krellen

As a rape survivor, I find this sentiment you are espousing to be extremely offensive. Comparing "microaggressions" to RAPE is out of line. There is no excuse for even coming close to this metaphor of yours.

Well, I don't like my backer memorial, so I'm asking them to let me change it since it doesn't seem to be such a big deal now. If they really value their backers, they'll let me, right?

They have a fear effect. Haven't seen anything beyond that.

It currently does highlight containers, but not dropped loot from enemies. (It's possible "Expert Mode" disables this?) As for my suggestion: when I click on a member of my party, I want to select them to the exclusion of the rest of the party. Having to click only on the portrait or click them twice feels too "sticky" for me.

Except I'm not talking about a new iteration, clinging to the old. I'm talking about a ranking of all the iterations since the original AD&D. 2nd Edition ranks in the back of all versions. 1st edition was wonky, but had some fun exploits and oddities that 2nd edition "fixed", to its detriment. 4th edition is a weird attempt at making play different, with some systems that work well and some that are bloated and ugly, but overall it's more fun to play than 2nd edition. 3rd edition greatly simplified systems, making them easier to understand and slightly more modal, leading to a deeper game than 2nd edition. There just isn't anything that 2nd edition has to offer that isn't done better by one of its predecessors or successors. 2nd edition just doesn't bring anything to the table - it was what we had at the time those games were made, but it's certainly not a bar to measure games against today. Baldur's Gate and Torment were great because of the writing and stories, not because of the combat mechanics. The greatest weakness of all the IE titles was always the combat mechanics, and that's because 2nd edition is simply not very well designed, especially for implementation by a computer that cannot fudge rules on the fly as can a human Dungeon Master.

Well, to be fair, 2nd edition is by far the worst-balanced and least enjoyable iteration of D&D to date. It was a spectacularly terrible system, and the games that used it as a base were great despite it, not because of it. So far, I'm not terribly impressed with what PoE is doing instead, but I definitely can't support a "let's go back to 2E" movement.

Okay I don't get this because real-time combat with pausing is fundamentally part of IE games It's actually kind of not, you were just fooled into thinking it was. The IE games were all turn-based under the hood; the turns just advanced automatically and rapidly. This system isn't that, and is worse for it.

Your opinion is wrong. If I'm playing on Easy, I am saying "please don't waste my time with a bunch of stupid trivial filler. Let me blow through that stuff." If you're looking to get challenged by every single fight, having to use the utmost of your ability every time, you're looking to play a game on Hard, or maybe an even higher difficulty. Don't make Easy into Hard because of guys like this. Let Easy be easy, and let Hard be hard.

Combat needs something. I have ended two playthroughs now, both on Easy, being slaughtered by beetles. BEETLES. SOMETHING is wrong with the combat system. This is not a reflection of "old school" values. Baldur's Gate wasn't this full of nonsense. The old TSR Gold Box games weren't this full of nonsense (I was playing some of these just last year, so this is recent memory talking). There is something just fundamentally wrong at the very core foundation of this combat system.

Coming into this having not followed the development, not read these forums, not having contributed anything (beyond a large stack of money) so far, the combat in this game sucks. It's just awful. I was murdered by two stone beetles on Easy, and I can't really figure out what I was supposed to be doing differently. First off, the beetles refused to attack my fighter, despite him standing there whacking things with his axe (once in a while, I guess?) The lack of any ability to heal, or to figure out how to make my people last any longer, was extremely frustrating (what sort of game has priests who can't heal?) I had the last beetle down to low health, so I tried to activate the Rogue's "finish them off" ability, but it didn't seem to trigger at all? I assume the final product will have a tutorial, but I can't imagine any level of information having made this any better. The combat just feels terrible. If we need to micromanage people, just make the game engine turn-based in the first place. Real-time with pause is an awful system, and the only way it's ever passable is with heavy levels of automation and making Easy ACTUALLY easy.

Sir, given that the author of this blog is the writer that created the story of Planescape: Torment I don't think the term "fanfic" can be applied to any future work he might do to the story he originally created. We can make arguments ala George Lucas that he shouldn't retouch it after so much time, but a fanfic it is not.

Non-action, turn-based RPG is the watchword for me. After all the work you (Chris) have already done, I trust you on the story/setting without any input from me. Just don't make me have to click or move my mouse frantically to fight and I'm on board.