Reddie

This is quite an important point. For me it would not ruin roleplaying, but obviously the world would be inherently less realistic. Here's how it works in real life: rivers start up in the mountains and flow lower and lower, eventually getting to the sea. Now there are almost none that would split so far from their mouth. It only happens in well-developed delta systems, and these cover the whole area near the mouth. No, in real world rivers actually have tributaries, because water flows into the deeper basins, not the other way. Of course this can probably be explained by use of magic, but hey, doesn't that sound far-fetched.

Also, he's mostly right that we're buing a license and not a game, but Steam pushed it futher as they don't offer licenses, only license subscribtions. As in, software licensing is not about product anymore (yes, a software license is considered a product in court practice) but about a service. It's not only the matter of technical restrictions, as with this practice they are avoiding i.e. european law that states licenses can be given away or resold, because obviously this law don't apply to service subscribtions.

Why do you want to impose on other people your definition of enjoying? Personally, I couldn't care less about your childhood expieriences. If you feel cheating ruined game for you - DON'T USE IT. If you feel saving ruins game for you - DON'T USE IT. But don't demand your attitude be "encouraged" with game mechanics. Everyone and their dog has own idea of enjoyable gameplay, yours is neither better nor worse.

That sounds exactly as good as any argument you're coming up with. Aesthetics is subjective. You may prefer the first map, while someone is well within his rights to prefer the second (regardless of whether it's the final map or not). Can't see anything wrong with that.

This. I don't realise how people can say things like "Steam is not a DRM, Steamworks is". You need a Steam app to install a Steam game. Steam app checks if you have rights to install it. Should it determine you don't, it won't let you install it. That's pretty much a definition of DRM: an app checking whether someone has license rights and enabling or disabling certain actions based on the outcome of that check. Just because there are arguably less convenient forms of DRM out there (i.e. UbiSoft's) does not make Steam less of a DRM it is.

This whole thread's permise is silly beyond belief. It all gets down to people who want to limit player's ability to save saying: "we don't like save&reload approach, but when it's available it's tempting to use it, so it should get removed!" And I don't really see how it should be anyone's problem besides themselves? If you people can't resist the temptation to use mechanics that you feel is damaging to gameplay, get on with some will training instead of imposing your views on other people.

Idk about DRM in PE, but while Steam does not necessarily requires client to run while playing, it definetely requires it while installing a game, thus forcing a player to accept their dickish "Subscriber Agreement". Naturally, GOG has it's TOS as well, but they only deal with using the web service and not the installer - you get an actual licence product instead of a licence subscription.

I say no to automatic regeneration in combat, except when it's achieved by ingame resource (artifact/spell/technology perhaps?). When out of combat, there could be automatic regeneration to simulate self-healing, but I don't consider this obligatory.

I don't have much problem with DAO's mechanics, apart from the fact that it was unbalanced. There were only few correct sets of skills that made you character not suck, and cooldowns should have their lengths sorted differently. But leaving that aside - I'm not a mechanics buff, I can take anything there is, with exception of a system that's totally unintuitive, to the point of being unplayable. My biggest problem with DAO was an over-abundance of boring and repetitive dungeon-like areas. It felt less a homage to Baldur's Gate than to Icewind Dale, while lacking the feel of it.

The division is more like left-right division in politics, i.e. it's not absolute and there's of course a large group of, let's call them "moderates" Of course both factions tend to stick with siege syndrome and "if you're not with us, you're against us" way of thinking. It's important to realise that Kickstarter funding enables the game to be made, but to become a success it also has to sell decently. So I hope it will be the moderate faction that the game will eventually cater to. Instead of oldschool combat to please traditionalists and romances to please evolutionists (very misleading name btw), I'd much rather see combat that takes some new ideas that were actually good and romances that are toned down from the absurd level they were in recent BioWare ventures (an exposition slightly above the line of BG2 would hit the spot, imo). The radicals from both sides will get angry but majority would probably consider this at least "good enough".

Regarding the story, I think it doesn't get mentioned in updates/stretch goals because it is the primary feature covered by initial 1.1M funding. It seems to me that from the beginning Obsidian wanted to do a certain kind of story or not do it at all. I can't really imagine Chris Avellone endorsing a campaign along the lines "if you pledge 3M, we promise you 20% more dialogue text!". I'm a huge fan of Torment myself, probably the best game I've ever played.

Let's take a thought experiment. You are presented with situation in game that you cannot handle without losing one of your party members. Be it scripted sacrifice a'la Pillar of Skulls, a really hard combat encounter, a boss fight, whatever. And, for various reasons, there are only two characters eligible (i.e. you may be playing Arcanum-like game where party size is relatively low). First of them is noticeably better in terms of stats, but he has character alignment opposite to your PC and through in-game dialog it is clear they simply don't get along. The second one is opposite - a trusted companion and friend in terms of game story, but somewhat inadequate in terms of gameplay and combat mechanics. Which one would you pick?

This is certainly a threatening possibility. I too am glad that this game will free the modern RPG from its crippling dependence on turn-based gameplay and bring some diversity to the genre. Absolutely. Wasteland 2 for them old-school purists, PE for us dissatisfied with where the genre is but nontheless wanting a different experience. Only that I didn't made any argument for or against, unless you count advocating for diversity as an argument. Sure I bother to dig and discuss and so on. In respective threads. Overall opinion stemming from the discussion is that too often people rationalise something as being good because of being present in IE games. Opposite is rarely seen. You mean, like what was the point of this thread from the beginning? As it started as a commentary to level scaling overreaction...

But the PC is the party leader. It is the leaders job to do EXACTLY what you describe - to plan tactics and lead. And manage resources (technicly he could delegate that to someone else, but whatever). How is that NOT roleplaying? When you are planning your strategy, do you take into account factors like relations between PC and a character, if a character is good/bad, in other words - all the parts of character's design that are not associated with gameplay? If so, yes, this is roleplaying. But if you only look at how useful a character is in combat - not so. Except if your PC is so manipulative and cunning in every game you play. For example, right now I play Baldur's Gate and my character is a Transmuter. All it means for BG mechanics - apart from a minor modifiers when learning - is that he can't use abjuration and necromancy spells, and he gets additional spell per level which doesn't have to represent chosen school. Nontheless, I play it so the majority of my spells are transmutation, even tho combat mechanics would dictate otherwise.

I, for one, want to say: PE is going EXACTLY the way it should for me, and at current state of things (we never know what lies ahead) it's going to be one of the best games ever. Obsidian team took the best possible attitude - they have their own resolve, which they allow to be influenced by fans, but only to a certain degree. They don't want to just recreate the experience associated with classic cRPGs, they want to move it forward, to make a game showing where the genre should be standing today. And rightly so! There is a vocal group on the forums (and in the community as a whole) that argues for even more old-school-ness, for sticking completely to the basis without aiming for progress in terms of gameplay. While I understand their nostalgia, I am also happy that for a good part it will not find itself into a game. I don't want every single cRPG until the end of time to have turn-based combat and vancian magic system and so on. I don't even want a majority of the genre to have these common traits. I have my own likes and dislikes, but above all I value diversity. Not only it's the only possible way to achieve progress (and it's valid not only for video games) but it also allows everyone to find their own game, as opposed to bending to supposedely "superior" mechanics as presented in old titles, and being told that one is a poor player if he/she simply can't stand it. So, if anyone from Obsidian will read it - stay with your resolve, guys. /rant