Stun

Or...here's a crazy thought... maybe they shouldn't put such powerful gear in a shop that the player can just walk in and buy?

Kind of like real life? A wrestler can get winded in 5 minutes (Endurance). Take a few minute break and get back to it (End of combat). But each time he does it takes a toll on his health. And can only do that so many times before he needs a more proper rest (Health). If it was really like that, it would be pretty cool. But as it stands, under POE's system that wrestler can sprint around the ring, do body slams and pile drivers endlessly, for an unlimited amount of time without losing a single point of endurance.....as long as he doesn't get hit.

No. Endurance in PoE is not a synonym for "energy". That is to say, your endurance can be Zero and it won't stop your barbarian from being able to activate a barbarian sprint, or your fighter from effectively engaging 2 more enemies and then activating his knockdown abilities. Endurance in PoE is more like....flesh wounds.... or some strange, measurable, pain threshold meter that, without any sort of explanation, goes right back up to 100% the moment there's no more enemies visible.

Lets try this again. I never said they were. Avellone never said they were. No one did. So... No one is arguing otherwise.

^Avellone neither stated nor argued that "hand crafted" and "statistics" are mutually exclusive to consoles.

Reading comprehension trouble, is it? Bryy, One of the founders of Obsidian is flat out acknowledging that consoles limit both RPG mechanics and RPG-based content. This means that if they did develop a Pillars of Eternity for consoles it would be a more limited RPG by definition. It must. And Avellone is just stating the obvious. Of course, if your response to this is "well, hehehe, who cares if the game has watered down RPG mechanics! All that matters to a business is how much Money it makes!", then one wonders why you're even a gold backer. The entire nature of PoE goes counter to "good business sense". PoE is neither a shooter nor an MMO. It doesn't have a multiplayer element, or flashy Hollywood style cinematics and special effects. It's neither taking advantage of the massive Console markets, nor has it budgeted $25 million+ in the advertising it would need to compete, financially, with today's mainstream titles. In fact, the ONLY sense PoE is making is in Being a true, classic style RPG. And the reason why it will succeed in being one is because the development studio is putting 100% of their time and money on none of the above.

Also lets put things in perspective. In the specific fantasy world we're discussing, There are magicks that heal endurance... which is the same field of 'science'. So yes, a better game world explanation is needed to explain why nothing cures health.... well, nothing but a simply 8 hours of rest, which amazingly enough, cures all ailments.

LOL! That's awesome.

Right! Instead, they'll be a little more diplomatic when they tell it like it is: you have a long wait, Bryy, before you ever see an Eternity game on Xbox.

PS: So would releasing the game on consoles. I suspect you don't actually understand what Obsidian is trying to do here. . Yep, but even if PoE had a $100 Million budget, I'd *still* prefer it to look like Baldurs Gate 2 instead of....Dragon Age Inquisition, or Witcher 2, Or Dungeon Siege 3 or whatever the graphics whores value in their RPGs these days.

What a dishonest and disgusting attempt to move the goal posts. You were commenting on the sprites. This is not a picture of any game's sprites. None of your pictures are.

I suppose you're right. It's being uninformed. Why are you discussing wasteland 2 and making blind guesses, when you can simply look at the Pillars of Eternity beta and *know* exactly what we're getting? Have you played the beta? I have. The sprites look rather good. better than any of the infinity engine games. So you don't have an argument... unless you're a graphics whore, who wants witcher 3 level waifu detail.

?? You're arguing like one. The sprites look better than they did in the infinity engine games. (which means: more than we asked for) The only thing about them that isn't a flat out improvement is their animations, but that doesn't have anything to do with the engine. Also you're not going to get that PS:T look unless the game has bizzaro NPCs. No one looked normal in PS:T, and that was the design goal. The whole point was to make them artsy instead of realistic. As for Physics. No. It's simply not that kind of game. Physics work great in 3d environments, but they'll look silly in an Iso-view game with pre-rendered hand painted 2d environments.

The Icewind dales, and Planescape Torment. Both had diminishing returns on like items. In IWD1 it's rather easy to demonstrate. Go to kuldahar. Kill a bunch of Yetis, then go back and sell those pelts one by one. The first few will sell for about 50gp each. after that 35gp each, then 20gp each from then on. Of course, those games still didn't get it right since a smart player can simply hoard all the like items then sell them all at once to bypass the diminishing returns mechanic.

It would be more accurate to say that too much wealth by the end of the game means that you can buy anything your party wants from the merchant stock. Yes, yes. Horrible design, I know, but I prefer it that way. Sue me. But to answer your question: sure. At some point in an any decent RPG, too much shopping hinders adventuring, which is why I don't advocate a system where the game's best items are found in shops.

You're still missing the point. Solution to what, exactly? Being wealthy? Explain to us why it's bad design or a "problem", in a fantasy RPG, to have lots of money. This is not Sim City. "making money!" is not what the game is about. It's about questing, and leveling and fighting and exploring. Imposing a tedious merchant mini-game on the player serves no purpose but to distract the player from those goals. Again, if I'm running around the world doing nothing but trying to find people that can buy all the junk I've got in my inventory, then I'm not questing, leveling, fighting or exploring. instead, I'm simply engaged in a tedious merchant minigame. A pointless one that does not add an iota of fun to the experience.

That's kinda missing the point. Having to waste playtime by running from one vender to the next, to the next, to the next (and sometimes having to then wait an X number of days for those venders to replenish their merchant gold supply) means you're not actually playing the friggin game. You're not adventuring. You're not questing. You're not exploring. Instead, you're just doing busy work. And the rebuttal of "well, you wouldn't have to sell your stuff since the stash is weightless/bottomless!" doesn't work either since.... YES you do. This is one of those games with a major money sink. We have been given some pretty definite details about the Stronghold and they ALL point to you needing every penny you can scrounge.... and that's in addition to the standard needs of a 6 person party (shopping for gear) So no. Limited merchant gold would do nothing in a game like this but turn the whole experience into a banal grind. Again, I'm glad Obsidian saw the light.

While this is peripheral to the subject at hand, it's a really good point. And something that no one ever talks about. Unless the game has mercantile skills/feats and the party who finds that sword has someone in it who took those skills/feats, they shouldn't know what the base value is. Thus the game shouldn't make that information instantly available in the item description. In my pen and paper days, my DM wouldn't even tell us if that sword was magical until we 1) tested it out; 2) cast divination spells on it; or 3) took it to an appraiser.

Yep, or to put it another way, an infinity engine successor should not try and fix what wasn't broken in the infinity engine games. Lets look at the whole picture. The IE games (for simplicity sake, lets stick with the BG series for now) featured merchants with infinite gold. The result was both a positive and a negative. The positive was that there was no hassle. One stop at one merchant was all you needed to clear out your party's inventory of all the junk you hoarded. The negative was that in this system you ended up swimming in gold by the end of the game. Yeah, ok so what's wrong with that? Well, I suppose there's some people out there who insist that it's much more fun to be broke, so their solution is to create a system (a mini-game, really) where merchants can't afford to buy your stuff all at once and therefore you have to "work for it". By "work", what they mean is 1) being forced to visit every merchant of every town in the game after every adventure session; and then 2)probably having to wait a certain amount of time for their money to replenish so you can do it all over again. <----This is their proposal in action. This is their idea of a "fun alternative". And the real punchline: if you confront them on it, they will insist that their system is "more realistic" (as if we often find ourselves running from store to store to sell stuff in real life. Sure.) I don't know where these freaks came from, but I do know that their viewpoints have won the genre over. The TES games have limited merchant gold. NWN2 has limited merchant gold. D:OS has limited merchant gold. And a crap ton of other games that are too numerous to mention have it too. I'm glad Obsidian has come to their senses on this issue and scrapped it for PoE. The game is going to be more fun as a result.

Curiosity slaking, about a hotly anticipated game that's still 2 agonizing months away from release isn't a good enough reason by itself...?

Maybe not, but 6 characters with, say, 5 lore should be able to 'pool their knowledge' and achieve a bit more than if only one of them had 5 lore. That's called Synergy by the way, and it works great in pen and paper D&D.

If you move too far from the toilet, it gets an attack of crappertunity. Yep, Or as I like to call them: "disembowelment attacks"

Also lets keep in mind that we still know next to nothing about the game world's plot and lore. I've been criticizing the lack of healing magic/resurrection but that's strictly from a gameplay/philosophy viewpoint. If PoE's story/lore manages to believably explain to us why priests can call forth massive beams of energy from the sky to smite every enemy on the battlefield, but at the same time they can't muster the magical energy needed to mend a wound, or fix a broken arm, then I'll be OK with no healing magic. But right now it just seems like they removed heal spells for no reason but to give us "tactical combat", or whatever. And no, I'm *not* fine with that.

Eh? I wouldn't say that. BG1's expansion featured 3 major questlines that didn't have anything to do with the Main game's plot or ending. Ditto with Icewind Dale's. BG2's expansion...that was a different animal all together as it was a seamless transition to a completely different plot. I prefer the former -- specifically, the way BG1 did its expansion pack. It put new areas and stories into the existing game world and did it so naturally that it seemed like they were there all along.

That's an excellent idea. Also, they could tie pooping to the engagement mechanic for even more in-game functionality and relevance.