Sensuki

The IE games had the best incantations. There were incantations used in the NWNs and following games and they were all pretty terrible in comparison IMO.

This system would be better if it was automatic, rather than being based on attributes. The lead designer was struggling to find combat stats for six attributes after he took out defenses from the mix.

You need the math for two weapon fighting, which we don't have. I know the animation speed and recovery times for everything else.

Not a snowball's chance in hell, I'm afraid.

I'm mixed about this. I don't have anything against the A(D&D) way of doing things. That's what I've grown up with and I'm used to it. That's just how the game is. For D&D, classes are more than just their combat prowess. This is hard to translate to a computer game because providing interesting combat gameplay and interesting non-combat gameplay can be difficult, unless done pretty much through the dialogue system - which the Infinity Engine games do, and so does Pillars of Eternity technically (we can assume that Scripted Interactions use the same system as dialogue). Playing as a Ranger in Icewind Dale 2 and any of the Neverwinter games is absolutely terrible, this is partially due to the class design in D&D itself and how much the Ranger is more of a 'non-combat not-quite-a-Fighter' which is hard to translate into D&D. However the designers for Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 made it a fun class to play. Criticize them all you like, but the Ranger is great in BG1 and some of the Ranger kits in BG2 are great too - job well done IMO. We all know the situation with Thieves in the IE games. You use them to open chests and find traps. They can provide some usefulness in combat if played properly (usually as a worse archer than the Fighter and Ranger). Still, In both of the Baldur's Gate games - Thieves are fun to play. The fact that they are just not as good at other classes in Baldur's Gate 1 (and Icewind Dale) doesn't really matter as they still provide input due to the low level gameplay. In Baldur's Gate 2 they are good because of HLAs and kits. Now, if the Baldur's Gate designers managed to make most classes fun to play in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 (and technically Icewind Dale since it used a lot of BG1 assets and built off it as a base), why has BioWare and Obsidian both, failed on every successive attempt using the D&D rulesets? Bad design maybe? My point is that I don't think there was anything wrong with class design before, just the design and implementation of it in games after the IEs. This whole fetish with unification and streamlining is not the only answer to making all classes enjoyable and fun to play. This is the approach that has been made for Pillars of Eternity, and some people (not necessarily myself though) are not pleased that all classes play exactly the same outside of combat. The approach to the classes has been to all make them fairly distinct, but the method used to achieve this has also made the classes as a whole fairly rigid. Some classes are far less interesting than in the IE games: Want to make a ranged fighter like you could in D&D ? Well, that kinda sucks as a character concept now because the design for the Fighter has been pretty much based off the way Josh plays his 4E Earthstrength Warden in P&P. I would say that the Fighter is now less flexible than they were previously - which is bad. Wizards - they are now shoehorned into a specific type of Wizard, the type that only casts damage spells and personal buffs, this is now less flexible than before, and the types of spells you get while mostly similar to spells in D&D are less interesting than what is available in the IE games. Priests - Priests are also now way less interesting than any edition of D&D, they are kind of like gimped 2nd edition Priests who can now use any weapon, which is one benefit but not one that stems from class design. They are also still healing batteries. They're a strong class at the moment in the beta, but they are less flexible than in the IE games due to their limited spell selection and weakness in melee. The Chanter is definitely more interesting than most versions of D&D bards in combat. Bards were pretty good in NWN2 and the Blade was sick in BG2. The Cipher is a new class, so there's not really anything to compare it to ... except using Psionics in Dark Sun. The Cipher is pretty fun and has an interesting mechanic of requiring a target for spells. Monks kinda feel like Monks in the IE games without their cool unarmed animation. At level 5 they don't have many abilities though. I haven't played them enough to give a judgement, but I like the wound mechanic. Rogues are better in combat than they were in the IE games but they're pretty passive tbh. The only difference is that they do more damage and they have some actives. I haven't played a Ranger, Barbarian, Paladin or Druid yet. The design for the Ranger is cool though. So far I'd say while the classes feel distinctive, the flair is gone from many of the classes that we're most familiar with and they now feel like hamstringed versions of their D&D counterparts, whereas the ones where they've tweaked the designs a bit for PE are the ones that feel like better classes overall.

Originally the discussion was Do you like the music? Umm, yeah sorta Not my cup of tea I really like it Now it's back to we're back to pasting youtube links again. I fully realize that Justin's vision for the soundtrack is not my vision of what I would want it to be, and I'm glad that he gets a chance to "make it big" as a composer as it were, so if there are some songs I enjoy then that's okay - and I can always turn the music off and just play other stuff that I think that fits the atmosphere of the game art I guess.

We don't know how it works yet. Obsidian will probably let us know when the time comes.

Battle axes. Also people don't forget that Might doesn't just affect Damage, it also affects Healing, whereas Dex only affects Accuracy.

already has one

The stun from Celestial Fury is p. good. I always use it as my off-hand weapon as a Kensai unless I have to swap it out for a +4 weapon or higher. I also like the mod that makes it rain every time you use it haha, I love rain in the BGs. Speaking of rain, I have not seen any Environmental rain in PE yet ....... .......

I am not an Esteemed Gentleman, yet.

The strings are exposed. I'm finding all of these Microsoft Access Shortcuts to Weapon files in the Unity assets but I can't extract them because the program I'm using runs out of memory

my mouse always gravitates toward Dissident for some reason.

This type of customization will be done through the talent system. Suggest some things you'd like to be able to do and they might make a talent for it.

Go look up some Josh Sawyer quotes on enchantments. I am fairly positive he said that every item bonus can be added through enchantments and none of them are truly unique.

Frostbrand is easy to get if you pre-buy some thieving potions from high hedge. I think little exploits like this are fun, even if they're not supposed to work.

This likely includes facebook and mobile games, and that's probably why.

Drag it up with the button in the top left of the log. Left clicking that button resets it. I don't like the position of the combat log, it's really useless for on the fly reading due to it's position. In the IE games, I used to read the log while combat was going to get the feedback from to hit rolls and damage. This game has been designed for floating numbers, if you play with those off, well you're at a bit of a loss.

Sorry.

I think the portraits need tighter art style control.

I liked the word banal because you can actually make it from the letters in balance ^^

Balance is cool, but there's also a fine line between balance and banal.

This game will probably have bloated itemization due to Backer items and stuff, and the amount of weapons and armor. It's the item properties that are the issue.

Unfortunately you guys have missed the party. We lost the UI wars to the minimalists in the Update 54 thread over a year ago, shoulda been around for that. After actually using the UI, I think the design was a good idea in theory, but it's not very good in practice. The combat log being on the far right is the most useless position for it, due to our nature of reading / looking at the left side of things primarily (which is why books, programs etc are left-aligned). The middle section of the UI is rarely used. I actually don't use it at all. The pop-up action bar should have been next to the portraits so it didn't take up as much space when open, but the lead designer doesn't like moving his mouse in that direction so that's why in his game, there shall be no action bar on the right of portraits, only to the left or above.

Uhh, I have to say I disagree about that statement. I really enjoyed the BG1 Wilderness Areas because they actually felt like a "Wilderness" The problem in those areas was lack of quests. Every Wilderness Area had one quest, and it was usually a very, very, very simple quest and that's it.