Sensuki

If you think Diablo 3 of all games is the king of min/maxers then you clearly haven't played min maxers LOL. Diablo 3 doesn't even let you choose attributes. Thanks for the history lesson bro, but I was there and partook in those very threads. There have been many, many statements since then that reinforce the opposite. This website is not the only source of information. Sure you will be able to complete quests without combat. But long after the discussion about no XP from kills, the game has been reinforced as a game where "if you (plural, third person) don't like combat, it's probably not gonna be your type of game". It's not just to see whether you hit a mob. Someday you might realize that. Maybe.

I look at the combat log more than the actual combat, particularly if I've already played the encounter.

And how stuff works.

Yes it does and despite originally saying "Don't worry guys I understand why combat logs are important" and I call him out for it once, goes and completely contradicts himself by saying that he doesn't actually understand why a game needs one and I also highlighted several things which I thought were outrageous. RPGs are tailored towards the casual gamer today, they may be a misguided interpretation, but this is where stuff like "skip the combat" from BioWare etc came from. People going QQ combat ist to hard, game is too combat-focused, and as less effort was put into the combat systems they became dull and boring, and also easy. P:E is an Obsidian game, if there's anything that they're good at it's the RPG side. Getting the combat right is really important.

But it is going to be a combat-focused game ... Sure you will be able to do some non-combat stuff and bypass some fights using dialogue etc but there likely will be a lot of combat in the game. The RPG experiences etc are a given - they are being worked on by the narrative designers. If you just want a light-on combat version where you can just enjoy the story, I'm sure that will be supported but hopefully you will have to play on easy or normal difficult or something to experience that. There are a lot of people like me that played the IE games for the combat and that style of combat has all but disappeared after Icewind Dale 2. We would like to see it's return and these combat features need to be in there to support the upper difficulties and the min-maxers etc.

LOL Completely proves true all of the things I said in the other post, hello casual gamer. You are part of the cancer that is killing current RPGs.

Well as I said I wasn't sure whether you thought it was a drawing or not. Regardless of the fact. Polina did an excellent job at capturing the Infinity Engine interior look in that paint-over. I wonder what reference images she used

A few people (and developers) have mentioned that patching non-steam versions of Unity (and other) games are difficult and in the case of GOG you often have to re-download the game (or whole files) to get the updated patch. Logic Artists also said this about Expeditions: Conquistador (a game developed with Unity), that GOG users may have to re-download the whole game again to get the patch. To my surprise today when I logged on to grab the updated version I saw a nice 3mb patcher. So when the time comes when you are looking into how to provide patches to the GOG version or whatever, in the unlikely case that you are having trouble figuring it out I'm sure the guys at GOG / Logic Artists will be able to give you some pointers as to how to provide smaller size patches (although I'm gonna guess that you've already figured it out or will know how to do it anyway).

I think they were toying with the idea of having to pay Adventurer's Hall recruits or something. Don't know if that will end up being the case. I remember Chris saying something about incorporating companion backstories as part of the narrative.

Don't think so? I haven't seen it in an update, forum post (here or on Something Awful) or on Formspring. Before Update 46 the quote was they had ~15 team members Josh Sawyer Tim Cain Chris Avellone George Ziets Adam Brennecke Steve Weatherly Rob Nesler Hector Espinoza Sean Dunny Polina Hristova Kazunori Aruga Dimitri Berman James Chea Mark Bremerkamp Antonio Govela (this is not counting Justin Bell or Michael Edwards, and I think I saw Kien Tran and Austin Shannon's names thrown around somewhere) They then said they brought on some more concept artists and 2 more designers.

One designer has been revealed as none other than Bobby Null in Update 53. I am guessing the other one is Jorge Salgado http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/410612333086262131 For those that missed it Jorge played in the Live D&D session during the Kickstarter campaign. So I wonder what Jorge has been up to on P:E

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63894-update-55-vertical-slice-update/page-6?do=findComment&comment=1337603 Thought so

No minigames. Just no. And I thought the Dragon Age Origin stories were a good concept, but all of them were absolutely laughably terrible IMO (some more than others). Project Eternity is going to have one starting location, the prologue will be something about you witnessing a supernatural event. I can tell you there definitely won't be any drunk mode. Unless those were examples of what not to do

I don't know about that statement lol. Some audio gear is also a lot more revealing than others. My Sennheiser HD650s tend to gloss over flaws and make everything sound generally pretty listenable. on the other hand my previously owned Alessandro MS-Pros and my (unfortunately broken) Grado RS-1s were a lot more unforgiving of **** recordings. I find the same with my Tube amp (Mapletree Audio Ear+) compared to my solid state amp (Dynahi), The Ear+ is more forgiving and the Dynahi is very detailed. The average person generally doesn't tell the difference because they are not used to critically listening to audio. It is generally fairly easy to tell the difference between a Redbook file and an mp3, but it might not be out of an iPod using stock iPod earbuds. I also find telling the difference out of speakers a lot more difficult than headphones, but I use headphones 99% of the time for everything.

If you didn't treat everything as an argument, then you wouldn't be. I posted the picture for context as there are some people who think that the picture is a drawing and not a pre-render due to the word concept being used.

No need to be condescending because some people don't like you(r designs). I just can not tell you how SUPER impressed I will be. Until then, I'll use the combat log in these common combat situations, so I really hope they will include it. I've never been a fan of a black box approach. ..... Nice try. As for how can all this be done? Actually quite easy, sound effects, visual effects, character reactions. When a guy hits you and your character makes an "oof" sort of sound effect and sort of bends backwards they clearly took a hit. When your character yells out "ARghhh!" and falls on the ground they clearly took a lot more than "a hit". Likewise character animations and sound effects can show parries, blocks with shields, your character can call out "My attack is ineffective?!?!" (heh heh), and any number of other cues to let you know what is going on in combat. This is not 1990 anymore. Graphics have come a very very long way and can show a great range of depth, and good sound design can cover for what graphics can't do. As for arrows.... not only could your character make a comment like "Hmmmm... out of arrows!" but you also have weapon swap icons, they could just show your arrow count right there. As for IE games. No, I do not want BG3. I want a modern 2013-2014 RPG made by the people who made BG that uses modern technology and a fresh design to make something that is in the same spirit and style but progressive and new at the same time. Edit: One other thing, while I will turn off the combat log myself if it is optional... I left it visible in every mock up I made for a reason. People will expect it to be there, it was there in the original mock up, and I expect it to be there in the final game. Just because I don't want to use, or see it, doesn't mean I don't understand why someone might want to. I dunno about you but if you don't think the combat log is important then I would assume the following things: A. You don't play with "To-Hit rolls" turned on B. You don't play on a hard difficulty C. You're not really a powergamer / min-maxer The combat log is important for the purpose of: Dissecting things like attack rolls in order to determine enemy defense scores, why you missed, and in the case of P:E specifically how much damage you are doing and whether or not you need to switch to a different damage type. Eg. If I keep rolling grazes I want to know whether it's because the RNG is being unkind to me or whether the enemy I am attacking has a decent defense score. Keeping track of status effects - of course you will be able to see a status effect on a character but you might want to know where exactly it came from, there were times in BG1/BG2 where I wasn't sure how one of my characters came under a certain status, especially if you're new to the game. Very important for big battles with lots going on. Sure you could say, that you would prefer if you moused over the enemy and a tooltip came up with their defenses and bonus to attack, but that's not how the IE games were and it's definitely not how a lot of us want the game to be, especially on Expert Mode. I don't know about you but I didn't pay for a 2013-14 RPG, I payed for an old-school RPG. Bioware made BG not Obsidian/Black Isle. I want a UI that has lots of functions at the ready because it is important for combat purposes. For this it needs to take up some screen space and that is fine. A UI split into collapsing parts should cater to most people, but the combat log is an important feature in a game that HOPEFULLY is difficult on Hard+ and requires lots of dissecting of combat to be able to determine optimizations. You can't just say "Eternity is not D&D" as a valid reason for a combat log being silly. Project Eternity has Expert Mode - for veteran players who want a more 90's style all hints off experience / dials up to 11 game. Path of the Damned - Heart of Fury mode ie ridiculous combat challenge and Trial of Iron - you die, save deleted, start again (and if this happens, you'd want to be dissecting that combat log). Josh Sawyer has also gone on the record saying he'd like the game to at least be about as hard as IWD2.

Seems like some people want an infinity engine game with everything but the infinity engine. I'll take the same dialogue system please. Thanks.

Ignore what's on the UI. That was used just an example. My point is the space on the screen. Yes action take's place in the center of the screen but RARELY at the very middle bottom of the screen where the UI should be. The UI is better off being in that space - like this Once again, ignore what game it is and the fact that there are no portraits. I am talking solely about the position of the elements of the UI. I would rather the elements be centered or take up the entire length of the bottom of the screen than have two pieces in each corner.

I'm not sure I understand your perspective. Perhaps you could clarify? For me, I would think that most (>90%) of the players attention will be focused on the middle of the viewing area, so having the controls and status displays in the corners helps to unclutter the UI. An uncluttered look is one of the essential elements of UI design: just showing the user what they need to see without having distracting features. Sure. What is the point of a gap in the UI here? Because IMO that is just dumb, I would rather have both of the UI elements centered with gaps at the side, than a gap in the middle. And no Neverwinter Nights 2 inspired Dialogue UI please, hell no.

He did say "sides" In inverted commas, there may not actually be any physical space missing between them.

Actually it's an in-engine render with a paint-over. That mechanical/magical thing in the room was actually painted in

That's fine, although I'd prefer if there was no visual gap between them but I'll wait and see what it looks like. I did notice a few people were requesting the middle of the screen be freed up and to be honest I find that very strange.

Does the bar encompass the whole screen and if not are all the elements at least centered?