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That is like suggesting to a politician that he should only suggest things that has no cons. But we don't live in a perfect world. People who can't see, or admit to, both sides of an idea literally scares me. You have to keep in mind these particular points: Obsidian is aware of the deep divide about this mechanic. Sawyer himself stepped into a few threads to clarify. There's additional information now about how they're to be implemented along with examples--that are not set in stone. Logically, if they really only wanted to address the "caster useless in battle half the time" problem or the "rest spam before every encoutner" problem, only the single spell cooldown implementation would have worked. But by virtue of choosing double-lock cooldowns with a combined rest mechanic (and a mystery soul mechanic) for higher level spells, Obsidian is actively working on addressing whatever cons there are from players who want more "strategic" challenge (JESawyer's quotes). And let's not forget about the difficulty modes; D&D Vancian is very rigid and not open to mechanical scaling for difficulty modes. The tier cooldown, grimoire cooldown, rest requirements, etc. could all be tweaked for more customizd gameplay. I think this will be very innovative.

With the latest comments on how Obsidian is still "toying" with tiers, it honestly makes me nervous. Looking at how the tiers and add-ons are now, I wonder if they may have been better off doing half the number of tiers (digital game, box game with manual, special item/NPC/etc. design at the highest still, etc.) with everything else like books, beta key, signed stuff, swag being add-ons.

I agree with the checkpoint saves spoiling the challenge---I much prefer just a general autosave whenever entering an area, which could be large like a world map region or really any new area. I think DA:O had the much more obvious checkpoint saves.

Ummm.... Just so you know, Obsidian, there are only 10 days left on the KS, so if you're still toying with tiers, please toy faster. I just love seeing insights into the industry like this. It definitely shows how things are a lot more complicated and/or expensive than end-users realize, even "simple" things like capes.

The poll question seems strange to me. I find it hard to believe anyone likes to reload---players like to be challenged up to the point of their mastery, which symptomatically may require reloads if the difficulty mode is set higher than their current know-how. But ultimately, the point of combat fun is to not require the reload, right?

Whoa, what? How does 2.4ish million translate into 8 hours of gameplay? What exactly are you saying here? Are there official published numbers anywhere for BG and PS:T in terms of expected gameplay hours? I thought they were on the box or something... Not that I have those handy. I mean, the Black Pits addition to Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition supposedly "offers 15 levels spread over 6 hours of gameplay," so I'd expect a full game of the expanse and content along IWD/BG/PST lines to be much, much, much more than that.

I would suggest linking to the previous thread containing Bell's comments, for context. Edit: I think the hurdy-gurdy counts as an instrument of the Middle Ages--that'd be pretty cool.

Well, the idea I and others posit is to burn that GOG download to disc to keep in the box... The only issues with this route brought forth so far are (1) don't want to buy the blank and do the actual burning, and (2) GOG may not distribute to all countries.

Meaning that you want a 'user-editor' to allow you to give them personality? That seems thousand miles more complex. No? It's a simple text field I write the history in. This isn't really revolutionary. As Osvir says, mods could be really useful here, but it's just too early to tell. It's a nice idea, but probably beyond the scope, yes. It would be nice if optional premade backgrounds were optional alongside a plain build--I can see people who despise a specific companion but who don't like full-on IWD personality-less tactical engagement go for a "prefab" with *some* banter to fill out the party. Actually, having basic voice sets for selection, combat cries, and stuff could help a lot in that regard (some personality) without requiring full banter writes. I dunno.

Maybe yes. Or maybe not. OP is only interested in the DRM aspect. The Obsidian quote only gives Obsidian's reason for not deciding on it yet, so OP wanted to know if anything's changed only in relation to requisite DRM.

There are actually a few other differences, but I can see your point. At $500, the book is signed, there's a gold VIP badge, and gold thanks in credits. I guess it depends on what is important to the individual. I thought the message was a fairly good 'peace offering' for adding the unsigned book to the $250, but that, of course, will vary person-to-person. Yes, I imagine it's difficult to balance tier rewards against personal priorities. I bumped my backing to $140 for the beta key but have since dropped it to less than half since it's cheaper to just add the beta key afterwards. Well, people will find one they're comfortable with and hopefully can afford, anyway... Still, I may very well bump back up depending on what information, concept art (gear, races, vistas, etc. etc.), and such--including stretch goals. This particular update was very good with regard to an interesting magic system, IMO, so I'm still waffling.

Wrong thread, kiddo. There's probably a cloud saving thread around somewhere too. This is about DRM on the DVD at KS $65/other reward tiers. The only real problem I can think of with a Steam-DRMed disc is if GOG doesn't sell the digital download to certain countries...

The enter-a-small-dungeon thing reminded me more of the Pocket Plane in BG2, which was certainly convenient. That reminds me--I wonder how convenient the player house will be in terms of travel and storage. The floating disk---I wonder if there could be magical containers (bag/pack type) that require soul power to properly use, and in exchange, are powerful enough to carry a giant load. I mean, it would still be a bag of holding in practice, but there'd be a lore reason and some 'cost' for it.

How souls relate to mechanics General race information that don't lead to spoilers If romances will be included and to what extent, how many, etc. :p Edit: Oh, and the rest/camp mechanics.

Sorry, not going to say you caved to pressure to make some PC in the game...but....yea, you caved to PC pressure. I just hope this isn't a sign that they are going to avoid controversal topics and make the game PC. That would suck, really, really suck. Just a point, if you show pictures of characters and it takes more than a few seconds to tell if its male or famale, you are doing it wrong. This is intersting when you consider what was said here indierpg's And there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with making women/men attractive and showing it off. However, its pointless having females in armour if all the armoured characters look the same are unisex and ugly. Ok, got that off my chest. again, on indirpg Old target audience: Male gamers. Metagame requirement: In-game titillation without immersion arguments. (Grace's outfit actually made sense, but Annah in combat in that outfit made no sense, hence why she never joined my party--her purpose was obviously metagame.) Current target audience: All intelligent gamers. Including, unbelievably, more women. Which I think is a great thing. Metagame requirement: In-game immersion arguments for attire and to not tell women gamers that their sex representation in-game only has a "point" if they look sexy and pretty. Comment: If women can find men in setting-appropriate uniform and armour attractive, why can't men find appropriately-attired women attractive? Your attitude reeks of male-gamers-only entitlement. (Also, I had no problems identifying Aloth--I think people claiming they did were just trolling, seriously.) I have to admit, I've never seen such a centralized influx of PS:T supporters before (my poll was a big surprise). I'm still banking on PE proper, though, because I'm not sure a sequel is a good idea, and at least big Torment names are already behind this project.... There's been talk of stats affecting interactions. I propose something like this: High STR: You overpower NPCs with your body odor since you exercise so much. They either shoo you off before dialogue can happen or are very quick about talking to you to make you leave. High DEX: You're so nimble that your form is a bit hazy and if the stealthy type, you blend too readily into the shadows so NPCs have a hard time figuring out what to talk to. High INT: You overthink everything NPCs say, creating branching circular and cascading dialogue trees that invert on themselves until the NPCs give in and beg for mercy--or attack you. High WIS: You bore NPCs with stories tangentially related to the topic in order to frame a morally relevant point, creating branching spreading dialogue trees that lead to awkward NPC moments until they shut you up by just telling you everything you need to know and disappearing forever, or they attack you. High CHA: You are surrounded by such a bright aura and sparkles that you dazzle NPCs, who are blinded and dazed into submission but give little useful information due to being incapacitated.

There is no flexibility with the D&D Vancian system, and it's much harder to tweak across difficulty levels too. With the combined spell tier + grimoire cooldowns and scaling application by character level, that leaves a lot of room for tweaking... There's still one major variable missing, though, and that's soul. Hmmm. I hope they get creative with soul and not treat it as a pure mana bladder or something. Kaz and Kairean (unsure about the latter's exact spelling, some newer people on the forums) suggested this in some other threads: "Magic System Ideas" thread@Kairean: http://forums.obsidi...c-system-ideas/ "Magic: Limited Casting?" thread, couldn't find Kaz post (I quote it in this thread): http://forums.obsidi...imited-casting/ Short version: A; Mage's use their own souls to cast magic (potential "Soul Sickness"? further additions and conclusions = casting too much of too high powered spells could kill your Mage). B; Sucking the souls of your slain enemies to replenish. Brilliant? Yes, imo. The possibility of A sounds like a version of fatigue and also reminds us that soul has application for other classes. Feasible. I'd rather not see B because that reminds me of mana drain powers like in MMOs (I'm sure they exist in SP somewhere too, but I don't remember/haven't seen it). There's something else I don't like about B but I can't put my finger on it at the moment...

If you're talking specifically about the Formspring link, that was already linked twice on the previous page.

I like the overall proposed implementation. There is no flexibility with the D&D Vancian system, and it's much harder to tweak across difficulty levels too. With the combined spell tier + grimoire cooldowns and scaling application by character level, that leaves a lot of room for tweaking... There's still one major variable missing, though, and that's soul. Hmmm. I hope they get creative with soul and not treat it as a pure mana bladder or something.

Can't you just download the GOG DRM-free version game installer and burn to disc? I thought the point of GOG was to not use a wrapper that required a connection to install or play or anything like that.

Linked from the U16 thread--Sawyer answers in more detail: I think several of us were thinking along these lines too, and I think it sounds like a rather interesting system that can be tweaked and balanced well.

Yeah, I like Tale's suggestion for a soul wisp or something ghostly that can't directly affect the world for that very reason. A pocket familiar like Minsc's Boo could work out well in that respect too, but there's not necessarily a matching sprite. Maybe a squirrel that runs at the first sign of danger. Not much of a pet, though. Oh, Shevek's idea of a pet wandering the player house is great. Would give it an additional "living" feeling, I think.

Which is what difficulty modes are for. Obsidian did say somewhere that they want us to be able to pick and choose some things among the modes as well.

Yes, there was a dev post indicating that there would a number of options to set difficulty, and the length of the cooldown timers could definitely be one of them. But simply adding a "Base cooldown length" slider isn't really enough to resolve the issue. The game has to be balanced either with the assumption that "players will have most / all of their replenishable resources available for every encounter" or "players will need to conserve replenishable resources over multiple encounters". A game balanced for "all resources available" becomes insanely difficult when played the other way, and a game balanced for "limited resources" is insanely easy when the situation is reversed. This is, by the way, one of the valid reasons for objecting to rest-spam in IE games: If restspam is possible, then the developers have to create encounters that are challenging to a party healed to 100% with all spells available. If a player (for roleplaying reasons) wishes to not restspam, then they will feel that the game is trying to force them to restspam, by throwing absurdly difficult encounters at them. This is addressable as well, of course -- you could double up every combat encounter in the game, with one set used with low cooldown times, and another set used with high cooldown times -- but you've just dramatically increased your workload. It makes more sense to choose one or the other and balance the game for that, and the other group is just SOL. Just one observation--I think you're assuming the difficulty levels requires static designed enemy encounters and apply by nerfing player mechanics. I was actually expecting at least some difficulty sliders to apply to all enemies as a mirror effect with player mechanics. So there are really three basic types of difficulty scaling--player mechanics, enemy mechanics, and complete game mechanics. The last type would be auto-balancing in a sense, but it would also negate some of the powergaming challenges players would expect. For example, sliding difficulty to force the cooldowns to behave more like D&D-Vancian could affect enemy casters with the exact same variables--but this isn't necessarily more difficult. I dunno, just chatting... I haven't looked into the specifics of those three difficulty modes either.

Ultimately, I think the only thing Obsidian should get from this thread and those related to Dragon Age dissatisfaction is that a not-insignificant number of players felt the DA franchise simply did not fill the void it promised to. No pressure, Obsidian.

Both DA:O Deep Roads and PS:T filler combat are easy to skip--in the former, you could do the stealth-cutscene exploit (lol) and in the former you could just run off the map edge, if I recall. But I'll agree that filler combat isn't all that great unless it makes more sense in the world. In BG1, if you went out at night, there was good likelihood that you'd run into bandits, which was a nice touch. I think some filler combat at lower levels would actually be a good thing--get you used to the mechanics and tactical play. Then very few or none at higher levels, with better enemies or enemies only related to quests/storyline (though the "You're a Bhaalspawn and we're here to stop you" also gets old).