wanderon

Please cite the resource where this information is from. Sounds...well wrong to be blunt. It came directly from my head - sadly at 65 my brain is no longer completely cross referenced to the materials which were responsible for the information found within - I can say with some certainty that I either read about, heard about, or saw such a thing take place and a quick check of any search engine will certainly show that there is little question that the Apaches are noted as some of the best guerilla fighters and light calvary the world has ever seen.

This. I keep pushing this I know, but I really really hate that my rogue can sneak through a darn prairie like it's nothing. Forest? Sure, don't even have to calculate LOS, just imply (modifier) that rogue can hide more effectively in a forest. Flat barren wasteland? Better be one heck of a good rogue. Ever heard of Apaches (American Indians)? They were incredible guerilla fighters that would seem to rise out of the ground itself when it appeared there could be no one for miles in any direction - often times on a HORSE that they had kept lying on its side shrouded with bare desert shrubs little more than a foot tall camo'ed with desert dust and ready to rumble. IMO the stealthy rogue would be even more likely to stay unseen in rural plains than on city streets in daylight but then I'm a rural sort of guy not an urban cowboy LOL.

Only two things come to mind immediately regarding magic mechanics that annoyed me altho I'm sure there must be some more... 1) I hated the whole buff/debuff sequence that was mandantory fare for every single mage battle in BG2 - it just semed to be so contrived as a manner of extending the battle time and made memorizing your own buffs and debuffs mandantory as well so that in the end mages became carbon copies of one another as magical mystical buff buff debuff bots. 2) Overbearing spell effects - I'm looking at you giant color coded shimmering shiny bubble forming around each adventurer with any sort of simple buff cast on them. Well maybe three as I am not too keen on sequencers either - one spell at a time boys one spell at a time - this magic is hard to do even when you've studied long and hard all these years and it's not like loading up a submachine gun and just pulling the trigger - or at least it shouldn't be (IMNSHO). Disclaimer: haven't actually read the thread at this point just responding to the OP.

I agree that playing an ironman mode brings an entirely different feel than just saying to yourself - OK if I die then it's game over becuase with the former the final results are automaticly enforced upon you and with the later you know you can always change your mind. In ironman you KNOW as you enter every battle or dangerous area or important conversation that you have but a single chance to accomplish this - in the self-enforced alternate you know exactly the opposite - you know that in the end it's up to you whether you choose to end the game if things go badly or reload and move on - just this once... In ironman the feeling of apprehension builds higher and higher with every hour the game moves on knowing that around the next corner some random encounter could end the game you have now invested so much time in and played so well while in self-enforced nothing changes - in fact it becomes easier and easier to rationalize why you might reload if the worst happens - just this once - well maybe twice - ok three strikes and I'm out seriously I mean it...

This - exactly...

Why not? Aren't you bored by the fact that every single game must have a predictably happy ending? Actually I am more bored with polls that only offer options that favor the posters viewpoint or even worse forget to add an "other" option. Of course this isn't really a poll at all but instead a petition war of some sort. I have to agree I can't take this with any degree of seriousity either...

Even the Mythbusters proved that gangsta style is ineffective as a firing technique (satisfying as it is). Of course this is a game, the +2 to intimidation or badassery of holding your blunderbuss sideways while you cap a mofo would definitely be worth it. >) Sorry I thought the (snicker) would suffice for a pair of {sarcasm} tags indicating that I might be well aware of how silly that whole "gangsta" shooting style is with or without the whole pants falling down in the midst of battle severely limiting the opportunity to move freely issue...

Nope. That's just extra difficulty modes... not an easy/medium/hard (and whatever else there may be). What's what's discussed here. The modes are just on *top* of that again. Perhaps you missed the part where he specificly mentions how they treat encounters from easy to hard.... By turning combatants on & off and/or changing them to increase the both the general combat difficulty (easy enemy vs harder enemy) and/or strategicly (replacing melee with mages or vice versa) and/or adjusting the combat mechanics (scripting what those enemies will do). It may be a relatively simple statement but I think it clearly indicates the manner in which they will handle encounters at different difficulties.

@ Crusader_bin My personal opinion is the AI in NWN2 was an improvement over generic BG as were the tactics in DA series even if you didn't set them yourself but to each his own - I am of course aware that on interent gaming forums all AI is just stupid (along with any other game mechanic you choose to mention) but I don't pay much attention to that myself...

I play somewhat similar to this - I do usually end up finishing a game but for NWN2 for instance my first character to finish did so about 18 months after I got it and there were probably 15-20 other characters scattered about at different points in the game - some of which I would go back and pick up some of which are still waiting - or would be if a HD crash had not wiped them out a couple years ago... Same with BG series - there was always a point somewhere along the way when I would think - oh wait what if I rolled up a _______ and used ________ in my party? and off I would go to character creation to see what I could whip up.... I am really all about the journey and it doesn't bother me to put off finishing becuase that means when I finally got around to finishing NWN2 or BG2 the first time there was still stuff that I had not yet seen and was thus fresh and new to me in spite of the fact I had played the game for over a year. Then there were all those "no reload" games that ended prematurely becuase I died...

I doubt that companions AI in battle will rival the effectiveness of micromanaging them simply becuase it's not really possible to program them as a team not knowing which ones will be working with you nor what classes make up the team at any given point. However depending on the difficulty level you have chosen I suspect it will work well enough where you do not have to hand hold every one of them for every "round" in every battle- even the standard AI in the BG games would do this to some degree and AI has improved substantially since 1999.

Well they have pretty much laid out how the difficulty modes will work in Update #9 where Josh says: Certainly doesn't sound like they are looking to take the easy way out and with this info coming way back at Update 9 at the 2.3M goal I'd say they are going to be part & parcel of the essential core of the game (not just duct taped on at the end as an afterthought). For my money these sound pretty close to perfect.

I'm confused.... (happens all the time) If they don't offer dialoge options for those emotional reactions how will they have any effect on the conversation/target? Wouldn't that just take emotions out of the conversation except in the players head?

The Path of the damned is a spiritual succesor to Heart of Fury but according to what has been said so far it appears to be focused on the original run through - not a second run. From Josh in update #9

No one has confirmed that the objective experience will only be added when a major objective has been completed - it's possible that experience for minor objectives like dealing with a group of bandits on the highway or a group of thugs in the slums will be awarded as soon as the encounter ends. The same might be true for sections of a larger objective as well where it is broken into sections - I certainly don't see the mega dungeon having to be completed before any experience is awarded. Once again the devs are not taking experience for fighting off the table they just are not going to award it by body count - there is really no reason to believe it will not be awarded as you go along since it will likely still be calculated in small segments as you go since people may not finish every quest but thats no reason not to give them experience for what they have accomplished. Yes there may be a larger lump awarded at the end of a major quest but that doesn't mean there won't be awards along the way.

Objectives mean anything you do to move through the game INCLUDING fighting - there will be fighting - there will be lots of fighting - the amount of fighting there will be will absolutely astound you and I have no doubt you will get experience for all of it. It just will not be calculated by the number of bodies that fall - it will be calculated based on the objectives you complete by fighting or any other option they give you to complete them. Just becuase people are used to getting experience creature by creature as they cut a swath of destruction across the realm doesn't mean it's the only way or even the best way to design a game especially when one of the prime directives they wish to follow is to include other methods of completing objectives than fighting.

Indeed the dialoge should open a pathway for your character to follow and perhaps form freinds and rivalries along the way - there should be multiple options that then lead to multiple results - (much like PS:T) - and instead of the "win" button in the dialoge it becomes a matter of choosing a direction where your choices have consequences and eventually determine the path the party takes through the game. Obviously not every dialoge will result in world changing results but some of them should and the others should open paths in the short term and sometimes close others.

This sums up the sort of companions I would like to see nicely. I also like it when there is an option to allow the companions a way to make "their own" level up choices for instance with an "Auto-update" which allows me to offer them a bit more "independence" from my rule but I do like that to be an option just in case I want to choose them myself instead...

I'm pretty sure the Path of the Damned is still about an original playthrough and not as an NG+ option. AFAIK nothing has been confirmed or even mentioned about import/export being a planned option.

not all of us. I like the Diablo style NG+ where you start over with all of your levels and items, but the game is harder to match it. Instead of being a cakewalk through the game, its a different feel to playing the game because both your party and the enemies have higher level abilities from start to finish. I don't see PE going in this direction - it may have a mega dungeon but it is a story driven game not a dungeon crawl/combat simulation.

I cited gold as a possible reward. XP only for objectives would exclude fighting with random wandering monsters (i.e. getting ambushed while you rest). Just a guess here but I suspect any wandering monsters and/or scripted ambushes of any sort that are included in game will have their own experiece adjustment and/or other method of reward - I doubt the devs are going to waste time & resources including encounters that are totally meaningless. They have never said you won't get experience for dealing with an ambush by bandits or rabid racoons - they just said it will not calculated by X per body.

Sacred, would you avoid combat and instead sneak slowly around needing double the time? And miss out on the loot they have? You should take into account that to make sneaking fun the designers have to make it difficult as well. So since both methods give the same xp and both take time, the decision on your side is quite easy: You would sneak or fight depending on which is more fun. Or what you would see as appropriate. I'm not against sneaking (or other alternatives), I'm against combat not being rewarded in some tangible way. It's not that combat will not be rewarded - combat will play a large part of the game and WILL be rewarded - it just won't be rewarded by putting X experience points per body like a pinball machine racking up points for everytime you hit a button - the "scoring" will be more sophisticated than that.

Or they could just allow it and NOT balance it (like BG1 & 2) - after all I'm pretty sure the folks who play NG+ are not looking for a challenge anyway right?

I'm not seeing these features as problems myself. I have every confidence that the dev team didn't just pull these features out of thin air when they set them as stretch goals and that they had a plan in mind for them. I'm not much for speculation but based on what we have heard so far I strongly suspect the two cities are going to be related to factions and perhaps we will not see too much of one when we align with the other and vice versa. They have already stated that you will pretty much be unable to do "everything" in a single playthrough and that decisions that open one door may close others. If so I am totally on board with that concept since it means replays will offer new content you have not yet seen. The mega dungeon may have turned out larger than they planned but I'm sure they will come up with a great format for it. I would prefer to see exits along the way to get out and trade unless there turns out to be pockets of civilized clans of some sort carrying on business in the depths but I'm ok with getting locked in too. I suspect it's also going to feature in the main plot line and not be an optional area altho parts of it might turn out to be optional. In any event it all sounds good to me and I'm not at all concerned that any of them will prove to be problems for the dev team.

Really? Who knew? Only the second page (oops 5th page I guess) and we already have the "if you don't like it don't use it" argument? Seriously tho are you suggesting that if you don't like it you should still either vote for it or vote ambivalent so others can use it?