Voss

When the purpose in question is doing half dozen different things, and reading the text is not part of the focal point? Yeah, it is. But I honestly blame the devs for this one, it is a basic trap of fantasy- if you want your people/place names to not be mangled, don't make them too weird, too similar to real words or with too many vowels (or apostrophes). And don't expect people to use the language in your head as a pronunciation guide. They can't read your mind, and likely don't think like you.

Yes? Yes it was. Having a goal does not mean the goal is worthwhile. More time and effort into the skill system and a greater variety of effects could hardly have been worse than the bizarre masturbatory aid that their system turned into.

I love how people always assume devs are ****ing idiots when something they don't want is brought up, but treat them like unfailable Gods when they something they want is brought up. Unfair. I think they're idiots all the time. I'm terribly disturbed if I've ever conveyed the idea that Sawyer and Company are unfallible gods. Especially since I've outright stated my disappointment in most Obsidian games, and feel big chunks of this game are terrible design fails that even a starting game designer wouldn't have botched with a little research into the basics of game design, especially when cribbing from established franchises. But I don't see the relevance... I'm talking about resources, not dev idiocy (except their idiocy in setting resources on fire, I guess). I know D:OS would have been a much better game if they hadn't burned a ****ton of cash putting MP in.

It certainly has been for the development of this game. It will be interesting to see what happens here when the game is released. If you listened to the Steam forums when Shadowrun came out, you'd think it was nothing but horrible mess of trash and bull**** with no redeeming value of any sort...and also, the least Shadowrun thing ever. Including the Xbox game. Even a stopped clock...

Ragging on 'nerds' is a youtube/twitch joke trope. Depending on who is using and why, it can be less funny (taking it for cereal) or more funny (self-deprecating humor).

Berk is a real word, and used regularly in certain places (which given that you're using 'favour' and 'utilising,' you've made me sad). That said I agree, natural language (even if anachronistic) flows a lot better than a dime-store's worth of purple prose dribbling from the lips of drunk renaissance faire hacks. But I've seen a fair bit of profanity just in BB vids, to the point that if someone found it immersion breaking and upsetting in gangland Berlin slums, better back away from this game right now.

That has yet to be proven. It might have been a design goal, but it doesn't mean the final game turned out that way... This is also just a design goal. Unlike the 'multiple ways to play,' this has largely proved not to be the case at all. If tank, Per/Res/Con matter. If not tank, Might/Int/Dex rule. There absolutely seems to be no middle ground here at all. Optimism runs face first into math and cries at its first taste of reality. @ganrich- they have more than enough rope to hang themselves as is (though, given how IE NPCs ended up built, with a system that didn't even allow many choices, I can't say I want the devs choosing talents for NPCs). Watching character creation (and only creation) videos today was psychologically scarring. Low knowledge levels + unintuitive design decisions = trainwreck. All that said, I think Durance is far worse off than Aloth (though honestly, I won't take him either). Aloth at least has half his points in useful places, rather than barely a third, and negative modifiers on top. He's getting chucked in the bin, or follow in the footsteps of Khalid and fed to bears. Eder and Kana are companions done right- a wide enough spread to be interesting, but functional in their attributes for their class. Though it seems Pelle is going to have to suck it up and tank (unless, of course, she's full of crap design as well).

Pretty much. Also, these grapes? Comically Sour.

Correct. Gimped, ugly and silly. I'd argue the background is horrible too, though the rationale behind making the 'bad-touched' race look like nuclear mutants on top escapes me entirely.

But still bad. I'd hate to see real resources burnt on jamming in multiplayer

First one by a mile. The others are posturing, but that one just says smooth criminal.

There's a significant difference between having a house + a fence and an actual self-sustaining castle with its associated revenues. Well, in a castle you have a keep (the lord's "house"), several utility buildings (stables, barracks, ...), and a wall with a gate. Now, you can also have a village or a little city around walls too so people houses do not burn down when invaded. However, the farms are out in the country yard. Now, having stony castle or a woody one is just a matter of technology. More a matter of resources and time than tech. You have to go a long way back to find people who hadn't figured out the secret to 'pile rocks on each other, maybe with some mud between so they stick' @osvir. Pesky ninjas.

Is there data on this, though, or is that speculation? Seems like it'd be a difficult thing to determine. I'm not personally privy to it, but I'm sure people with access can track when sales happen on Steam, and can quite easily track views on youtube, If sales of a title spike alongside the latest TotalCox video views (or whomever- notably Arumba & Quill, given Paradox is publishing it), you have a correlation. Track it for multiple titles and you have a functional theory, at least one good enough to hang a sales hypothesis on. I'm kind of annoyed by it actually, since several of the people I usually watch are putting off their typical content in favor of 'Let's Plays' that I won't watch because I don't want to be spoiled. Which makes it harder to fill the time until release!

Good question, yes. Personally, I'm all for giving review copies out to the streamers/LPers to help advertise the game and thus boost sales. What I'm less happy about is that their embargo isn't also ending on release day, since that means that there are what, thousands of people who haven't (and a reasonable proportion of whom won't) bought the game who are going to experience a good chunk of the story, albeit by watching rather than playing, before those of us who've spent literally years following this game's production and contributing to it by playing the beta and offering feedback and suggestions. Some people getting the game in advance to figure out what they're doing and plan their streams, or get their videos put together for the 26th, I'd be fine with. Three days of them streaming it while I'm very excited about the upcoming release and have to wait... well, flaunting their access was a good phrase for what it feels like. It's not a huge deal for me, but yeah, I wish it had been handled differently. That is actually a legitimate issue, and something that I'm not entirely comfortable with as well. I would much prefer the stream and review embargo be lifted on release date, and I honestly don't know of a really compelling reason that it's not. Sales, obviously. Streams and let's plays are much more effective (as a sales platform) a few days in advance rather than when decision day has come and gone. Hypemachine Go! The distinction between stream & let's play and review has me laughing, by the by. If people can watch several hours of gameplay, it matters not at all if the video-maker says 'I like it,' and pulls a random number out of the leftover pizza. The viewers can judge for themselves, and usually the video-maker's enthusiasm (or lack of it) has more impact than nonsense review numbers anyway. They provide more than enough content to pass judgement, the lack of a formal judging sequence is pretty low impact.

Seems pretty unknown at this point. There is a difference between cruel or aggressive dialogue and actually being able to betray a happy little village to the bandits outside of town, actually sell someone off into slavery rather than just threatening to kick them around, and so on. And I think the line needs to be crossed into actually doing things rather than snippy little dialogue options for it to mean anything at all. Then again, I'm completely unspoiled when it comes to story things, and will happily remain so.

Basic. Premium edition computer games are gibberish in my opinion. Just junk to toss in a corner some where- all that matters is the game itself.

And what pronunciation are you basing 'au' on, or a trailing 'a' after a vowel? Is it pronounced more like French? German? Russian? Japanese? (do I need to go on?) These sounds may be written the same way, but they sound entirely different. You don't have a pronunciation guide there, just letters. Protip: make your bollocks fantasy names readable and pronounceable to casual and unfamiliar readers.

This is entirely wrong. Your argument at this point is 'Medium armor is DR 7, and heavy armor is DR 10, but if you add 4 to 7 it is 11, and then inexplicably claim the argument ends there. But you can also add 4 to 10. Enchantments are a constant, they don't change the relative values.

Clothing can be enchanted too. Enchantments apply equally to everything since they are (IIRC) linear upgrades and not multipliers.

yes, we have no rogues today. We have no rogues but Eder went from a fighter to a rogue and back to fighter during the development cycle and he is also supposed to be relevant to the plot line so I am hoping he retained enough of his roguish ways to suffice as a lock/trap man... (or that one of the other CNPCs has rogue tendencies) No idea what you mean. If you want any of the characters to deal with locks, traps or sneak, you just assign them points in mechanics and stealth. No connection to class at all.

Special snowflake, and to have a godlike companion, but one that isn't ugly

They're steam forums. From what I've seen of them, most of the forum users can't manage to figure out release dates for games on steam

Just tank from what I've seen. Most casters want Might and Int., both for extra damage, bigger AoEs and longer durations on control spells. AoEs certainly matter for paladin modals, and duration and radius matter a lot for chanters.

Why is that? How long you think your 'tank' will stay up naked? This is quite intuitive to protect your squad evenly and have flexible characters that can hold out on their own. This tank\dps min\max mentality is what counterintuitive and artificial here. You take the armor off the tanks to make them 'softer' targets so the enemies stay focused on them, since your idea tweaks the AI to have monsters magically attracted to whatever value 'softer' is. Unless you're arguing that monsters should just magically know what your health bar is, in which case I'm just going to frown at you. Min/Max mentality is neither counterintutitive nor artificial. It recognizes how the game world works and reacts to it appropriately. Think of it as the age of gunpowder, with dps characters taking the role of guns, and tank characters taking the role of swords. The overwhelming power of guns (dps characters) makes armor irrelevant. Logcailly killing people as quickly as possible so they deal less damage overall is superior just trying to tough it out.

A table is pretty pointless for PoE. Might, for example, is +3% damage and healing, and +2 Fortitude defense, per point over 10. And -3% damage/heal and -2 Fortitude per point under 10. Each stat pair affects one defense (fortitude, reflex and will) at +/-2 per point above/below 10 and affects a couple other things as either a percentage (often 3), or in the case of perception and resolve, also deflection at +/- 1 per point from 10.