Vaeliorin

Given that paladins aren't tied to religion in any way, it wouldn't make any sense for them to include a Holy Avenger. Heck, you could even theoretically have a paladin dedicated to the destruction of religion and the gods. Would such a paladin be able to wield a Holy Avenger? How would that make sense? I could see deity tied-weapons for priests, but that seems rather unlikely. Also, not having specific OP items is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. If my character has spent their whole career using axes, for example, I shouldn't be punished in the end game because I want to keep using axes, even though the OP weapon is a sword. As far as I'm concerned, there should be at least one top-tier weapon of each type that are all relatively equal in terms of power within their specific category (2-handers balanced against 2-handers, etc.)

To me, the proper way to handle this is to give us access (either in the manual, or through the PoE website) to a fairly extensive setting document (basically like a campaign setting book for a PnP game.) The way it's normally done with new IPs, my first character tends to be a retread of a character I've been playing forever, in order to get a better idea of the world so that I can make future characters better integrated into the setting.

Real-time first-person AI exploiter. Or maybe enemy circler...probably should add tile-based, as otherwise that would describe Dark Souls, as well (though supposedly Dark Souls 2 is better about this.) Regardless, one of many examples of why turn-based is the superior system.

This makes me happy. This is how treasure should always be done, as far as I'm concerned. Makes repeat playthroughs more interesting when you don't know exactly what you're going to get.

Well, the last couple of seconds of the trailer basically means it's a bargain bin for me. I don't pay full price for games that have timed platform exclusive content.

It could be interesting if the music was good, but from that trailer, it isn't. Single musical episodes in a series are, usually, okay, but an entire series based on it would grow annoying rather quickly. Of course, I largely hate musicals.

That's all fine and dandy in a purely-lore state. And, I'm all for significant reputation effects and consequences for your behavior. But, this is a game, and, mechanically, I'd rather see it encourage you to follow your "creed" with the incentives you get from doing so, rather than with the penalties you'll suffer if you walk out of line. It's not that I don't think it make sense. I just think there's a better way to do it, than with sheer penalties when you place a foot wrong. I'd rather there be some interesting twist that occurs when I choose to follow the god of destruction, and I decide to mend and heal stuff. Maybe my healing abilities start gaining destructive qualities, as "punishment" or something; I take some damage whenever I heal someone, or I have to choose a target for some minor damage that's near the target I want to heal, or I can't cast the heal, etc. I don't just get my abstracted mechanical numbers dialed down on a numerical potency scale for being a Priest wrongly. I suffer an apt "punishment" that affects my decision-making, rather than my overall character effectiveness. As someone else pointed out about the lore, if anything, Paladins would be the ones to suffer straight-up potency by going against their core path. Priests' beliefs are (from the update) "more philosophical, open to criticism (both their own and from others), and malleable from individual to individual." Seems like you'd have a lot more interpretations of the same path, there. "If these people are dying of sickness we cannot cure, is it not benevolent to end their misery?" As opposed to "Oh no, I've chosen the non-benevolent choice... now my benevolent healing powers are diminished!" Again, mechanically, apply that to ANYTHING else, and it just reads so negatively. "Fighter, if you use a weapon you're not specialized in, your fighting abilities will start to diminish!" "Wizard, don't go studying spells of some other school, or you'll start to suck at spell-casting!" Hell, just by choosing this path instead of that one, and being able to bolster your abilities by following your chosen path, you've already got a mutual exclusion of bonuses going on. What you've chosen versus what you didn't choose, and following it to gain effectiveness versus failing to follow it and missing out on that additional effectiveness. Not to mention the reputation/dialogue/lore effects of your decisions. "Hey, I thought you were a priest of such-and-such! HOW CAN YOU DO SUCH A THING?!", etc. Throwing an extra penalty in there just seems like folly. And, though it's neat in the lore, mechanically, it just reads as "never, ever do anything that's even the slightest bit against your specific faith." There is no "Hmmm, it might be interesting to go against my faith a bit," which should really be a positively interesting option, just like class builds that don't necessarily play to the classes' strengths -- they're already worse, comparatively, for missing out on the utmost strengths of that class's abilities and style, so why would you tack on more penalties? "Oh, you're going to wield a weapon instead of a want, mister Wizard? Well, you don't get Blast, AND I'M GOING TO REDUCE THE POTENCY OF ALL YOUR SPELLS, BECAUSE YOU SHOULDN'T USE WEAPONS, but I'll let you use weapons, and just punish you for it, on top of the existing difference between the sheer effects of wielding that weapon versus wielding something else, u_u" Except it's not all your spells. It's one specific ability (priest passive AoE stamina regen, paladin passive defense boost) that is effected by your following of your chosen path. I'm doubting it's absolutely vital to have those running at max efficiency, and if you're unwilling to take a minor hit to those abilities in order to make an in-character choice, well...sorry?

Huh. Personally, that's the kind of thing I couldn't care less about (well, that's not entirely true. I do find it interesting, but I'd be content with an end-of-project summary type thing, as opposed to regular updates.) I want mechanics and lore info. I prefer to be intimately familiar with a setting before playing in it, because otherwise it seems like my character is a moron when he lacks basic knowledge about the world he lives in. Also, I'd like to have at least a basic intended character progression before I get the game in my hands, because I want to be able to play it straightaway when it arrives.

You know what, call me an idiot, but for a moment there, I really hoped that I'll find that copy protection wheel in my boxed copy... Sure that part about game being locked down for 72 was ugly, but the wheel... I... did... kinda... like those... back in the day. No, I'm not kidding. I loathe April Fools'. I was kind of hoping it was real too, not as actual copy protection, but just as an old-school in-joke type of thing in the boxed copies of the game. You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, Obsidian.

I expect to be tarred and feathered for this, but... BG2 is the worst IE game. My personal rating is PS:T>IWD>BG>IWD2>BG2. IWD2 would be above BG if I hadn't encountered a game-killing bug my first playthrough. Consequences are unnecessary in an RPG. All that matters is choices, and how those choices define your character. Real-time with pause combat is awful, and can never be legitimately difficult, as it's too easy to correct your mistakes. 4E D&D is the only edition that's been remotely playable, and it is also sadly the only edition that hasn't gotten a noteworthy game made based upon it. Class-based systems are awful, and are only acceptable in an RPG because non-class systems give you no idea what potential skills your possible companions might have, and therefore no decent way to determine in what direction to build your character. Level scaling is good, but only when enemies scale upwards, and not down (i.e. you can still encounter enemies who will trounce you out of hand, but should never encounter enemies that you just walk all over...those are only boring wastes of time.)

Chalk up another one for Florida. I think my favorite part of this article is the line "Career paths involving crack cocaine generally are frowned upon by law enforcement." I can't imagine why they felt the need to add that line, and it makes me wonder about these crack cocaine involving career paths that aren't frowned upon by law enforcement.

As others have said, this isn't really the case. My dwarven street samurai has an 8 Charisma (can't unlock any more etiquettes, so I won't be going any higher) and also has an 8 quickness, ranged combat, and rifles. He absolutely destroys things with burst fire (he always gets buffed with haste so he can fire 2 bursts per turn). Granted, I think I'm starting the final part of the campaign, so it took a while to get those stats, but it's possible. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the game so far, and look forward to playing other people's campaigns, and maybe working on some of my own. I've only had trouble at one or two points (running around in the later matrix bits requires ESP, which I didn't deploy and promptly got myself kicked out, and even got "killed" by some Black IC...yay for Doc Wagon!) Already planning my next run with a Rigger/Decker hybrid...no guns, just drones.

I'll take underpowered mages over overpowered mages any day, but then you know that already. Besides, after all the years of overpowered casters, it's only fair that the melee types get to be useful for a change. Honestly, I'm really happy with what I've seen so far, as it's exceeded my expectations on many levels (I was expecting more 2E-like rules when funding the project, which is why I didn't back for higher than I did, as I loathe 2E D&D.) I obviously won't be able to say for sure until they've shown us more of the ruleset (I'd like to see some stuff on the classes we don't know much about yet) but so far I'd say I'm getting a better game than I was expecting (though I'll admit to being a bit disappointed with crafting no longer being a skill...not sure how it will work now.)

Given that theoretically you could be a necromantic champion as a paladin, it wouldn't make much sense for them to have abilities specifically for fighting the undead. As someone mentioned, it might make more sense for them to have something along the lines of favored enemies, and have abilities that only work (or work to greater effect) against those favored enemies. Point being, paladins aren't shoehorned into being goody two-shoes in P:E. They're simply champions of causes, and those causes can potentially be anything that you can think of. While I don't have a problem with the goody two-shoes paladin (though I always thought Lawful Good was too strict of a requirement, mostly because I don't enjoy playing Lawful characters) I much prefer this sort of paladin who is much more in line with the original concept of the paladin (and not the D&D one.)

I don't know what it is with RPG UI's, but it seems like nobody likes numbers. A bar for health and stamina is all well and good, but in the end it's fairly meaningless unless everyone has identical health/stamina. A half bar of stamina may mean that one hit from an enemy will take out a mage, whereas a fighter with a half bar may be able to take another half-dozen hits. I'd much rather be able to see the numbers (without needing a tooltip) so that I know exactly how much stamina/health a character has remaining. I'd also like to be able to see effect durations numerically...I don't want a buff to run out in the middle of a fight when if I'd known it was that close to running out I could have recast it prior to the fight, or waste time dispelling an effect that would have ended in a few seconds anyway. Anyway, other than that, I don't have too much of a problem with the proposed UI other than the fact there are nowhere near enough quickslots. I don't want to have to go through a bunch of submenus to access commonly used abilities (or even rarely used abilities, really.) I'd also like to do away with the concept of weapon sets, and just be able to use any quickslot for weapon setups (ala NWN 1/2.) That said, I can make do with whatever, but frustrating UI's are far and away the biggest problem I have when trying to replay old games..

How can it be more strain on the GPU than them running about trying to hit you with stuff and hurling spells though? Optional would be good..... The problem comes in when you get piles and piles of bodies hanging around. If they're not on screen, it won't effect the GPU, but it will effect memory usage. That said...I don't particularly care if corpses hang around. It doesn't break my immersion either way. My personal preference would probably be to have them disappear, just because I don't want them cluttering up the landscape.

Personally, I'm happy with just getting updates whenever they have something of substance to tell us. I don't need updates that tell me every time they finish an area or finish writing an NPC, or whatever. If there's significant things to tell me every week, then weekly updates are fine. If a month or two goes by with nothing significant to report, I don't need an update just telling me "Hey, we're still working on it!"

Um...maybe I'm missing something, but isn't that 15 dungeon levels? 14 at 75K, 15 at 77.5K? Regardless, congratulations. Really looking forward to seeing how the development goes.

"Quick #ProjectEternity PayPal Update: $106,663 - 2230 backers" via Twitter about an hour ago Nice. That means level 11 of The Endless Paths, too. Darn close to the second city, as well. ~8k right now.

An Hour glass has two "heads" the sand flows from one to the other when it's standing up, as opposed to on it's side. What doesn't make sense about that? But it doesn't have two heads. It has two sides, but not two heads. This is why I hate riddles. If you don't/can't think like the person who wrote them, you've basically got no chance of getting them (unless the answers are picked from a list...those ones are usually easy.) So, no, I don't want riddles. But I love puzzles. Lots and lots of puzzles, please.

This. If I could get the XP with the boxed CE, I'd definitely move up to that tier, but I want a boxed copy and $250 is just too much for me ($140 is pushing it, honestly...though if the game was turn-based...) Any chance of getting the XP as an add-on?

I can't imagine anyone would object to the AI being smarter than it was in the IE games, where everything basically just attacked the first thing that hit them until it was dead. That said, there also needs to be some way to protect squishier members of the party. That doesn't mean taunts, and it doesn't mean convenient choke points everywhere (which is as bad as taunts when it comes to things not making sense.) What exactly it means is up to debate (stances that create a zone of control around a character that slows enemies (as they have to dodge/avoid attacks and thus can't move at full speed) or attacks them when they try to move through possibly, or trips, charges, etc.), but if enemies are going to be smart enough to charge the squishies, we need a way to keep them from being able to get there.

This is almost exactly what I was going to say. Essentially, I want a game that is designed in such a way that it doesn't require me to abuse it in order for it to be fun.

I have to admit, I hope that monks are expert staff fighters. I like staff fighters conceptually, but I don't think I've ever encountered a game where a staff was a decent weapon for a melee class, which seems strange to me.

The one that really sticks in my mind is from playing Wizardry 7. I was starting again for the umpteenth time (I've probably started that game over 30 times) and was progressing normally, got to the Gorn King, went to get the map piece out of the chest...and it was actually there! I'd played that part of the game dozens of times, and never before had that piece of the map actually still been in the chest. I was floored. It turns out that the map pieces are actually in the chests when the game starts, and after a certain amount of time, someone comes and takes them. The idea that a game could actually change based on how long I took to do things was just a complete revelation for me. And now I want to dig out the game and play it again...maybe I'll actually finish it this time.