Horrorscope

Working on visicalc in the mid 80's. This was a more fun way to cruch numbers.

Related: How large are the loaded area's in comparison to BG's? Being 2015, my first guess would be much larger to give more a sense of adventure, but maybe not.

There are no NDA:s from the beta(s), so there's no worry about that. There is a review embargo for those that received the "finished" version intended for release, but that's not really the same thing. Anyway, well... It's a good game. Well the Backer Beta is, at least (I'm not a backer, but I have access to the backer beta). But it's not really.. Baldur's Gate 2 style gameplay with up to date graphics and twirly shiny bits. If you check around the forum, you'll notice some issues are being discussed repeatedly, such as the Engagement system, the lack of individual Stealth, the "Combat Only" abilities, no pre-buffing whatsoever, rather static combat, etc. But it's still a good game. I would recommend it to any fan of the Infinity Engine games, I really would, but let's make it clear that it still has a long way to go to hit the sweet spot in more ways than one. I think that is what actually infuriates many of the fans more than if the game had actually been bad; the fact that it's actually not bad, but it's also not quite as good as it could be, sometimes for very strange, seemingly arbitrary and sometimes downright bizarre decisions. And sometimes simply because there are still issues with how all the rules and assumptions fit together (they don't; the armour system comes to mind) and a lack of balancing (attributes are lopsided and heavily favours min/maxing based on what you want to do). It sounds like I'm dumping on the game, but I'm not. It's genuinely good in many, many ways, but you should curb your enthusiasm in the "spiritual successor"-department and play it for what it is or could be; a good start. A really good start. Thanks, good info. I haven't been following religioulsy but since it is right around the corner been doing some catch up. Like the decision about no buffs, that was just a step you had to do after the step of sleeping. I recall say in NWN the mod where you can hotkey a series of buffs each sleep. It made such a huge difference in two ways, saves a lot of clicks, but also you were so much stronger for it. Impossible to really balance vs a person that didn't want to buff all the time. So the backer beta, they only got to see a small sliver of the game? As for D:OS we got the one town. What we'll see if it follow the patter for this genre's comeback, some massive balance patches, almost to the point you rather have waited 6 or so months before playing the game "As it was intended". Wasterland 2 and D:OS I believe both still have one more and possibly final balance patch. Xcom/Shadowrun... more of the same. Very interested to see how "Slow" works. I'm not huge fan of constant start/stopping of pause based games. So if Slow works out, perhaps I can work it that way in battle and still feel I'm commanding the team fairly well. Could be a missing ingrediant to the pause base genre.

OP brings up a question I have and I'm sure has been discussed... Is their scripting for the AI? If so would you say it is deep like DA:2 or a bit more shallow like vanilla BG? Thanks.

There are a lot of slices possible. Does the mana regenerate? Or need potions or sleep to regain mana? I go with this angle, as much as some want the real hardcore, I'd try to appease them with options, like Perma-Death, Markers on/off, Highlight Objects on/off, where toggles make sense and aren't dastardly hard to do. But if hardcore isn't you and I am a bit torn myself (why I suggest toggles) many are conditioned to what some call dumbing down, where another could say "advancing design". In the case of sleeping for stats back, I never liked it because to me it was cheesy and a chore. On top of that it is harder to game balance since the designer doesn't know stat-wsie where the players vitals are at going in to battle. If you regain after battle automatically, then you can balance knowing that each fight the players are going in 100% ready. Personally I like auto-stuff like this for the most part. I think all these classic games need to take pieces from the past and UI/gameplay enhancements as we've progressed. I think we shouldn't rake them over the coals on these 50-50 decisions. D:OS, no markers. Hardcore YAY! Lots of players who bought it not knowing... Where do I go? Too much talking up front. Game is too hard, they didn't realize you needed to leave town from a certain gate to fight level mobs. Or didn't know you needed to get the two henches in town. Toggle. Toggle. Toggle. It servers budding worlds.

I think this game has more anticipation than D:OS, having the true BG vibe. As far as Wasteland 2 goes, the numbers I recall seeing sold for that were surprisingly low. But they've been supporting it quite well, needed some support to. Totally feel this going the D:OS way vs the Wasteland 2 way in sales.

Sounds like FoW toggle off time!

D:OS is probably right around 1 million by now, was 700k + many months back. I suspec this has a real shot at 1.5 million, just has to be what we expect and WoM will take it from there. I will be one of the non-backers paying the $45. It is interesting though, EA/KS, you never know what you get after that, your biggest customers have already paid by release. I personally only back games I want that are struggling to make it. This one had no problem funding.

As if the developers don't know what to do. It's all a matter if they want to, my guess is no, since they would have done it on release.

MS was on the record recently stating the wanted to get back and do more of that. But then you have to trust whomever said it. About a year ago they said they were refocusing strongly on the PC. That was a good one.

Which is the single greatest decision the team made.

Best adaption of DnD ever, still pretty bad after 3214214 community patches. ' TOEE was a good adoption, but feel KotC is even a better DnD adoption.

I made an image to help you find out what equipment your character can and can't use: Note: This item is for Reinhart; you can tell because it has Reinhart's face on it. There is a similar system for drops from monsters as well. I know determined pants very well.

That sounds good. But who doesn't want these?: 1. Free camera per player 2. Individual gold 3. Client Player Saves Is anyone really against those? Perhaps some will work around not having those, but I doubt even those players would be opposed if they were added. Now the other 95% of players will demand those for this genre, the bar was set years ago, call it what it is. Personally I got over the controls, but the whole buying point to me was co-op. In my case I'd only play with a set group, so the part that stops me from buying this is the camera part. You cannot expect many to play random online games without those rules above. It's just what it is. Now it does look like a fine SP game, personally I am not looking for that.

To you it's a bonus, to me it's the reason to buy it. This genre imo demands multiplay, it also demands imo closed servers. But somewhere almost the entire industry forgot about that one.

To fix things like locked camera, all players on one screen, shared inventory and gold. Those are fairly major changes. I'll be amazed that they fix those to give the game proper co-op mechanics. I'll make you a pay-pal wager we don't see these fixed. If they gave each person freedom to move that means other things they could rely on you being locked to the same area would have to be reprogrammed as well. The game was designed for these rigid standards they set forth here.

Dev:

In the menu move combat targeting to the far right. The difference with this game is you have to move slightly first in the direction of the enemy you want to attack to target it. So say you are surrounded, your target is the north enemy to start, if you want to immediately target south, put your cursor over the south enemy (like any other game), then click RMB (the difference), you will move slightly south but also target that south enemy right away. East, move cursor over east enemy, RMB target east, attack. That's how it works. Yes it is different, but once you have that figured out, not too bad. I can see someone in dev. that played it day in and out have no issue. This genre has trained us to simply move the cursor over the enemy to attack and as we swing with LMB it simply handles the targeting as well.

All pc users can remap their keys, Auto HotKey is free, now I'm not saying that to be wise. But I have done that and really most issues can't be fixed by simple re-mapping. I wish it were true though. RMB - Should be a drive (move to location) and steer (mouse view) all in one. No hold down Alt, one key does both and that be RMB. That to me would be the single nicest key. But playing this with mouse vs controller, the fighting part is just off with the mouse, I don't know if it is the target lock being the issue or not, but I just have much more control in everything I do when fighting with a gamepad vs the mouse mode here. That isn't the case in all games of this manner, just this game because the k/m controls are just a bit off. As to a developer stating click to move, actually the developer is correct you can right click to move, it's just you are thinking click on the ground to move to a point. So it's more of the small details in what was said. It's now all about do the developers care because the message has been true. I found solace in the gamepad in my case, but that shouldn't be the blanket answer.