Stun

I agree with Malekith. I mean, sure, it's probably totally within budget (it's not expensive at all to create a few different portraits for each NPC displaying different emotions) but... really, that just seems like a pointless gimmick to me. Not to mention excessively game-y. (oh look, I picked the flirty dialogue choice with the Tavern Wench, and now her portrait is smiling in the conversation! woot!) Decent writing should adequately project this emotion to the reader anyway, and if it doesn't then we've got different problems, don't we. I never had trouble decyphering NPC emotions in Planescape torment or the BG games... did you?

Excuse my french but... Bull. Both on this thread, AND in your camp out thread last week, AND in last week's mini-update, we got a Dev coming in and flat out telling you that the site isn't ready. That's transparancy by definition. Yet here you are, still unsatisfied. Please do me a favor... Please.... find a way to reign it in before next june or so. Because I shudder to think of how noisy you'll get if, perish the thought, the game itself suffers a release date push-back.

Update 66 says before Thanksgiving. Which is today. It's also Tomorrow, Sensuki! Like I said in the other thread, there's nothing but "tradition" dictating that the big update must come today. I just have this gut feeling that this update is big enough to break the "updates-happen-only-on-tuesdays", thing. Besides, it'd be so much more "dramatic" to present this update right before Thanksgiving, instead of, you know, two days before it.

Yes? Or, more specifically, we all do evil things on occasion. Although, D&D has a classification for people who's actions are all over the place: Neutral. See, this is why I love games that track your moral decisions and tie them to an alignment system. In such games, your "role playing" is put to the test, and it's fun to see the end result. You can learn a lot about your own play habits if you simply let the game judge you, without trying to achieve a specific result. I once did a Playthrough of Planescape Torment with that mindset. By the end of the game, my Nameless One had racked up a Chaotic Good Alighnment.

That, and evil is such a broad term in RPGs. I'd imagine many people who swear they don't commit evil acts, actually *do*, they just don't realize it. Selfishness is considered evil, for example. Thus if you ever killed Drizzt in BG1 to get his shiny Scimitars, then you are playing evil. And in BG2, if you refuse to give the silver sword blade back to the Githyanki when they ask you to... then you're playing Evil. etc.

Interesting that you'd bring this up. This is a true statement for AAA titles who's distribution is carried out in the traditional manner (Major outlets like Walmart, Best Buy, Microsoft and Sony and the like simply won't carry Adult Only game titles) thus killing a game's sales. But would an AO rating have the same effect on a PC-only kickstarter game? Hell, does the ESRB even bother Rating crowd funded games?

True. Every once in a blue moon you'll get a game that manages to pull off a non-cringeworthy portrayal of sex/sexual themes. But more often than not, sex is a subject that devs simply cannot nail correctly in their games. So personally, I'd rather they stop trying. Fade to black is a dishonestly lazy way to do any type of scene, and the other two alternatives (graphic and text) ultimatately fail because Game developers are just that: game developers.... not... you know... award-winning Hollywood movie producers and script writers. I do get a chuckle when I play a game like Baldurs Gate though, where the scope of the "sex" is a bunch of Harlots in a brothel yelling: "Hey sexy, do you want to take a look at me ditties?!"

Safe bet that it will be. One of the talking points that Tim, Josh and Chris made during the kickstarter is to point out that without the publishers breathing down their necks, they're finally free to pursue taboo subject matters denied to them in previous games. This will lead to a game filled with mature subject matter. Which, I might add, is one of the few *good* departures from the IE games, which were all Teen rated, and pretty tame when it came to that kind of stuff.

Icewind dale will always have a special place in my heart simply because of the awesomeness of Trials of the Luremaster, which Black Isle gave us for Free. It was *free*. Yet it gave us a better story and better dungeon design than Heart of Winter

It'd be more accurate to say that Bioware was already well into the production phases of DA:O and and ME1 when EA bought them.

The Bioware Love-Hate relationship here on the Obsidian forums is an interesting thing to observe. On the one hand, it's true. This place is, more often than not, flat out hostile to the Bioware name itself. But, at the same time, there's a cult following for the BG series. PE's very backer numbers wouldn't exist without it. That's paradoxical, as Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 are Bioware games! The infinity engine itself is Bioware's creation. So yeah... It's Love-Hate. And why not. Are we supposed to just ignore the crash and burn we've been witnessing these last few years? I certainly can't. Dragon Age 2 was more than just an insultingly bad game. It was an attempted murder. An assault with the intent to kill the Bioware name, the Dragon age franchise, and its fans. It was a con job thought up by a board room full of people who have never played a video game before. It was a conscious, deliberate attempt on the part of the studio to see just how many shortcuts and how much cheap mediocrity they could get away with in the industry and still pull off a profit. And apparently, EA was satisfied with the results of the experiment. Mike Laidlaw was promoted. Instead of fired. And no, "short development time" had nothing at all to do with the crappy nature of DA2. They had 18 months to create a sequel to DA:O. That's exactly as long as it took for them to create Baldurs Gate 2.... the greatest game ever created. Plus, if 18 months was too short, then why did they make it a point to friggin change/overhaul everything from the ground up? Logic dictates that if the publisher is demanding a short development time, then the solution is to leave everything as is, then just spend the time you're given on a new story, new characters, and new areas.

Yeah... Eye candy. That is the most important thing in an RPG.... when you're 12 years old. Edit: the really interesting thing here is that Bioware is struggling to compete with its peers even in the VISUAL arena that you place so much importance on. CDProjeckt's Witcher 2 (for example) gave us a much better cinematic and graphics experience than any of the Dragon Ages. And Bethesda's Skyrim did scenery porn better than anything we've seen from Bioware... ever. Including DA:I. By the way, whatever happened to judging an RPG based on its RPG mechanics?

Graphical/Physics limitations maybe, and that's all. But DA:I will suffer all the limitations imposed by Consoles, voiced protagonists, and the 'cinematic experience', while PE won't. This means a far more constrained and limited set of RPG mechanics on the whole, Like in dialogue choices, full party control, full party customization, etc. And then we've got the design itself. Can you roll up a cypher or a monk in DA:I? No of course not. There's only 3 classes in Dragon Age. And only 3 races, btw. DA:I will also have far more limited weapon choices, spell choices, party arbitration choices (there will be no Adventurer's hall in DA:I!) But hey, none of that matters, because DA:I will let you blow up bridges! Right? And.... this discussion is pointless. Is there anything stopping you from getting both games?

^I wouldn't give that ridiculous post even that much credit. ^there are flat out false statements being made here. First off, Bioware has not invented anything in about a decade. Especially with Dragon Age. Even if we utterly believe all the hype we've seen from the various DA:I trailers, demos, convention interviews and commercials, there's STILL nothing in them resembling "innovative". You are, in fact, getting your own stronghold in DA:I, and its "strategic" value in the game, as described by the Bioware Devs themselves, is fairly standard stuff: gathering allies/agents to your cause, and then using them to "win a war against the evil forces". Second.... what modifiable environment? We most certainly got no such thing in ME1, ME2, DA1, DA2, or SW:TOR. (those are bioware's last 5 games, btw), and they've said nothing about the player being able to affect an environment change in DA:I, other than the standard fare of getting a stronghold then fixing it up. In terms of point #1 and #2 here, Project Eternity's stronghold will actually be giving the player more than this.

It should be: POLL: All fights must go the distance. Agree? (because, you know, if one fighter gets "lucky" and scores a knockout, then it is: 1) Unfair, 2) Untactical, and 3) Boooring.

^I'll also point out that "kill the mage first", and "use Haste because it's overpowered" were specific examples of tactics/strategy to be used in Baldurs Gate. Completely different tactics would be suggested if we were discussing a different game. For example, In Temple of Elemental Evil, (Another D&D ruleset game with tons of dice rolls/luck elements dictating combat) I most definitely would not suggest wasting any of your 3rd level spell slots on Haste. Nor would I necessarily advocate killing the mage first, because they're hardly the nastiest opponents in any given encounter. Instead, for TOEE I would suggest going after the overly-aggressive enemy barbarian first before he improved-trips and AoO-spams your entire party to death, and having your mage shoot off Fireballs every round to get rid of everyone else. In other words, all combat-centric RPGs have their own specific "magic bullet" ultimate strategy. You'll never find a *good* combat centric RPG that doesn't. The only ones that don't are the ones with truly sh**y combat mechanics. And those games usually employ grotesque amounts of level scaling to insure that nothing the player can do will ever break the soulless, rigid, combat balance.

Yes. And not that this is anything new. All of the IE games did this as well. Take BG2 for example, where the "luck" and "Probability" element was most prominent. Now look at all the spells, abilities and magic items they put in that game to assist you in "beating the odds".

Please read my posts concerning the "inferior tactics". Even if it was not an insta-kill spell, a spell that does anything from 1 to 30 damage has about a 10% chance of instantly killing you if you have 27 HP. So? That's not anything resembling a rebuttal to what we're discussing. It's just a whine about game difficulty. If you have 27 Hit Points, and enemy mages can do 30 points of damage at once with their spells, then you should be using your head and employing tactics to survive such encounters, instead of just assuming that the game will protect you from high enemy dice rolls and that if it doesn't then that must mean the system is "broken" and "untactical". Bottom line: Stop blaming player failure on bad luck. Many of us have completed no-reload challenges in BG1 and BG2. It can be done, and it can be done relatively easily and consistantly. This alone proves that 'Bad Luck' is merely an element of gameplay, not a system flaw.

There are no insta-kill spells in BG1. Lets face the facts now. Karkarov's main character died in a mage fight because he used inferior tactics for the battle.

Get your main character's saves into the negatives? (there's no Auto-fail-on-1 in the BG games) And there are lots and lots of ways to do this in Both of the BG's. Alternatively, there's the ham-fisted approach: Attack the mage. In BG1 this was super easy. There's nothing any mage can do in BG1 against a volley of arrows and magic missiles combined with a melee assault from a party of attackers. Nothing at all. In BG2, Mages are infinitely tougher, and disrupting their spell casting is a game unto itself. Thankfully, BG2 gives your party an infinitely vast variety of tools to neutralize "bad luck". But I digress! This all shamelessly assumes tactical combat, which we're told doesn't exist in Baldurs Gate.

LOL So? That doesn't mean that the BIG update they promised us will occur on the 26th. In fact, If I was a betting man, I'd say that we won't be getting the big update until the tuesday before they go off for their holiday break. (which would be well into December) If even that. They gave no date for it.

Yeah I have been replaying Baldur's Gate lately and sorry but, it's combat is anything but tactical until very late game. So far 90% of my fights have boiled down to select all, click a mob, wait for it to die, click next mob, rinse wash repeat. The fights that do require some planning have also hilariously come down to luck. I had one fight against this two mage, ogre, and two fighter group. Had it won, my party was up, all but one mage dead. Then as we engage the final mage he casts something and my main character failed a save apparently, one shot kill game over. So much for tactics, one bad save paired with the mage scoring his best possible damage, and I lose. Begging your pardon, but I see tactical written all over this description of yours. Everyone knows that Step 1 of any battle plan in BG (or any of the IE games) is to kill or disable all spell casters first. You didn't do that, so you paid the price. Hm.... BG1? Level 4-5 party? Lets see. The following buffs could have helped you tremendously against the 2 mage, 1 Ogre, 2 fighter party that took you out. 1) Invisibility (enemies can't target invisible characters) 2) Haste (Haste is completely unnerfed in BG1, making it the most powerful Spell in the whole game. It doubles your entire party's # of attacks...for an extended period of time. Had you hasted your party, then employed focus fire tactics, that fight would have not lasted more than 20 seconds) 3) Monster Summoning 1 (the value of this spell is not in what it summons, but the quanity of what it summons. An enemy surrounded by gibberlings will waste all its attention, attacks and AI on the gibberlings, leaving your whole party to do whatever it wants in complete safety, for several rounds. 4) Sanctuary (The level 1 cleric spell. Forces enemies to ignore your cleric....even if he walks right in front of them to heal your fighter, or your mage. or to recast any expired buffs) 5) Potions. (BG1 dispenses them without limits. Magic Blocking, Magic shielding, Invunerability, Heroism, Giant strength, Invisibilty, Speed etc. The majority of these will improve your saving throws to the point where you won't fail any. And a couple will enhance your fighting skills so as to tip the balance of the fight in your favor) 6) Mirror image. (doesn't just protect your mage from melee and ranged physical attacks, it will also protect him from AOE spells.) 7) Shield (have your mage put one of these up and you can shrug off enemy magic missiles.) 8.) Chant, Prayer, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Luck (boost your entire party's saves) And... they stack.

eh? where did you hear this?

If we're bad designers, sure. Touché. But you can't predict all player reactions. Luckily "take care of someone" is quite straightforward, but maybe the more complex quest objective could be intentionally ambiguous? Ambiguity does not instantly assume difficulty, it just suggests a potentially open-ended nature of the objective. Quest descriptions are inherantly action-based even if they're ambiguous... so all the player needs to do is either look for Verbs in the description, or else look for actionable items in the description. And a good devs will always put one or the other in there. Examples of Ambiguity: 1) "little Timmy was crying in the street today because he lost his puppy." <---Ambiguous, because there could be several quest objectives involved with this description. But there are 2 verbs in the descriptor so it's not difficult to assume a few of them: A) Find Timmy's lost puppy; B) Calm Timmy down with diplomacy skills. C) Kill Timmy so the neighborhood can get some peace and quiet. 2)"Local Blacksmith has nothing to sell" <---- Ambiguous, And there's no verbs, or rather, there's a verb that's not happening. But there's an actionable item here. A problem. a business is open but not operating. So.... Objective is: A) Discover the cause of the inventory shortage and solve it; or B) Kill the Blacksmith and transform his store into a loot storage area for yourself. ......... DIFFICULT stuff is when they literally give you nothing to work with - when you read the description and your first reaction is: So? or yeah....and? Examples of Difficult. 1) I met the captain of the Guard today. He was wearing a Dwarf costume. <----Not particularly ambiguous, and if it's a quest objective then it has failed, because there's no actionable items, and whatever Verbs are in the description are actions that have already occured. 2) City Councilman Bruce Lay has decreed a national Monk-appreciation holiday this weekend <---straight forward with everything except for the quest objective. The player's reaction is: Um... ok... so what? What do I do? Where's the Party?

Just a nit-pick, but which IWD are you talking about? Because In IWD1, the attributes do not affect spell-level acquisition... for any type of spell caster. Ditto with all the IE games, save for IWD2. And even IWD2 made it a point to remind the player in the load screens, and the manutal, and the character screens, that he/she needs high attributes to cast high level spells.