Gairnulf

I'm on windows 8.1 so I can't say, haven't tested on Mac OS. Just from your initial description of the problem it sounded like you've visited enough different areas for the game to start crashing on area load. I hope they fix that in the patch that's supposed to arrive in the coming week.

One week and just 45 votes? Son, I am dissapoint. Come on, people!

This seems to happen to anyone after enough transitions between Crossing/Village/any dungeon. It's probably not related to having a sixth character. I read my error.log after the last crash and it said there had been an error writing to a memory address. I'm not a "real" programmer (just a web front-end), but I think the problem is inevitable in this beta build and it's called: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

This basically means that the more a player dislikes combat, the harder it would get for him relative to someone who uses every opportunity to solve things through battle, i.e. you are punished for not fighhting battles. My opinion on the whole question is that battles, when they are present, should always be memorable, and this should be what the designers should strive for. In other words, I'd like as few battles as the story/quests permit, but design them uniquely, make them count, so that I still feel rewarded after winning the battle, and the xp is an afterthought, not a reason to grind through a battle. The question "xp for battles or no" is the wrong question, because it pre-supposes that gaining xp is the motivation behind figghting battles. The right question is "what should the motivation be for the player to fight battles" And to this question my answer is - I prefer it's not the xp. And what's the difference if I get little xp from the quest and some from the battles while completing it, or if I get none from the battles but much from the quest? That is, for quests which require fighting to be completed. Some examples of battles which I liked and battles which I disliked, taken from Baldur's Gate II: silly battles were those with the goblins in Irenicus' dungeon, but how memorable was the battle with the fallen paladins? I'd happily go through such a battle without xp. For me XP is like the excuse that I should bother fighting a battle, and if this activity, fighting a battle, has other attractive qualities, I'd do it without the XP 'compensation'. A similiar example from the backer beta is fighting Medreth's gang vs fighting the beetles,

I had learned much of the English knew around the age of 14 from Grim Fandango and later Baldur's Gate II

Hmm, I wonder if these dates are telling us something about the release date.

I was actually hoping they would only remain there in the beta, but Iwould like to keep the engagement lines.

I agree that option 2 is the more fun option to play, and option 1 just replicates the problem, only instead of <tab> you have a skill which you should constantly keep turned on. The miniquest option sounds too complex to be introduced on a grand scale, and it would have to be tailored on a per-area basis, which would be costly, I imagine. I'm leaning towards an option of adding difficulty rating for finding containers containing loot. If your skill is too low, the container doesn't light up for you and you can't see it, or interact with it, and you have no way of knowing if there was a container there, whether or not you are using the highlight button.

"... The situation heated up quickly, so the mage was forced to cast a quick Withdraw..."

Damn, this sounds so cool, I don't want a piglet now!

When thinking on this question, I group these solutions as "Introducing a skill that determines how much/what loot the plyer would find", but for me this is really a more veiled variant of another solution - outright randomization of the contents of containers for loot. I can't say how costly this approach would be to implement, but I'm not sure I like it. I can't exactly put my finger on why, but it feels a bit unfair when you have to fight a battle and then the reward is decided by chance. All that is unless the skill check doesn't always return the same kind and the same amount of loot, with no random factors. Then the loot found would only differ in different playthroughs, which sounds fine to me. This however runs the risk of unbalancing the skills, if the rewards for successfull high checks are excessive.

I didn't suggest two types of containers. It's not even realism, though. It's not like, realistically, your character could spot anything at all hidden in the entire room, simply by utilizing a floating mouse-cursor that some deity-like entity (who was ultimately controlling the character) moved about the room until things were revealed, but only to that entity.You've already got a system in place for your character to have limited capabilities that you, the player, cannot leapfrog over. If your character has crap Intellect, then, no matter how clever you are, you cannot cause him to produce some huge, clever dialogue response in order to solve some problem. So, likewise, if your character has crap Perception (or whatever you want to affect it), then he should be incapable of detecting subtle, hidden things, no matter how many times you dance your mouse cursor over them.So, again, if they want to put in some sort of thorough searching mechanic, then that would be cool. But, it shouldn't be up to the player to literally search for hidden things, beyond having your party actually go see what's down this branch of the cave as opposed to just ignoring that entire corridor.It makes no sense, in the context of the entire RPG system, to force the player to rely on his own perceptive abilities to detect some tiny "hidden" trinket on the ground 5 feet away from the character. Your character would pretty easily be able to spot that, just by glancing in that direction, but, to the player, it's one little tiny pixel that MIGHT be a slightly different shade of color from the dirt around it.Don't get me wrong... finding hidden objects on the screen can be fun. I'm not saying that's just dumb to enjoy that at all. It's just silly, in the context of an RPG in which your character's ratings determine all the other outcomes. Tying the chance to spot a container to some attribute pr a derived stat sounds very cool to me, but I wonder if it isn't too late in the dev cycle for this to be a realistic thing to wish for.

And do you think this would change anything in how you use the function? Personally, I'd still submit the temptation and keep the function available. sorry there, mental lapse from my side. I was thinking IE / TAB with its multi functions. If it's a key solely for highlighting, you're right of course that you wouldn't need a separate key for the option. I do like your suggestion, but i'm not sure how many players would want it after the BG2 TAB experience, perhaps your idea could/would be turned on/off in the options menu? That would be nice, an extra difficulty toggle feature, like the Trial of Iron mode Or they could just include it into Trial of Iron. It seems like a masochist's mode anyway Especially if your (only available) savegame becomes corrupted due to some bug while the game is still in its early versions.

So when the buttons are separated will they be hidden via separate gems, or by the same gem?

I was talking about PoE in my last post, when I talked about tooltip delay. The IE games already had tab show tooltips on buttons, before it highlighted containers.

1. Are the talents/spells shown only on hover or all the time? 2. Are any of the three main parts of the HUD hideable?

And do you think this would change anything in how you use the function? Personally, I'd still submit the temptation and keep the function available. Having hidden caches that are very small is a solution I'd go with, but what this achieve is make the container harder to see for the player. My goal is to restrict the player from being certain he has discovered all containers with the press of a key. I want leave him/her in some doubt, like "Ok, I gave this area enough time, and there's nothing more to find, I think". And it never bothered you, never felt like it's unnaturally easy to loot areas? You are against the solution, but would you agree this is something that would be nice to be addressed, or there is no problem for you?

I'm also used to the way it is in the IE games, but found the tooltip delay controls, and it seems to fix my problem, also gives me more information that pressing tab over an ability in the IE games does.

That's the only reason I would mouse over buttons besides in order to click them. And it helps me learn the abilities' names and effects faster. When I don't need it anymore, I'll turn it off.

Yes, but then you're counting my vote against (I voted Sensuki's in the poll and then Saeri posted his later) - so my preference between 'IE Nostalgic' and Sensuki's is for Sensuki's, but between that and Saeri's version, I'd vote for Saeri's. But that's probably enough arguing over what the poll results mean You can change your vote after having cast it. Just consider "IE nostalgic" to encompass any version of the UI with such a layout

However you can reduce the tooltip delay to 0, which means tooltips appear instantly even without pressing a key.

You're clearly in minority with this opinion.He is not a minority atm because from 30 votes only ten prefer the IE layout. I hope for at least a 100 votes before we can judge anything from the results though. But they're talking about Saeri's version which isn't an option in the poll (The 'IE' version you gave doesn't have the IE 'feel' and looks like a minimalist UI laid out oddly (rectangular block in top left should be a longer, thinner line - might look better then). - Saeri's version wins on style (IMO) ) I count all the votes for the "IE nostalgic" version to be votes for Seari's version as well (sorry, I can't edit the initial post and the poll any more). Since it's a "nostalgic" version, I suppose whoever voted for it would also support the version that's even closer to the BGII UI.

You're clearly in minority with this opinion.He is not a minority atm because from 30 votes only ten prefer the IE layout. I hope for at least a 100 votes before we can judge anything from the results though.

For me reaching the PnP experience, meaning the kind of uncertainty in a game that can only be provided by other real, thinking people around you is the ultimate achievement, But don't you feel it gets too gamey, having this scan feature on, after you've just been a having the most classic rpg experience?

I'm pretty sure it's not in the current build, but it will be in the final release. Sorry but I can't cite a source. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong.