Stun

Aah yes. The sweet smell of burning straw men in the morning. No Bryy, most of us aren't that stupidly general with our criticisms. If, for example, Obsidian makes a game design mistake in one of their RPGs, I (and others like me) will call them out for it. It will be a specific gripe - aimed at just that problem. Of course, if that specific problem happens to be the very same one that is present in, say, every EA game, or every Bethesda game, then we will call them out for it accordingly. Why shouldn't we? More to the point. EA-owned companies love giving us dumbed down games with shoddy console ports. If the day comes that Obsidian gives us a dumbed down, shoddy console port game, then they will share the same criticism from us that we give EA - because they friggin did the same thing. Not sure why that's so hard to understand. Or why we're "horribly naïve" for calling a spade a spade.

I whole heartedly agree with everything in the OP's video.... except for the tirade about the puzzles. He's definitely stating his personal tastes here. Making puzzles easy is NOT an example of dumbing down a game, unless you judge RPGs on how close they come to recreating the Myst experience. Which I don't. For people like myself who were never huge fans of having Gordian Knots and Rubik's Cubes thrown at them in every dungeon, the omission of such atmosphere-killing activities is welcome. I don't play the ES games for their puzzles. Never did. Morrowind is a great game in spite of its puzzles, not because of them. So when Bethesda rendered Skyrim's puzzles trivial, I applauded the focus shift.

Satan? Viacom? Dunno. EA is a publically traded company and I'm pretty sure no single entity owns a majority of their stock.

We're not there yet. Right now I'm just wondering what the true tactical purpose is for the engagement mechanic in the first place. Aside from Beetles (who get to teleport around at will, and be totally immune to the engagement mechanic), the enemies in this game do not utilize in-combat mobility anyway. They get to their target and they stay there until they're dead, even if the mage in the back is obliterating them from a distance. Or to apply your analogy: It's like installing an AC unit in an igloo. But you might be right that the engagement mechanic isn't the problem here. It's difficult to actually pin-point the true root of the problem because the combat as a whole in this game is downright insufferable. Nothing means anything. I haven't noticed any difference between rushing into melee naked as opposed to equipping the heaviest armor; I haven't noticed any damage difference between daggers and greatswords. My morning star-wielding, 20 strength, dirty-fighting rogue is not doing 26% more damage than my dagger-wielding 9 strength wizard. They haven't fixed pathfinding; they haven't fixed the disappearing equipped gear bug (which they've known about since last June); Buffs in this game seem to be nickel and dime affairs that don't make any difference in combat effectiveness (go ahead, tell me how much less you've gotten hit after someone buffed you up with +10 deflection). And the numbers don't make sense. I was fighting a Skaen cultist and BB Fighter grazed him for 6 damage, and then about 3 seconds later scored a critical hit for 00.00 damage. Say what? Is this game coming out in a few months? Yeah, we should probably be a little concerned about that.

This is wrong. Sensuki and I have been discussing engagement for weeks now and many of the arguments put forth are ones that Sensuki and I talked about together. To say that Sensuki is the only one arguing for the removal of engagement is specious. Add me to your group. I actually don't mind the fact that the engagement mechanic in this game is hilariously exploitable. In fact, I think it's awesome that it is... in that Degenerate-Gameplay-in-your-face-to-Sawyer kind of way. What bothers me, and has ALWAYS bothered me, about the engagement mechanic is how constricted and untactical it makes combat feel. One of most tactical moments in any major, party based battle is when things aren't going your way and you have to stop and change your game plan....move people around, reposition your priest, move your mage a little to the left so he can cast his cone-attack without frying half your party, etc. etc. Well, you can't do that in this game. Someone will die for it. Almost exclusively in this beta, success/failure depends on the friggin first 3 seconds of the encounter. If you're favorably positioned, you'll be fine. If not, you're dead. That may be fun to some people. Not me. That's not how I define deep tactical combat.

See, this is where I differ from you, and many, many other gamers - and why this discussion about price points seems trivial to me. I *don't* have a lot of games to play. I purchase games relatively infrequently. (I tend to re-play my favorite games over and over to kill time between anticipated releases). At most I'll buy, 1 or 2 games a year, and sometimes none. (I bought zero games in 2010 and 2012, for example). So when a game I'm looking forward to does get released, I'm usually one of the guys who Pre-orders the collectors edition of it, then looks at the clock and waits for 12:01 to come so I can unlock the DRM and start playing. And that being the case, paying $60 or more for a game is no big deal for me. I see video games as a great entertainment bargain at their usual $50-$60 full price, and to be honest, I'd willingly pay MUCH more without complaining if there was some industry-wide price hike one day. Back in 2000 when I bought BG2's collectors edition for $54.99, if I had known then how many YEARS of gaming pleasure it would end up giving me, I'd have happily bought it for $1000...or more. That's really how much that game is worth in money measurements. And there have been other games over the years that really *really* acquitted their price. Divinity Original Sin, for instance, is a steal at $40, and IMO, a missed opportunity for Larian. They could have easily priced it at $50 or $60 like any other AAA title and it would have been completely justified. Even Skyrim is very much worth twice its full price if you buy it on PC, due to its size and the seemingly bottomless pool of Mods that can turn that game into anything you wish it to be.

Bullsh*t. It's not up to you to decide, for anyone else but yourself, what is a dependence/addiction and what is simply personal preference. I plan on playing PoE, and I am intensely hopeful that it does well financially so that the studio that decided to make it, in the face of the Big Publisher model, gets suitably rewarded AND financially driven to give us a sequel. Does that mean I'm co-dependent on Obsidian? Nope. PoE will be the first Obsidian game I play since NWN2. (that's right, I skipped Fallout: New Vegas and opted for Skyrim instead. I skipped South Park: Stick of Truth and bought Divinity: Original sin instead) Go ahead, Label me.

No you are not. You could buy them from somewhere else, catch your own fish, whatever. Hey, that's true! Why, just the other day, I found myself heading to the store to buy some Aspirin because, well I had a headache. But then I thought to myself...why am I addicted to the pharmacy? So I turned my car around (we'll discuss that in a minute!), went back home, to my kitchen, and proceeded to cook up my own aspirin. Anyway, To make a long story short, after my entire apartment complex exploded, I decided that next time I'll just give in to my addiction and make use of the pharmacy, like a normal person. Of course, there's still the matter of my car...and my addiction to it. I NEED it. To get to places. Yes, yes, I suppose I could walk the 8 miles every day to and from work...in the rain and really cold temperatures here in the St. Louis suburbs. But again, I think I'll just (shamefully?) accept my codependent nature, like a normal person. I'm pretty sure I'll be all right. Freak.

You say that like it's a bad thing. It's not. It's called "rooting for the good guys". If there's a Company that makes good games, in an industry crawling with companies that make crap games, why wouldn't I be immensely interested to see that company profit from its works?

Well, it can't be too good-looking. The game lets you use it as a physical weapon, after all. I imagine after slamming things like Oozes, zombies, insects etc. with it, it will start to look pretty nasty.

Devolving into codependency? What's wrong with codependency here, exactly? You haven't explained that. We all depend on gaming companies to make games for us, and they depend on our money to make those games. So I would think it's obvious that a gamer would want the companies that make his favorite games to continue succeeding and profiting from the games they're making for us....so they can make more. For me, I remember when Black Isle tanked, and then, less than 2 years later, Troika. That was particularly painful. Two studios who used to make my favorite games got shut down, one after the other. Why? Lack of sales. Yet you wonder why their fans would care? Are you even a gamer?

Oh that's an easy one. Look around you. Look at the nature of fantasy RPGs today. You've got Twitch games like Witcher. Action MMO clones like Dragon Age. Games who's only depth is their scenery (Skyrim), and ALL are designed/optimized for console users. This is the Big Publisher model. This is how RPGs are today because publishers do not believe that an RPG can be profitable any other way. So you ask me why I should care about the success and profitability of old school style RPGs like PoE, Wasteland 2, D:OS, and T:TON? Yeah, THAT is why. Because THOSE are the type of RPGs I prefer to play. If they tank, no one will make any more of them. And then I'll have to settle for the mass produced mediocrity that the Big Publishers feed me because there won't be any other alternative.

I think a more meaningful metric/comparison we should be using is how well PoE will do vs. the other kickstarters. Will it outsell D:OS and Wasteland 2? My gut is telling me it's going to blow those titles out of the water (saleswise) by virtue of the Obsidian name alone. Or, maybe a more interesting question is how well will it sells vs. other Obsidian games. It'd be silly to suggest it's going to be able to compete with Fallout New Vegas. That game sold about a zillion copies. But if things go well, it might sell better than, say, Alpha Protocol or Neverwinter Nights 2.

Yeah, I've been wondering about that. 6 months ago, one of the top people at Obsidian (either Feargus or Josh, I can't remember which) flat out said that the game will come out in winter of 2014 because 'that's when the money runs out' (their words). Now they're saying 2015. Well? Did the money suddenly not run out? Or are they paying for it out of their own pockets?

"when you left-click, something awesome happens!"

Steam's doesn't. Being #1 on Steam doesn't have a whole lot to do with sales. Steam tracks who's logged on playing their downloads. That is how they compile their rankings. And that is why for the entire month of November 2011, Skyrim had the #1 spot on steam, despite the fact that it was released in the same week as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, and despite the fact that CoD was massively outselling Skyrim that whole month.

You say this in jest, but in true Pen and paper D&D a classic wizard's lifestyle is not too far from this. First, there are spells like Wish and Gate that literally drain the wizard to the point where he's bed ridden for a week. Then there's the stuff that takes up the majority of his time, like studying ancient tomes, enchanting items, and creating Golems which will put him out of commission for weeks or months at a time. Then when he's free to come out of his tower and go adventuring, THAT's when the world gets to see his earth-shattering powers in action. Obviously this kind of stuff can't be accurately duplicated in a video game because it would make playing a wizard really boring, but video game developers can do the next best thing. They can make a wizard intentionally weak and squishy early on; they can make him high maintenance, and they can limit his spell casting frequency. And if the player is willing to endure all that he will eventually be rewarded...because mages become the most powerful class later.

Agreed! Or more precisely, they should be spending those first 4 levels studying, growing their beards, keeping their robes nice and clean, shopping for decent hats, and training their familiars. The time for world domination comes later.

To keep the analogy accurate, YES. In fact, during the course of the game, you can expect that 6-year-old Rope tripper to become a rope Master, being able to conjure different types of ropes from his fingertips; being able to summon giant animated ropes to the battlefield to do his job for him; being able to use those ropes as magic whips. Being able to manipulate those ropes and use them for teleporting purposes; being able to mass-grapple opponents from a distance with those ropes; being able to insta-kill enemies with rope chokes; being able to nuke the battlefield with Greater Rope Burning, and Mordinkanin's cataclysmic Rope Swarm, etc. That's the nature of well designed Mages. They're a liability early, and super-powerful later when they've paid their dues.

Skyrim is the exception to the rule as it's the game that the Call of Duty/Battlefield crowd buys when they want to play an RPG. But your average RPG fan is different. They certainly are cognizant of the RPG sub-genres and they have their preferences within. That said, at the end of the day, I don't know how much it will matter, sales wise, that PoE is Isometric, and real time with pause. I think the fact that it's got Obsidian's name on it will matter more than anything. And timing, as mentioned on this thread. (I really *do* think that it will be a boon that this game is coming out during that relatively long stretch of time in between DA:I and Witcher 3. Lots and lots of gamers get bored between major releases and find themselves browsing Steam for something to tide them over. If Obsidian plays their cards right, they can grab that crowd in fine fashion.)

Nah, You're over-analyzing. It has nothing to do with any "Roman Empire influence". There's only one explanation for Dragon Age's 21st Century-like views of sexuality/relationships: David Gaider. He is: 1) Gay; and 2) Dragon Age is his fantasy world. He wrote it. It's his creative outlet. In light of these two simple facts, everything is obvious.

There's no such thing as a 'platonic romance'. The term is an oxymoron. It's like saying: "This water is dry" See, neither of these examples is platonic. Once someone acts "cold" towards you or "loves" you, you've exited platonic and entered into the deeper emotions of things. As for those ideas themselves being placed in an RPG, it can certainly be done, but, like just about all video game romances, they will come off as half-assed unless they're the main plot of the game itself. And if you make a friggin ROMANCE be an RPG's main plot...ugh. No thanks. That's what Harlequin novels and daytime soap operas are for.

This is nonsense on 2 fronts. First off, If that kid with a rope is part of a party, and his job is to trip people so that they fall helplessly face first into your Rogue's flanking range, or your Archer's arrow barrage then not only is that kid useful, but he just turned the battle in your party's favor. This is, in fact, the main function of low level wizard spells. Second, lets not forget that Party thing. This is not Skyrim. This is a game designed for a 6 person party, and that being the case, there's no reason for this banal one-size-fits-all garbage you're advocating. NO, Lephys not every class should be core-designed to be functional in every situation. Eventually, with gear, earned talents and massive amounts of power-gaming, a class should be able to overcome those situations that they were not built to succeed at, but until then, that's what decent party-based gameplay is supposed to be about..

Next up, UI's designed for consoles. MMOish collection-based quests (with markers!), and multiplayer. Why? Because PC-based UIs, hand crafted questlines, and 100% focus on single player campaigns... are a "thing of the past" too. Am I missing anything? Oh yeah.... Day 1 DLC. By the way, IF that's *really* the intent, then why the hell shouldn't we utterly blame Sawyer and everyone else at Obsidian? Are they not the ones designing the f*cking game? Excuse me, are they not the ones designing an IE spiritual successor without any publisher-enforced design structure to keep things familiar and accessible for the modern dummy?

Yeah, if you've got a chemical imbalance in your brain. ...Or if your grasp of the English language is really that limited. What you are describing is a crush. But that's not what we've been discussing for the past 28 pages of this thread.