Sammael

Well, I'm not "everybody on the internet" so I can't speak for others, but you should be easily able to google me, find my real name, and see my credentials as well as my previous connections to various BIS/Obsidian projects. Been here forever... only slightly less forever than Grommy and Volourn. The problem is not in Josh's management, but it's not always Josh's call.

Uhm. No? Its beta. Early beta, but Beta. Also how the hell would you make an accurate guess on how much time the game still needs? 14 years of experience in software development, 16 years of following Interplay/BIS/Obsidian games. They need more time.

This is not really in beta stage. This is alpha, or somewhere between alpha and beta (at best).

There's not much I can say that hasn't been said already. But I'll say this: the game (as shown) needs at least another 6-7 months of development. I sincerely hope that Obsidian will abandon the currently projected release date and focus on completing the game and making it as bug-free as possible.

As it is, combat is really confusing. I feel like I have no control over what my characters are doing, which is very different from IE games. I even started using auto-pause options (something I never did in IE). I had 2 fights, one with stone beetles where my party got slaughtered within seconds, and the second with the group of assassins/bounty hunters (+ a dozen companion boars) outside of town (led by... Merith?). I managed to survive the second fight with 3 party members still alive. My own character (druid shapeshifted into a bear) got killed in 2-3 blows. Playing on normal difficulty, BTW. I always played IWD2 on hard and it was a piece of cake except for the final boss fight. Granted, that was a long time ago and I may suck at games now. Plus, the PoE system is so different it will take a while to achieve system mastery (I think they went overboard in making the system different from D&D, which will be a turnoff for some people).

First of all, @vril did come off as slightly hostile but I don't really care. I didn't post the specs in the first post because I wanted to see first if anybody else had had the issue (I searched the forum before posting but it's really impossible to tell since there is no convention to naming threads and people often post multiple bugs in the same thread). It's not a loose cable, that's for sure, all the cables are secure (and simply reloading the game fixed the problem). It could be a driver issue, but since I'm not having any trouble with any other games, I'd say it's more likely an issue with Eternity than with the drivers themselves. Or, it's a loading/caching problem, for whatever reason Eternity wasn't able to load or cache the resources the first time I ran the game.

Sure thing. Intel Core i7 2600 @3.4 GHz ASUS P8P67 MB 8 GB RAM ASUS AMD Radeon HD 6850 (Catalyst version 13.12) Windows 7 Professional 64-bit DirectX 11 Samsung 971P Screen resolution 1280x1024

I know there are assets missing, but when I initially started the game, everything was... pink. For example, this what the character creation screen looked like: The same thing occurred in the options screen, and during the initial load. The whole screen just went pink. After restarting, assets were loaded properly.

Well, yeah, but if I understood the announcement correctly, it has no companions from the game, no quests from the game (or at least the main storyline), and is extremely limited in scope. In my mind, "beta" means something that's close to the finished product and needs to be playtested and debugged, whereas this is a much different animal. I'm not complaining, just curious.

I haven't been following the development closely, but I'm slightly surprised about the contents of the beta - was this a plan all along (to have the beta be a tech/system demo unrelated to the actual game) or did it change at some point?

Stonekeep (1995). Curiously enough, I avoided CRPGs like the plague prior to Stonekeep - I was primarily a TBS/RTS/P&C Adventure fan. But then, a friend of mine got Stonekeep and invited me to play together with him - we took turns between playing and journal keeping (thankfully, the game had an integrated map so we didn't have to use the graph paper). I still remember the moment when we defeated Khul-Khuum - it was so anticlimactic I couldn't believe it (but the Palace of Shadows gave me nightmares for years). After that, I hunted down Gold Box games and played them until I got stuck/bored - I don't think I managed to complete any of them except Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession. I am *still* frustrated by the ending of Stone Prophet, which required you to draw Ankhtepot through a series of corridors filled with lightning bolts and poison so that he could battle his chancellor and give you the time to escape. Never could do it I also played through Might & Magic games (almost all of them) and Wizardry (later ones). I was never a fan of Ultima games.

If by "adversarial marketing" you mean the snot-nosed punk "CEO" at the beginning, yeah, that was trite. I am cautiously optimistic. I pledged less than I did for Eternity, simply because I am not too keen on the chosen setting. However, as long as the story is good (and with M.C. Comb at the wheel, that's a given), I'll be willing to turn a blind eye on the setting.

No, that's fine. I was in college when Torment came out, studying computer science. I unfortunately had to drop out in 2000 and immediately started working as a programmer. These days, I'm more of a project manager/consultant/analyst than a programmer, but I do some coding on occasion.

Completely useless fact: Josh was on the Torment team, but not as a designer... he was the webmaster and designed the kick-ass Torment website.

The grind thing is just a general example, I do not expect Eternity to have WoW-style respawn points (even if IE games did have them - q.v. Undersigil in Torment, random encounters in BG games, and so on). Players will undoubtedly find the way to exploit the system, and that's their right. On the other hand, if Josh and others want to make a game that does not encourage you to slaughter every living being on the map for XP that's their right as well. This is a question of style and perception; they want to make a game where killing things should not always necessarily be the primary way of resolving problems and making progress in the game. Where did I see that before? Oh yeah, Torment. And I know a lot of people in this thread who hate the proposed goal-based XP hated Torment. Oh well, you can't win them all.

I go to a (real) vacation and take a vacation from the boards and it all goes boom. I'm not too surprised. Re: Stamina/Health - this is a pretty standard, run of the mill Wounds/Vitality system. It's supposed to add that grim'n'gritty feel to the game; in PnP all it does is induce bookkeeping nightmares. Since the computer will do the bookkeeping for us in Eternity, I think it will work just fine. Josh, for us who cannot stand anything related to 4th edition, please include a toggle somewhere to replace paladins barking orders to heal with the standard "Vita! Mortis! Careo!" In my little world, people don't get better from being yelled at, but I will gleefully accept the "IT'S MAGIC!!1!11!" explanation. Re: XP awards - the designers have every right to set the tone and feel of the game by eliminating combat XP. Furthermore, eliminating combat XP will make balancing much easier (without resorting to the hideous auto-scaling crap), because they won't have to worry whether the player is level 5 or level 15 because he spent three weeks next to a rat hole killing ratsies. Yes, 3.x scaling XP is not bad, but it's not a perfect solution because when rats stop giving you XP, you'll just move on to the orc spawning spot.

I'm leaving for a vacation soon, but when I get back (early October), you can count me in.

What sort of help do you need?

Cool, thanks for the info!

I'm not seeing it in the FAQ, was it in the comments? Who replied?

Sure, why not - a Heart of Fury mode of sorts.

Hrm. Maybe we could meet somewhere in the middle? Magic Mini-Marts? I know a lot of people enjoy magic shopping, but I'm not one of them. I'd much rather take my loot from the still-warm corpses of my enemies.

I can express my desires and opinions, as I have on these boards for a very long time. In the past, some of my opinions were actually taken into account (IWD2), and I will continue to offer them in case someone finds them useful. Besides, that's what half the threads on these forums are, the other half being speculation.

No time for a longer post tonight, but I'll post a few things: ECONOMY Silver standard, please. The D&D gold-based economy doesn't work at all, never has, and never will. This is a purely semantic point in a computer game, but it would make me very happy. Gems and such should be used sparingly and preferably have additional uses in the game (other than being alternative currency). MAGIC ITEMS No generic +1 swords, thank you. Each magic item should be unique and valuable, adding more options to the player's arsenal rather than crude numerical bonuses. Some D&D staples should be present - Bags of Holding, Rods of Wonder, Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, etc - but they should all come with added twists and unique properties. In short, put some "magic" back into magic items. And make sure item descriptions are evocative and fluffy, like in Torment and IWD1/2. MAGIC SHOPS There shouldn't be any. A wandering peddler of curiosities, sure. A master crafter whom you can commission for a hefty fee, sure. But Magic-Marts are a big no in my book. CRAFTING It's a waste of time for me, but I know a lot of people enjoy this type of stuff so it's probably a good idea to include it. Just make sure not to repeat the mistake Arcanum made with the bajillion components and recipes. If anything, I think Jagged Alliance 2 can be used as a model, with a few components that can be combined with common items for unusual effects. ENCUMBRANCE No inventory tetris, that's for damn sure. Make it somewhat abstract - for example, I use a system of encumbrance points that combine weight and bulkiness. Max encumbrance is dependent on your Constitution score and each point of encumbrance beyond your max reduces your speed by one point. Items have less encumbrance when worn then when carried in your backpack.

Glad to hear that I wasn't misremembering entirely. We need to get Sammael in here to get a reminder of the details... Behold... the archdevil appears. Ask and you shall receive, though the price may be too high I have a lot of TBH information. Quite a bit of it is something that I would not reveal without permission, but pretty much everything that was on my now-defunct FAQ plus a lot of stuff I had prepared for the FAQ but never got around to posting is fair game. What would you like to know?