Wormerine

I am pretty sure it was confirmed that importing save will still rewuire character creation - your choices will be imported, not the character. Whenever changes are for good or bad, I wouldn’t accept “but it was like that in the first game” as a valid point. It’s different game, what was in the first game is only relevant as a point of reference. I don’t think there is something like “mechanic’s lore”.

There is a virtue in inventory management, but in BG2 you also always have access to unlimited stash. You just need to walk for a bit to get to it (or get a hold on holding bag, which is a clunky stash). The game would need to be redesigned to support inventory management (aka, Darkest Dungeon - what do you take, how much you can carry, what to do you leave behind) or admit that the whole system is a smokescreen and cut the fat out of the experience. PoE went for the second approach. do you think that the second approach is better? We‘re not designing games so we‘re just speculating, but if you were a designer about to create an rpg with stash inventory would your priority be to create quality over quantity for loot? I would imagine that James Ohlen&team did have to take the limited inventory into consideration when they created BG2. How do i design monsters, encounters? Think of the many enemies that don‘t drop weapons at all since their fighting with e.g. claws or whatever like umber hulks, vampires, mummies, ghouls, trolls, beholders, and so on. In Nalia‘s castle the guys who drop loot are the Yuan-ti fighters but everyone else afaik doesn‘t drop anything. It‘s mostly when you fight humanoid parties that you get the special loot. You simply don‘t fight that many enemies of the same kind and composition in BG2 as in similar rpgs. So i‘d assume with stash it‘s easier for the designer, surrounding the player with lots of enemies of the same kind isn‘t that much of an issue for the designer since it‘s ‚put it in the stash and let the player deal with hundreds of identical items‘.I don’t think second approach to be “better”. It certainly doesn’t make for a better inventory management. It does, however, what it’s supposed to do - give you access to weapons you found that your current and future companions might want to use. PoE had overall issue with providing a huge amount of dull, recreatable weapons. I enjoyed Soulbound weapons much more. The amount of trash items was a minor issue for me, mostly because I would loot everything without paying attention, often missing the good stuff. You are right, the way BG provided loot was more sparsely. The way you built you party was different as well. Quite often I would quickly decided who will be in my party for the entire game making keeping/ditching weapons easier as I knew who might use what. In PoE you meet companions later and you don’t really know what might be of use. I am not against revamping inventory management and item system. I am also a big fan of inventory Tetris (one thing I loved about NWN1 was how it’s inventory worked). But I believe that slapping weight restriction or removing stash without making sweeping changes to the current design would only make for a poorer experience. I don’t believe BG was much better as far as inventory goes (weapon design was). In the end you were given your stashes in a form of bag of holding and other containers to get around inventory management. I liked some minor stuff, like limited arrows - I count them among “original xcom clip ammo” mechanics: insignificant annoyances, easy to surpass and not meaningful game mechanics, which fulfill certain fantasy. However, those mechanics will be frustrating or acceptable on a very subjective level, because they are not good, interesting mechanics. Just a busywork, which you might be willing to do or not. So either make it nutritious or cut the fat out, I say.

I wasn’t trying to say that you can’t have unique items and real inventory management with tangible consequences for leaving stuff behind. However, how game is and works would work well if items could be lost permanently. After all, even when you sell them they remain in merchants inventory for later possible use. Let’s say you see a nice battleaxe of drake slaying. Nice stuff, but no one in your party specialises in axes and there are no drakes nearby. So you leave it and it disappears forever. But then you meet Jimmy the Barbarian Dwarf and he loves his axes. You also venture into the cave of drakes. You could really use this axe now. But it was one of a kind, handcrafted and now completely lost to you. Of course, you could make every weapon craftable/buyable, which would mean leaving stuff behind would have consequences but wouldn’t be that crashing. Or you could choose your companions at the start of the game, decided what they will use and not add new companions throughout the game making decision making on what to leave behind easier. Both would work for me, and probably there are more ways to do it. But PoE doesnt care about inventory as it’s not its focus. It does, what it needs to do and does it well, without enhancing or sabotaging core game.

Once Goldpack Palladin's shiny effect wears off, the Palladin't becomes cloaked:

The problem is: in majority of RPGs (especially story driven RPGs) weight limit doesn't add depth but rather is a time waster and that is precisely why it was removed. As Josh explained there is nothing stopping you from carrying absolutely everything from Dungeons and stashing it/selling it, so removing stash or restricting carry limit only adds more wasted time between looting&selling rather than adding any depth. Some depth of choice could be added if items would disappear once you leave the level, but it creates an issue with game design - unique weapons can be easily permanently lost. If that was the case, people might feel even more obliged to carry what they can, then run back to keep and stash their goods before moving on. So yes, carry limit adds a bit of "immersion", but lately it really did become and annoyance rather than a boon (Elder Scrolls/Witcher3) as it takes your time&attention from doing fun things rather than adding any depth. Perhaps there should be? Perhaps items you leave on the ground should disappear during area transitions? I mean, it would make sense that all sorts of scavengers would pick the bandit camp clean of everything even remotely valuable after the player party has removed the dangerous bandits from the picture. No, it "shouldn't" be but it "could" be. It is not that it is a bad idea, but does mesh with the "unique" and "pre designed" item philosophy. The way items are dropped and designed would have to be redesigned. But as PoE and IE games main focus is story and worldbuilding, I imagine devs saw unique handcrafted items as a more important feature than inventory management. Sometime two equally good ideas go against with each other and you have to let one go.

Have been playing with the system a bit (not much mind you), and while I still support the change my initial impression is that many classes don't benefit enough from both strengh and resolve. I find myself quite restricted regarding perks I can get depending if I have a high strenght or resolve build. I have been playing so far purely with single class characters. It might be better if we go multiclass and have a wider choice of skills to choose from.

The problem is: in majority of RPGs (especially story driven RPGs) weight limit doesn't add depth but rather is a time waster and that is precisely why it was removed. As Josh explained there is nothing stopping you from carrying absolutely everything from Dungeons and stashing it/selling it, so removing stash or restricting carry limit only adds more wasted time between looting&selling rather than adding any depth. Some depth of choice could be added if items would disappear once you leave the level, but it creates an issue with game design - unique weapons can be easily permanently lost. If that was the case, people might feel even more obliged to carry what they can, then run back to keep and stash their goods before moving on. So yes, carry limit adds a bit of "immersion", but lately it really did become and annoyance rather than a boon (Elder Scrolls/Witcher3) as it takes your time&attention from doing fun things rather than adding any depth.

Yeah, I am super confused by afflictions right now. I am playing buffing/debuffing cipher right now, and spells don’t seem to do, what I expect them to do. Need to do some digging into mechanics.

The flaw of BG2 system was that whatever cool item you didn’t carry with you, you left it in your keep (aka. Stash). When my friend modded Witcher3 to unrestricted carrying limit I frowned upon his casualness. However, what I ended up doing is running back and forth between points of interest on a map and a merchant carrying and selling everything I could. Essentially I did the same thing my friend did but he saved butload of time. There is a virtue in inventory management, but in BG2 you also always have access to unlimited stash. You just need to walk for a bit to get to it (or get a hold on holding bag, which is a clunky stash). The game would need to be redesigned to support inventory management (aka, Darkest Dungeon - what do you take, how much you can carry, what to do you leave behind) or admit that the whole system is a smokescreen and cut the fat out of the experience. PoE went for the second approach.

Yeah, I would like to see firearms become stable damage dealers, maybe not the most efficient weapon for someone with massive strength, but a good option for someone with mediocre strength. Or at least I would like to see different weapon “schools” being influenced by different attributes. But I don’t think that is what attributes were designed to accommodate.

To me it doesn't have much to do with complexity or difficulty but with engagement. If there isn't much decision making in combat and little variety in enemies than encounters start blending with each other. In tyranny you have limited amount of skills, which are on cooldowns. Even if your attacks target undesirable defences, there is no reason not to sit on them, so you cast all the skills, all the time on all enemies. It is more of a clicker than a tactical game. And so combat becomes boring, and everytime encounter stats you just click until its over.

I have saved in the world map and reloaded resulting in UIs from the worldmap and exploration overlapping: In addition, the main character's portrait is a wrong one, even those in the options it is still recognizing the previous one. FIxed itself once I entered a location:

I didn’t enjoy Tyranny combat but it wasn’t purely tied to the limit of 4 characters. More because of it being a decision devoided spammfest.

That’s great, I am doing bunch of passion/favour gigs as well. But asking people to do work for free, whenever it is voice acting, music or programming is just unprofessional and inconsiderate. I don’t know anything about Obsidians music being recorded for free - I am pretty sure they hired an orchestra for some of the pieces. Are you referring to music recorded for the Kickstarter trailer? Quality of that wasn’t great. Considering how rare it is to see a competent musician or actor - no, I wouldn’t say that there are so many of them. Also in all that discussion we omit the cost of casting. More characters = longer casting&search. Whatever, trying to discuss cost of something we don’t know much about. Obsidian will do what they will do.

Sure, but I am interested more in spells which make use of strength. If strength based mage wont use spells much, that will be disappointing. In PoE1 I mostly used Cipher as weapon DPS/crowd control character, so for that build resolve is not,helpful anyway. There is now choices to be made between weapon and spell damage but in my opinion it’s a boon not a problem (at least in theory).

I don’t know how “might” was pitched originally as I wasn’t following development of PoE1, but “might” has never been tied to soul power within the game. It is clearly described as a stat describing physical strength and spellcasting capabilities + scripted interactions clearly tied this stat to physical strength. Looking forward to creating: 1) cipher 2) high strenght and low resolve mage and seeing if those characters are as useless as some people suggest.

Not all the writers, just the guy who wrote Durance and Grieving Mother And yet those are the most interesting and best written characters IMO. ...to be in a book *interactive book.

It might very much depend on what you like in your RPG and what you value more. I found world, characters, quest design and overall structure more engaging in NV than Fallout3, which after initial “WoW!” moment quickly bored me to death. It is still the only Bethesda title that I managed to play for quite a few hours, but it was more due to the nostalgia than enjoyment of the game. I started to really dislike it recently as it kept me from trying NV for many years, and it turned out to be one of the most satisfying RPGs I played in years. I didn’t touch fallout4. It seems to be filled with many of systems, which could make for a fun game (weapon customization, city building) but I doubt they are fleshed out and polished enough to carry the game. Dialogue system looks laughable for a fallout game and I heard from a trusted source that story is embarrassingly bad. Still, they could make a really good fallout shooter and I would probably still dislike it for wearing a corpse of something I love.

Not all the writers, just the guy who wrote Durance and Grieving Mother And yet those are the most interesting and best written characters IMO.

If I didn’t know that there are less people in my party I probably wouldn’t notice while playing the beta.

Can Obsidian give rewards to investors? I know they said they couldn’t give the game to investors, which they thought it was unfortunate but would cause problems as the game would need to be taken into account as part of financial return.

UFO: Enemy Unknown (1994) - 10 points Mythos Games/MicroProse Thief: The Dark Project (1998) - 10 points Looking Glass Studios Deus Ex (2000) - 10 points Ion Storm Freespace 2 (1999) - 10 points Volition System Shock 2 (1999) - 10 points Irrational Games/Looking Glass Studios Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) - 6 points CD Project RED Bastion (2011) - 6 points Supergiant Games Planescape Torment (1999) - 6 points Black Isle Studios Fallout 2 (1998) - 6 points Black Isle Studios Invisible Inc. (2015) - 6 points Klei Entertainment Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000) - 5 points Bioware Portal (2007) - 5 points Valve Corporation Gothic II (2002) - 5 points Piranha Bytes Super Meat Boy (2010) - 5 points Team Meat Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003) - 5 points Ubisoft Montreal Starcraft: Brood War (1998) - 3 points Saffire Corporation/Blizzard Entertainment Sid Meier’s Pirates! (1987) - 3 points MicroProse Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (2002) - 3 points Raven Software Spelunky (2012) - 3 points Mossmouth, LLC Ancient Domains of Mystery (1994) - 3 points Thomas Biskup Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia (1999) - 1 Point New World Computing Hitman: Blood Money (2006) - 1 point IO Interactive Mafia (2002) - 1 Point Illusion Softworks Fez (2012) - 1 Point Polytron Corporation Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013) - 1 Point Starbreeze Studios

Being a musician I mostly guess that VO is expensive due to my personal experience in music. First you need a place to record - studios and concert halls are expensive. For a musician a recording session is expected to be better paid than a live concert, because your work will be reused by someone without you profiting. Sure there are a lot of musicians but they spent many years training, often deal with large student loans and purchased instruments worth $10,000-$100,000. Playing below union wage is not in their best interest. In the recording you have musicians and a team of director and audio engineers who will help in making sure recorded material is high quality and later edit it. Recording of 30min-1hour long, high quality demo reel in US usually costed me between $500-$1000 and that was the cost of a small studio with one audio engineer and a very basic ensemble (just a single violinist - therefore not much equipment in use, no balancing to do) and it covered couple hours of recording session, and cleaning up/editing audio (naturally I didn’t pay myself for performing). I would also want to point out that as it was proof of my abilities recording, there was no time consuming editing like putting different takes together, adjusting intonation etc. Sure, I usually recorded for around $120 but the difference in quality was drastically noticeable. while I can’t possibly predict how much a recording of VO or soundtrack for a game costs I expect it to not be a cheap process.

Well, having quality recording and someone who can speak isn’t enough for an engaging performance. It’s like saying that for a good performance in a film you need a good camera and someone who looks fine. Most youtubers would make for terrible voice actors and their setup probably isn’t good enough. Some games used voices recorded by you tubers on their own setups and it’s is very hearable. In addition, You need someone who can quickly craft a character, potentially change accent, deliver lines in a way that they convey something about a character, and they need to do it efficiently. I imagine there are also other people involved like a director. From what I understand actors in gaming industry tend to be under appreciated if anything.

I will cheat, and say that I wouldn’t change stats that much, but go classless. As class heavily defines your character it doesn’t really seem to work well with second defining mechanic of your character aka. attributes. Personally I would like to see attributes be more impactful and visible; Character with high strength and con plays substantially different than a character with high perception and intelligence. As it is now, I really don’t care what stats add what bonuses. I leave it in Obs heads to balance those out.