Stun

OK, I guess that explains Obsidian pitching us an IE game successor and then delivering us a game with constricting melee engagement mechanics, bottomless, weightless inventories, a borked group stealth design, and a convoluted stamina-health system. LOL by all means, go ahead and call that inspiration. I'll call it what it is: yet another failed attempt to reinvent the wheel. Anyone else find it interesting that the only things in PoE that have received universal praise happen to be the small handful of things they didn't alter from the Infinity engine games?

So in your opinion, the only measurement of inspiration in a video game is... a good story?

And what's even more obnoxious is that he doesn't even know what the word means. I have asked him to give us his definition of it but he's refused. So we will turn to the dictionary instead. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inspiration in·spi·ra·tion noun \ˌin(t)-spə-ˈrā-shən, -(ˌ)spi-\ : something that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create : a force or influence that inspires someone : a person, place, experience, etc., that makes someone want to do or create something : a good idea Whether you love or hate the state of RPG's that are coming out today, there's plenty of them that ooze inspiration by definition. PoE does not constitute some "return" of something that has been absent/lost. The very premise of this thread is silly. Try harder Sheikh.

If that's what you mean by inspiration then your entire OP is a joke. It's really not up to the player to define a developer's inspiration, and even if it was, it's still a remarkably subjective thing. Take Skyrim, for example. Whether you're someone who loved that game or hated it, it oozes inspiration from a developer's standpoint. It's got the deepest lore of any RPG to come out in the last 30 years. (you can spend hours and hours and hours reading the in-game books...and the various different volumes and versions of each one) The world itself contains OCD level detail (there are 5 different types of butterflies for God's sake. Developers hand-placed every plate, cup, piece of fruit, book, item and gold piece on every shelf, table, cabinet and drawer in the massive 300+ hour gameworld.) You can shoot at the birds that fly overhead. you can jump in the water and catch the 8 different types of fish. The game has 9 playable races. Even the game's various DLCs clock in at 50+ hours of content each. Yet, Skyrim is very much a modern game, designed for the stereotypical, modern, casual gamer and I'm positive that neither you nor anyone else on this thread would ever hold it up as an example of "effort and heart!" So I'll ask again: Define Inspiration.

Oh I don't know about that. This sounds like excessive wishful thinking with not a whole lot of evidence to back it. First off, I'm wracking my brain trying to find the 'technical advancements' PoE is taking advantage of. I can't think of a single one. Physics? Graphics? Hollywood style cinematics? Second, 'inspiration' is such a vague term. I wouldn't even know where to start. You're operating under the premise that modern RPGs lack inspiration? What do you mean by this, specifically?

Oops, you're right. My bad. Are you seriously comparing a man's life to that of a friggin DOG's? Let me answer your question, It's not a good or bad outcome. It's not an outcome at all. It's a process. The dog charges toward the man. Maybe he gets stabbed.... Or maybe he knocks the man down and chews off his arm while getting stabbed, allowing the 8 cops to take over without having to fire their guns. There is NO WAY to spin this in the cops favor. They f*cked up epically.

The fact that we've got 8 cops and a dog together against a single pen-knife wielding kid is ALREADY an utterly illogical scenario that begs a ton of questions -- questions about motives and reasons and the like. So yes, I'm certainly not going to dismiss the possibility of bigoted group-think.

They had an entire minute. I almost got bored watching the staredown. They also had a trained attack dog -and- they were not under fire -and- there was absolutely nothing to hinder communication between either themselves or the kid. From this footage that we have, it's very *very* difficult for an objective observer to conclude that these cops handled the situation correctly. Straw man. Human nature doesn't work that way. Instead, these types of cops find themselves together in a group, and that makes them bold. Then they see a trouble maker and then they mentally weigh the importance of that troublemaker's life. In this case, they concluded that it wasn't worth a whole lot (in fact, they concluded it was worth less than a dog's). So instead of going out of their way to diffuse the situation non-lethally, they said F*ck it, lets just unload and be done with it. PS: There were 8 cops, people, not 6.

I agree. It wasn't even one of those tense scenes that required a split-second decision to be made. It was a standoff. There's no reason why they couldn't have struck to maim/subdue.

I don't know. That's iffy. A kid with a knife can be quick but not quicker than the attack dog in that scene. Also 8 armed cops? Why didn't one of them just shoot the kid's leg or something?

The answer is NO I guess. a) It is not turn based. It is RTwP. b) It has probably the best RTwP implementation in the history of RTwP. I am saying this as a stern critic of the mechanics, c) It has actually a really great story which lacks in pace however. Also, by your ridiculous standards of "sales" IWDs are probably even lower on your lists? Lower than D:RoT? Nope, since they both sold more. And I brought up sales only because you claimed it's 'tremendously popular' in Germany. It isn't. And never was.

We're not talking about the MMO, we're talking about River of Time, which didn't sell worth a damn even in Germany and ended up bankrupting its creator.

LOL Gonna have to vehemently disagree with that. Drakensang: River of Time's combat is virtually a clone of Dragon Age Origin's- That is to say, it's alright. Easy to learn and master. It's Visceral, and, as you say, 'mechanically balanced'. But it lacks All semblance of depth. It's not dynamic at all. For anyone expecting the cerebral combat experience that BG2 or IWD2 offers, D:RoT's combat is NOT the way to go. it doesn't have any. A flavor issue? WTF! You can't just shoo away the fundamental importance of the magic system when you're discussing combat. I'd argue that magic makes or breaks the entire experience. This is a FANTASY RPG, not some medieval dueling simulator.

In a single player game, Exploiting AI simply means you've discovered a way to outsmart the enemy. Nothing wrong with that. But if the developers see this as a problem then the best solution is for them to develop better enemy AI, NOT impose absurd, convoluted alterations to the combat rules. For example, lets take kiting. Kiting happens to be a personal Pet Peeve of Josh's. He, of course, calls it degenerate gameplay. Thus he has decided to build PoE's combat system to specifically address it (ie. draconic engagement mechanics; silly recovery pauses during movement etc.) the problem is that this crap does more than just check-mate Kiting. It also punishes legitimate movement and positioning tactics. This is the soulless, gamey, ham-fisted way to address the so-called 'kiting problem'. And PoE is filled to the gills with exactly this type of convoluted nonsense from the ground up. Name any unusual aspect of POE and I'll show you why it's there. PS: Let me tell you how to fix kiting in a way that won't turn the combat system into crap: Magic. And terrain. and halfway decent AI. Enemy fighter getting bitch-slapped by a mobile archer? Simple, give him a wand of hold person and set his AI to use it when he's being kited. Boss fight rendered too easy because the Boss can be kited? Simple. Give him a haste spell. or better yet, Turn the encounter into a cage match. Give the Boss access to levers that can lock the doors of the room and drop boulders on people who try to hit and run.

And Idiot Dialogue. We were flat out promised in a kickstarter update that if you created a character with low intelligence, he wouldn't be able to talk properly. What happened to that?

The purposes of Kickstarter aside, ALL fantasy RPGs are attempts to forge something beyond the anachronisms of human limitation. Most of them have magic, after all. No; You're not really addressing the point. The concepts being demonstrated in PoE's combat do not seem solid to me. They seem unnecessarily experimental. Normally this wouldn't be a bad thing but in this case it is. You don't peddle a retro game and then produce something so....alien and unfamiliar. It also feels fractured, as if the devs aren't really sure what they want the finished product to look and feel like. (more on that below) Rounds are for human PLAYERS. It's a mental thing. A round is an organizational tool that makes complex, numbers-based interaction between 2 opposing combatants flow in a way that a gamer can understand and follow. In any case, PoE still feels like it has rounds, but the mechanics often times seem to be in opposition to the concept, so the end result is something that doesn't feel right. And I'm not sure how the system as a whole can be 'tweaked'. The issue seems to be at the core level. There's hardly anything that feels right in combat.

Then maybe instead of arguing against the existence of kill XP you should argue against the existence of random beasts. I'm a huge advocate of hand placed encounters. There should be an authentic, specific, in-game reason for the existence and placement of every enemy in this game. Because that would eliminate 90% of the gripes people seem to have against kill XP.

No it didn't. BG2 is a better game.

Aah. You're one of those gamers. I believe Bioware used that same logic to justify the homogenous blandness of the Dragon Age games. For example, there isn't much functional difference between a mace and a hammer, therefore, lets eliminate one of them. Then lets go down the list and do that with everything. Don't need 11 character classes when 3 will suffice. Don't need 7 races when we can make do with just one. etc. That's called Streamlining. It's a cancer on everything that RPGs stand for.

A change in design philosophy, in fact. But unlike Namutree, I don't believe Obsidian can take it all the way. Not by release time at least. There's far more involved in making a total switch to combat XP than simply assigning XP values to all the enemies. There's also the matter of balancing the entire game from beginning to end to account for the switch, unless they think it's no big deal if players end up hitting the level cap halfway through the game. due to the thousands upon thousands of additional experience points they gained from every enemy kill.

Not that I agree or disagree with...whatever you're saying here, but I'd just like to point out that there's a fine line between creative writing, and talking like a shopper at a Wall Mart in Alabama. You've crossed it. lol But on a serious note: I suspect you'll have to scream extra loud to register anything on the e-Richter scale. We of the Pro-combat-XP crowd were always the loudest, and if you'll notice, we're being slowly and subtly appeased. Eventually we'll be mollified to silence and when that happens, there'll be no more 'explosions', because most RPGs reward XP for 'incidental stuff" as you call it. It's what people are used to. Also, Update 7 (the only kickstarter update that discusses the XP issue), is just vague enough to leave the door open for it. Tim Cain said we'll be rewarded for our accomplishments. Well? Disarming traps, opening locks, exploring areas and filling out the bestiary cyclopaedia all fall under the Accomplishment banner. Any gamer who's ever played an RPG knows that.

3 things. First, Obsidian has said, and repeated, that Exploration will be a focus of this game. So if you see no reason to explore, then this is the wrong game for you. Second, This is not an either/or, nor should it ever be. The rewards for exploration should be all of the above. Exp, loot, scenery, discoveries, quests, combat, humor, terror, gaming memories etc. etc. I've yet to see a good argument made that eliminating any of these makes for a better gaming experience. Third, I doubt there will be enough exploration XP to make a substantial difference in the grand scheme of things. That is to say, one who decides not to explore every single map will probably not end the game tragically under-leveled, or whatever the worry is.

What patches? What are you talking about? Every single IE game shipped, on day one, with quest XP and kill XP in equal measure. Never were the two concepts ever separated, or ignored, or added later, or overly weighted to one side or the other.

It was NOT. If something so fundamental to gameplay as the leveling system was broken, none of the IE games would have seen the light of day, let alone become celebrated, genre-defining, all-time classics whose very name mentions can generate wildly successful kickstarters 15 years later. Feel free to put a lid on the gross hyperbole now.

I'm ambivalent about Lock XP, but Trap XP is something I support wholeheartedly. Traps are 'hostile' elements of adventuring. In a good RPG they constitute a direct threat. It makes sense that the party be rewarded for choosing to deal with that threat. As for Exploration XP... I'll take it. The IE games didn't have it but whatever. If a game is going to focus on exploration, then it makes sense that the character growth process be tied to it. As for Bestiary XP....well.... baby steps. They're on the right path here. I have yet to do a run with Beta ver. 333 so I'll reserve full judgment until I do. But it sounds like a decent middle ground between people who want XP for every kill vs. People who suffer from paranoid schizophrenia whenever the spectre of "grinding" shows up.