Hassat Hunter

The reason why it was shown vs. not shown had more to do with 2nd edition D&D vs. 3rd edition D&D than wheter they wanted to make it easier on players. Personally, I don't really care that much, especially since PE wont use D&D and who knows how enemies are defensively calculated. The armor type should tell some, but is it all?

That Edit wasn't there yet. IIRC; Get boost on Tatooine (same for hatching eggs), take it to Hoth, get that item. Then use it on some crystal on Ilum, kill ghost, get unique crystal for crafting. That's what I recall anyway. Yeah, Alderaan is the easiest, Tatooine second. I've only done Hoth once but it was a bit of puzzling and had insta-death (with revive penalty) so it's my least favorite, never done it since.

Ehm, all IE games allowed you to move the camera over the map. I doubt PE would be different, zoomed or not.

Well, the GSI Heroics can be solo'd on Alderaan en Tatooine, so you don't even need someone else (I wouldn't advise it on Hoth or Makeb though).

Don't say that... Bethesda might sue you too!

I can't be bothered doing the weekly Makeb at all, even if I still need 2 reputation ranks... too annoying...

Yeah, I only noticed near the end of the seeker droid (I think, the one on Ilum) mission that throughout the mission where a few item which gave text hovering over them. Of course, with the group I had, no pauses to read... was hoping to read them after the boss was done, but the teamleader left, and I got kicked out of the instance :/ *sigh* And the only way to get it again is a new character now...

I did them both (well, all three actually)... although yeah, finding a crew took many an evening shouting LFG on the fleet... and sometimes we got 2 or 3 and still had to abort. The biggest issue with these 2 (3) H4's isn't that they come after a singleplayer line, but that they are non-repeatable (like all other H4's in the game). So doing them again, no bonus. And without carrot dangling infront of them, few MMO-players would be willing to help out. If they just make it so you could repeat it daily and get the bonus, any and all issues with finding a group should go away I think, since all three quests are really fun to play and short too for the reward.

I wouldn't call that "panning", simply "moving"... Panning implies the angle is changed, and whatever way you would, it would become painfully obvious the game was never made to be seen in another angle. Which is what isometric is all about...

Playing Dishonered. Can't say I like it... (so far)

Of course the problem then became, especially in Throne of Bhaal, that those items sell for thousands of gold, ruining any kind of economy. Hopefully the dropped items in PE wont go that insane though.

As the background is a 2D image, panning will never happen...

I'm proud of you soulburner Not many, sadly enough, would nowadays tread the difficulty of the classics, or are shocked by 'the graphics' (who cares, right?).

The OP got a point... I would agree spreading out XP so not everyone levels up at the same time. Wheter due to different XP-requirements or by having their XP start at a different level from each other and the PC doesn't really matter that much in that regard...

Yup, have been several times he didn't jump, and either; 1) Could continue 2) Suddenly fall into lava out of nowhere and all die

Ah, that one. Short, which can be nice, but it's not a lot of fun to play. I usually; * Kill the 2 fighters * Switch to shield, pop the no-hit power up (it's been so long I forgot names) on the second minefield. * Pop EMP and 4 missiles (shield, whatever the circle is behind the shied, 2 engines). Should generally destroy it, or only require few blaster rounds. * Keep shields up at all times and just spam missiles to take out my targets. You got 100, it's a short run, plenty left over, no reason to risk getting yourself destroyed with lasers. Only switch lasers if needed to finish the frigate. Don't think I ever really had problems with the astroids. Spamming missiles doesn't require a laser-lock, so you can spend all your time on avoiding any collisions there... or maybe I just got too used to the run now, and did have issues at the start, don't remember...

What's it's name in Republic space? I might be able to give a few pointers. And I don't think they wanted it's ambuigity gone as well as they probably think several gamers had issue with pushing Malgus down, and thus nerfed it to serve their needs, ruining one of the most epic flashpoint fights in the progress

Game design is funny stuff? Well, you learn new things every day. So 'random terrain' is fine? Despite that that, the cover, the place where you can and can't walk etc. all will most likely play a bigger role in combat resolution than wheter an enemy has a sword of axe. Why? Actually that would be the question if I didn't know already. You think wandering is still handcrafted but just wandering in a random area or random within a designated distance from the homepoint. WRONG. Wandering is randomness, even if the group composition stays the same. Unless the terrain they wander is flat all over with nothing on it, and OE wont make their maps that lazy or boring. It will add factors outside of the developers designation. It's different from patrolling, where the developer has fixed parameters set for his party to be. You think the axe or sword is full randomness. WRONG. It's cycling between a selected number of designations set by the developer (your valued hand-crafting. You think this randomness can only be acquired by complex algoriths. WRONG. But it's all been explained before so scroll back a bit. So, all your objections are based on wrong assumptions. As such, you don't have much of a footing to stand on, only you don't seem to realise that. If you said "I don't like that" fine, can't argue with preferences. But don't use false facts or misguided ideas on what is needed to say it should not be done. Wheter you really believe them, or just hope to try and make your opinion the only truth (which would be kinda low) doesn't really matter in that regard. I do suggest spending a bit of time in researching game-development. Hopefully it will learn you much, so you will no longer will remain steadfully true to incorrect assessements. Also, you still don't get we don't want to randomnise combat but rather have some variety to drops, even on uniquely named enemies, do you?

Eh? What? They always have limitations. Poor designers :/ Let's look at the mentioned titles; * Witcher II. Been a while, but from what I recall it was an FIXED over-shoulder camera. As I stated before yes, that can work. But tell me, how many characters did your team consist of in Withcer II? What? No team. I rest my case. * Dark Sould I don't know. * Dragon Age. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The level designers knew full well you can rotate now. Result; It's forced upon you, often. Stuff became hard to see. Control is lacking, so they needed to invent the "action menu" for teammates. Since camera is fixed on one character sometimes for spells you needed to select another character to have a proper view to cast. And you know the funniest thing? It looks WORSE than Baldur's Gate II, a 10-year older game. And that in our Graphics Cold War Era. * X-Com. Can I refer you to my "what are you playing?" post about it? And how I HATED the camera. I don't know who controlled it, but he or she followed your idea of "Hey, you got all the time in the world, let's make the camera as obnoxious as possible on purpose. Who cares they need another 1-5 minute per turn to use this ****ty camera, it's turnbased". Rotating around to see enemies and waypoints was a pain. Zooming was a pain. And elevation? It was so horrible I just rather waited 10 turns for the enemy to come down than go up. It was THAT ****ING BAD. SO BAD IT MAKES PEOPLE GO ALL CAPS LOCK WITH STARS! "You got all time, so it doesn't matter" my sweet ass... Drakensang is also over the shoulder. And the teamplay is... bad at best.

Yup they changed it. Now the fight isn't awesome, it's lame and sucks. Such a shame.

The funny part being 'A well made and properly done 3D camera' has yet to be made... IN 15 YEARS. Which to me, makes it seem it's simply impossible. We made so many strives in those years, but still there can't be good 3D camera points? And as modern games showed, over-the-shoulder isn't exactly good for tactical gameplay or controlling a team.

An encounter wandering as a whole? Sure. But then it's really not handcrafted anymore. They could be encountered at another encounter. You could find them with the bowmen close to your party. I suppose it works best with melee only. And if that works, why wont random equipment? What makes one kind of interesting gameplay appaling to you, while it's not that different? It's not even for replays. Think you died in a forest due to bandits. In BG1 all bandits had swords. Here they could have a variety of melee weaponry, all different. And they're seeded once you enter the forest. So even if you entered the same area, suddenly the team you just found plays entirely different. That's something handplaced can't do, sure the encounter may be good, but it's the same all the time. This would spice it up, give players a reason to think, act on what's given. Have them to react. Anyway, from the beginning on, my point wasn't even about used items (though seeing the armor and weapon dropped on the enemy character would be cool, yeah). It wasn't even about items on enemies, or found in the wilderness. It was about how it would be cool if most "unique" drops actually had 1 or 2 variations that could drop instead. All you guys focused on was the weapons though. I didn't even think about them. But now that I was forced to think about it I had to come to the conclusion that, yes, randomnising them too (again, not completely, but in a limited roster of possibilities) would be awesome. More graphical variety, more variations of items you found instead of always those crappy swords, some change if you played the game again, and yes, more challenge to the player and active required reactivity if weapons really play as big a part as you believe they will (personally I still somewhat doubt that). Bonus; It saves developers time, and instead of bandit1.cr (sword), bandit2.cr (axe), bandit3.cr (hammer) they could all fit it in 1 file, as well as bandit4.cr (bow) and bandit5.cr (crossbow) into bandit2. See how what used to be 1,2 and 3 don't get bows or crossbows? And how randomly chosing 1,2 or 3 (all preset) doesn't require ANY algoriths, just a randomiser? Now, as to the WHY? Because I've played BG1 a few times. I did BG2. I did KOTOR1. All the loot was fixed. It was boring, it was predictable. It was stale. I don't want completely random (KOTOR2 wasn't good either), and yes, making instead of 1 drop 3 (not necessarily unique items though, although as I said before, that would be cool too, and add a layer of depth, and reactiviteness, as well as players discussing items more and potentially using items they otherwise never would. All pro's to me). Why is this bad? I don't know, you tell me, since you're the one objecting against it. If you replay the game to see other choices and all the dropped items are the same, is that going to add an additional layer of strategy and thinking to your brain? No. Indeed. Would if you suddenly find other items, although yes, some the same too, require you to think better about your strategy. Thinking like 'Meh, I'll find that sword+2 there, no need to buy a sword+1 now' could be invalid. You still need to keep your top-game. Would that be good game design? Yes, I think it would. Would it be wasted development time? Maybe for an AAA+ game with the lowest commoditor, but this game is DESIGNED for the people we KNOW will replay it. And maybe again, and again. And spending time on this, implenting this, would really level up the game for them, for us. We know people still play BG2 to this day. Most people know everything. With just this tiny bit of randomness you can never say that about PE. It will remain fresh, playthrough after playthrough. No forestwalk the same, no lootfind exactly the same as you had in the game before. But please... do tell me how I have little cognative capabilities or or no long-term vision, or any vision or "how I have to turn on my brain" (oh, the IRONY). I have no objections to items being fixed. But the only reason YOU want them fixed are narrow-mindedness, naitivity and a severe lack of knowledge how games are based. That, to me, are NOT valid reasons. I would have been far more forgiving if the preference came out of mere preference, than because of these 3 reasons, which aren't a preference to begin with.

I only use my basics to buy Isotope-5 and put that on the GTN. Of course, that was a lot better money-wise before Oricon and CZ-198 made basics so common prices plummeted. Still a nice little extra dough. EDIT: Actually, you can send "comms" to teammates. Just buy something you want for them for comms, then rip out the mods, put them in legacy armor and send that through mail. It's the main way people suit up alts for hm fp's or ops... EDIT2: Nvm, I should read whole posts before making replies XD. EDIT3 (I keep going): Bound or unbound does have rules. Bound items are special boss-loot generally. So they're bound so people need to play the FP's rather than simply buy the items. Also for some reason lvl 52 'improved' orange items are bound, which I still think is a bug. The rest should be unbound. AFAIK the world bosses only drop unbound items. Most people farm them just for that, GTN money. Personally I just ignore WB's by now, too long to respawn, too many people after them, and the rewards aren't worth it, I can make money in other faster less annoying ways.

Games rarily live up to their previews. It does look rather promising, but it's too early to get hopes up, especially if there's no PC-version of the bat

While the OP is WTF? it wouldn't be a spiritual successor without blue outlined animals on the map. If there are only enemies in the woods, well, that kinda kills the feel you're in a living breathing world. I wouldn't mind too if they add, like Divinity II, if you kill a lot of them a super-animal kills you.