Leferd

Still not clear what point you're trying to make as I'm not going out of my way to kill lions, beetles, or spiders. Would you care to make it more explicit rather than trying to be clever with your sarcasm? I'm not being sarcastic. You wrote that you need a discentive to prevent yourself from partaking in "degenerate gameplay" like going on murder sprees for every last drop of XP and items. Just wanted to say that you won't take a reputation or alignment hit for killing the extremely hostile spiders, beetles or lions in PoE, so there is no discentive to prevent you from relentlessy killing all of those critters for their bits... other than the fact that it is pointless, but as you wrote, that didn't stop you from killing everything in BG either. Ok. That's a bit clearer. I was hoping you weren't trying to make a play on the Socratic method gone bad. For PoE the disincentive for me to not specifically go random critter hunting is that I won't be rewarded with XP for it. As terrible as they are, FedEx scenarios are still quests. I should be rewarded for completing quests/missions/objectives. To be honest, it would be poor level design if I face a random dangerous creature in the wild that is not associated with a quest. That's the fault of the designer. You can make the argument that no one is for forcing you to kill, but it's poor design rewarding players to go grinding for XP (without consequence) by going on a random mass killing spree. If there was a bounty system at play for fur/scales/hides or craftable bits, then atleast there is in-game justification to do so, and that's fine. ,

Still not clear what point you're trying to make as I'm not going out of my way to kill lions, beetles, or spiders. Would you care to make it more explicit rather than trying to be clever with your sarcasm?

"You are the ones who believe that a player should get no xp for defeating a dragon in combat but believes a player should xp for helping a little girl find her dolly just ebcause she asked you to. L0LZ" Replace dragon for an xvart. The dragon example is preposterous. Yes I should not get XP for randomly killing an xvart in the wild. Random FedEx quest. Thank goodness we've seen a drop off in the amount of these quests, but yes, we should get XP for retrieving Hull's sword.

"Really? That is sad that you couldn't figure out that it is pointless." I'm not sure what you're getting at. "So what about items? Will you kill everything for item drops so that you can sell it for cash? Or do you only go on killing sprees for XP?" Loot is secondary to XP. I don't like to go on killing sprees but I'm participating in degenerate behavior because I get rewarded for doing so without consequence. If there is a disincentive for me to not do so, then I won't. Killing critters, monsters, or non-humanoids in the wild in BG was essentially easy XP to farm without taking any reputation or alignment hit. "(BTW don't call it an objective based XP system, because it isn't. PoE uses a quest XP only system.)" Ok. Quest based system then. My bad.

What's horrible design was that I was rewarded for going on a mass killing spree without any repercussions for such behavior. But in an objective based system, I'm not going to murder someone unless I receive a gameplay incentive for doing so - usually in a form of a quest. And in other RPG's I'm usually quested to go dragonslaying, so I will get my XP and loot for doing so.

Then why did you kill the Xvarts even though it was completely optional and infringed upon your roleplaying idealism? Did you kill all of peaceful peasants too because the game rewards you with XP for doing so? Yes. The game encouraged me to slaughter the entire village because I have this incentive to farm XP so I can level up and go ankheg hunting and get their XP I turn. Vicious never ending cycle. Kills my role play buzz. In an objective based XP system, I'm not dangled with consequence-less meatbags to go XP farming. There's no incentive to do so.

You know, may be on to something here. It's too late for Obsidian to make this change (which would go back on this being an IE "feels" game) but a lot of the issues with combat pacing, feedback, and pathfinding could be reduced, if not outright eliminated with a turn based system. I do think however, that the team will get the combat feel right for the final release with enough tuning.

So I've been thinking. Should the Pathfinder cRPG get the green light, how are they going to differentiate this from Eternity? I wouldn't be going out on a limb to state that a significant portion of Obsidian's core audience are specifically cRPG enthusiasts (with emphasis on the C) with an affinity to the isometric perspective and party based tactical combat. So how to make a game in the same vein as Eternity yet differentiate between the two? Make it turn based. We're staring to see a resurgence with turn based gaming. X-COM was excellent. Divinity is getting great feedback. In-Xile is concentrating on it. Marceror in another thread brought up that having played the Eternity beta, a lot of the issues for combat could be eliminated if they went with a turn based system. I agree. Pacing and feedback are the primary problems and both could be reduced if Obsidian went the turn based route instead. That said, I am optimistic that Josh and the team will get things right eventually.

This horse has been rotting with maggots for eternity. As I have been saying for years, any mechanic that eliminates rewarding psychopathic kill counts is a very good thing. This game will track reputation. I don't want to be known as the guy that butchered an entire xvart village. And you know what? BG rewarded me for it, with no hit to my reputation or alignment!

It's as iconic as "This is CNN."

I'm reading a lot about trash mobs. But what would qualify as a trash mob? Are they masses of sprites to be dispatched via an instant win button? So far I haven't really come across as anything that would be classified as a trash mob. The giant beetles? They can be very deadly but can be quickly dispatched if you target the wood beetles before the stone beetles. Giant spiders? Take out the widow makers first. All it takes is a little know how and knowing who or what you're going up against. Thankfully there aren't any xvart villages to massacre to fulfill my psychopathic urges.

I could be wrong. Sawyer wrote on it somewhere. Will have to dig up...

A successful Interrupt prevents targets from completing a special action or spell.

What you call fun mage battles I call "Counter the Mage: The Game AKA: The worst combat system ever created!" In fact I have many epic posts on these forums about just how much it sucked to play BG2 past a certain point because literally every fight boiled down to using the same tactics the same way in every single fight and the fight was always won the moment you took down the mage. Namutree: Jesus man tone it back. The game definitely looks like the IE games, feels like them, sounds like them. The mechanics aren't identical? We knew they wouldn't be going in. It definitely plays in a very similar way to BG2, to deny that the game play is very close to the same is.... just false. You may not like the mechanics behind it, but it plays exactly the same, you pause, you issue orders, you micro manage, you buff, you debuff, etc etc. Yep. We are still in the first couple days of beta and like many have predicted, people are gonna cry arms over how bad and buggy the gameplay is and attribute failure which can be caused by unfamiliarity. Give Obsidian a chance to go through their teething problems. New engine, new pipelines, new rules systems. I may be optimistic but I fully expect this game to be a new modern, if albeit, retrofied classic.

Or they could institute a feature where excess loot can be used to fill up your stronghold armory and it'll grant increases to your stronghold's security score.

There will be reactivity, but most of it will be based on your actions in the game via the reputations mechanic. There will be limited reactivity based on your character background, but it's not a big emphasis.

Thank you for the link. Yeah, it would be really nice if this forum had a dev post tracker feature. http://pedevtracker.azurewebsites.net It's not complete with all the devs (especially the new ones) but captures most of them. Really nice man, thnanks. Hopefully you keep it updated. I'm just an end user myself.

Looks like the best case scenario would be MCA doing stick figure drawings of these items.

You do realise that Sawyer is not a fan of Baldur's Gate 2. Right? Huh? Where? How? When? http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/39401-armor-abstractions-in-fallouts-special-game-system/?do=findComment&comment=526647 I really disliked most of the CNPCs, I really disliked being forced to go find Imoen, I really disliked the style of dialogue, and I really disliked being flooded with a million quests by every shmoe on the streets of Athkatla. Basically, there wasn't a whole lot I did like about it.Basically he disliked just about everything I loved about BG2. Somehow I think that this is appropriate:

Thank you for the link. Yeah, it would be really nice if this forum had a dev post tracker feature. http://pedevtracker.azurewebsites.net It's not complete with all the devs (especially the new ones) but captures most of them.

I'm going to be doing the same thing for the same reasons.

No action queue. Atleast not that I'm aware of.

The more I play Eternity, and the more familiar I'm getting with the game system, the more I like it - combat included. With tuning, they can get the combat to the right state. Aside from a dearth of adequate feedback (tactile and visual), the other major concerns are pathfinding and auto attacks. Both should be receiving fixes in the next build or two. Slow mode doesn't help as much as I would like it to -in fact it's too slow for me. Overall, I'm really liking the game. The bugs aren't a concern to me because I know they'll eventually get fixed, but the potential for this game to be special is there. PS Scripted interactions are cool.

I agree with all of that. So far the combat has been the least enjoyable part of the beta for me. I am trying to avoid too much information about PoE but when you say combat is frenetic can you not pause the combat to plan your strategy, or is this not how it works? Repost from another thread: "I'm about halfway through the the beta and I haven't had a party wipe yet. But the combat still needs significant tune up. Yes, it's a crutch that we are not familiar with the ruleset/skills/spell mechanics etc but the primary problem is lack of useful visual and tactile feedback in terms of what's going on."

Looks like this one is dead in the water. ...The blackwater that is...