Karkarov

Some new portraits would be nice especially if they are companions we have never heard of.

i always said that DnD based games are at least 90% luck. Sounds more as if Karkarov was playing at run-and-gun instead of buffing the tanks... which is where the whole 'tactics' thing comes in... Casters used as offensive units against casters is begging to be buried in a hail of fail... Sounds to me like you aren't familiar with D&D rules. My team was level 4-5, what do you propose I "buff" with? The fight in my example was won, had the mage even done something as simple as targeted someone else I would have had it in the bag. I only got a game over because he targeted my main character, my character failed his save, and the mage scored something like 25-30 damage. My main dude was only down like 5 hp when he died. Also this is D&D 2nd Ed rules, aka, Baldur's Gate. There is no "tanking" if a mob wants to hit someone other than the Fighter, they can. I can't force them to attack one person unless the fight goes down in a tight passage, which they rarely do. Also buffing isn't "tactical" it is common freaking sense. Tactics is using your tank skills in pe to lock an opposing fighter in melee with your fighter so your mage can stand just outside of melee and hit him with spells. Or using your rogue to hide in shadows then stealth behind the mage and backstab him. Using a freezing spell on a enemy highly resist to physical attacks so it is frozen and no vulnerable to physical damage is tactics.

I am pretty sure they have already said the default is going to be very light on "mechancis" feedback to begin with. If anything in "expert mode" I would think you would want to see your exact die rolls and modifiers since the challenge is theoretically so much higher it matters there. In regular play I shouldn't need to worry about if I rolled 12+5-2=13 miss versus armor 14. As long as I play with a decent strategy, have a balanced team, and they are properly prepared for the area I should ultimately be fine at normal game settings.

Different engine, sure... but they're trying to replicate IE as best as possible.Why is this a crappy solution in 2014? Because all other games in 2014 have fixed cameras on their PC and thus scrolling is made extra difficult, since usually the camera is locked on them? If so, that's not a very good reason IMO. While dragging with the mouse seems reasonable (and I assume will be in) I have no reason not to believe simple mouse scrolling like in the BG's would feel absolutely fine in PE, rather than in other modern game with their PC-locked cameras. I don't see why they can't just make WASD move the camera around, pretty sure they did it in later Infinity Engine games.

Try the souls games, as in Demon's and Dark Souls. You have no manual save and while you can't "permanently" die death can carry a lot of penalties and if you are unable to fulfill certain conditions you could find yourself out levels worth of exp.

In what world is it edgy to dislike PS:T ? The world called the PE Forums. Trust me you aren't the only person who doesn't think it is all that good. In fact I think it is the worst Inifinity Engine game by far, it was form over function and style over substance in the worst way.

And, had it been his mage that miraculously saved the day with a "Hail Mary" spell, he'd likely have been pleased as punch. No because they wouldn't have been saving the day, at the point that happened it was 6 guys versus one mage and I appeared to have the fight in the bag. That out of the way I realize part of that is the D&D mechanics, I am just simply laying out that Baldur's Gate (and other infinity engine games) are not as "tactical" as people seem to remember them being. Most of BG2 tactics specifically just boiled down to "counter the mage".

Yes, I know for a fact they liked to complicate things. Did you know in D&D 2nd Edition there were rules in the DMG for creating custom classes. Just to prove to you how borked their idea of class balance and exp scaling was you could do fun experiments. For example, if you created an exact replica of the Fighter class you actually needed more exp to level per level than a by the book fighter did. The Rogue actually needed ever so slightly less, and the Mage was totally out of place. Paladins had insane stat requirements and massive exp walls but other than some immunities and lay on hands were actually worse in most fights than a generic Fighter. To say D&D is a poorly balanced game is the understatement of the day. But their EXP system in 2nd Edition was completely borked regardless.

Like Hassat Hunter said, no panning, no altering of the view angle. It is just like Baldur's Gate 1, or any other Infinity Engine game. The cameras position is fixed and can not be moved, only moved to different parts of the map or zoomed in for closer viewing of the area or out to see more terrain.

I agree, I tank in MMO's but I don't want to see those mechanics in other games. It works in MMO's because you need to force grouping, you need everyone in the group to have a role, and it is easy to design encounters around because you know what the party has. This isn't an MMO though, we can be a little more complex than that. That said the bit about damage soaking is the common mistake of people who don't tank and or don't understand tanking. Taking hit's and mitigating damage is just something you have to deal with because the enemy is focused on you. Tanking is in reality the most reliable Crowd Control that exists. It is about, like I said, controlling who the enemy attacks, where the enemy is positioned, and to some extent how effective the enemies attacks can be. Shooting a cone of cold is bad ass and all, but if my tanking is forcing you to face away from the party it wasn't nearly as effective as it could have been. That said yes, Fighters get a self regen in combat I believe, extremely high deflection so they are harder to hit and therefore crit than anyone else, and I think also don't get penalized for being attacked from sides or back. They also probably get the highest wounds count next to barbarians. So yeah, they will be the most "sturdy" class.

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.

You omitted the part where Sawyer also said that only Fighters can "engage" more than one person at a time. Tanking as a concept isn't about taking hits, it is about controlling the enemy by forcing them to fight who you want and be positioned where you want them. Paladins can only do that with one person, just like every other melee. Only the Fighter can control more than one enemy at a time by this method, hence why it is "the tank". In his example his paladin could have stopped that one guy, but if it had been two who rushed the mage... well he would need more than the paladin. No class will be "must have". But if you plan to control combat through the tanking method there is only going to be one "great" choice. Also be aware the paladins skills are very positioning dependent, sometimes using it to intercept someone will also force your paladin into a sub optimal location for the fight and they wont be able to use their best abilities as well as they could have. Every class will have it's strength in weakness, I suspect they won't be nearly as flexible as was suggested in the past. I also suspect that if you build a party that doesn't cover each others weaknesses and don't play your characters to their strengths and instead try to "go outside the mold" you are going to have a very rough game.

To be fair by that point in throne of bhaal your character was supposed to be pushing "epic" levels, have obscene amounts of power, and be near godlike in stature. I would think being rich would be the least of the things they would have to brag about.

Actually a skeleton having yesterdays newspaper is perfectly legitimate depending on how he died Like has been stated, all "important" loot is hand placed and random loot is going to come in from a table based on the loot container. Be it a rat, a brigand, or a old barrel.

Uh no that wasn't why. It was because those games are based on D&D. In D&D 2nd Edition (aka the rule set Baldur's Gate is based on) every class had their own EXP table. Some classes leveled fast and maintained that pace like Rogues, some leveled fast early then ran into huge EXP walls later on like Druids, and some were just stable like Fighters. In D&D 3rd Edition (the rules NWN is based on) there was no more class based EXP, everyone leveled at the same rate based on the same EXP table. To be honest I see no reason for separate EXP per class. As long as everyone gets a reasonably similar amount of growth per level it should be the same for everyone.

The view angle is fixed but I am pretty sure they have said you can zoom the camera.

Uh not really. There is already much discussion in the "hit miss or glance" thread in the mechanics forum about what value a fighter is and so on. Sawyer himself made it pretty clear that the Fighter was the "Tank" and other classes could take hits sure but none of them could do what the fighter does in the "tank" regard. He even specifically stated that barbarians were suited for aoe dps and had little tanking ability at all and said the paladin was not well suited to it either. So basically if you want a full on "tank" in your party you are bringing a fighter.

Uh here is the thing, user scalability of the UI is well in a word.... complex. Every single element of the UI, every single graphic, has to be designed from the ground up to maintain visual quality, detail, and scale evenly from the ground up for it to work. Designing that, making it fully functional, and also meeting the ... desires of most of the users on the forums at least... Well in a word it would be a challenge. There is a reason most games don't support user controlled custom UI scaling, it really is a lot harder than it sounds.

What Soulburner said. If you can't tell the difference by listening to it than the "container" is basically meaningless. Audio quality has just as much to do with your audio set up, the greatest, most hi fidelity sound file in the world will still only sound "ok" through generic 2.1 speakers which is what most PC users have. If they want some insane perfect quality audio clips they can do it as a separate download for the soundtrack.

Apparently my class opinions are in line with everyone so far at least, my top pics are the top 6 picks right now. I agree that an actual short walkthrough of a small part of the vertical slice level would make a really great update.

Wrong. This isn't an action game, I can pause any time I want, therefore there is absolutely no drawback to the controllable camera. No one in their right mind who had the budget and time to make a game fully 3D would not do so. A forced isometric view with a forced camera angle only impairs what you can design and how you can display it on screen, designers in general don't like to have limitations on what they can design. What do they say about common sense at the Friendly Arm again? Oh that's right, they say most of the posters on this forum don't have any. The funny part being 'A well made and properly done 3D camera' has yet to be made... IN 15 YEARS. Play some games from the last decade please. Or are you insinuating the Witcher 2, Dark Souls, Dragon Age (especially the newest one), hell even X-Com from a couple years ago which all have rotatable cameras at the least didn't do it at least "well". Hell X-Com of those I just listed had the worst camera of the lot and it was the only one that forced isometric view on you. Go play a Drakensang game or something for christ sake.

Just as an aside this is a primary concern I have had from way back. I know this isn't D&D and we won't be using D&D rules but I am still concerned we will be looking at D&D for inspiration. It concerns me for 2 reasons. 1: D&D is well... a poorly balanced game these days and was outright broken in 3rd Edition. 2: It is taking more and more and more inspiration from MMO's. MMO's use the trinity (like I said before) for a very specific set of reasons. The Trinity style combat was designed specifically for MMO's. I can't help but feel like there are better ways to do things in small team single player games. Just to be specific I am not knocking the game, concerned, nor do I feel the overall subject of the thread how deflection works is poorly done or anything like that. I just hope there is enough freedom to make say a Fighter who is not a tank with a shield but instead some sort of battle juggernaut who still gets outdpsed by others but does real damage and makes up for weak "tanking" with greater mobility or combat options. Etc etc.

I don't know I think Pillars of Eternity is sort of a poopy name but then again it keeps making me think about those books about the Pillar's of Earth or whatever based on the building of various cathedrals etc in medieval times.

What he said, but to be more anally specific. Tactical games are better served by a free 3d camera, period. A camera you have totally control over is always better "tactically" than one you do not. You can cite examples like NWN2 and said "no it isn't" but I can simply counter with "Yes it is, it isn't the cameras fault it was programmed badly and poorly implemented. Blame the designers. A well made and properly done free movement 3d camera will always be better." Secondly, games are getting more and more graphically detailed. It is hard to see graphic details from a fixed view 30 feet in the air looking down at a 5'5" tall human. As games start to look more visually impressive it is only natural that you would want to move to a style of camera that takes advantage by showing off the superior fidelity. Lastly... Even the modern versions of chess lets you rotate the camera to look at all sides of the board. Being stuck at one view from one angle is by definition not as helpful as having any view you want from any angle you prefer.

I guess this story and especially this final paragraph concerns me for a couple reasons. 1: It reminds of World of Warcraft or "Insert Trinity Based MMO Here"... I don't have a problem with that type of game, the appeal (especially for multiplayer) is painfully clear, it is easy to design encounters for, encourages team play, gives everyone a unique and defined role in the party. Many MMO's use it because it really is one of the easiest and best ways to get a group of people to work together to overcome a wide variety of encounter types. I even love to play tanks in MMO's, but while my primary job is "get punched in face and not fall down" there is some level of threat management, ability dodging, different cooldowns you may need to time, specific mechanics you have to counter.... PE on the other hand is a single player game, the cooldowns won't be that intense, the mechanics won't be as demanding (such as move 15 yards in 5 seconds or die), there is no threat I just use an ability with the fighter character to force "engagement" on those in melee.... or I don't. 2: If grazes are basically sub optimal and not desirable outside of "graze or miss" situations, which can't be that common and could surely be fought with a better approach, what does that say about the fighter class if one of the top end skills is being able to graze more often? It tells me they are a low damage class first off. Per your own words even the worst hit you can get will do better damage than the best graze you can score. Most of their use seems to be heavily reliant on positioning and use of engagement. Based on your story a fighter can clearly take a hit... but unless someone tries to break out of engagement it doesn't look like they can deal one. They sound like the very definition of the "get hit in face but don't fall down" character. It sounds like the Baldur's Gate 1 fighter, except now he can force you to hit him but consequently does no damage. Handy, but not really more fun for the player or all that interesting mechanics wise. Why not just bring a barbarian and deal better damage and counter higher damage intake with higher hp? Why not bring a paladin whose damage is still probably weak but has better utility overall? I am sure caster classes have some form of mob controlling abilities that might paralyze or even prevent someone from moving and likely a far better offensive complement. Sure there is all kinds of tactical synergy with the engagement system, but it sounds a little too much like MMO combat to me and it only works and is fun there because of all the things going on around it, very little of which will be going on in PE. A lineman on a football team does a lot of work to help his team win... but unless he is on defense and sacks the QB no one ever talks about him. He does a key important job but he just isn't exciting or interesting. I guess I am saying I would like the fighter to be more exciting and fun to have in my party, not just a meat shield who gets beat down so the rogue can score an easy backstab. Hopefully I am just over reacting, but then that is what happens when you speculate based on limited info. Normally I wouldn't do that but it has been a long day