Stun

That's a good point, actually. I wonder how that's going to be incorporated with regards to the UI. The IE games all had an icon/button you press to bring up the area/world map. And that's how I'd prefer it with PE, but I wouldn't be completely averse to an "always there" minimap on the top left or top right corner.

You're not describing the flaws of 'Save-or-die' here. You're describing crappy game balance, or silly encounter design. Huge difference. There isn't a single person on this thread who's advocating that only ONE side of a conflict should have access to insta-death powers. Instead, we're arguing that such spells/powers should be embedded into the game system itself and at higher levels, both the enemy and the player should have access to them. This changes the dynamic of your example drastically. Because now when Big-bad-insta-slayer gets lucky with his Vorpal blade and kills Tough-warrior-bob, Squishy-Egbert-the-Mage can cast Disentigrate and even the score. Oh, and by the Way, ever heard of a dodge-based mechanic called Improved Evasion? Yeah, that combat skill.... lets you evade insta-death spells cast at you..... No pre-buffing/meta-gaming needed. And it's not like this is anything radically new. AGAIN, BG2, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale 2 all had this system. Even BG1, a low level campaign, featured Basilisks who could petrify players.

You are aware that when people refer to balance, they're generally talking about the whole of the game, and not specific encounters? Imbalance within encounters is fine and very preferable, as long as those imbalances balance out in the long run. OH! well in that case, I take my initial comments back. Each one of the IE games contained perfect class balance. Indeed, in every single one of them, after a certain point about halfway through the game, there were no more weak classes. Or even "weaker" classes. period. So... what's the point of this discussion again?

And this will be a party based game anyway. "class equality/balance" becomes moot here because in a *good* party based system, any class, weak or strong, is merely a part of the whole. And I would *think* that decent variety and creativity in the beastiary would also render class balance moot. (ie. warriors should have an easier time killing Golems than mages would, and clerics should have an easier time killing undead than warriors etc.)

When we don't have a real argument, lets pull baseless statistics out of thin air. lol Do you realize where this argument of yours leads? First off, RPGs (and all of the IE games save for PS:T) *force* you to reload when your main character dies anyway. And death doesn't have to come from an insta-death spell. You can die from any tough battle where the enemy manages to reduce your health to nothing. Therefore, lets make sure all fights are easy, so as to not promote "save scumming" and "meaningless" (lol) pre-buffing? That is what you are arguing. Literally. Absurd argument that it is. Indeed, there's nothing fun about plannning and strategizing. NO fights should require you to prepare ahead of time. And there's no fun in relying on dice rolls. Every single one of the Infinity engine games (the games Obsidian name-dropped repeatedly to promote PE) had that as a *core* feature behind every element of combat. But... it's no fun! BS. On several levels. First off, Power word Kill is a 9th level mage spell. It requires countless hours of playing, leveling and gameplay to even *get*. Second, Contrary to what you might think, a standard fireball cast by a 12th level wizard is actually more powerful. It will do more damage to more people at once and more types of enemies, whereas, Power word kill is limited to one mortal, living opponent who has just 60hp or less. Third, It is a spell, and like all spells, it can be interrupted, concentration can be broken. It takes exactly as much planning, skill and tactical focus as any other spell. In fact, I'd argue that it takes more skill and combat awareness than other spells, since you have to accurately assess how much health your target currently has, otherwise the spell will do nothing and is wasted. No, it's not. It symbolizes power and achievement. Mages are glass cannons by definition. "squishy", as someone said earlier. They suffer lower armor ratings, more vunerability at close quarters, limited offensive ability (unlike melee classes who never run out of sword swings, Mages can run out of spells) The Trade off is that after suffering these limitations for the majority of the game, they eventually acquire a couple of elite, and highly feared spells that can turn the tide of a fight instantly. And even then, its not like they get to use these spells in every encounter. And it's not like every enemy is doomed no matter what. At that level, the monsters who will surely die from a finger of death will NOT be the bosses (for example). Instead, those bosses will, more often than not, Make their save...assuming they aren't already immune to death magic, or have magic resistance that must be overcome. Spells like Destruction, Distentigrate, Power word Kill and Death Spell are useful/reliable against the garden variety summons, other mages, and perhaps the careless, mindless tank type who's throwing all caution to the wind and trying to take out that mage. So? Bottom line: Obsidian Named dropped the IE games. They CHOSE to remind us of those games and to offer us a chance to crowd fund a new game that will recapture the feel of those games. Those games weren't 4th Edition. This is not to say they need to use D&D rules, and MY point in mentioning D&D had nothing to do with that anyway. My point was to remind Sawyer of the very system he grew up playing. If he thinks the concept of Dice rolls influencing conflict resolution is bad, then one wonders why he stuck with such a system for so long.... as a DM.

Disagree. An RPG doesn't need class equality to fully deliver the player choice you're describing. Or at least the Infinity engine games didn't. Despite there being nothing even resembing class balance in those games, they still managed to make Soloing any character build a completely viable route (for example). And They accomplished this in a myriad of ways. From magic items, to dual-classing, to multi-classing to the D&D rules system itself (ie. a stoneskinned opponent can still take damage from a flaming sword. The sheer number of classes, class abilities, class combinations, and spells was nigh infinite, etc.) In other words, to answer your questions of "what if I don't want a wizard. or a sword and board tank?", the answer is: don't use them. Again, I once soloed BG2, from beginning to end, with an armorless Kensai. And by chapter 3 he had become completely overpowered. In another Playthrough I rolled up a Sorcerer then took Viconia (a cleric) with me. Same result: it was a bit of a struggle early, but by about chapter 3/4 the game ceased being a challenge. The problem I have with rigid class equality across the board is that it makes the game feel overly restrictive and one dimensional in the course of multiple playthroughs. I mean, what's the point in trying out a different character class when you know the challenge will be exactly the same and the power ceiling will be totally unchanged? That, and what's the logic, exactly, in insuring that every class in an RPG is perfectly balanced? Is that the way it is in real life? Is the President of the United States equal in power to the burger flipper at McDonalds?

Indeed. Actually, there's a lot of leeway here in how the narrative can be written/structured in order to acheive what you're asking for. A game's story can deliver that feeling of the unknown without having such a "mysterious" physical plot delivery structure. The various Infinity Engine games are proof of this. For example, BG1 and the Icewind Dales did things precisely as you describe. The slow-drip plot flow was natural, even as the map-settings were ever-changing. In the meantime, the player was left in the dark with regards to both his greater objective and the climax of the story itself until near the very end, when the "plot twist" revealed what everything was really about. But BG2 and Planescape Torment did NOT do it that way. They did the opposite. In the case of PS:T, you're flat out told, via a prophesy from a seer in the game's prologue, exactly where you were going to go in the end game, and what you'll be facing once you get there lol. In BG2's case, The entire plot's objective is laid out before you in the prologue, and then you're given confirmation scenes throughout chapter 2 and 3. Interestingly though, the "what's over that hill??" feeling was actually stronger (for me at least) in PS:T and BG2 than it was in those other games. I chalk that up to good writing. And setting.

Wow, neat info. Personally, I think Obsidian is in a position to eliminate the guesswork on something like this. They could send all their Project eternity backers a short Questionare (via email or whatever) asking them what type of monitors/screen displays they have.

Ugh... I was on the fence on this issue until I saw Sawyer's argument here. His answer worries me. Design decisions on a game feature should always be based on whether that feature makes the game *better*. They should not be based on trying to second-guess player behavior. The argument he's making is a dangerous slippery slope that has been responsible for the decline of the RPG genre. It's this type of thinking that has seen the elimination of wonderful old school things in RPGs over the years, such as: 1) NPC perma-death (had to take that out because... you know... some players would just reload when it happens) 2) Random effect magic items. ie. Deck of Many Things; Wand of Wonder; Wish spells etc. (can't have those anymore. why? same reason... some players would just reload until they got the effect they wanted) Eventually, this mindset lead to the removal of vital gameplay features like: 1) Having to prepare and memorize spells - because *some* players do not want to worry about... heaven forbid... trial and error... or picking the "wrong" spells on their first playthrough and having a tough time. 2) Missing in melee - Because some players can't stand watching their characters swinging at air... so lets remove this feature and replace it with illogical crap like automatic hits. 3) slow leveling - because players want their characters to become very powerful, very quickly, so lets give these ADD-suffering players what they want. In the future, this mindset will eventually see the removal of Character classes - because some players want to be able to do everything all at once. And Branching narratives- for the same reason. My question to Sawyer: What's wrong with Good Luck/Bad Luck in a game? Is it not a HUGE, and driving element in D&D --- a game system you spent much of your life playing and DM-ing? Is it not an existing factor even in real life combat?

Don't know, but you shouldn't be doing it! lol

Ok, I'm gonna bow out here after this post because I'm starting to get bored and I've just realized I've wasted half my friday afternoon engaging in a rather mundane debate topic about... virtually nothing. I've never finished BG1, but from what I played of it that probably would have been better than what we got. Nope. Not even Objectively. Since in that encounter, you do not even know who Serevok is. He's simply labeled as "armored figure". So lets recap the (completed) story at that point. 1) Welcome to candlekeep, your home. Your dad wants you to go on a trip with him. Hurry up and equip yourself. 2) Meet Imoen, your childhood friend. 3) Fetch a scroll for a mage 4) Kill two guys 5) Meet up with dad, and go for a walk outside 6)Kill an armored figure. The End. (Thank you for playing Baldurs Gate 1!! $50 dollars well spent!)

Right. When an RPG boasts 60 hours content, and players report that they managed to beat the game in its first chapter after playing for 3 hours, then that game will be seen as a huge dud. Broken. Seriously, imagine if you and Gorion were able to kill Serevok in BG1's prologue via a couple of lucky rolls of the dice. What kind of Gaming experience would that have been? I'll tell you. None at all. And the devs would have been held accountable for releasing a (literally) BROKEN game. But that's what you're asking for here: a Game you can break early, for your own ego's sake. Story be damned.

Correct. But In computer game terms, if you don't want to take the "immortal villian" route, you only have 2 other options here. 1) You craft a story where the villian remains hidden and completely out of reach until the very end of the entire game. Or: 2) you present the villian in chapter 1.... but he/she can only interact with the player via a cutscene (ie. the player is powerless to fight/affect the villian) Do you like either of these two? And what happens, then, when we get players wishing that they too could perform such awesome high level illusory projections that can talk, threaten and taunt from a mile away? Just saying....

Because in Tabletop, a decent DM can think on the fly and even *adjust* the plot when the players come up with an ingenius magical solution that he/she didn't anticipate. In a CRPG, though, if the player manages to, say, destroy the main villian via a lucky roll with his Chromatic Orb Spell in chapter 1, then that means he just broke the game. And Ironically enough, history shows that games who's plots can be broken by smart players tend to be bashed as BAD GAMES That isn't cheating. TTO and Trias are different kinds of being from the Nameless One. The argument as it relates to NWN2 is about teleportation spells, which aren't abilities exclusively possessed by Jerro, and the way teleportation is used to decide crucial events in the plot while the player for some reason cannot use it (or use the other spells named above to prevent it). Or even attempt to use it. The writing in these scenes doesn't make sense at all, while TTO's shadows certainly do. To be fair, The teleportation that Jerro uses is, again, Blood Fueled. This is demonstrated when Shandra enters his haven.... she suddenly gets the ability to Teleport as well.

Ok, you're forcing me to Over-defend NWN2, which was never my intention, as it's been my stance since my first post on this thread that its main story is a bit convoluted and contrived. But you know full well the devs covered their asses with Ammon Jerro. He's NOT using his own power to do the things you're citing. He's using the collective power of his enslaved demons and devils. The story points this out to the player about 50 times. Everyone from the Golem outside his Haven, to the various named fiends inside Warn you point-blank that as long as they're under his command, his power is practically absolute. Which means, No, your silence spell probably wouldn't have worked on him (not that it matters. AFAIK, He's already got the subvocal casting perk when you recuit him lol) As for wanting your magic to solve the plot-problems that arise... yeah, that sounds like a great idea on paper. After all, there's no magically sealed door that a Disentigrate spell can't destroy. And there's no teleporting character than a Dimension anchor can't hold in place. But you'll notice one thing: No *good* High fantasy story can be made with those types of rules. Only a low fantasy story can (Ie. a politics of man-type of plott.... like the ones the Witcher series has.) Of course the trade off is that in those types of stories, the player will not be able to cast silence, or disentigrate, or whatever type of "problem-solving" spell that the high fantasy games give you.

So... Your issue is with the unfairness. ie., The villian can do X but you can't.... and worse, the DM allows the villian to do X, but you can't, in order to advance the plot. Alright, fine. That's a fair gripe. ....Except when it comes to NWN2, which is so apologetic on this point that they give the PC and his party *sole* access to the single most elite power in the entire realms: Immortality. In NWN2, when an enemy falls in battle, they're DEAD. Period. Even if they're part of an enemy party that contains a high level Cleric that can cast ressurect/raise dead. Not so for the PC and his gang. They cannot die. They can only be knocked unconscious, temporarily, They bounce right back up at the end of battle, or during battle as soon as a mid-level cleric raises them (or even a low level fighter with a raise dead scroll raises them). But I digress. This discussion is pointless, and retarded. It's as if NWN2 is the only RPG you've ever played. Well? Is it? Show me a Crpg that doesn't use enemy 'cheating" to advance its plots. In fact all of them do. All the classics do, at least. BG2? Yep. Irenicus And Bodhi teleport away from you...multiple times....in order to advance the plot. (And Bodhi's not even a spell caster) IWD1 and IWD2? Yep, the main villians in those 2 games teleport away from you. In fact, they teleport away from you after teleporting TO you in the first place for no reason but to taunt you. Even planescape Torment has cheating villians. TTO has the power to send shadows after you wherever you may be. Trias has spells you will never be able to cast. etc.

Really? You're lamenting the fact that your character can't teleport? I suppose you'd call the story *great* if you could teleport? Sure.... You'd simply be able to teleport when the villian does... And have a magical cat-and-mouse chace with the villain, then clobber him and take the shard back. Yeah, that'd be GREAT writing ....and the game would end up being 3 hours long, and plotless.

This is not some novel idea. This is the often-repeated minimalist suggestion. I'm vehemently opposed to it. There are at least a hundred things that are wrong with it, not the least of which is that it simply wouldn't work well for a party based, iso-view, RTwP game that is going to have several different distinct classes with dozens upon dozens of spells, skills and abilities for each. I can't even begin to imagine the headaches it would pose for those of us who wish to engage in a truly tactical party vs. party battle (for example). And it wouldn't *at all* capture the feel of the old infinity engine games that we were *promised* PE would be reminiscent of. Skyrim has what you are describing though, doesn't it. Take that and be happy. A *good* RPG will have more spell choices for your mage than your keyboard has keys. And if your solution is to assign 1 button to bring up a giant spell menu list, then what was the point of having the empty, UI free game world screen in the first place?

YES! Thank you. I clicked on this thread, then read some of this feedback and I can't believe my eyes. My first reaction was "Who are these people!?" Here we have Obsidian seemingly delivering on their nostalgia and 'old skool' ressurection promises in graphic fashion, giving us a mock up UI plan that looks exactly like IWD2, and what are the reactions? "no!", "Clunky!", "I want something more modern!", and my personal favorite: "I want minimalist" (translation: I've been fully seduced by today's cinematic, don't think, don't read, just watch" philosophy of User Interfaces. C'mon people. Have you forgotten the Infinity engine games? I haven't. Back then, the so-called "clunky" UIs were like that because gameplay featured far more than just what's going on in the main screen. And I don't recall some groundswell of complaints about the UI. It didn't feel combersome at all. Everyone was satisfied with it. Anyway.... No. Absolutely not. How about an expanded combat log window instead, with all of its glorious mathamatical calculations present for us to study during a battle. Combat logs are for D&D nerds like me who want to know exactly how their combat mechanics are affecting the fight. I don't just want to know that my opponent made his saving throw against my sleep spell. I want to know what he rolled to make that save. I want to know what affected that roll, what type of bonusses he had. I want to be able to analize the second-by-second actions of an entire encounter, both the visual and the "behind the scenes" stuff. Take that away from me, and I'll dig through my trash can, pull out my copy of DA2, and mail it to you with a strongly worded letter of GTFO. So... instead of keeping all this technical info in an easy to read window near the bottom, you'd rather it clutter the game world by having it float around over an opponents head, or your characters avatars? Or something equally intrusive and visually un-natural? Really?

Call me crazy, but I honestly think DA2 was better than NWN2's OC. Ok. You're crazy. lol The difference between Demons and Devils (and between Law and Chaos in general) is whatever the current sourcebook writer says it is, everyone has a different interpretation; There's not the slightest modicum of consistency anywhere so there's no baseline to be faithful to. You can say you liked NWN2's interpretation, but to claim that it's a faithful interpretation is just plain silly. Alignments? No, that's not *at all* what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Personalities of the specific different types of fiends. Succubi who actually try to seduce. Balors with short tempers. Pit fiends with their lawyer-like cunning and plots. And then the lower, less intelligent types who's evil is more basic/primal. etc. In a simple run through Jerro's haven, you meet each of the different personalities. Again, this is something not explored in the other games. Torment and the Icewind dales only focussed on, as you say, Chaos vs. law with regards to the fiends. And BG2... bah. Fiends are little more than skins on a named opponent in that game. They *almost* got it right with Demogorgon, but that was just a matter of them doing a decent job by accident. The personality they gave him could have easily worked just as well had they used Orcus, or Baphomet, or any other demon prince.

Friendly fire Prince Thrommel to death then take Fragarach off his corpse. It gets a lot better. In fact, the way XP is handed out (you get far more EXP and loot from killing stuff than you do from completing those retarded quests), I usually suggest to new players that they go ahead and Skip the majority of those worthless little quests in Hommlet. They're a complete waste of time and they're not fun at all. You only need 2 things to advance to the *main* part of the game: 1) Someone to point you to the Moathouse, and then... 2) Someone to point you to the Temple. You can skip everything else. Although the quests in Nulb are a bit better, and yield more loot and story. You *might* want to do some of those.

LOL Well of course it was better than DA2. The Gamboy advance version of tetris is a better DA2. Getting a root canal is more fun than DA2. Personally, I thought NWN2 was *great*. And to tie this to the thread topic, I think NWN2 did a few things exceptionally well and Project eternity could take a few hints. 1) as mentioned by others: The Stronghold. Crossroad keep was done about as good as any stronghold in any game I've ever played. 2) Act 1's Plot path. (ie Guards vs. thieves) I liked the idea behind it. And would love to see it done more often 3) The demonic/devil lore. Probably not going to see such a thing in PE since it's not D&D based, but I have always given NWN2 bonus points for getting it right. They do the personalities of the various types of Tanar'i, Baatezu etc. faithfully by the book. Something that Neither Torment, nor BG2 nor the Icewind dales suceeded in doing.

To be fair, Ammon "redeems" and "repents" in gradual stages (the way a truly remorseful person who's done bad things usually does in real life). Don't forget the long "contemplation" scene at Shandra's farm. And then the way he rebukes Black Garius. And if you want to delve further, the comments he makes at the Thay College in Mask of the Betrayer.... All of which come *after* your interrogation of him at the bar in crossroad keep. Many players won't even see the best of jerro's personal dialogue, since the majority of it is dependent on influence check successes... which aren't that easy to get with him. And lets give Ammon a break here. He's a decently written character. You want a true example of Garbage writing in NWN 2? Zhaeve. There's your DM's pet. She's nothing but a faceless, emotionless, soulless plot device. And to add insult to the injury, they clearly tried to make her a Dakkon clone, and they failed horribly.

Are you SERIOUS!? Then what were the demons for? To fight the shadow reaver? But didn't the shadow reaver not even show up until after Ammon had already come and gone? It also doesn't explain why the Shadow Reaver hunted down and murdered everyone in West Harbor when they could have easily just skipped over it to get to the song portal, but at least they're supposed to be the villains so I can accept that they did it because "BWAR HAR HAR I R EBULZ" though it's still childishly bad writing. There's been a crap-ton of debate about this particular issue. along with developer confirmation that, yes, it was the Shadow Reaver who destroyed West harbor. There are still lingering questions, though, but you're not asking the right ones. For example, you ask why Ammon and his Demon cohorts bother to even go to West Harbor when they could have, instead, just gone straight to the Song Portal. Well, I have an answer to that: What makes you think they were looking for the song portal? Ammon was on 2 missions in that game. Collecting the Shards was his other mission, remember? And west harbor is where the sword shattered. And in that cutscene where he's there, he plainly says: "So the town still stands. Lets see if what I'm looking for is here". <---- Even if he's NOT looking for shard pieces here, his comment suggests that he's not quite sure where the song portal is anyway. But I do agree with you that story writing was... unnecessarily convoluted. They kinda dropped the ball in this part, because they deliberately give us hints/suggestions that it was INDEED Ammon and his devils/demons who destroyed west harbor. 1) the bodies of the towns people. You can click on them and get a description of their state. They died the same way that the Nobles in Neverwinter did.... no marks on their bodies. Blood drained. (ie. the work of Ammon Jerro and his demons) 2) Neeshka, when she gets to west harbor immediatly senses the demonic destruction. She sniffs the air, feels the ground and says: "demons. Maybe a devil or 2. This place has been hit by the lower planes. Conclusion: They Scrapped the content that was supposed to show that the Shadow Reaver destroyed West Harbor, and replaced it with content to show that Ammon Jerro did it. I couldn't begin to tell you why they'd do such a thing but the end result of course, is that it hurt the story.

Agreed, in fact, not a single one of the examples was an easter egg. The Twisted Rune encounter was actually the scattered remains of cut content. Easter eggs are hidden modern-day references that appear in a game. BG2 had a few, such as the Squirrel and Moose in a cage near the circus tent in Walkeen's Premenade (Rocky and Bulwinkle reference), and the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon posters in Ribald's shop. Stuff like that.