Shades

Cats in hats! <3 I should make a new character called Dr Seuss. Regarding the removed backer content... I'm so glad that the backer got to change it to something else rather than just getting nothing when they paid to be able to add something to the game and support it. I'm also glad that said new content makes fun of the whole situation, because it is quite frankly ridiculous (it was a very short, unspecific piece of text and I'm sure anyone could come to a lot of wild assumptions about it by using their imagination). Equally ridiculous is the way on the other side people now seem to be threatening to not buy the game... Excuse me? You mean you're this concerned and outraged... But you didn't actually back the game on Kickstarter in the first place. And you didn't pre-order or buy it once it released... So basically someone who still hasn't bought the game now, is outraged at a tiny thing being changed (which is equally as silly as those who were outraged at the content itself) and will not buy the game. Okay, go ahead. Don't buy it. You miss out on enjoying an awesome game, and I'm sure Obsidian has plenty of other, rational fans who will be willing to help contribute if there is another Kickstarter put up for an expansion or sequel. The good thing about solving this as quickly as possible by changing the content is it stops the angry mob from trying to drag this wonderful game through the mud. Of course now there's a whole new angry mob... But as someone else mentioned. This was backer content that was changed, not Obsidian's own content. I trust that Obsidian would be much, much less likely to change their own actual content due to an angry mob. And now back to the cats in hats, eee! Thank you for the quick patch, and if those cats in hats are a joke please consider making them not-a-joke at some point in the distant future

You mean the selection of icons that appear above the character portrait when I have him selected right? That's what I've been clicking on, the conversation bubble icon there. And he just says "This trip could've gone better." and the bubble stays there... Unless of course he's meant to just say that? Hmm, seems Calisca also has one... Ah, I'm guessing those single lines are all they have to say. I was expecting them to just bark what they say when I get to an area and that the dialogue bubble would be for actual conversations rather than single lines. Well, now I know at least XD

This is probably something obscenely obvious, but I just can't figure it out. I'm at the start, I've seen a tooltip that said when a companion wants to talk, they'll have a conversation bubble above their portrait. That seems nice and simple. So in the ruins I noticed one such bubble pop up for Heodan. Hooray! I click it. He says "This trip could've gone better." and that's it, the bubble persists. I try right clicking the bubble, nothing. Since I need him selected to see the bubble, I now try selecting my main character and clicking on Heodan, it swtches over to him. The same happens when right clicking or clicking on their portraits- well, right clicking on the portraits brings up the inventory. For the life of me I just cannot figure out HOW to start whatever that conversation is. None of the icons appear to have anything relating to dialogue, the manual says nothing about companions and how to talk to them, and neither does the Strategy Guide. Somebody please put me out of my misery and just tell me what I'm supposed to do

I found one missing head in character creation, and figured I should check all the others while I was at it to see if there were more. -Female Orlan heads 4, 5 and 6 are not there. -Male elf head 2 is stark white. -Male elf hair 10 not there. -Male moon godlike head 4 not there. -Not sure if the Cipher Powers that you can choose from on level-up are being displayed by their levels. Because I can click on 1, 2 and 3 and it shows the same ones. Presumably it's only supposed to show those for each level. -When Selecting 'Game' in options menu other option titles vanish though can still be clicked. Same for 'Graphics' and 'Sound'. Sorry that I've put these all in one bunch, I didn't want to spam the forum with topics for each thing as I'm just noting down anything as I go along.

I think you nomancers underestimate us promancers a bit. I would love to see some of the darker aspects of relationships explored, especially reactions after a romance has failed or been turned down (maybe if your PC is persistent enough about trying to aggressively pursue a romance with an unwilling NPC that NPC will eventually leave the party or stop talking to you completely). In most games the romance interest and PC continue on happily as if nothing happened. Perhaps you could have someone who gets obsessive with a love interest (who may or not return the attention) to the point where they actually hurt the person or try to lock them up or something. Maybe such a thing could tip a character over the edge where they kidnap the PC, run off and start some sort of horror dungeon like mentioned in the interview There are certainly a lot of different and interesting ways things can go in romances that aren't restricted to the happy fluffy sparkly kind.

I liked the way I could walk or run, without any sort of annoying side effects in PS:T. The only thing I wouldn't mind is making more noise the faster you go. Otherwise if you drain stamina is your character going to run until they fall unconscious? (and then you have to sit around waiting while their stamina goes up again) Or go into a surprise fight and fall unconscious after one hit? That would just be really annoying. Other penalties would be alright I guess, but they would still put me off using the run ability. Because if I'm using it most of the time it will be to speed up my progress in the game (it's not that I want to complete it super fast, but that my free time is limited). I won't really care if there is walk or run if there's something where I can increase the frames per second like I could in BG (though that had a limit of 60) and BG2 (no limit, I went right up to 100, woo :D ). Yes it messes up/skips dialogue a bit sometimes, but on my 7th playthrough it made things so much better/faster.

Heh, I just thought, perhaps we could have an Order of the Chimera (IWD2 reference) requesting half-breeds in the PE setting

I think this would just encourage the 'I want more money spent on this feature that I like and use rather than this feature that I don't like' arguments. And we already get tons of 'I don't want development time/money wasted on that' going on.

Sure you can. The whole "God" thing could be some trick by an egomaniac who has a tad too much power going on, for one. Or someone could deny Gods in the same sense that we have people that deny the moon landing, or that the world is round. Or you could have both. Or some third thing. Yeah and people who deny the moon landing and say the world isn't round are also idiots and or downright insane. I don't think anyone wants to have a main character who is basically a moron. Maybe if they want to put in a joke NPC it could work. Really? Then why the calls for having the idiot/low intelligence dialogue? (and I would be quite happy to play an insane character too) As for the world being round and moon landing... Have you been on the moon or in space to see that the earth is round? I'm guessing you've only seen pictures or video footage, so you haven't actually experienced these things yourself. I'm not into conspiracy theories and denying these things myself, but I can certainly see why someone might deny them because they haven't seen or experienced proof of these things enough to satisfy them. And that doesn't mean they are idiots or insane. It works the same way here. I imagine in the setting very few people have actually experienced direct contact with a god. So most of the 'proof' of gods would be what you've heard this other person saw/experienced (you wouldn't even have photographs or videos to show you proof as we have these days). To me that leaves plenty of room for someone to doubt the existence of gods unless they have one walk up to them directly. And even in that case as mentioned the character may not think that they are gods, that they're some lesser (than a god) but powerful being masquerading under the appearance of being a god.

This is the type of thing I was thinking of regarding animal half-breeds. And for a pretty well known one you also have the mule (horse-donkey). It's also interesting to note that they don't always seem to be infertile, sometimes the females can produce offspring. I'd really like it if that quote/what someone mentioned Josh Sawyer said on the issue (about there being no half-breeds) isn't something set in stone and that they'll change their minds about it. But I wouldn't be surprised if they don't either. I just think that they could do something interesting with half-breeds if they wanted, rather than simply... not having them.

In Arcanum as a Elf you wouldn't be particularily welcome in the dwarf mines, and people would be stand offish in the normal cities (due to elven arrogence) and dwarves the same but reversed. Half orc and half ogre where very disliked/distrusted everywhere, although there where backgrounds that could help with that. It made for some really good and interesting dialogue and question That does sound interesting. I'll have to dig out my Arcanum manual and take a look at trying to play it. It only means one race would have to be left out if half-breeds counted as a different race (and if they're really restricted by that number of races). I'm not sure why they would count as a different race. I'm unsure if the godlike even count as a separate race or if they're just subraces within the other races, I'd be happy to see half-breeds treated the same way (as subraces). As I've said they could even use the existing models with the player being able to choose one of the two parent races that they most resemble.

My point is that if you keep saying fewer is okay it may get to such an extreme conclusion with time (after all DA: O had 3 races, a lot less than the D&D games that came before it, and then DA2 had 1). I'm not saying we should have so many choices for races that we have to scroll for hours to get through them all, just that more choice isn't always a bad thing. MotB had quite a number of races and subraces to choose from and it was a great game. And of course I'm pushing for half-breeds because I like playing them myself and we've already got the standard humans, elves, dwarves, gnome-inspired, orc-inspired and even the equivalent of planetouched as a subrace. So why not half-breeds as a subrace too. As I've said, half-breeds wouldn't necessarily count as an entirely different race but could be a subrace. Using half-elves as an example, I think in some settings I've seen it mentioned that to a human a half-elf looks like an elf, whereas to an elf a half-elf looks like a human unless they're quite familiar with the other races features and can recognize that it isn't your typical elf/human. So it doesn't have to mean that every person the player comes across will scream 'Oh no! You're a half-breed!' (you could cut down on specific dialogue for the subrace this way). Only those that can spot what they are. Though of course I would like to see half-breeds implemented with some sort of prejudice (or perhaps the equivalent to a charisma penalty? Since both races that the half-breed is part of may find the mixed appearance unsettling if they don't assume they're the other race. And there's the possibility of them not quite turning out right, I don't imagine all half-breeds would strike a pleasant middle between their two races) as you don't really see this in the IE games when playing as a half-elf. I can't recall if half-orcs had much dialogue specific to them. And maybe half-breeds would get different reactions depending on where they were. As someone mentioned in the region that has a mix of human and elves half-elves probably wouldn't be frowned upon.

Respectfully, this seems like asking to be pandered to. Being a fictional world with magic, the context of religion in P:E is naturally going to be completely different from our own, whereas "atheism" (as opposed to agnosticism, faithlessness, or a general lack of piety) is really quite specific and quite modern and therefore not a natural thing to import into the completely different metaphysical context of a different world. RPGs can't really get away with forcing you to play your character as a pious member of his/her culture's faith - and I've never seen one try, and therefore don't understand why it is such a burning issue to the melodramatic soapbox crowd at BSN - and it really is quite simple just to not pick zealous dialogue options if you don't want to portray a zealous character. And if you just want to establish that your character isn't religiously inclined, avoiding the appropriate dialogue options really does the job. Requiring the option for your character to endorse actual atheism, and to have dialogue options that amount to getting on a soapbox to bash the general idea of religion, is misguided. You say respectfully... Then proceed to toss insults such as "asking to be pandered to" (really?, I thought I was just asking for an option, I wasn't asking for the game to revolve around being an atheist or anything), "melodramatic soapbox crowd at BSN" (I don't go to the BSN for the record, and I don't see what I or the OP said as melodramatic at all. You exaggerate, we weren't throwing ourselves around in despair. I also don't see why you're so preoccupied with boxes of soap), "amount to getting on a soapbox to bash the general idea of religion" (nowhere did I bash religion or mention bashing religion, let alone wanting the options to bash religion in the game. I find it insulting that you assume atheism equals bashing religion). I think your definition of 'respectful' may be a little skewed. Atheism is the rejection of the belief in deities or believing in no deities, right? So if a character didn't see/acknowledge the gods as deities, but some incredibly powerful creature/being instead, would that count as atheism? Or perhaps you have a character who only believes what they see right in front of their eyes. Magic isn't proof of gods, and they've never seen a god in person (I doubt many people in the setting would have), so they don't believe they actually exist (after all magic can be used to explain a lot of things in some settings, especially mysterious and open worlds where there are still things undiscovered). Of course I don't expect to have a huge and detailed range of non-religious choices to choose from, but just one faithless option like you had in NWN2 would probably work in covering it. And who knows, maybe they'll feel like putting in some dialogue that lets you specify what you do/don't believe in more precisely. PS:T was certainly able to fit a lot of text in.

I wouldn't be surprised if they have, they've mentioned a number of other things in various comments all over the place. I should have learned from other games by now to set my expectations lower. Haven't a lot of concepts been pushed to their limits in fantasy though? As mentioned, elves, dwarves... Yet they're doing a different take on them. And I'm not sure that races being unable to interbreed is such a fresh thing, there are plenty of games already where you can't play as half-breeds. And PE will even have the god touched, which may be from gods interbreeding with mortals in the distant past or mortals being altered or magiked by the gods into being a little different, aren't those outcasts? If so they certainly haven't gotten rid of some of them. Well I don't dislike half breeds. I just always prefer cRPGs do fewer things and do them really well. Fewer races mean your race can potentially mean more as the developers have more resources to make each race distinct. So I would prefer we not have half breeds. But that is just me, it seems like a ton of people love lots and lots of choices even if those choices do not actually impact much of anything. If we take that to its ultimate conclusion though you end up with only humans (and do I need to mention how boring that is in a game that hasn't got a set, specific character that you're playing?). As I mentioned you wouldn't even necessarily need to have different models for half-breeds, I doubt they would take up a huge amount of resources as a subrace of the existing ones.

Sigh. I'm surprised that so many people seem to dislike half-breeds, but I guess I do have a habit of liking unpopular things. Hm, why do people dislike them? Is it because we've seen them in a number of fantasy settings? (we've also seen elves and dwarves in lots of settings, yet we have those... ) Is it just one of those things like romances that people just find offensive? Or because they think races should be separate (in which case oh dear, the races don't seem to be very distinctively separate in terms of regions in this setting, and as mentioned there are a number of different animal hybrids in the real world if you like using real world reasoning on a fantasy game. Infertile half-breeds would be a very interesting option to explore, a shame they've just ditched the lot). Seems I'll have to finally play Arcanum to play a half-breed in a game I haven't played before.