why

Huzzah! I can't even play it now, but I took the time to see if it downloaded, which it did, and then if I had White March 2, which I do. It had the advert for the WM2 in my load screen, and asked if I wanted to purchase it, which was weird, but when I clicked on purchase, Steam said I already had it.

Sorry. I mean to say, "and to experience the kill!"

J'accuse! You haven't been killing them for free! You've been killing them for their loot. ...And kill experience!

Finished EoB1. Deep in the Catecombs on EoB2.

I never played Oregon trail, but I played all of the infocom games, even the bad ones. I have the GoG value pack for them. I still think Zork Nemesis is an excellent game. I just hope I can get it to display right. Then I can post a pic when I olay it.

That's funny, Andrea. I always have a mage or, in other games, a.mage equivalent character in my party, usually as the main.

Dogmeat. cannot. Die!

If it turned out that Mr. Avellone were being negligent or vindictive in delaying the fulfillment of his obligations, that would disappointing. Not because I'm personally invested. I'm new around here, but whatever happened you'd hope for better comportment.

I wonder, will the backers get a rebate every time their NPC gets butchered? This made me laugh. Of course, I don't really think they have a true grievance on the issue since they still got what they bought, but it was funny anyhow. Fact is, I think the backer NPC issue is kind of crazy, but I can see that it genuinely gets under peoples skins. I don't have a stake in this fight. I don't have a backer NPC in the game. I guess if folks really hate them, now they can get some payback. I wish I'd been able to hear the chat because I get the feeling the audio banter would have been pretty funny about it.

Aw, I had to turn off the sound and I couldn't read the screen for crap. I think that's funny all things considered, but I don't begrudge other folks their day in the sun on this issue, but I never play a murderer, so I won't get to use anything of the sort.

I'm bumping the thread just to mention that Mr. Sawyer will be on the twitchtv channel tonight to show off a little White March Part Deux! Here's weird eyeball guy's thread about it in the Pillars place: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/84195-josh-sawyer-plays-white-march-part-2-on-twitch-tonight/

I guess it's supposed to represent the different styles worn by men and women in the Dyrwood, but that's pretty striking. Also, clothes are clothes. If you pick up an outfit at a store, I can see the assumption that you've bought an outfit comforming to societal norms, but if you pick up an outfit off some chump you just offed, then you'd think it would be what it is. On the other hand, it seems like the armor you get off dead folks is always in good repair which is odd considering you just spent some time and effort destroying it in order to kill the poor bastard inside. Ah, failings of simulation in an RPG!

Our small little group of Obsidz fans will ballooooooooooooon tonight. Hey, maybe Avellone can join and give a few insights as well

Yeah, I tend to stack mental attributes on my PC, partly because he's got to be able to talk to NPCs and partly because I always end up playing casters. I used to avoid using consumables and save them for the "big" fight, but I got tired of ending a game looking like a traveling apothecary. Nowadays, I try to use them judiciously.

What weird idiosyncrasies do you have? For example, if I play a paladin with lay on hands, I never use it on that character unless there is no other character who is currently wounded. My cleric always uses his or her last healing spell spell on another character. My characters never use or learn a spell that inflicts instant death on a creature. No disintegration or 'finger of death.' I surely can't be alone. Does anyone else suffer from this curious afflicition that assails me?

Pink, you're a tricky one. I *like* you! hehe ...But I'm sure the screen shots with animations aren't completely false. Still, I completely support your efforts to get them to cough up more stuff. I can't make it from my home computer on Wednesday of next week. Bad timing for me, but maybe I can participate by using my phone. ugh. I'll probably just have to get the news second hand from my homies (by which I mean *you*). However, I really do hope they can get the go ahead for a stream of the actual card game. I know Dowling really does yeoman's work on the Obsidian live streaming site, and he has to put up with a bunch of us drunk bastards. We'll treat the devs gentle if they just do a little demo of the cards and give a tiny bit of commentary of how the actions will play out in the electronic game. I, personally, promise I'll handle 'em with kid gloves. <.< >,>

I would say that scaling has been going on for the entire span of humanity. High school basketball teams generally play other high school teams. College baseball teams play against other colleges. The local peewee football teams doesn't play against an NFL team. In old cRPGs, scaling was implemented by monster type in a certain area. Tabletop was always different because the DM could adjust monsters accordingly and there wasn't as much filler time such as travel and whatnot between relatively safe areas. So, if he wanted to convey the relative safety of an area, the players could always encounter less dangerous or trivial obstacles. If he wanted to convey changes in the location, the party would face the new and more difficult creatures. That's harder but not impossible in a cRPG. Here's my beef, and I think Ob's name mentioned something akin to this earlier, sometimes a wolf is just a wolf. If I bypass a few creatures early on, I should expect those creatures to be more or less area difficulty appropriate. The pack of wolves menacing the small outpost that I never visited shouldn't suddenly be battle wolves with a contingent of dire wolves and a big daddy wolf with a shiny collar sporting the name 'Satan' etched into it. If the wolves scale like that, did the outpost people scale also? People have pointed out to me that scaling occured in BG2, and I enjoyed BG2 quite a bit. So I know that it can be done well and that I shouldn't let the bad taste of Oblivion taint my appreciation of scaling, but, just for myself, I don't really want uniformly difficult fights. I want most fights to be challenging on some level, a smattering of really difficult fights that make me change up tactics or use new ideas, and if I head back to previous areas, I don't mind some fights that are pretty easy or even trivial. Scaling is best when I don't know the design team is using it.

Nice work, Silent Winter. I love the ray of fire to the face! Kind of reminds me of the last time I had dinner at the local In and Out Burger. Couldn't say who were the revenants and who were the customers, but the food was good.

Kind of reinforces the idea that Paizo is the one keeping things close on this one. I'll have to check out the thread.

Link isn't working, bud. What does it say?

That advocacy works in all directions. As a consumer, I can defend a product on any basis. To be clear, I disagree with initial premise. I don't see a problem from my perspective as a consumer. On the other hand, I don't want to be so personally invested that we start a large complaining about the complaining chain. Hopefully, if they do it again, and I hope they do, it will be tweaked to broader appeal. PS. I do a lot of these posts while hiking and it can be a real bitch to quote and whatnot. Although the ever present that if falling over the side does add piquancy.

I played some of it. I don't want to spoil the release, so I haven't done much, but I've enjoyed a lot of what I saw. I did the opening scene and some of the... space ship? Whatever it is, and then some outside scenes and a battle. Interesting so far.

Yep, and those worked out just fine. I can kind of see why some folks don't like the NPCs. I get it. I just don't understand the depth of feeling over it. It's not as if there haven't been an abundance of goofy, fluffy, silly, or just plain idiotic headstones, NPCs, item descriptions, and other nonsense in the games that putatively provided the template for Pillars. It strains credulity that some people would be up in arms to the extent that they are. Hey, I think folks should bitch about stuff they don't like, but it's such a minor issue. Maybe it's a good sign that the game is generally excellent that people complain about the NPC tier funding mechanism. It's funny because there's some random thread about the old watcher at Caed Nua and someone thought I was being meanspirited there when I was just being goofy. Conversely, I actually do find some of the arguments here borderline contemptible. I hope not to have real animosity over them, but those NPC tier backers provided a lot of funding for this game. Sure, if the argument (as I understand it from some people) is to change the future process in order to make the NPCs more seamless, that's cool. I can see where they might get on a player's nerves. It took a second for me to wrap my head around them, and maybe it's harder for some people to get over the implementation. Help out those folks by improving how to concept translates into the game. On the other hand, if the idea is to castigate the folks who footed a chunk of the bill by paying for what Obsidian wisely offered in order to infuse some green into the bottom line, then I'll respect other people's right to complain by complaining about them. I think Obsidian did it generally right and I suppose, if they do another kickstarter, they'll do it even better. The first kickstarter was like sex for the first time. Didn't know exactly what to expect and didn't know what you were doing, you made a few mistakes, but neither of you could wait to do it again. I mean, the backers do I hope. I don't have money for kickstarters. I'm on a tight budget. Now that I've done my own bitching, I guess I'll go back to the bleachers and watch the rest of the match. I'm too lazy to complain for long and I refuse to hold a grudge with some misguided spirit who over inflates the 'horrible' consequences of backer crafted NPCs in Pillars 1.