiest to see. BGII was in the middle ages, and PoE is the early 16th century. I want to feel the Reformation! Which reminds me - I for one think the new targeting markers with the baroque elements in them look cool.

If it took you one week to speedrun through the main quest, this makes it bigger than Baldur's Gate and probably around the size of Baldur's Gate II, but this also depends on what part of the whole content consists of the main quest, so it's not that much of a good estimation to compare it to those games, I know. I'm curious to see if the game will ship with an interesting to play engagement mechanic and how you'll achieve that. Talking about the "moneys", would you consider doing a serious denomination across the board, for all currencies? Doing maths on the scale of hundreds and thousands doesn't go well with the "based on early 16th century" setting. You have my greatest respect for showing the good taste of adding numerous currencies, although it would have been nice to also have moneychangers in big port cities, but I guess that was too much overhead for a secondary feature. Let me note something positive for a change - I loved the voiceover quality and voice acting. No cheesyness, nothing over the top. Just how I've always wanted it. The portraits are also spot-on, so much so that I wish more of the quest npcs had portraits. A DLC hopefully.

You just need to add "spell/talent cooldowns" to the spreadsheet and you're set )