Gurkog

I am probably directly halfway between both extremes and I pledged all I could.... barely anything, but it is the thought that counts.

I think a lot of the codex members have already put up a good sum of money. Their drive for a codex adventure group is about 50% of the way to its goal and I think it just might happen. Codexians are also a very bipolar lot who strangle each other one second then dry hump the next. I think I might make that last line my new sig

I am pretty sure that they won't focus on multiplayer or modding until the next title in the series. They are focusing on creating the world and game systems this time.

They should focus on rewarding positive game practices rather than trying to stamp out negative ones... why would a player do something abusive if doing the 'right' thing gave them a greater reward.

I am pretty sure that martial artists have been recorded punching through bullet proof glass. That supports the idea of their fists being virtually magical tools of destruction. Plus it would be awesome to see a monk punch through a curiass and rip out a combatant's still beating heart.

If they presented the classes with different names I bet the reaction would be a lot different. Obsidian probably made a mistake by using recognizable titles for people to identify with even if the actual classes are structured differently.

The only thing DnD paladins have over other classes in the IE games is higher saving throws, thats it. They aren't as good of fighters and can not function well as a support caster... so ya, thats it.

I could see barbarians having some sort of tribal rituals to enhance battle prowess and whatnot. I bet they add a holy warrior subclass as a future stretch goal that is not pigeonholed into just 'lawful good' paladins. It won't be restricted to 'lawful good' gods. The game is not going to be restricted to black and white morality so being a paladin might have a lot of negative impacts on the world because of their inflexible beliefs. I highly doubt it will be the D&D experience many people imagine.

In BG2 the only character that was OP in combat was my Inquisitor Paladin using the legendary great sword. He was virtually immune to all magic because of his high saves, virtually immune to melee because of stupid high armor, could dispel any enhancements that might make an enemy able to hurt him, could walk through pretty much any trap unscathed, but he had 3 weaknesses that I can recall... mindflayer insta kill, maze/imprison and can't open locks. I don't know how Paladins faired after that game, but it was kind of stupid how easy it was to do most of BG2 with him.

No aggro means melee characters are a waste of space since magic users will always be useful while they have to chase stuff around to MAYBE get its attention. I guess you would just have 1 wizard kiting the enemies while others are blasting away on them. If they make the enemy AI as well designed as The command options you can give in DA:O (hopefully more complex than that) they can roughly simulate logical tactical decisions. I rarely had to give manual commands to my ranged and support units because they did what I wanted automatically. There seems to be a lot of beligerant knee-jerking in this thread that would make the rpgcodex proud. EDIT: My D&D tactic for BG and IWD for dealing with finicky threat is to summon an impenetrable wall of creatures to block the enemy from attacking my ranged units. Incredibly cheap and incredibly effective.

I am hoping that elves are not the frilly, androgenous, wastes of space that are in most fantasy. I wouldn't mind if most elves were more akin to orcs or something. As for barbarians... I hope to be able to carry an elf in one hand and use him as a shield while playing my barbarian.

Great update! Keep crackin' the whip and churn out those updates. EDIT: Excellent compromise with the addition of the Adventurer Hall. This way everyone is happy!

If they want to make future titles in the series for consoles I have no issues with them doing so. Although, any game available for the PC should be designed for the PC. There are very few bigger budget titles that are designed for PC. Bethesda and Bioware PC games are rather terribly designed compared to older RPGs.

I imagine that it will work with older tech. They are not pushing graphic renderer capabilities. Might be more taxing on a system than Torchlight 2 though... so you could look at that for a measure of what to expect.

For each console that a developer wants to add support for the cost of production goes up about 100%. So they would need to more than double the expected pledges just to support 1 console. It just is not feasible for mid scale projects with low funding.

My best RPG experiences probably mostly occurred while playing Dark Age of Camelot: I had a totally defense oriented paladin that gained a lot of RvRvR credit at a relatively low level by ressurecting players who died during Relic raids. Very few classes could ressurect and they weren't popular for RvR. Relic raids involved hundereds of people and really felt like war was occuring. I was in the Darkness Falls dungeon, on my paladin, soloing rough monsters for profit when an assassin tried to jump me. I ended up killing the assassin, the creature I was fighting, and additional creatures that wandered into our fight. It was glorius! Another assassin 1 shot killed me later, but that was all part of the fun. Fighting a legendary creature with a large group of players and barely surviving with almost everyone dead or weakened. Playing as an assassin and hunting other assassins. It is like a recreation of subs hunting each other, hoping for a sonar ping to fire at. Using amnesia on a magician's mind controled pet, setting it free, and watching the poor sap get mauled to death by it. Great stuff like that.

@Mr. Null

They will probably add an obssesed cult of black dragon worshippers called, The Obsidian Order.

Dark Age of Camelot had great combat. Too bad it was an indie title with limited resources... then EA bought and killed it. I liked WoW combat circa WotLK. I quit the game before Cataclysm was released so I don't know how its current combat system compares. Those games are MMOs with rotatable cameras though. I am not sure how their systems would work with a fixed position camera. I know WoW's combat was heavily inspired by Diablo and Warcraft. The Torchlight series has some mechanics they could take inspiration from. Charge meter system that effects many skills, including ones on cooldowns. Perhaps Grim Dawn and Diablo 2 could inspire things as well. There are good segments of mechanics out there to copy and paste, but not entire systems.

In Torchlight 2 some cooldowns become better if used when 'charge' meters are full. The charge meters fill up as most attacks are used. So, a player could use the cooldowns at the start of a fight with no charge, but be drasticly less effective (unless the player just came from a fight and their bar is full). They could try to use skills that maximize charge generation so that the cooldowns are more effective. Finally, they could use skills that don't build much charge and just use the cooldowns whenever. That could be an effective way to manage cooldowns so they are not binary, mindless skills. They add extra layers of tactics for the player to utilize in different ways. There are probably many other methods of integrating cooldowns with other activities to add synergies.

Last time I played WoW, in WotLK, classes like Druids and Shaman had a lot skills that would randomly trigger bonuses to others. This made it so using a cooldown willy-nilly would be less effective that waiting for the opportunity to gain full benefit from their awesomness. There were also situations that called for the use of cooldowns and budgeting when to use them could be the difference between success and a raid wipe. (battle res, tranquility, innervate, shaman group rage buff, etc...). It was not so simple as just 'spam cooldowns in succession'. WoW may be different now though because I saw they really gutted talent trees. I always played a rogue, which was probably the easiest class, and it had very few cooldowns. The only ones used regularly were: feint and cloak of shadows to avoid aoe damage. The big ones like adrenaline rush, blade flurry, killing spree, blind, vanish were all used sparingly. I did play a Laser Chicken for a while... and it also had only 2 offensive cooldowns that were both mainly for attacking multiple, spread targets - and 3 support cooldowns used to help others in 'oh, ****!' moments. I guess I never played the classes that had the cooldown 'whackamole' play style. Dragon Age had a horrible cooldown system. Waiting on timers for every spell AND using mana? What bull****. I could see doing one, the other, or a scattered mix, but not both at ALL times. Torchlight 2 has decent cooldowns that, if specialized right, will be available when needed. They aren't necessary to use all the time, but they help a lot when overwhelmed. Engineer barrier shield and robots, berserker wolves, and whatever the other classes use. That game has an ebb and flow of intensity that the cooldowns tend to sync with. The timers usually refresh by the time you need to even the odds again. I guess it all comes down to implementation. Depending too much on them for general use or making them so long that they are hoarded and never used are the negative extremes. Make it so they are more effective when used in conjuction withother skills and situations.

I found some change in my couch cushions so I upped my pledge! I hereby dub myself, Tactical Response Unit of the Obsidian Order!

In my opinion, the only good elf is a dead one.

IE games = put fireball into every slot, spam, then rest after battle. Rinse. Repeat. That sure involved a lot of analysis and strategy. Very few fights actually benefited from using anything other than evocation spells.

It was only announced a few weeks ago.