Sabotin

I think the elimination also stems from the fact the they're not going with rock-paper-scissors mechanics with spells and counters to those spells, but a more generalized approach. So very specific preparation should be unnecessary. The buffs are probably going to be balanced around the no-prebuffing policy, with diverse cast times and effect powers to be used tactically instead of strategically. Hmm, does that sound more action-y? xD . I still hope some elements from this remain though. For example if switching modal abilities/spellbooks/weapons/etc takes an amount of time, it would pay off to know what will be useful beforehand.

The part I like about such setups is the choose-your-own-difficulty. Figuring out how to kill some big baddie alone when you were supposed to pull it into an ambush or something .

Wasn't the class system put in purely due to nostalgia/IE feels anyway? The problem seems easily fixable though, just put skill points into different things on different characters... I don't think it unlikely that the game will have threshold checks achievable only with full invest+class bonus.

As far as I gathered weapons will have different attack speeds and damage values, with the "inferior" ones having a non-standard extra bonus (higher accuracy, longer reach, deflection bonus, etc). I am almost certain that there will be extremely few if any out right immunities. If you've followed Sawyer's posts for a bit you've seen that the idea for combat is more about efficiency rather than hard counters. So while your spear guy may not be as effective against spear resistant foes it will not make him useless. And I think weapons will be grouped differently, not swords/maces/daggers... I believe someone mentioned the Cowboy perk in F:NV, which gives a bonus to damage dealt with dynamite, lever-action firearms, hatchets, knives, and revolvers as an example of the direction they wanna go.

Do the Druid next please. The others we have an idea what they do at least, but that one is a complete mystery . As others have mentioned there's a floating rock on the left side of the screenshot xD. Not sure why (lighting?) but I get a stonehenge vibe from that ruin. The classes seem pretty distinctive, I think it will be fun breaking and experimenting on them :D . Oh, also, have some sort of reference in the game where people complain about the rogue stealing all the killing blows, hehehe.

If you read a bit further in the definition you'll see that "boreal" comes from "Boreas" - the Greek god of the north wind, which is in its own turn associated with cold weather . I guess looking at it strictly you'd have to call them something else. Nothing comes to mind that would be linked with "south" and "cold" at the same time, possibly because on the mirroring latitudes on the Earth the climates are totally different (Tiera del Fuego maybe sort-of?). Could just call them snow dwarves or whatever. Just please no elvensoundinglongaschickenintestineswithextragtf'téhf'sôdg'oöfg`an dwarves.

How about making these off-hand defensive weapons function as just reskinned shields?

At some point it was said that rogues would be able to set up their own "sneak attacks". Maybe one of these will be some kind of distraction, that temporarily turns off a perception circle? Otherwise I too have trouble figuring out how you'd approach someone for a stab.

I think it'd be a good idea to have something like that. I often find it difficult to associate a codex area description with a visual location on a map. That goes doubly so when the names are difficult to read and have multiple variations.

I don't think you can expect animations for every attack though, that would not work well with the mechanics. Since the characters are doing stuff at the same time it would look weird to begin for example some casting animation, then get hit and play that one and then return to the middle of casting. I guess they could do something like the slight twitch in IE, but not sure how that would look in more detail. I think the sound and the attack animations themselves could bring a lot of "weight" to the combat though, so the animations of the receiver wouldn't be that important.

Not sure if this applies as LoS, but I hope the circles aren't going through walls. It would be awkward to get detected by enemies from a room you didn't even know was there.

Look at it this way: the "interrupt cooldown" is just a numerical representation of the hit animation which plays when you get interrupted.

I'll echo a couple of previous posters that the the character sheet (or part of it) could be on the inventory screen. Then you could just color code the changes as a preview when you're hovering or holding an item with your mouse. Not sure if the inventory window would always be open for all party members at the same time, but you could display the character sheet on the side depending on the inventory of which character you're mousing over or something. IE games were very impractical on this and I think it would be cleaner than having long strings of mechanics info in the item descriptions or whatnot.

Lots of guessing but: The Concentration number is flat, while the Interrupt is a %. This would lead me to believe that it will be DamageDone*Interrupt vs Concentration check to determine if the skill is interrupted. So the things that interrupt would be the big hitters, not the fast nicks. And it'd be hard to break the concentration of anything with heavy armor. That paladin on the picture would have to lose like a third of stamina in one hit if it works like that. Depending how much hard cc (total loss of control) is in the game this cold be a secondary use for something like rogues or rangers and whatnot that can produce big hits, while others can do it on squishy characters only. Assumptions upon assumptions, but that's what we do, right? :D .

Why would you assume INT does something more than what it says? And fighter types can also have AoE and debuffs. In fact I wonder if INT AoE increase also affects the threat area around people, that would be an interesting factor.

If each point in attack moves the 5/45/45/5% curve for miss/graze/hit/crit by 1% then your damage gain is higher than 2% if you're below enemy deflection or lower if you're above enemy deflection. Not counting DT. Looking at the dispersal of offensive stats I would say that a little bit of everything would be optimal. Which makes me believe that class abilities and talents will be determining which way to go. I hope we'll be able to see all of the possible skills somewhere at character creation or in a manual, to help decide.

I like the little notes for reputation. I guess even terrible villains start as rascals

I don't know how 4e dnd handles the stats, but those sort of remind me of the Neverwinter MMO. I wonder how the point buy is handled though, it seems some stats have diminishing returns (% ones) and some do not (those for opposed rolls). By the way, what happened to Fort./Ref./Will. They're not mentioned, yet they sort of coincide with the stats. But that might also just be due to the class. One thing though, I am very weary of the interrupt mechanic, due to how it affected DA2. It heavily skewed the balance to favor offense. While not really stunlocking it was reducing the damage (since it often got interrupted) by a lot, making it the much better choice. This might have been also affected by other factors like fast repositioning and telegraphed attacks, but still...

An example of questionable data interpretation: I've been following a couple of games that get balanced every now and then and the main metric seems to always be quantitative. Something is underpowered if it's not used a lot and something is too strong if the majority uses it, etc. While possible, I don't believe that would be the only reason. What about the fun factor, ease of use and learning curve, just happening to cater to more players or even vanity. I think you have to be very careful with metrics to see what you need to and not what you want to.

For those epic items that would bankrupt a merchant - how about making them worth little money, but you can find people that would be willing to trade some other artifact for it? Cue easter egg trade chain quest xD . Also thumbs up for bartering. One thing though. I'm not sure if it's mutually exclusive, but how are different play styles dealt with? I mean you have people that stack money to save up for that super awesome sword and you have people that upgrade equipment at every opportunity and people that are everything in between. It seems like different loot quantity/quality is meant for a specific style of play and would bring issues to the other?

Maybe a companion with some kind of mental disorder (and I don't mean used to comedic effect). You then have the chance for all sorts of social interactions and explorations, specially when you bring souls in.

I think the idea is to take companions and then if you don't like someone you can switch them out with an adventurer. I can't really predict what I'll do, depends on how I like the companions .

While on the subject, I'd like to see mingling and interaction between the various factions/neutrals/etc., that goes beyond "we are x and hate y". I think it would make them feel less artificial and maybe more connected with the world.

While playing the same character through multiple games does bring something, I don't think it's at all necessary for an enjoyable sequel experience. Take MotB, the game could have easily been made around the player using a completely new lv1 character instead of using the person from NWN2 OC. Or heck, take PS:T, you're basically playing a sequel with a different character there as well (previous incarnations). In Divinity 2 you're also a new hero. In a sequel, the world and character building can still matter. Doesn't it make you feel good when you hear about places that you've visited and hear stories about events that you've been involved in, or even just witnessed? Some good and well placed references can really breathe extra life into a world. As for the epicness, I don't think that's necessary to take into account in relation to a sequel. First and foremost I'd really appreciate a solid and enclosed experience, not an "intro" to the world. We have enough franchises that just use different assets in the "sequels" and don't really change anything. This kind of goes with my previous thoughts, but having the same character can sort of box you in on what you can do and show. There's only so far you can go with "bigger is better" before your world and systems start breaking down (look at any longer lived MMO and their contrivances born from power creep). In addition if you're boasting decisions and consequences you can fast get entangled in your own story lines. Bioware tried this and they did not come out unscathed. But with a new character you can go as epic as you want in the first game. The deeds and heroics of the previous game simply go into legend or something

How do swashbuckler style characters work, when deflection is purely gear dependent? Does light armor give that instead of damage resistance or something?