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Waywocket

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Everything posted by Waywocket

  1. Strongly disagree. Leaving aside the straight-up bugs, at the moment, the UI probably needs at least a dozen iterations before it's up to par with even BG2, and playtesting that properly takes time. I haven't even bothered reporting most of the UI issues aside form ones that are seriously bad (though others have made many good suggestions), because it feels like the UI design and implementation is in such an early stage that bug reporting would be meaningless - like pointing out to somebody painting that they've missed a bit when they've only just made the first stroke. Think about what WL2 was like three months after the beta began, and compare that to how much better it is now. And even that's a little optimistic, since WL2 was in a much better state when the beta started. It's possible that the UI can be taken from its current point to where it needs to be in three or four months, but realistically I think that kind of schedule is going to require at least a new build per week.
  2. I regret that I have only one like to give for this post.
  3. You mean like in BG/BG2/IWD/IWD2/PS:T(sort of)? I don't think so, because in practice right now you play until your fighter has no health left and then you're forced to rest, so you'd really only have one bloody portrait, and arguably you really ought to if you're wandering around that close to death.
  4. I really think health and stamina should be shown the other way around: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67112-staminahealth-display/
  5. Okay, I've played a few more hours, and I think more than ever that these are displayed the wrong way round. It's not just me - see for example http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66770-first-impressions-thread/page-11?do=findComment&comment=1484588 Fundamentally, stamina is a very different thing from health, and the red bar just looks so much like it should represent damage that I don't think the current way health and stamina are shown conforms to almost anybody's initial expectations.
  6. Do we actually know that this isn't intended behaviour? Most of the wizard's spells come with serious potential for friendly fire, so I wonder if this might be intentional.
  7. I'm so happy to hear there's somebody else who found this to be a problem in F:NV. Although I suspect you still didn't mind it quite as much as I did, since it was one of the (numerous) factors in my deeming the game unplayably frustrating within a couple of hours and uninstalling it. (Seriously, that game was mechanically so awful that I can't understand how so many people were willing to suffer through it long enough to get to the 'good content' that I'm told exists somewhere. I feel sorry for anyone contractually obligated to attempt to develop an enjoyable game in such an unspeakably bad engine.)
  8. Could somebody with serious contrast problems post some screenshots, so we know if we're discussing the same thing?
  9. But the weapon stats are visible in the descriptions. It shouldn't be all that hard to figure out. How is this different from figuring out which buff, debuff, or counter to use in various situations in BG2? How about because it's ridiculous? Answer quickly, which of the following are lions immune to: * Stabbing * Cutting * Having their skull bashed in * Obviously none of the above, how is this even a mechanic? Edit: Okay, maybe that was a little over the top, but I'm leaving it as I think the point stands. It makes perfect sense that a breastplate would deflect a blow from a blade, unless it was hit just right; it does not make sense that a boar is practically immune to all except piercing damage.
  10. I think that the elephant in the room is that for many people - myself included, to be honest - random meaningless fights aren't actually fun. Getting ambushed by beetles and having to spend ages dealing with that feels like an easy way to pad a game out, not actually an enjoyable encounter in its own right - like it was literally put there for no other reason than to inflate the length of the game. Pointless fights that affect nothing and occur for no reason are kind of like a tax you have to pay in most RPGs in order to get the reward of the fun parts of the game. At least if you get some XP, then it doesn't feel like it was a complete waste of time.
  11. Also, I really like the way offscreen character indicators are drawn, with the little portrait. It's a small thing, but that kind of thing really helps to create a sense of attention to detail.
  12. Ah, there must be some other requirement I've not fulfilled then. Well, never mind.
  13. So how do you actually use a rope and grappling hook? In the inventory it appears to be just a prop - you can't equip it or interact with it, and just having it sitting there doesn't seem to unlock any options in the dialogue where you're climbing up to/down from the ledge with the egg. I know it's not going to make any difference, since it doesn't actually seem to be possible to hand quests in, but I still wonder if I'm actually missing out on some game mechanics.
  14. Interesting. I've not seen rope and grapnel - time to go shopping I guess. Thanks.
  15. At (seemingly) anything above 1920x1080 loads of the textures get scaled up to double(?) size, which looks pretty bad, and some bits of the UI get cut off - there are numerous threads in the bugs forum that describe the various issues in more detail, so it doesn't really need to be covered here.
  16. So, the egg up on the ledge: has anybody figured out what you need in order to get it down without breaking it? Can it even be done? It seems that you need high athletics to be able to get up there, but I can't see what you need to get it down - some combination of might and dexterity maybe. This is bugging me even more than my inability to find a peaceful solution to the ogre problem .
  17. Seriously? This is a thing that people actually did?
  18. I really love the background art. Aside from a few minor layering/masking issues which will doubtless be sorted pretty quickly, I'm very impressed with how good the backgrounds look and how well the 3d elements are integrated.
  19. I'm finding the game auto-pauses a lot more than I was expecting, and I think what's happening is that if I pick, for example, 'auto-pause on taking damage', it will pause not only when someone in my party takes damage, but also when anyone in the encounter takes damage (and similarly for other triggers like spell cast or whatever). Can anyone confirm if this happens for them, or if I'm just getting mixed up because I have so many auto-pause triggers enabled? Edit: Actually, I think it is that I'm just getting confused about exactly what some of the options do. 'Spell cast' in particular is about when the enemy casts a spell, not your party (for some reason), and I'm wondering if I was just getting mixed up about the others when so many things fired in quick succession.
  20. So engagement sounds, on paper, like a pretty straightforward mechanic. The concept is simple to understand, and yet in practice it turns out I find it very confusing. I can't seem to see anything that tells you when a character is engaged, and by whom. Am I missing something, or is it not there? Coupled with the tendency of enemies to run right up to you and cluster tightly together, the effect in practice is that combat consists of a ton of characters practically standing on top of each other, with it impossible to see who is attacking whom, and me too afraid to move anyone because they will get horribly stabbed if I try. I guess if you've initiated combat by getting the drop on your enemies, you can pre-position your party to minimise the problem, but outside of that, how are people dealing with this? Is it something you just get better at with more practice?
  21. Hmm, you think? I tend to place a fairly high value in conforming to expectations in UI design, even if that would leave the resulting UI slightly sub-optimal (though never to the extent of being severely sub-optimal), so I'd tend to go for the option that seems the most normal, and least surprising - especially in a situation where the player is having to learn a whole load of new mechanics at the same time. You could be right though that it works out better once you're used to it; I'll see how I feel about this after playing some more.
  22. In the known issues, they mentioned that a lot of people find the system unintuitive. I think that this could be improved to some extent by simply swapping the way they're displayed; it seems strange that stamina is represented by a growing red bar of doom, whereas a character's actual life is represented by a small green bar that doesn't look so important - more like a mana bar that happens to be green. Health is more important in this game than in most others, since it's harder to get back, so I think it should be that that gets the big red warning display. On the other hand, given its rapid regeneration, I feel that stamina is more like a resource, and should be displayed in a way that's more like resource bars in other games; it also probably shouldn't be red (or green), as red and green are colours that are usually reserved for showing health. Right now it's hard to describe what exactly the red means - 'lack of stamina'? I'm calling it 'exhaustion'. Assuming that the way the system works remains unchanged, my alteration to the UI for it would be that health is the red bar covering the portrait, and it would start form the bottom - in both cases because that's familiar to a wide number of players, and I think more intuitive that red represents damage more than exhaustion. I'd put the stamina bar where health currently is, very slightly wider to emphasise it a touch more, and not green: Thoughts, anybody?
  23. Look a bit harder at the portraits and ability icons, they're pixelated. I have the PNG file of the screenshot if you think it's jpeg compression - because it isn't. Mine have always looked like that, so they didn't stand out to me at first. In my case, I think I've worked out why (http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67056-text-rendering/?do=findComment&comment=1483040), though there must be a slightly different explanation here. What does the text look like for you with the same settings?
  24. Okay, after some experimenting with different window sizes I think I know what's going on: It appears that if you pick a resolution higher than 1920x1080, the game will upscale many of its UI elements, for some reason. Note that that doesn't mean higher resolution assets will be used, just that the textures are stretched. This leaves most UI items looking over-large and badly blurred or somewhat distorted by the scaling. In fact, it also affects most images, which I was initially assuming were unfinished assets but I now see actually look fine at lower resolutions.
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