Tamerlane

Josh Sawyer has said that they'd consider portraits with different expressions for NPCs. Doing it for the PC would, of course, be... problematic. I'd be cool with that. Plenty of JRPGs have used that sort of thing well.

Oh, you were talking about pulling. Well, yeah, that's bad. But so is kiting. **** kiting.

Or he was using the old rhetorical device known as "hyperbole", like every single other person who uses the word "literally" in a sentence. EDIT: Also, punishing attacks of opportunity. And attacks of opportunity that can be used for knockdowns. Please and thanks.

He was talking about how his opinion of DAO changed after playing BG, not his opinion of BG.

I think they've said that they want to start PE with the main character about equivalent to a level 3 or 4 D&D character, anyway. No ****ing around with rats in the barn for us.

Didn't DAO also have Lord Foreshadow show up at some point? I don't get any of these (except the ring one). But then I'm livng in backwards post-communist Europe "Sorry about the mess" is a line from the first Star Wars movie, said by Han Solo after shooting a man in a bar. I don't specifically recall it, but I'd imagine the last one is also a Han Solo line.

D&D - and most of the IE games - had ****tons of weapon-immunity, either innate or through spells. ****, even the main character could get permanent immunity to nonmagic weapons, albeit at a point where nonmagic weapons have pretty much ceased to exist.

Some of the lighter-hearted JRPGs, I guess. But an infinite number of those gets balanced out by the existence of NieR, the most depressing piece of media I have ever seen.

Well. I wouldn't be too broken up if I came across a gazebo with an arrow in it.

Geomancy was terrible and everyone that used it was terrible.

Tall grass or thick bush as an LOS blocker could be neat, I guess. Slow movement when going through a swamp or deep snow, maybe. Hell, resistance to fire damage if you're in a river?

Obsidian, please, for the love of Christ, do not do this.

Yes I very much like this idea. There's really no reason for hotkeys to match the first letter of the action especially since keyboard users use much more muscle memory than actual brain power to find the key they wish to press. It might have a slightly higher learning curve (if that), but the advantages are worth it. I will just say this though, having a customizable menu would be better, but the most important thing is to actually have hot keys that are useful and intuitive. Without hotkeys implementation, standard grid doesn't much matter. While a grid setup makes sense - I use a pseudo-grid for SC2 - some players are accustomed to having WASD for camera control. I've been playing a lot of Natural Selection 2 (team-based FPS/RTS) lately, and holy **** does making the jump from soldier to commander ever get disorienting for that very reason. Going from running on ceilings with WASD to having those keys as your construction hotkeys leads to a lot of accidental units, buildings, and upgrades.

Posting is nowhere near frequent enough to require more subforums.

so...mexico...or canada? Puerto Rico, though whether or not they succeed in become a state any time soon remains to be seen.

This is absolutely true. It is also true that for characters with predetermined backgrounds, developers can reference character history in-game, which is something blank-slate characters can not have happen. And some people prefer one of those and some people prefer the other and some people don't really care and all of us could go on for many, many paragraphs about it.

Can't be arsed to look up the quote, but Josh Sawyer has specifically said that he doesn't want encounters where you have to have a +3 weapon or a certain spell or whatever to do damage in an encounter. ... I think. ****, maybe I should look up the quote to be sure. But I'm 99% sure he said that.

Josh Sawyer has said that there will probably be a slider for combat speed.

****ing lightning bolt!

Sorry, I did a terrible job of wording it. My point as that games, where you are locked into a specific backgrounds (Alpha Protocol, Planescape Torment, Dragon Age 2, Witcher, Mass Effect) actually have the most roleplay. You actually feel that what you do matters. Because devs can concentrate on the story and on player's experience instead of mashing in apparent variety like they did with countless classes and races in NWN2, something which was utterly pointless in single player. Actually I don't disagree with you that you can do more in-game with a character whose background is created by the game makers. You can be very specific with references and history and reactive to that. Note, however, that DAO doesn't have you start out as a Warden, it forces you to become one through the course of the game (well the prologue), so I don't see it as exactly the same thing (your mileage may vary, of course). To be fair, at least the Dalish origin gave you a pretty legit reason for needing to become a Warden: you've been poisoned, and they have the only cure.

I do not know where to start with such a roiling mass of wrong.

Recent? Hell, Age of Empires 2 is over a decade old.

If at the end of your playthrough, you are satisfied with the character development for the NPC and the options given the PC. That doesn't sound right. I need a meter to tell me if I'm winning at love or not. Perhaps the devs could use Leisure Suit Larry for inspiration? Just out of curiosity, how do you know when people like you in RL without a meter? If we knew the answer, would we play RPGs?

Starcraft 1 is the only starcraft I played, but watching some of those players in tournaments is so exciting in and of itself, because of the beauty in which they control their units. I've always liked those starcraft custom maps where it was sort of a puzzle and you had to use your units casting to figure out a way to pass that level. I feel that cavalier-oblique/isometric style cRPGs have a lot that they can learn from SC and its successors. Oh, absolutely. I was just saying that as far as micro goes, Brood War and Warcraft 3 are the examples you want to use, not Starcraft 2. I mean, I enjoy Starcraft 2 well enough, but it just does not have this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqsSrWZciY0 ****. Can mages or rogues or someone, anyone get a spider mine ability in PE? You have no idea how much I miss those things.

If you take just one thing from DAO... ... take their spell-radius/cone graphic thing. NWN2 kind of did it, but DAO specifically highlighting what is and isn't inside the AOE of a fireball or cone of cold was a Damn Good Thing. I'd hope that this would be obvious to Obsidian, but then, I thought it would be obvious for the new Xcom, and yet...