Madscientist

Great videos. I got some questions: Monks 1: If you play a monk you are forced to be a tank, because you need to be hit to do abilities. If you send a fighter or paladin with a shield in first, the enemies will attac him and you have only your auto attacs. Is that correct? Monks 2: You said you gain 1 wound for 10 points of damage. Is it all damage added up or is it the damage per hit? Example 1: When you get hit for 19 points damage twice, do you get 2 wounds? Example 2: You get hit for 1 damage 10 times, do you get 1 wound? Firearms: Somebody said that you have to reload firearms manually after combat. Is that correct and how do you do that? Spell accurancy: I assume the accurancy bonus of your spell is added to your base accurancy. The character screen shows only your accurancy with your equiped weapon. I do not think that an accurate melee weapon in your hand increases your chance to hit a far away enemy with a fireball. Most classes have a different base accurency for ranged and melee attacs. Is there a way to determine your hit chance if you use something different than your auto attac? (except looking at the combat log afterwards)

- explore everything of the map - try to finish all side quests before continuing the main quest - I always play a good char. I tried to play some games the evil way but usually I quit after a short time (like NWN2). The only exception was arcanum. After finishing the game with a char with max talking skill who finished all quests the best possible way I replayed it with an idiot orc fighter/thief. The idiot answers are so funny and usually you do not get the best result as idiot anyway. He always took the worst option and killed several towns. - save often. Before every fight, before you talk to somebody, before you open something and before you enter a new area. - reload a lot. Give the wrong answer, a char takes too much damage or dies, I run into a trap -> reload - I spend a lot of time with character creation (2h rerolling to create a party for IWD) . But when I choose a char I stick with it till the end unless the char turns out to be very useless. - I do not use any mods. (except a community patch for very buggy games). I want to play the game as the developer has created it. After finishing Bg1+2 several times I installed BGT, but I almost feel like a cheater now. - I grab everything that is not nailed to the ground and sell it, even if I swim in money. - I have no problems to rest often. In NWN2 I rested after every fight. In other games I returned to the inn when my chars were hurt. EDIT: - Play the game for the first time without help. Then read a guide (if possible the official one) and try to find absolutely everything if I play it again. Looks like I am really paranoid, but my other personalities and the invisible evil forces that hunt me like it that way and I myself do not care

When D:OS came out, there was big confusion on gog because the numbers of the patch files were different than the numbers in game. I think this problem has been solved for D:OS now. I am not sure if gog or the developer or somebody else was responsible for that. But in case the developer was part of the problem: Please make sure that the name of the patch file is the same as the version number shown in game ! ! ! I will not go to steam and I think that patches are better than a buggy game. If this problem was caused by gog alone, please consider this whole post as pointless.

I said that having tons of money is not a big problem in RPGs. Maybe I was wrong. I have finished NWN2 OC and now I play MotB. In MotB the game trows gold and items at you like crazy. There is a rotten barrel next to an old barn and inside it you find: several thousend gold and a magic weapon! There are shops with good and expensive equipment, but I had no problems with buying everything I need after a short time of playing. Don´t get me wrong. Regarding story, setting and characters MotB is one of the best games ever made (together with PST). But epic equipment does not feel epic when every pile of dirt has tons of gold and a magic item. I said before that the best magic items in BG2 were completely overpowered, and I still think so. But the way HOW you get them was correct. You need to kill a dragon for a sword or you need to clear several dungeons to get money to buy one item. In BG and IWD, getting a magic item felt importand to your char. And thats it. The absolute amount of money you have is not importand. It is importand that an artefact you find feels significant for you. You got to have some effort to get it, like killing a big monster, finding a secret room in a dungeon or spending some time to get enough money for it.

You say that BG2 is too hard. Then what do you say about BG1 where almost everything can kill you with a single hit in the beginning. Sure, Bg2 has some hard battles, but in the beginning you can find some easier things to start with. I think the main problem with BG combat is the following: When you do not know the system many fights are just frustrating. But if you know this counterspelling thing, then the whole game becomes a piece of cake. There is nothing in between. I tried to play the game again some time ago, but I quit after some time. It was so easy because I knew where I find item X and enemy Y and what they do. Playing a different class did not change much. I always had a party of 6, so I always had a fighter, a thief, a cleric and a mage in my party. The only difference is that my char is stronger than my party members, but they do their job good enough. I am not somebody who tries to solo a game, because party interaction is importand for me. I am happy that you learned to enjoy the game.

Thats it ! Your stats are determined by the fact that you are an elf mage with scientist background from the mountains. Arcanum is a good example. You have lots of possible combinations, but you do not roll for stats.

Will there be a forum where I can report bugs once the entire game is out? I have not seen such a thing for the other games on this site. Now players could only test a very small part of the game, so even if everything was perfect here you would find several things in the other areas. Right now I play NWN2 OC again and I find tons of bugs by just playing it (not actively searching for errors). I do not have the beta, but I want to help to make better games in the future.

I hope there will be no rolling for stats in any future RPG. In BG, IWD and realms of arcadia I rerolled for 2 hours until I had the perfect party. I did this while watching TV and than I saved the game ( and in case of IWD it took some month until I started to play with this group.) A point buy system creates more balanced chars and it is easier to balance the difficulty level. PnP and computer RPGs are two different things and just because somethings exist in one of them you don´t need to put it in the other.

First of all, I do not think that this is a problem at all. I played lots of games where this happened and it didn´t stop me from enjoying the game. I can think of 3 ways to handle it: - The western RPG: Thats what we dicuss here. We have some need for money in the beginning but sooner or later you get more money than you ever need. It worked for many games we consider to be good (like the IE games), so why change it. - The JRPG: Whenever you come to a new town, you have to kill monsters until you have enough money for your new gear and spells. I don´t like grinding because it stops the flow of the game. Killing the same monster again and again for 1 hour just to get a weapon that does 5 points more damage before you go to the next dungeon is not fun. - My completely insane idea: The game calculates the money you get depending on the money you have. If you have lots of money, chest and enemies give very little and if you have no money you will get more loot. This is complete nonsense and it would ruin the game but you get a solution for a problem that did not exist in the first place. note1: Those concepts are not true for absolutely every western or JRPG, but quite a lot of them are this way. note2: RPGs main focus should be on story, exploration and interactivety (choice and consequence). They are not economy simulators. When people invented modern RPJs they said: You need items. You can buy items in shops. You need money to buy things. You get money from chests, enemies and selling items. Nobody ever questioned that concept.Money is just a tool to get items. As long as it does not disturb story or exploration, money should not be much of an issue for developers. question: Is there any good RPG that does not have money or that uses a completely different economy system?

Gromnir is right. If you design the game in a way that you can finish it by taking only the critical path, then somebody who does all side quests will have tons of money. There is no way to solve this unless you add optional money sinks (like buying furniture made of massive gold to make your stronghold look better). During the developers test play week, only one of them finished the game and I don´t think he spend time looting everything that wasn´t nailed to the ground. We should ask him if he was swimming in money at the end of the game. Only when he says yes, then this whole topic could be a problem. Right now I play NWN2 OC again. I am short before kicking Garius out of my soon to be stronghold, I am lv 15 and I have over 400K gold. Why? I do all side quest. This means I get lots of exp and loot. Most loot is junk so I have lots of money. Shops sell expensive gear, but I don´t need it because I have a high level, good quest gear and I craft my own equipment. Crafting material were the only thing I bought so far. If this whole topic is a problem at all, then maby one of the better options is expensive crafting. Crafting is not neccessary to beat the game, but it can make a game much easier. Spending lots of money for it would be a better money sink then creating something that is a money sink just for the sake of being a money sink. In that case you could just allow the player to throw away money as he can throw away items.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2886976/pillars-of-eternity-josh-sawyer-talks-mods-pc-first-focus-big-head-mode-and-more.html This is good to know. But I guess I will have a typical party when I play. By the way: Right now I play NWN2 again (I had forgotten how many bugs there are and how the AS (artificial stupidity, you can´t call this behaviour intelligent) can drive you crazy). I like the party members, but I dislike the influence system. I choose an answer because it gives "You have gained +2 influence on X) and not what my character would do if he was alone. Same goes for KOTOR 2. Kreia was the best character I ever had in a party, but the system "forced" me to choose the answers my companions like. When you see numbers, you get the desire to min/max and conversation becomes a mini game for reputation. I hope there is no such system in PoE. If you have an influence system in PoE, please do not show us the numbers. It is a system that prevents you from acting in character.

There are millions of stories, movies or games and it is really hard to find something that has not been used before. The oldest known story is the gilgamesh epos and lots of things from it are still used today. But I must admit that some things are used so often that you think: Oh no, not the same ***censored*** again !!!

It is only one month until I can finally play and so I already had lots of time to think about how to play. My party will have only companions ( no soulless mercenaries) and look like this ( if there are companions with these classes, no spoilers please): - fighter tank (all defense, engage as many enemies as possible) - paladin and chanter as melee fighters - mage and cipher (main char) as casters - priest as healer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I watched some videos and saw: -Most chars were naked and went for max damage. Does it make sense to have a tank in the party? - All parameters that affect damage are multiplicators (might gives +X%, high quality weapons and crits give x1.5, . . . ). It looks like the game favours weapons with a big base damage. (A small number multiplied with something is still small, a big number multiplied with something gets very big.) In DnD games, strengh, feats and most enchantments added a flat number and only crit was a multiplicator)

To make things more complicated, I have 2 examples: - In Final Fantasy 7 there is a scene were the group escapes the shinra building and a motor bike mini game follows. When I watched this I had 2 questions in mind: Do small pick up trucks with 2 wheels in the front and 1 wheel in the back exist and could such a car drive some stairs upwards? I thought more about if this is physically possible than about what it means in the game story because the setting is so "realistic" that this scene could be part of any real world action movie. - Last year I played the game "Sam and Max hit the Road". The game is complete nonsense (no realism at all) but it was one of the most funny games I have ever played. There are also several non realistic RPGs that are fun to play. For example Driftmoon.

When looking at this map I have a question. Is PoE an open world game (like BG1, means you can go anywhere right from the start and only strong monsters can stop you) or can you enter new areas only when a quest tells you to go there (like NWN2)? This includes if you can choose the order of places to visit freely ( Like you can choose if you go first to town a or b to do some quests there.)

I always read the manual before I play a game. In D:OS the manual can be summarized by "read the tooltip". And that really is all you need. I think it is good when there is an in game guide.

I just remember a game I consider being "realistic", but it is not like the things I have written above: Realms of Arcadia 1 - You create 6 chars and they are only charecter sheets with stats, skills and a portrait. There is no personality. - There only a few people you can interact with. Towns are almost empty. - Your group alone saves the world from an orc invasion. But the game is realistic in a sense that it is the best "middle age adventure simulator" I know. - You have to eat, drink and rest often. - you can get ill. - You can lose or damage your equipment on your journey. - When a char dies, the only way to bring him back is to pray at the temple of the god of life and hope for a miracle (OK, the chance of success is low but you can pray as often as you want. But there are only a few temples in the huge game world.) - You need the right equipment for each situation (traveling without sleeping bag and cooking equipment, traveling without shoes, climbing without rope, no warm cloth in the mountains, no torch in a cave and tons of other things can give you serious problems) - To make things worse, every time you save the game outside of a temple each party member loses 1 exp (and you gain exp very slowly)

Its great to see what I started. And the video is great as well. So it looks like realism has several meanings. - There is violence, sex and dirt. ( OK, Thats definitely NOT what I mean) - Things are like in the real world, except some things that are introduced by the setting. PST has one of the most bizarre settings ever, but there are humanoid people and they have to eat, drink and sleep. They walk on the ground and live in houses with chairs, tables and beds inside. The things that are different than the real world are given by the setting and cannot be changed at will. If the setting says that only mages can cast magic, it makes no sense if a farmers dog throws a fireball at you. - The people act according to their role in the world. Like in the example of unrealism were you become king and then the cook orders you to kill some rats. - The game is realistic in the sense of the video. It means the opposite of a story like "You are the one and only hero and you save the world alone from everything" Of course, all these things belong together somehow.

When people discuss how a game should be, many people (including myself) sometimes say that you should choose option A over option B because A is more realistic. Computer RPGs are not simulations: - They do not simulate real middle age economy - They do not simulate real martial combat - They do not simulate real middle age political system - Tons of other things People have no problem to accept, that a game has elves, magic, resurrection, . . . On the other hand, many poeple would complain if: - Your characters walk through walls. - "Rotten zombie bones" are the favourite meal of humans in the game world - In PoE a char pulls a lightsabre out of his pocket and cuts a dragon in two pieces with a single strike So what do you thing about fantasy games and the word "realistic"?

I am against such a filter. I am from germany and I know those things: - games were changed for the german market because they have blood and gore. (tons of shooters) - games were changed for the american market because they show naked skin ( Gothic 1 ) - Right now I play Risen 1 and it was forbidden in australia because you can smoke grass and drink alcohol. I hate all these things. My opinion: Games are produced with a certain target group in mind. Depending on the game, you may have violence, blood, sex, drugs or something else in the game. Those things are written somewhere when you buy the game. If you have a game and you think that this game contains things your children should not see or hear, then do not play the game when children are around.

It is only in my account library as pre ordered game. Im do not have the beta.

I know you can play the game in several languages. I have 2 questions: - If I understand the screenshots correctly you can change the language any time in the in game menu. Is that true? - I am from germany. Does the beta exist in different languages and are the translations good? Since my bad experiance with Oblivion, I played most games in english unless they were developed in germany. In the german version of Oblivion there was: - a healing spell named "fireball" - item name "TrdschwH" ( means "Trank der schwachen Heilung" (Potion of minor Healing)) - sometimes written and/or spoken dialogue was randomly english or german or both combined - somebody said that in the french version "trap door" was translated with whatever "trapped door" means in french. I work in a university so I speak english very often, but we don´t have a native english speaker in our group. My experiance is, that almost everyone from scandinavia speaks perfect english and I understand every word (I was on vacation in Norway) but when I hear a native english speaker I hardly understand anything. In games I understand most things, but I am sure I miss alot, especially when it is supposed to be funny.

I have pre ordered the game on gog. In my gog account the is written pillars of Eternity + 3 DLC. What does that mean? - The game will have 3 DLC on release? (makes no sense, every contend that is ready on release should be in the game) - The pre order benusses count as DLC? (that makes even less sense) - You get the game and 3 DLCs whenever they may come, but you have to pay if you want any DLC after you got 3?

I think I play an wood elf cipher in PoE. The first time I play on normal because I want to role play and I don´t need an optimized char for hard combat. ( And I have no idea what optimized means when I play it the first time). simple equation (mathematically not really correct): elf = fighter/mage cipher = fighter/mage elf = good bow user About small chars: Usually I do not have them, but when I played BGT last time, I was a gnome fighter/illusionist. Maybe I play an Orlan later. When I saw them the first time I thought: "Cool, I can play as goblin!"

You seem to forget that the PoE magic system is different than DnD. In Bg or IWD your casters had tons of spells but they must choose their spell slots when resting. In PoE every class is like a sorcerer in DnD. You select your spells at level up and you can cast until your uses per day/encounter are finished. (except mages and their grimoir, this is a bit different) That means in PoE the following scenario is impossible: You start a fight, you loose because the enemy confuses you, you reload and rest and memorize chaotic commands fight again and win. In PoE either you have a spell that cures confusion or not. If you have it you can cast it, if not you have a problem. In that sense you could argue that PoE is more meta gaming than BG because you must choose at level up what abilities will be most useful later and you don´t have the ability to scout ahead several hours of gameplay (like "I should learn spell x now because an enemy 3 dungeons later will use spell Y."). In BG or NWN, I would adwise first time players to use mages instead of sorcerers, so you can change your spell set if you find out you selected the wrong ones. I must admit that I am one of those pathetic players who do this. When I run into a combat and most of my party dies because they get confused, I reload, memorize other spells, rest and try again. You may call this bad play style but I don´t care. Nobody has the right to force other people how to play a computer game. If somebody has fun and is able to progress in the game it is OK. suggestion for PoE: You should be able to cast all spells all the time. Per encounter abilities are reset at the end of the next battle. If you have a buff you can choose if you cast it before or during combat. Usuall you only have 1 or 2 uses per day/encounter anyway and the duration is short. I saw a PoE video where a group entered stealth mode, moved closer to the enemies without being seen and the mage fired a fireball at the enemiy group. Then the enemies attaced, the meele chars ran forward and the other chars used spells or arrows. Is that tactical enough for you? (This is how I did it in D:OS. Sneak, summon a fire elemental in front of them and when they gather to bash it you use a fireball to burn them and heal your elemental.)