Tigranes

Are we really discussing the appropriateness of kerfuffles now?

A free widescreen mod that works perfectly well has been around for years, so you can use that. As far as I know the controls are exactly the same in EE. But of course, if you want to wait then use EE, that's also your call.

That's some bad audio.

Great, as long as stamina/HP is balanced properly. It also makes it more tricky to reload when a party member dies, because he/she will have got to that particular fight low on health, and thus you retain that danger.

Mea culpa, I believe I interpreted your comments slightly differently. I can't imagine that they'd have a situation where you do sidequests to get XP, but you come across some nasty dudes and beat them down for no gain. I agree it would be rather stupid, and until further confirmation one way or another, I'd think they'd use common sense there to work out a solution.

They sound like a nice way to freshen things up and build on the formula without breaking it. You're surely not advocating that the only true IE-successor is one that has numerical HP and resurrection spells, clerics that can heal, fireballs, green circles beneath people's feet, etc. Now, I don't want to get into the debate of what is and is not a 'core mechanic' - we went there already with Fallout, it took everyone 5 years to realise you can't really draw a list of essential elements (though NMA tried). My point is that there were certain composite effects IE games delivered that stayed with people - tactical party full-control combat with a distribution of roles, non-scaled opponents and management of scarce resources; a plethora of main and optional quests providing a range of solutions; relatively mature writing in dialogue trees; beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds; etc. From that vantage point, I see the stamina mechanic as an excellent way of improving the IE mechanics while keeping in its spirit. Harder to say with limited healing, as there clearly will be ways to heal, just not in the form of Clerics Heal. Obviously, someone else can say they sound properly crap, but I think it's important to have perspective with regards to what is 'in the spirit of the IE games', what a single sentence can be extrapolated to mean, and how that effects your pledges or not.

And what core element of IE-style game has just been declared missing? I agree if kill XP is completely removed, then that's a pretty big change, and I don't know if I like it or not until I learn more. But I don't know if that fundamentally changes the experience. BG2 in particular gave huge dollops of quest XP in conjunction with kill XP (which in many filler fights amounted to little). As far as I can see, levelling is closer to IE-style games (slower pacing) than modern RPGs (level up every 3 minutes), there's little to no level scaling, there's plenty of sidequests, etc.

This is the kind of assumption I don't get. They haven't said that there will be less sidequests, or that they don't like sidequests or exploration. They haven't said that they will not give you XP. The only information we do have is that the critical path will be slightly level-scaled, while sidequests will not be level-scaled, and that they are looking at XP given when you complete a quest or part of a quest. (Whether kill XP is given is not clarified.) In other words, everything points to a typical RPG world with plenty of sidequests with their own XP and gear rewards (e.g. the mega-dungeon). I think people quickly read through a small selection of sentences and then balloon it up into huge hopes or fears about the game, sometimes not in context of what the devs were talking about, or simply imagining a single sentence to imply an ocean when they mentioned a drop of water.

Knee-jerk isn't good for your health, I don't see how not liking grinding = oh god he thinks everything except the main quest is grinding. If I were to choose between his track record of Icewind Dale, and a rather liberal interpretation of a single sentence, I'd go for the latter, no?

I don't see the leveling being any slower than the IE games, at most. And with 6 people in your party, you still had somebody levelling up at least every half hour. I have no strong preferences about the XP system, it really depends on how it all works together.

Yeah, Torian Kel / Geoffrey / Vollinger is worth at least one playthrough. It's a pity they didn't get a lot of work put into them, given scope constraints.

Really? You're not just saying that to get me to play the game? Cuz I *hate* Virgil... What makes the situation even worse is that (I've been told) you miss a large portion of the story if you ditch (or kill... ) him. Might give the game another chance if what you say is true. If you hate him that much, ditch him. You miss only one specific NPC (Virgil's 'mentor') and the pretty tangential way in which he fits into the main story. And, of course, some other elements involving Virgil's personal story itself, as he turns out not to be a loyal puppy dog after all.

Virgil hardly talks after the first town, and given the 20+ NPCs in that game, you're cheating yourself out of a magnificent game. I'd like the occasional dabble into pop metaphysics.

I'd like to see a good variety, yes, and if they're doing a new IP, might as well not have orcs, or even worse, things that look and sound like orcs but are called darkspawn, or whatever else. Or, at least, orcs that make sense in that particular setting in their own way. After all, and funnily enough, LOTR still has one of the best and unique depictions of orcs.

Just means you won't level up every 30 minutes anymore.

*shrug* it says 'The World' because it was created explicitly to be placed in the Kickstarter page, under the description of 'The World'. If you're going to complain about such minutiae, that's not a problem, but it means you gotta look up all the information before you rip on it.

Given my lamentable performance at keeping this up to date, I highly recommend an info-dump that is more comprehensive than, well, anything: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=58186 I will eventually update this thread, of course, but plan to keep it much more to basic details and frequently asked questions. This thread has literally everything.

The life of Cleve is what gives all of us meaning, really. His insane dedication of half of his life into Grimoire elevates our petty squabbles and indulgences into something greater, something majestic.

I actually liked the consumables and potions in IE games. There were a limited number of high-powered throwables (Potions of Explosion, Arrows of Exploding, Wand of Cloudkill, etc) which, except for late-game, worked as highly limited get-out-of-jail cards that were very satisfying to use. I remember getting lucky with the one and only charge in the Wand of Freezing on an ogre mage. Meanwhile you had a good selection of contextual potions like Mirrored Images. The 'buff' potions like Potion of Defense were kind of inconsequential, though. I would support potions/consumables that are rarer but stronger, and have short-term impacts. I'd also like the backlash mechanism on each potion - e.g. each potion has one or two active ingredients, and drinking more than on epotion with the same active ingredient causes overdose problems (any more complex than that and it's just confusing); or, each potion has a negative and positive effect. I'd also like enemies to make use of potions, and for that to be easily detectible. (e.g. certain BG2 mods showed you with a floating text saying "Gulps a potion of X" on an enemy.)

I like the backlash idea in general, and, depending on how the lore deals with souls, you could easily have different forms of backlash effect any character, magic or not, and have that replace 'fatigue' (and also reprise resting). E.g. you can use a powerful spell or fighter ability at any point, but if you are already tired and have expended many spells, the backlash may be as severe as a permanent loss of attributes, while in more reasonable cases, the backlash would be more temporary, such as lasting a few turns. So even within a single battle, you may not want to start with your 3 best spells all the time, as even when fully rested, it would impose 3 sets of temporary backlashes (e.g. immobile mage + null dodge + decreased casting speed). Though each backlash is minor on its own, lasting only a few turns, it would make you think not just about what spell you cast this turn, but how you cast spells throughout the course of the battle. The notion of souls as used in PE already introduce the notion of essential expenditure, of using something vital to your life-force to exert power, so in whatever form, it'll be nice to see this kind of backlash economy become prominent, instead of the typical "I have 5 spells, now I have 4 spells".

Well many players would not get to the bottom of the mega-dungeon, so that wouldn't work, but the idea itself is cool. I actually prefer it to the ye olde "here's a city and here's a big dungeon beneath the city".

Yep, just get the expansion pack later. $140+20 will set you up right.

$140 + 20 for expansion. The actual content, like beta access, is the most important to me, and Cloth Map, Collector's Box and Badge are minor factors as well. I really don't care about most of the other goodies, and I already have W2. I'd have gone 165 if I'm outside the US, yes.

Virgil will never leave you, he's the Loyal Dog type companion. He'll just become evil, too, after his brief sojourn. I don't find Geoffrey useful really, he summons the zombie every other step then just whacks at people, his fire elemental form isn't great either and so he does nothing until he gets disintegrate. Torian Kel is worthwhile.

I want nothing to do with a man who manually clicks on the scroll-bar instead of using the mouse scroll wheel. Bring me my port and sherry, butler.