Stun

Ugh.... You've just described Icewind Dale 2's Fell Wood, only instead of portals they had.... er... I don't remember what they had. Knowedge of how to get deeper into the wood, I think. Followed by defeating some ghostlights in order to leave or some such. Anyway, How about... a crevice in the ground that the party falls into, then has to explore its way out of, and when they finally do, they find themselves in another part of the world.

Nope, unless you're Dwarven. Huge underground complexes don't start at the surface. Workers dig and dig for whole lifetimes, THEN they lay the foundations at the bottom, and then start building levels upward.

What? Go ahead, build me a skyscraper. Create the top floors first, then work your way down to the ground. Build the underground parking garage levels last. Don't worry, Concrete defies gravity, and Foundations are a myth.

All those things were great. But as far as dungeon levels/layouts go, Watcher's Keep was horribly designed. I pray that Obsidian doesn't take a cue from it. It was a theme circus. It didn't feel like a dungeon at all. Here's how every level but one went: 1) Enter at the center 2) Go in a circle from room to room 3) Unlock the foozle in the center fight and fight him 4) Exit the level Additionally, even those "good", "memorable" moments seemed slapped together, totally unrelated to both each other and the dungeon's supposed theme. They took a famous, heavily lore-defined Artifact (Machine of Lum the Mad) and put it in a dungeon supposedly built by Helmites to house one of Helm's opponents. Say what? There's a dragon in one of the rooms of level 3 lol. A demilich in the other. Githyanki in another, and mind flayers in another. There's no explanantion for the Petrified characters in level 1, Nor the fire giants in level 2. Basically nothing made sense. It's not hard to take a structure and fill it with every single "awesome" Idea you can think up. But that doesn't make for a good dungeon. a Good dungeon has a driving story behind it. A mystery. Something that keeps your attention from level to level. Not 100 stories, 100 themes, and 100 tiny little challenges to satisfy the ADD

Anyway, two months after this poll comes up (lol), and I've changed my opinion. I now think it's gonna be neat having a projectile attack option that isn't from a bow/crossbow/slings, or spells. I also wish for the ability to craft/improve firearms as well.

My *guess* is because there's a distinct 'talking points' difference between offering suggestions, and giving feedback. In the case of confirmed stuff like Firearms and Cooldown mechanics for spells, what you see on this forum is the latter (Feedback to something that's been confirmed). On many other topics, though, it's the former.

I'm not convinced that the IE games' implementation of consumables was "broken" in any way. 1) With the exception of Planescape: Torment (which, just like Skyrim, allowed heal-spamming while the game world was paused), the others did not. You were limited to one-per-round. 2) None of the IE games had 'overpowered' potions. The healing ones were just useful enough to keep you alive when you were in serious trouble. They did NOT suddenly restore you to full when you were near death, unless you were a level 1 mage with 6 hp. 3) The Non healing ones were refreshingly varied. They ranged from elemental resistance buffs, to Magical resistance buffs, to physical enhancement buffs. But again, nothing that broke game balance The only valid argument I've seen on this thread against the IE system pertains to potion frequency. Potions were indeed too common. Soo... to fix the problem, simply make them less common. Done. No need to change the system, or get cute with pointless complexity, or whatever people here are suggesting. PS: Witcher's system was horrid. The Toxicity bar is a cool idea, but.... having to stop and meditate before a fight in order to use a potion? Really? LOL no thanks. if such a system was in any other game but the beloved witcher, people would be condemning it as a metagaming tool.

Then they would lose their abilities since Good is not allowed for Shar worshippers and Evil is not allowed for Torm worshippers. Then I would boot them from my party for being useless. In theory perhaps, But in Throne of Bhaal you could, in fact, change Viconia's Alignment to non-evil, and she becomes more powerful as a result. (her turn undead power actually destroys undead now, instead of just charming them) In any event, I'm not sure I agree with the notion that you should gather "alignment-compatable" companions in BG2. If you do, you'll miss out on some of the best banter exchanges in the game. The Minsc vs. Edwin banters are priceless. Mazzy vs. Edwin will leave you in stiches. Keldorn vs. Korgan banters are hilarious. You'll miss all that stuff if you just use an "all good" or "all evil" party.

Yeah, until you come to the next difficult lock, then the next one, then the one after that, and the one after that. Next thing you know, the mini-game has clubbed you to submission and you're off to check Nexus for mods to let you just bash that lock open with one hit.

Essentially, Yes. Which is why I like the idea. The consequence is tangeable and in-game. Rather than being laboriously real-life tedius to gameplay (ie. hey, kindly waste 10 minutes of your playtime staring at this door and trying to get it open. Fun! fun!) If I had to make a baseless guess, I'd say there *will* be highly coveted magic items to be found in this game that will, in fact, boost your lockpicking skills so that you won't be needing to haul around massive amounts of lockpicks (masterwork or otherwise) in the first place.

I think it might be sorta like how D&D 3rd edition does it with "take 10" and "take 20" checks. Consuming 10 lockpicks merely represents the notion that you finally got the lock open after trying 10 times.

No, he said you use 10 lockpicks for a 10% increase: Which means if you bring 99 lockpicks with you to, say, the endless paths, it'll take only 10 such locks to use them all up.

Bah... If I had 4 arms I wouldn't specialize in greatswords. I'd be dual wielding...er... Quad wielding 1 handed weapons. lol

I've done many a BG2 playthrough with Grandmastery in Flails. Flail of the Ages, you know. Very useful weapon in that game. And in IWD2, Mace was probably the best weapon-type to specialize in.

Well, that's part of the reason why people have suggested "damage" as a consequence of lock bashing. KOTOR2 and NWN2 had such a system. You can bash open a locked chest, but some of its contents won't survive the blow. Personally, though, I'm not a big fan of total class exclusivity on stuff like this. (ie. you must have a thief to open locks otherwise GTFO) The benefit of certain classes having certain skills should just be that they're the best at doing those skills, not "they're the only ones who can!" Also, semi-off topic: Traps should be a team effort. They should be easier to detect if your rogue and your Dwarf (with his stone sense) for example, work together to look for them. And disarming traps should be easier if your Rogue and, say, your high intelligence mage are pooling their mechanical knowledge

Well, I didn't 'sign up' for the beta either. It came packaged in the tier I donated to. But regardless, what exactly *is* the beta here? If it's an early version of the entire game then I don't see it ruining any experience. You basically get to play the game before everyone else. And if it's just a demo-like thing like most betas tend to be, then it won't be ruining too much.

That would be pretty darn cool, actually.

Or he casts disentigrate on the door. The door is now gone.

On the other hand, if a mage's lightning bolt can fry multiple armored enemies to goo, then why can't it break the hinges off a door?

Also, the "mechanic tools" analogy is faulty. Someone who isn't a master mechanic can, in fact, break master craft mechanic tools. And that's what we're discussing here.... a character with 75 lockpicking skill trying to use a tool to pick a lock that is otherwise beyond his skills to pick. Who's to say that he's not breaking that lockpick because he's using it wrong?

So you'd prefer a skeleton key type thing. One lockpick that never breaks. I disagree. I'd much rather have lockpicks be consumable, since if you give my character a Permanent lockpick-of-10%-assistance, I will cater my build to it, and thus not bother actually *mastering* the lock pick skill, since I won't need to. Whereas if lockpicks are consumable and can run out, then I will need to either get my lockpicking to 100, or else worry about running out of lockpicks when I'm in the middle of a dungeon.... which is as it should be if you're not going to bother being a master at picking locks.

Huh, when I read that lockpick passage, I interpretted it as just a general example of using gear to offset a shortfall. (which IMO is a self explanatory thing and shouldn't really need a specific example) But since we're discussing it.... Is it safe to assume that another example is: if you need an 85 in stealth to successfully sneak past a pair of guards on the road, and you only have 75 stealth, you could drink a potion of sneaking and succeed? Or if you need 20 strength to lift a door bar, and you only have 18 strength, you could drink a potion of muscle enhancing +2 and succeed? Anyway: Well, perhaps "zippo" in the way of BREAKING NEWS: REVEAL!!! But an interview with the head honcho game developer can be an informative read without such "hard facts". This interview gives us glimpses of how some of the gameplay mechanics might turn out. For example: ^what have we got here? We've got a guy who's making Project Eternity, and he sees stuff like Combat logs, full party select, and the Highlight button as useful, if not vital game mechanics. So there's a really good chance that PE will have all three. Personally, this is the kind of information that puts my mind at ease. And IMO it's more valuable to me than if Josh had come online and said: "hey, let me tell you all about NPC #11. [insert biography here]." (or whatever you might have hoped was in this interview).

Indeed. I've lost count of the number of people who *still* think we're dealing with a 3d, cinematic type game. I would say that the devs probably need to straighten out this confusion, but what more can they do that they already haven't done?

-The gem quest (and that whole Jackal area) in IWD Trials of the Luremaster was memorable for me. -I also liked the Trial in NWN2. -Bonderai Reloads- BG2: TOB -Infiltrating the Bandit Camp in BG1 -The Atherium Wars Quest in Skyrim: Dawnguard -I'm trying to think of an actual quest in PS:T that stands out, but nothing's coming to mind. PS:T's quests weren't what made that game great. The conversations were. That said, the meeting with Ravel in her maze was probably the single greatest 5-10 minutes of gaming I've ever experienced.

So... lets recap Essentially Immortal protagonist? Check. Companions that can't be gibbed/chunked? Check. Protagonist could raise his companions from the dead almost at will? Check. Combat was Ridiculously easy anyway (almost an afterthought by design)? Check. So far, we've got: Not-hard, and difficulty-wise, not a whole lot different than your standard RPG of today. And this stands in Stark contrast with today's games, which 1) Also Let you rest anywhere; and 2) Also Have "nightmare" and "master" difficulty settings. Right? Right! We're batting 1000, so far. Perhaps in the first game. Of course you and your party members in the first game also don't have that much health to begin with. In the first half of the game your average party member will have ~20-50 hit points, So the 20 or so cure light wounds you had did indeed help out a great deal (you don't take much damage in BG1's early game. And in the second half of the game your cleric and druid will have cure serious wounds. Your mage will have Vampiric touch, and even your Paladin and Bhaalspawn protagonist will be able to cast cure spells.... and that's in addition to potions. So lets add that all up now. 1) Potions. 2) Cleric spells, 3) Druid Spells 3) Main character Bhaalspawn abilities. Also 4) temples and 5) rest anywhere. But of course, this particular aspect of the discussion *ends* when we bring up BG2. In BG2 and Throne of Bhaal we've got: 1) FULL Heal and Mass heal spells cast By Druids, and Clerics, and Items 2) Enough Potions of extra healing to fill up multiple potion bags 3) Regeneration Items. Enough to equip your entire party with. 4) Polymorph spells and Items which can be used to heal its caster/user 5) Rods of ressurection - which can be used on living party members to fully heal them... instantly 6) Greater Restoration -- which has a casting time of 1, and completely heals the WHOLE PARTY instantly Rare my ass. Well, except for BG2, where normal mode does not have unressurectable perma-death. But this is all beside the point. The OP wasn't really complaining about most of this. He was more talking about the artificial, contrived stuff like draconic resting limitations, and save-game manipulation.