Sensuki

There are a few elemental resist types - Shocking is one, Fire, Cold and Acid are probably others. If you see a guy in Plate Armor, zap him with a Lightning Bolt, +50% damage lol

That's usually going to happen because people will find the opimal route to getting a good weapon early. In Baldur's Gate 1 I have a certain route I use to get Imoen fast XP so she can pick the lock inside the Beregost Blacksmith so I can grab a very early Bastard Sword +1. In Baldur's Gate 2 well yeah, after Irenicus' lair it's free game. That is the nature of a non-linear RPG like this.

Bet away, I'd be happy to take your money.

Armor does reduce spell damage, yes.

eh? where did you hear this? Updates are on Tuesdays and that is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving...

They've been doing bi-weekly updates for a while, and the last one was a month's gap. If they're going by symmetry then there will not be an update this week and we'll have to wait a month from the last update to get the big one. Still I don't think a Q&A is unreasonable, it takes up a lot less time than the others I am sure. There's still a few people that have been working on the game for a while now that haven't done a Q&A - Jorge Salgado, Sean Dunny, Antonio Bovela, James Chea, (we've heard about Antonio in an art update though). The Contract Writer position has been filled and so have the Environment Art positions.

This about expert mode only. You get popups that show values by default. You will be able to see attack rolls, and the mechanics behind the rolls will be broken down (ie. bonuses to accuracy from gear + conditional values)

Are you guys planning to do an update this week? Even just another Q&A would be nice. None of the journalists took any pictures of the art that Josh put in his GDC presentation So a couple of those companion portraits would be nice

No not at all, that would be silly. I am only talking about not displaying target Defense scores of enemies, or target DCs of Skill checks, just like the IE games did it. Apparently there is already a very comprehensive breakdown of an attack roll when you mouse over the attack roll in the combat log, a popup comes up and shows you all the values that affect it.

It can backfire on RPG's though. Case in point... Dragon Age: Origins. No offense but Dragon Age Origins is not a good example of anything. It shouldn't even be involved in the discussion. Think Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment (which all did not show AC values or DCs of skill checks). We know how the game mechanics work already. If you don't there's several/threads posts I can link you to. Blind picking skills and abilities also has nothing to do with the discussion.

I'd like to re-iterate that I said this is for expert mode only. Normal mode can have all the transparency it likes, as long as it stays the hell out of expert mode. It is not mechanics obfuscation either, it is only obfuscating the target values of enemies - which I think is fair and for the reasons stated in the OP. You didn't get ACs and DCs in D&D or the IE games, and I don't believe you should get them in the most IE-inspired mode.

impressive gnomish nocturnal open reading everyday

I know - but as long as we're having options - why not allow the obfuscation of dice-rolls too? Yeah that's fair as that was actually the default IE setting.

I am talking about Target values only, I read the combat log and will be turning off floating damage numbers.

Expert Mode is independent from the Difficulty slider. It is a style. It doesn't make the game harder (apart from having permadeath on) as far as I can tell, so far it has mostly just been about turning off all the helper information and presenting the game more like the original IE games. Examples given so far: Permanent Death No skill checks, stat checks or reputation modifiers shown in dialogue Stat popups on enemies disabled No journal quest names Probably no floating damage numbers

The point is obfuscation. Expert mode turns off all helper information and presents are more classic, hardcore experience more inline with the original Infinity Engine games. You could call Expert Mode classic mode perhaps. It does not necessarily mean 'expert'. I will probably not be doing mathcraft to win encounters in Eternity, I will just be winging it. This works, or that works. Rather than "okay I have the accuracy I need to hit this unit's deflection at a hit rate of 70%, so this should make this encounter easier." That's how I do it in Aarklash Legacy, I don't use the stat popups in that game or read the spell descriptions or use auto-pause. To beat most encounters I figure out my own formula .. right, position mage chick here, use knockdown skill to disrupt bolt-thingies. Micro healer left and right to get the wave off on my tank and dps classes - kill the Skeleton Mages first as that seems to work the best. Battle Realms is one of my favourite RTS games, and it goes for a full obfuscation mode. You never see attack, damage or hit point values - you get a general description of units, skills and upgrades. You had to work out the counters for yourself. Some people would probably pull their hair out at that but I think it was great, one of the best RTS games I've played.

I like that. Covers both sides of the fence well, without being too in your face.

It might just be me but I never install games to my Program Files folder. I have a separate drive for that and my Steam is on a different drive as well. I have an old SSD (60GB) so the only things that go on that is Windows, programs and temporary downloads / stuff like that. I prefer config files and saves in the actual game folder because the game folder does not get deleted, whereas I format my system drive a few times a year (now I've gotten into imaging it instead), mostly to try and troubleshoot mouse input lag created by installing programs. If I do go and delete a game folder, if I want to keep the saves I back them up. The average user probably only has one hard drive though and just uses the default install location.

The recent discussions about Combat Challenge =/= Obfuscation and the inclusion of a stat popup and Bestiary logs raises an important question to me regarding a particular feature of the Infinity Engine games (and Dungeons and Dragons) that I rather enjoyed. In all of the D&D campaigns that I played, the target values of skill checks and Armor class were never revealed by any Dungeon Master, you had to do the math yourself. You might be able to figure out what the AC of a monster was if you knew the value from the book and the DM was using it or you could approximate it by the armor they were wearing, or you rolled a miss on a 17 and then someone else hit the same monster on an 18 in a later round. In Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment - Armor classes were never shown in the combat log, only the attack roll was displayed: For example Sensuki attacks Josh Sawyer: 15 + 6 = 21: Miss However in later titles (the trend started with Neverwinter Nights 1 or 2 I believe) the target DCs for skill checks and AC values for enemies were shown upon rolls in a manner similar to this (using a D&D example here). Sensuki attacks Josh Sawyer: 15 + 6 = 21 (vs AC 24): Miss Eternity will be supporting transparency by default as Josh wants players to engage in the mechanics, and it makes it easier for people unfamiliar to RPGs of this kind. That's fine with me because we will also be able to disable the popups that fill in the enemy defense scores. However I am a bit worried that the combat log will still show target values. I have asked multiple times but have not got an answer yet - perhaps the question wasn't noticed or they haven't decided yet, so I thought I'd post a poll. Please keep in mind this is for EXPERT MODE only. Personally I do not want to see target values in the combat log, I would rather work them out myself, yes it means I have to do some 'unnecessary' arithmetic which some people may find bothersome, but these people are hopefully not Expert mode players. I am not too phased about whether values are shown in the Bestiary as I probably won't use it, but I wouldn't be against having stats disabled in the Bestiary as well on Expert Mode. I don't want to know anything, let me figure it out please. Personally I felt Baldur's Gate 1 gave the best feel, it didn't give you any feedback about the states of enemy health either. I'm not too phased about that I'm more concerned with not being able to see their defense scores and skill check targets than anything else. Hopefully there's some more Expert Mode players out there that feel the same.

Personally I'd prefer it the save folder was in the game folder. Unity by default does not expose the game files, you have to structure it like that yourself.

It's a GDC Talk to mostly people unfamiliar with Eternity, and every bullet point that Josh talks about is something that is a lot different than most games Their method of creating 2D areas to explore - with their cool dynamic lighting & effects tech Scripted Interaction screens - something not seen for quite some time in an RPG Text - Eternity will have a lot of text, and will be partially voice acted rather than full-voice or no voice - these days it's usually one or the other so (omg) you will have to read the text. Eternity will be challenging, but Josh wants to promote transparency so that it's easier for the average person to figure things out Eternity will have lots of options for the hardcore, and the casual. I had to do a powerpoint explaining IPv6 Tunneling to a bunch of Science students and lecturers who had no idea how computer networking worked (because at my University IT and Science is under the same department), so I had dummie pictures of like an ocean (IPv4) and two pacific islands (IPv6) ... that kind of stuff is good in powerpoints, then people unfamiliar understand.

The amount of text in Eternity has already been discussed many times, as has the information dump stuff. Josh Sawyer prefers a drier, more natural style of dialogue, so the dialogue of characters will be more realistic. Chris Avellone has given many talks on what he didn't like about Planescape Torment and the info dumps and huge walls of text was one of them. If you talk to any NPC in Eternity they are not going to give you a history/exposition dump just for the sake of it, you'll probably have to ask them specifically about that information and even then it will be skewed by their point of view. If there are any long text stringents they will likely be split up into separate dialogue pieces (via the continue button, I assume). You can probably expect something along the lines of Baldur's Gate 2, in Obsidian's writing style for amount and style of text. George Ziets has also been known to quote that as well.

TBH I think it's fine as long as it doesn't impact the overall design of the game for those that are competent (which in most games, it does). Eternity has expert mode, higher difficulty modes and a mostly old-school design, the only thing I am worried about is not being able to turn off target numbers for rolls.

Josh Sawyer's GDC Next talk was today a few hours ago. Unfortunately the recording of the session is behind an attendees only paywall (I think it was like $700 a ticket). There wasn't much activity on twitter, a couple of people posted about the inclusion of casual options, a few photos were taken and one guy thought Josh's natural tone of voice sounds like he is bored . Anyway thought I'd create a thread so if anyone finds any info / Josh puts up the powerpoint we can discuss it in this thread, so far there's only these. "The questing in Project Eternity is going to be insane. Get ready to read, kiddos. Or don't. Because they're giving you casuals options too." ""A lot of the people playing games are not good at them. That's okay. It's our job to help them." - Josh Sawyer, Obsidian #gdcnext"

Oh yeah we haven't seen Orlans, Godlike or Aumaua races in the game yet, just concepts (and even then, the Aumaua concepts were *very* simple. So I am looking forward to that way more than classes. Also seeing monsters in game too.