Stun

Not sure why there would be a period of calm in the beginning of the battle when, theoretically, that is usually when a given enemy would be at 100% in both numbers and power. But perhaps a better thing to hope for is 1) fast casting times for these buffs and/or 2) it being more difficult to interrupt a spell caster's casting than it was in the IE games.

What Planescape: Torment did and what Josh is describing are two completely different animals. PS:T didn't have a reputation system. There was no behavior tracking whatsoever except for maybe Alignment, and even that did not have any effect on dialogue choices. Instead, PS:T's dialogue beauty came from the sheer volume of choices you got in just about every conversation, regardless of what you accomplished in the game world, and of course, the way your various stats (int. cha. wis. etc) affected your dialogue options. We're going to get Both systems in PoE, but again, the question is: How well will they pull it off?

Yeah, there are other problems that arise from flight implemented combat. Spell complexity for example. AOE spells in the IE games, like fireball and stinking cloud have a basic 2d radius. 20'x 20' or some such. But if a game is going to have a spell like fireball, and flight mechanics, then those spells are going to have to have a cube-like 3d area of effect. If you cast a Cloudkill at a creature that's hovering 20 feet in the air, will it completely miss the people who are on the ground right under it?

Yeah, that's the illusion of flight. Dragons and celestials in BG2 did the same thing. They'd flap their wings and the animations would make them appear as though they were "flying". They weren't though. Because melee characters could still easily hit them with their daggers and short swords. True Flight, and true ground-to-air combat, is like what we got in Skyrim. In Skyrim, when a dragon is flying...it's FLYING. It is out of melee reach. A dragon in flight can only be hit by ranged attacks. <----I would LOVE to see these types of mechanics in PoE

I'm particularly interested to see if they successfully pull off the dialogue-choice-based personality system as described in the article. Bioware tried to do it in Dragon Age 2, and they failed. But they failed because (1) There was no game world reputation system tracking (aggressive Hawke was not treated any differently by NPCs than Diplomatic Hawke etc. so what was the point?) and (2) the super-intrusive voiced protagonist model made it so that if you incurred enough "Aggressive behavior" points, your Hawke began automatically talking like a complete douche to everyone, even his mother.... without the player being able to do anything about it. <Ugh> It's safe to say we're not going to have these problems with PoE, for obvious reasons, but we still don't know how well it's going to work. Anyway: ^Flight? That dragon is flying above the characters! This didn't happen in the IE games. I wonder if this means that the game will be supporting ground-to-air combat

Ok, I'll elaborate. Lets start from here: ^i.e. eliminating death. Making death mean something other than "You're Dead because you failed". Consequently, this is basically the developer saying: "hey kiddo, if you recklessly and foolishly approach combat throwing all caution to the wind, don't worry about it. You, and your companions are immortal." ie: Neverwinter nights. Save scumming is neither mandatory, nor is it supposed to be exciting. When we're talking about combat, it is the player-imposed RESULT of failure. It occurs when a gamer has failed to rise to a game's challenge and now wants to escape his deserved in-game penalty for failure. But the Solution is NOT to reduce the challenge or reduce the penalties. The solution is to...Not Give a F*ck about the playing habits of crappy gamers. Also, Save scumming is hardly limited to combat. Gamers save scummed a lot in Neverwinter Nights... for other reasons. Loot distribution, for one. Neverwinter nights has randomized loot drops. So gamers often saved before opening a chest. Then opened the chest, saw its contents and if they didn't like what they saw, they reloaded and opened that chest again in the hopes of getting something better. Save scumming also occurs in games that have wonderful choice and consequence. What do you propose the Devs do about THAT? hmm? If the writers decided to write up a complex dialogue session between the PC and an important NPC and player chose a dialogue option that resulted in a not-so-excellent outcome, that player will be tempted to reload and try a different dialogue choice. <---again, what's the solution to that? Make all dialogue choices lead to the exact same outcome? Eliminate all negative consequences from all choices?

No, you're saying that it's a feature in every cRPG except for games like Dark souls... where Death is irrelevant. Which means all you're really saying is that to cure save scumming all you have to do is: 1) eliminate Death; and/or 2) make the game so easy that there's no heavily reliance on save scumming. In other words, we've successfully eliminated one type of degenerate behavior.... by dumbing down the game experience for everyone else.

To each his own lol

^ FYI, if you hit the "quote" button, you can separate your words from the other person's words, instead of having to rely on quotation marks. Anyway... Side Note: Monks first appeared in the 1st edition AD&D Player's Handbook. Back when Quivering Palm had no saving throw and a 17th level Monk's title was Grand Master of Roses.

Uh... No. Monk is not a fighter kit in Bg2. And you can't be a Mage Paladin either.

First off, you CAN be a Berserker-Mage. He said Mage Berserker not Berserker Mage. A distinction without a point. You can't be a Mage Monk, either. Is Monk a Kit? Nope.

First off, you CAN be a Berserker-Mage. Second, there's no pre-requisite class for them. If you want to be, say, a Bounty Hunter, you do not need 4 levels in Thief (or whatever) before you're allowed to become a bounty Hunter. Instead, when you're creating your character, and you get to the CLASS option, you can click on Bounty Hunter.... and then... just be a Bounty Hunter until the end of the game. Are you Classless if you decide to do that? Oh, I wouldn't say that Bio called them kits just for giggles. Calling them kits solves a ton of logistical and categorization issues. Most of which are completely irrelevant to this discussion that we're having, though.

Because Neverwinter Nights 2 was released in 2006, and comes close to offering BG2's vast build customization choices. But After 2006, no cRPGs even tries. Not in BG2 it isn't. Not with its loot drops. Not when your entire game can change depending on whether you're wielding Crom Faeyr, or Carsomyr, or whether you're dual-wielding the Flail of the ages and Belm, Or if you decide to build your Kensai as a grandmaster of Katanas so that you can wield Celestial Fury and totally have a different combat experience than someone who grandmasters in Long Swords and is using The Equalizer. But like I said, weapon choices are NOT what defines class builds. it's only the Beginning of the definition. Kits ARE classes, since you can begin them as a level 1 character and they stand on their own (ie they do not have a core 4 prerequisite, like 3e prestige classes do). Oh, and they're called kits because Bioware decided to call them that. If you disagree then by all means, Would you call a 40th level Assassin classless?

Ooh! A true meat and potatoes BG2 discussion. I haven't had one of those in ages! Lets do it. Your math is a wee bit off. And so is your head. I can help you with the former. 50% would suggest that half of both the bestiary and the encounters are mage battles. This of course, is beyond dishonest. Beyond grotesque hyperbole. It's a flat out deliberately false statement. BG2 has mage encounters, certainly. But it also has: 1) Mind Flayers (and Ulithards, and Vampiric Illithids, and at least one Alhoon) 2) Muggers 3) Salamanders 4) Beholders (and Gauth and Elder Orbs) 5) Vampires 6) Skeletons (and Skeleton warriors) 7) Carrion Crawlers 8.) Elementals (earth, water, Air, fire, and the princes) 9) Dragons (Red, Silver, Green, Shadow, White, Black, Blue) 10) Umberhulks 11) Trolls (Standard, Giant, Ice and Spectral) 12) Kobolds 13) Hobgoblins 14) Golems (Clay, Stone, Flesh, Iron, Adamantite, Sand, Magic, Bone) 15) Non-spell-casting Pirates 16) Imps 17) Pit Fiends 18.) Glaberazu 19) Mephits (fire, ice, steam, wind, water, smoke) 20) Planetars 21) Divas 22) Fire Giants 23) Wraiths 24) Wights 25) Crimson Deaths 26) Wandering Horrors 27) Mummies 28) Spiders (standard, sword, wraith, phase, giant) 29) Thieves 30) Fighters 31) Panthers 32) Lions 33) Tigers 34) Shadows 35) Shadow fiends 36) Yuanti And that's about it. No wait. Wait. Who am I kidding. It also has: 37) Dao 38.) Standard Genies 39) Cambions 40) Ogres 41) Wyverns 42) Invisible Stalkers 43) Aerial Servants 44) Nymphs 45) Succubi 46) Balors 47) Tieflings 48.) Myconids 49) Shambling mounds 50) Raksasha (Rahk, maharaja, etc) 51) Drow fighters 52) Drow Priestesses 53) Otiyughs 54) Mariliths 55) Werewolves (and Wolfweres, and Greater Wolfweres) 56) Shadow Wolves 57) Worgs 58) Wolves 59) Dogs (rabid and war) 60) Ankhegs 61) Duergar 62) Ochre Jellies 63) Mustard Jellies 64) Green Slimes 65) Githyanki 66) Koa-toa (priests, warriors, princes) 67) Sahuigan 68.) Minotaurs 69) Tetherian Soldiers 70) Balthaazar's Monks 71) Bears (Black, Brown, Cave) 72) Skin Dancers 73) Zombies (and zombie lords, and poison zombies) 74) Ghouls (and Ghoul Lords 75) Ghasts 76) Nishruu 77) Hakshear And I'm sure I missed about 50 or 60 more. Your simple mind may have perceived that half of BG2's encounters were Mage-wars, but the actual black-and-white facts in the game illustrate otherwise. Of course, with Fighters in BG2, you also have several kits that you didn't bother to mention, but no matter. We'll Discuss them at length, later. And while the first differences with fighters revolve around the Following weapon proficency choices, such as: 1) Mace 2) Hammer 3) Spear 4) Axe 5) Long Sword 6) Bastard Sword 7) Katana 8.) Scimitar/Waksashi/Ninja-to 9) Club 10) 2-handed Sword 11) Halberd 12) Flail 13) Sling 14) Short Sword 15) Dagger 16) Short Bow 17) Long Bow And the weapon style Proficiency choices: 1) single weapon 2) Two weapon 3) Weapon and Shield 4) 2-handed weapon ^these are NOT what define a fighter in BG2. BG2 has fighter KITS: 1) Berserker 2) Kensai 3) Wizard Slayer And these kits differ wildly. Kensai cannot wear armor. Wizard Slayers cannot use any magic except magic weapons, armor and some potions. Berserkers cannot master ranged weapons. Additionally, all three classes have class-specific bonuses and abilities. But this is just the tiniest drop in the OCEAN of character customization in BG2. Unlike your precious Dragon Age 2, Karkarov, BG2 does not limit players to three character classes <gag>. You can also be a Barbarian, a Thief (or its 3 kits), a Bard (or its 3 kits) a Cleric (or its 3 kits), a Druid (or Its 3 Kits). A ranger (or its 3 kits) You can be a Monk, Or a Sorcerer, Or a Mage, or a wild Mage or a Paladin (and its 3 kits. That's 33 different classes, if you're keeping count. 33. Thirty-Three. And even that isn't the whole story. You can Multi-class. Or Dual class to produce countless different combinations of builds. ^I challenge you to find a SINGLE cRPG created after 2007 that offers even 1/6th of BG2's character build options. Take all the time you need. You won't be able to find one. Yet you have the audacity to criticize what is probably BG2 single Greatest strength. Get over it already. You can save scum in every cRPG for a billion various reasons. You might as well just come out and voice your dislike of the entire f*cking Genre. Attention Josh Sawyer thralls: "Rescue Imoen!" is NOT the main storyline of BG2. This is FALSE. I can create an all Monk Party of 6 in BG2, can't you? I can create a party with 5 wild mages and one Priest of Helm. Or a Party of 3 cavaliers, 1 assassin, and 2 Beast Masters. I can create a Party of 6 dual-classed Kensai-thieves. I can create a party of 3 Blades, 2 Bounty hunters and 1 Stalker. As can anyone else. What gave you the impression that Bg2 had any such silly party-creation limitations? Have you been listening to Josh again?

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/39401-armor-abstractions-in-fallouts-special-game-system/?do=findComment&comment=526647 ^we can start right there and work our way to the present. He dislikes almost everything about BG2, from its NPCs to its plot structure to its ruleset to its quest volume(!). Which would be fine, except that he didn't seem to have any qualms shamelessly name dropping BG2 (and all the other IE games) when he needed money from us for his next big project. That's only half of the truth and you know it, Indira. Even aside from the totally UN-vague promouncements of "we want to bring those games back" and "we loved making those games", there's also the video, which did not shy away from dramatically plastering those titles in giant graphics and invoking them as the premise of the entire kickstarter campaign.

How do you know he's never personally experienced someone telling him that these "suckerpunches" he's describing are good and should be in the game? I'm pretty sure he has. No sale. He made no such distinctions when he broad-brush stroked us, therefore, I'm exercising my right to pick apart his generalizations, piece by piece. And he is a game developer, Lephys, Remember? He should know, better than everyone else, that no two gamers are exactly alike. You might want to figure out which it is: Is he describing your feelings on the matter? Or is he describing someone else's thoughts on the matter? It's one or the other. I said *Many* of the examples. ^it's right there, in the passage you quoted. "Many". I even spelled it correctly. If I wanted to use the word "ALL", I would have. But I didn't. I used "Many", which means that he's describing my thoughts on many matters, and someone else's thoughts on other matters. Or... you might be attempting to burn down a straw man, categorizing the people you disagree with as one big singular group, so that you can dismiss us all with one simplistic rebuttal. You do that All. The. Time.

I think it may have something to do with the specific examples that Josh gives in articles like the one in the Op. He cites these examples, attributes them to "what grognards want", then dismisses them. Many of those examples though, happen to be features I loved, that were in games that I loved. So naturally, I concluded that I must be a grognard. And then here you come, taking Sawyer's ball and running with it.... I'm pretty sure NO ONE is in this mythical group you're talking about Lephys. The IE games themselves were an ongoing experiment in change. There were 5 of them. Each one was different from the other. There's no such thing as excessively scrutinizing proposed game features.

Right, Right. We cement heads are just disagreeing for the hell of it. We're not smart enough to actually have fundamental reasons, many of those reasons arising from 2 whole decades of playing both old and new games, for disagreeing. No, no, it's simply intertia. (inertia?) But you're not totally wrong. In my Grognardish opinion, it's probably not a great idea to sales-pitch the infinity engine games, and falsely claim to LOVE MAKING THOSE GAMES, and then turn around and 1) Make something else, and 2) insult and stereotype us for refusing to embrace the wonderful, magical superiority of today's RPGs. Yeah, A Great Mystery. It's almost as if he's the Project Director for a game we funded, or something important like that. Crazy.

On the other hand, it's not like he hasn't mocked plenty of modern games and their designs. He has?

I disagree. It successfully does what it claims to do: Rank games based on popularity -and- To be an outlet where gamers and the media can come together and pool game critiques into one giant website for a consumer to read and draw conclusions for himself/herself. You're totally free to argue that Popularity and user reviews are not valid measurements of how good a game is. And that's fine. But that, in itself is a subjective viewpoint and you're simply attacking the messenger by dismissing Metacritic as "bullcrud". In my opinion though, Metacritic gets it right more often than not. If I go to metacritic and see that a game on there has a 3.5 user rating, chances are, that game IS garbage.

Also, There's nothing inherent in a "what if" argument that makes it undefeatable. In fact, what if I told you that people often defeat such arguments on a daily basis but don't even realize it?

Well, I wouldn't call live instrumentation "nothing at all". It's kinda a big deal for Audio enthusiasts like myself. An RPG's mood music can make or break the experience. Of course, if the music in this game cost them a half a million dollars, then it had better be something extraordinarily fantastic. Anyway, to the Thread starter: I kind of agree with your concern here. But look on the bright side, at least Obsidian was razor-like specific with all their other stretch goals. Imagine if they weren't. Imagine if they had decided, instead, to make all their stretch goals look like this. ^Check that out. Look at the sheer number of vague, unaccountable, intangible salesman fluff InExile used to acquire the funding for Torment. Almost every single stretch goal was: "deeper story!", "even more deeper Story!", "Expanded reactivity!" and "The expanded reactivity is expanded even more!" <gag>

Is this true? Or are you making it up? Ask him

Explain what? How Death spells worked well in Table Top AD&D but failed in cRPGs, even though their cross-platform implementation/application was one of the small handful of tabletop features that managed to get translated in letter perfect fashion, almost as if they were specifically designed for cRPGs instead of the other way around?? Well of course you won't explain it. You Can't.

What? Oh! Well, you know what I think? I think that Lephys is a relatively intelligent guy who knows Zelda, Tetris and Mario better than 95% of the rest of the teenage population, but unfortunately has never actually played Baldurs Gate 2, Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale 2, and therefore could not possibly have the first clue how the Death spells he's been desperately attempting to criticize for the last 12 months actually work and gel within those games. Yet he probably Honestly believes he's an expert on the subject because he's read and memorized some opinionated Forum posts from Josh Sawyer. And I believe that he honestly thinks that his arguments actually make sense and his opponents are just dishonestly and spitefully waving them away, instead of meticulously addressing them, disputing them, and refuting them to the point of being seen as fanatic Gary Gygax acolytes.