Elerond

I think that they said that their plan is to do different skill point pools for combat and non-combat skills, so that you don't need to sacrifice your combat prowess if you want to take non-combat skills. Which don't mean that non-combat skills couldn't help you in the combat. For example with stealth you probably can better position you party so that combat is easier to win and if there is sneak attack you can perform those. Getting combat benefits from non-combat skills isn't anything strange but quite common occurrence, especially in IE style games.

Item durability can work fine in the game. I liked it in Arcanum in that extend that you had to not use your best equipment in some dungeons or risk losing them. Like for example that dungeon that was full of fire elementals that destroyed your armor quite easily, which caused you see non-combat options to solve your quest there. PE will not be so punishing as items don't break, but change to lose some of you damage potential is at least in some extend enough to make people do some forefront planning, like fixing their equipment and taking another set of weapons with you before going in that 15th level dungeon. And I agree with Josh, if you have party base RPG system, then it is good to design skills so that every member can benefit having it even if they aren't party's best in that particular skill. Or you need to have so many skills that your party can't master them all even if they try (wasteland for example). Because otherwise you remove trade-offs from leveling up and make leveling up quite dull process (NWN2 for example). Of course you don't need item durability to make crafting worthwhile skill for everyone in party, but in my opinion it is quite valid way to do it. But you could also do options in encounters where you need several party members to have crafting skill to make bridge so that you could circle around trolls that keep toll on main roads bridge. Or you could make crafting skill give sharpening/maintenance talent that make your equipment work better a short while, but that is just inverted durability as Josh pointed, but it may be better in psychological perspective as it gives benefits if you have skill which don't seem as negative as skill that reduces negative effects. And money sink in this case is not repairing, but buying short time bonuses in your gear. What comes to that crafting shouldn't be skill that benefits combat, I don't see how short time equipment bonuses are any different from permanent equipment that give you combat bonuses or consumables that give you short time combat bonuses, two most typical things that you do with crafting, except to get this short time benefit character needs to have points in the crafting skill.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission It seems that they do several updates in week, sometimes couple in 24h. Which is probably why some say that they spam with them.

How is it diferent from Lockpick????? If you have it, and you take a thief companion you waste it. Which means that we probably will see lock picking skill change to something different or combined with other stealth skills. Because typical implementation for it goes against design principals that PE team seems to follow (no useless skills or min-max skills).

I like buy or order (smith or some one else does thing from ingredients that you provide) artifacts that are actually useful in the game even in the end. Some people say that you should find most powerful artifact by exploring world, but my opinion is that it is as viable option to buy most powerful artifacts (even uniques) with the money that you got by exploring world. Buying property and upgrading it is also usually quite fun way to use money. Buying homes or stronghold is quite nice way to use money especially if it opens my game play, like governing people/area and so causing changes in the world. Consumables is good way to use money as you can strategic depth (preparation is key to success) in the game or give player ability make encounters easier. Although in latter case I have tendency neither buy or use consumables, as I always think that I will find better way to use my money (which rarely occurs). Crafting is in my opinion good way to use money (by things needing ingredients that you can't find by exploring and paying fee for using crafting place or building one in your home/base/stronghold/etc.), if you can make better items that you can find, so ability to upgrade any weapon via crafting is something that I would like to see. Although I don't mind if I can't change upgrades to better ones later on in the game. Using money to repairing, bribing, buying information, resting, healing, traveling and other things that simulate real world pending is okay in my mind. Usually economies of rpgs suffer from endless money syndrome, meaning that your character will get more money in the game than s/he can any intelligent way to use, which causes that buy-able artifacts can become too easy to get. And it also means that you don't need to think if you could afford to use money in bribes if you want also get full plate of doom and sword of dragon slaying, as you know that you will find enough money to buy all stuff what you want and bribe every person in world and still be millionaire. Which is reason why I would like to see that there isn't endless amounts of money in the world, but player need to think where s/he puts his/her precious coins.

22can's Godus project has quite good weekly updates and they are on alpha stage already, which looks nice. Say what you say about Peter Molyneux, but it seems that he has quite good handle how to keep product in the budget and the time. But PE has most interesting updates for me and Godus comes as second and then Planetary Annihilation and Elite Dangerous. In my understanding why inXile don't make regular updates is that they don't have capacity to free people to do them, which is bit sad for me as I am very interested to know how they produce games compared to other companies that I have backed. And what comes to ready kickstarter project there is already several that I have backed, but only one game (Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams), but several games are already in alpha stages. And it looks that end of this year I will have least half dozen games to play.

To me it looks that item durability is added to make crafting more potential choice of skill for every character, so that there is not only one min-maxed craftsman in the team. Although to accomplish this repairing need to be actual money sink and not only chore, so it should cost so much that it actually dents you wallet, but not so much that it invalids builds that don't have crafting entirely, but enough that you need to think every time do you take crafting or some other skill. Crafting itself don't look like mmo crafting, where you craft new stuff, but way to make you existing stuff better or get short time benefits (cooking), so it isn't economical balance crafting like in mmo, but ability make your character better, which make crafting more comparable skill to other non-combat skills like stealth and conversation-skills, which means that it gives you option to play game in different way, which is more combat oriented route. Which is quite different role for crafting compared to mmos economical crafting, where crafting is non-combat way to acquire more money. So for me it looks that crafting and item durability will be nice features in PE, as crafting gives you better combat characters by giving you ability get permanent and short time combat benefits. And item durability will work as money sink, which impact you can lower if you put your skill points in crafting instead of some other skill, which make, as I already said, crafting potential skill option to all characters and not only to your dedicated craftsman, which make skill more universal and better balanced in my opinion. And crafting is added to game because people requested it during kickstarter campaign, which is reason why it made itself as stretch goal, which obligates Obsidian to offer such mechanic in PE. PS. PE will have unlimited deep stash in inventory, which can accessed on resting places and cities, which I think are only places where you will have access to crafting places (forges, labs and hearts), meaning that crafting items will not eat your limited inventory space if you don't want.

That brought an idea to mind, we need Tim's Cook book as mystical artifact in the game

Nice update, crafting sounds to be very nice feature. And it also good to hear that you have added item durability in the game.

The problem with this map and the other map was the scale. The scale of the map you linked is of a country side by the looks of it. the map of p:e was more of a country. I'd like to see old school maps of whole countries instead of a city. http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~28882~11202:Map-of-Central-Europe-comprising-Gr here's an example. it's 1800's (so later than 1600's) http://photos.foter.com/129/gutia-c-rrez-the-americas-1562_l.jpg america's map 1572. (you're right here but this one is really off scale) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/GoughMap_ca_1360.jpg/800px-GoughMap_ca_1360.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cartography Map of Finland from 1539, a part of Carta Marina, which is map of Nordic Countries (+ Koala Pensula and the Baltic States), as you can see is quite decorative map.

Looks like they we be quite good in short encounters, but in longer ones you need to do some thinking how and when you will use them. With current knowledge I would say that paladins will be excellent companions for the barbarians, with their ability to revive unconscious characters.

In IE games rest had change to be interrupted only in few areas (and in some areas you couldn't rest at all), but mostly it was without any real set backs and usually in areas that gave some restrictions you could go back last area where there was no rest restrictions. And of course you could always save on those areas where there was change to be interrupted and load until you can rest freely. And to be fair NWN and NWN2 also had this kind of restriction in some areas.

That's not really "more in-depth" By the sound of it they just made it less relevant to make the damage less unpredictable. Which isn't always a good thing because, because it can make it too predictable and boring, and it usually leads to heal/potion spamming. But you can't spam healing spells or potions in PE as it don't have any.

Game mechanics seem to be bit different than what I originally though that they would be, but that was something that I expected as they pitched entirely new system and world, but in my opinion Obsidian's vision looks better than what I had in my mind when I pledged. Mechanics looks that they can easily produce game that give us at least same degree tactical combat and dungeon scrawling as IWDs, which is what Obsidian promised. And we also know now that game will use pre-rendered (2d) backgrounds that are visually stunning and have BG/BG2 style aesthetics and that game will use isometric view, just like Obsidian promised. But what comes promises of "emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of PST" and "memorable companions and the epic exploration of BG", we probably need to wait for the beta to give judgement how well those promises are realized. So in my opinion, what is worth, we will get just that or even better PE than what we were led to believe.

Did you ask from Ossian Studios about changes, as they are studio that made MoW, so they may know who had supporting responsibility for it.

That is true, at least that sense that you are free to practice you religion even that you don't have legal recognition to do so. That's a valid point, what about the rights of those churches that are prepared to marry gay couples but legally can't. Very good point actually These is no "legality" to it. A church does or does not marry homosexuals based on the churches internal dogma. So there should not then be any problems to force churches to perform weddings for same-sex partners if you give them freedom not to use ceremonies and rituals that their dogma says to be used only for heterosexual weddings, as then they much only do weddings as legal entities and not as religious entities? Or would it be better if churches didn't have right to perform legally binding marriages, so there would be no need for debate if they should or should not perform weddings for some people? PS. This is only hypothetical pondering from my part, as I fully support freedom of religion and churches right to include and exclude people from their ceremonies as they see their beliefs dictate.

Dead of DOMA is good, but I think that there is still long way to go before there is gender neutral marriage laws in every state. It is always interesting in this debate how people fear that churches would be forced to marry same-sex partners, but nobody ever is concerned that some churches are now forbidden to not marry same-sex partners, even though their dogma recognize such and even some cases advocate them.

Do animats have their own mind or do they blindly follow orders of their creators? Also I am interested if one can bind soul energy to steel or are all magic armaments made from weaker metal alloys like bronze?

And we know that they work very well as humans are under constant threat of over population even that they have been in on going war all that time, war where they have suffered great losses, like losing entire star systems full of people and they constantly colonize new star systems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MVnznrOqXVE Interesting take for alcohol advertisement

Correct me if I am wrong, but in my understanding there is no universal good-evil division in PE, but instead each faction have their own view of morality. And only "evil" creatures that you can found from the world are creatures that always attack you and even that is because of that they see you as food, enemy for their race, etc. or they are souls that are bounded on objects (mostly by ancient civilizations) to create guardians for places or things. Meaning that there is no absolute evil creatures (or people), which of course don't mean that there aren't any maniacs, psychopaths or criminals terrorizing people, but they aren't evil in metaphysical sense, but because how they act, and therefore some factions could see their actions justifiable and even good if they are targeted against factions that they oppose or are even in war against. So playing evil (what that ever means, as I don't think there is one universal interpretation for it), should work as well if there is faction which moral code you interpret as evil, but I think that all factions, at least those factions which you can join will see themselves to be the good guys of the world.

You can do much more draw call on consoles than what you can do on pc, because going through drivers and graphic api causes draw calls to be more demanding than consoles more direct access to GPU. Which is also reason why you can in most cases do better looking graphics on consoles than on pc with same computing power. Although DX11, OpenCL, CUDA and Direct Compute have made cap between consoles and PC smaller and they or some new innovation probably will decrease it even more in future.

GUI looks like that is done only for the technical demo. So I would say that it is not UIv2, but UIv0.5 or something like that.

They did show also that dungeon from vs, which looked very nice.