Karkarov

Hate to tell you Mal but I am typing this very sentence from a TV screen. The day of "monitors" being clearly better is long since dead. Sure I am limited to 1080p, but guess what? Almost every game and or website is designed around 1080p to begin with.

Damn straight. By the end of the Witcher 1 I had developed my own Witcher Mini game. It was called "Find a Woman Geralt actually can't have sex with". It got real challenging at points let me tell you. As for PE, it will be Mature more than likely. You want to avoid an AO rating like the plague though.

I know for a fact (as does Junta) that we already have a thread about cinematics and if/when they should be in game. That said, sure why not go with this style? Just don't get confused and think it is somehow "cheaper and more cost effective". Though I would like to see some gameplay mixed in here in there in a stylistic way. I know you guys probably hate them in general but JRPG's have gotten really good at using animated cinematics mixed with actual gameplay for their titles so you could look there for example of what I mean. That said stylistically you obviously want to avoid "anime".

Guys few things... Sharp One has long since proven he is just a flame bait troll. Stop replying to him, it is a waste of time and counter productive. Also... Unity is a modern engine. Has it been used to make a AAA budget game? No. But it could be. There are some very graphically detailed fully 3d games hitting the market that are 100% Unity based. The game is isometric and 2D simulated 3D by CHOICE not because of a engine limitation.

Fairly sure there is this same thread somewhere already, but who cares? As of now I would probably go with something like.... this. Male Human Cipher (possible MC) Male Aumaua Fighter Female Godlike Rogue Female Elf Ranger Female Human Priest Male Elf Wizard If I swap anything from this to final it might be some race switching, making the fighter main instead of cipher, class wise the only possible change would be paladin instead of rogue.

That's quite a leap of faith. Each "interpretation" seems to offer a good / neutral / bad option to the recipient so I wouldn't assume to know their motivations or decade long back history. It isn't that complex. Just use common sense. If you are in a bar full of drunks in the middle of a cities slum do you think making a straight and narrow high moral ground arguement with the people around you is likely to be effective? When you are ambushed by a bunch of hobgoblins wearing human heads on their belt do you think trying to be charismatic and suave or violent and intimidating is going to work?

That is where human nature comes in. If you know one dialog option is going to result in you doing some soap box moralizing and the guy you are talking to is a hard baked mercenary who has been in his line of work for over a decade.... Well just don't be stunned when he isn't impressed by your speech. You need to consider three things in your choices (just like alpha protocol) what do I want to play my character like, do I want to piss this person off or get on their good side, and what do I want to get out of this encounter short/long term?

It wasn't bad planning, it was an insanely short development cycle with an unreasonable sense of demand to push the game out the door. I have no clue why they did it, but they made DA2 in like... a year and a half? That isn't much time for a AAA budget RPG. Hell it takes Square Enix like 5 years to make 1 numbered Final Fantasy it seems these days. In fact I am willing to bet that PE has already had as much or even a slight bit more dev time than that. Personally the Bioware hate on these forums is getting pretty old either way. I am sorry their games sell well, I am sorry Mass Effect is going to be on pretty much every "top 10 games of the last decade" list for anyone whose opinion matters, and I am sorry Dragon Age 2 kinda sucked. That said if Dragon Age 2 is the worst game they ever make.... they still have a better roster of games than 90% of other developers out there.

No. This system is very similar to what we were doing on The Black Hound in 2003. Actually it sounds really similar to Alpha Protocol. Which is a good thing because I could be quoted saying the mechanics can be questionable but the conversation and character interaction is basically as good as it has ever been done. Then considering Alpha Protocol is an Obsidian game I would guess that makes sense that it would be similar.

This forum has always been the hate DA forum, or more specifically the hate Bioware. Personally I like most of their games so.... Like my other post said, they have implemented it. There are plenty of fan recordings of demos done at industry shows where they show mages blowing up bridges etc etc. Here is a link. The video quality is shoddy but it gives you a good idea of how the game looks an plays: The part where they start showing combat that we care about for the purpose of this post is at around 20 minutes.

Yeah I even found myself agreeing with Stun in another thread. At that point I had to check my window to make sure the apocalypse hadn't started.

Actually the publishers would care more if it were android and ios friendly than gamepad.

Just to clarify Bioware has shown DA:I demo's where they did in fact destroy parts of castles/forts for strategic purposes... so yeah it is in game. Makes sense considering it is one of the big selling points of the frostbite engine. They have also shown areas and talked about how that town might get wiped out if xyz happens, or other spots where if you cleared out certain monsters and did some things you could built a fortress etc etc. You are right about the "Base" concept in DA:I though Stun. They have said the player will move between them and at various points one might get destroyed or you stop using it for whatever reason. It wont be as integral to the game/mechanics as the home base of Eternity will be. You are right about the "Base" concept in DA:I though Stun. They have said the player will move between them and at various points one might get destroyed or you stop using it for whatever reason. It wont be as integral to the game/mechanics as such and the Eternity stronghold is definitely going to have tons more going on and be a focal point in the game. I also have to agree about the graphics point, why is that even being compared? Of course the game with a minimum 5+ times the budget and the engine behind BF4 is going to have the better graphics. Graphics aren't even a focus in Eternity, the idea is making a tactical party based rpg focused on lore and character development. There is plenty of images out there of various areas in the game and the graphics look plenty good enough. Hell Shadowrun returns seems to be doing okay and I can already tell graphically it is better than that.

The dev's can't stop you from metagaming, that's the players issue not theirs. Also like Sawyer said in his clarification post... it is tracking your averages and long term actions not one off moments. So no, making one mean choice is not going to suddenly make everyone think you are the scum of the earth if 90% of the time you are Mr. Nice Guy. That and there is no "wrong" answer. I seriously doubt critical game content will be tied to having a certain reputation or disposition. In alpha protocol for example all that happens is sometimes you could talk your way out of a situation with the right choices, or get some bonus/situational things for upcoming levels or battles. If it was a key plot fight you still had to go at it regardless of what you did, said, or how you did it, and said it.

This is how it works. You are given a job to clean the stables by Bob the Stable Master. You can just go and do it and Bob will like you more for doing the work while the village on the whole likes you more too. Or you could not do it and Bob + village think you are a shirking jerkface. Or you can bully Little Timmy into doing it for you, and now you get bonuses with Bob and Village but the Village kids know you are a **** bully and they won't like you. In D&D your alignment was a mechanic and it was something you picked. If you were nuetral evil someone could bust a protection from evil on you. There is no protection from jerkface spell. Meanwhile this is a reputation system based on your actual actions and the factions/people they effect. In my stables example you are in the Village of Podunk. Do you think people changed what they think about you in the City of Bigtown though? No. They couldn't care less about how you resolved the Stable Issue in Podunk. But what if you instead say... join a mercenary army that one day lays siege to Podunk and burns it plus stable to the ground? Well the people in Bigtown probably noticed that one. In other words if you don't like a reaction you are getting... you have no one to blame but yourself. Because this type of system works by basing it's scores on the things you actually choose to do. Both the little and big ones.

Well I don't have anything to complain about since this is how I would run a reputation/alignment system if i were in charge of the game. Cudos to Obsidian and Sawyer for doing something a little bit more detailed and logical.

I have asked myself this question when browsing this forum many many times.

I avoided this thread up until now mostly for one reason.... That there is only one real response to it and I will likely be trolled for saying it. However since a couple other people have come out and said it I feel it is only appropriate to back them up. We don't know enough about the real mechanics of the game to determine if it is going to be a good game or not. We know some generalities and some very loose basics like the "no exp per kill" but we haven't played them in game so we don't know for sure how it all comes together and works. What's worse is... those are generalities. How can you be calling down a game for making mistakes or potentially being bad when you can even tell me how much stam and hp a level 1 fighter has. That is some pretty bare bones basic info... but we don't know. What level do you need to learn to use fireball? I can't even decisively tell you the names of any important non player NPC's. If I don't have even that basic a level of info how could I possibly be able to make any kind of determination of if the game is good or not? That said you can hate me for saying this but the no kill exp thing sure didn't hurt Mass Effect 2/3's popularity at all and I think it played out just fine.

I know I read about it somewhere outside of an update and the dev post at the time implied maiming only had an effect until you rested and a full "real rest" (like at an inn) removed all maiming effects. That lead me to believe it either made you very fragile in combat or just gave you a very harsh set of debuffs. So basically it is only punitive if you are not willing (or able) to drop what you are doing and go back to town. But then later devs has also made it clear that they hate save scumming and or degenerative gameplay so they may have lightened the maiming penalty even more. It doesn't matter to me because it sort of sounds dumb to begin with so I will likely turn on death. Will I reload a save if one of my favorite characters dies? Probably. If Khalid Mark 2 goes down though? I will be just fine continuing from there.

Well there should only be "dead" at 0 wounds. Maiming should be something that you have a statistical chance of on KO due to 0 stamina. Also don't link wiki's, too much of what I have seen on them has been based on hearsay, someone making a theorycraft post, or a broad interpretation based on like half a sentence Sawyer said 6 months ago. If you want to say "this is how it is in game" you need to link a dev post or an update. Either way it is still all subject to change regardless.

Wait a minute.... My understanding was that the main character couldn't "die" or it was really really hard to kill them, but your companions pretty much could die to any old normal stuff. What you guys are calling "maiming" would be what happens when a character got knocked out. They would take a temp penalty due to the KO and when you got a "real rest" in the penalty would go away. That said if you took down a dude+did enough real wounds to them to take their wounds counter to 0 they weren't maimed they were dead. At least that is what I am pretty sure I remember someone like sawyer saying somewhere. The challenge setting of the game was only supposed to effect the power of the enemies and maybe their ai to a lesser extent. It wasn't supposed to effect death rules. Meanwhile yeah, you could always save scum either way.

This was a very interesting update if for no other reason than that it confirmed map size for us. It is always nice to get a look at the creative process as well and I especially liked seeing the blockout vs mostly done version of that one area. I did think it was sort of odd in your original blockout you only had one door exiting the entry hall (other than the door you came in) but seeing it upped to 3 doors at the later version made me chuckle. Guess I was reminded of ye olden times in my design and architecture classes.... I do have to admit though the end of the article takes a disturbing twist and almost sounds like a lead in to "And now you know why we are behind schedule by 6 months!" announcement.

What happened to talking about why the game being isometric is bad? Doesn't the perma death debate already have it's own thread?

Uh Osvir, you can't click on video on that page. Sensuki already mentioned it was behind a pay wall in the actual thread about that conference.

Fair enough. You and the Obsidian team as a whole have been very clear about each class having strengths since the kickstarter itself, no one can find any fault with that either every class needs something to make it stand out. I just hope that there is still room for diversity without completely compromising effectiveness. Either way I trust you guys to get it done, there is certainly no dev out there with more experience at this type of game.