Darkpriest

Welcome to game development! And I mean that with a heavy dose of empathy. It's hella frustrating for developers too. I can only hope, that by the time of the final release I will be able to enjoy the game

"That song" as in this one? and while at the topic of Top Gun:

Well for me the current game is unplayable. It just crashes as soon as I am done with character creation and start the game with the first speech... First version was playable with the exception of some crashes on very large areas, like the Highpool, or that town to the north. Now I can't even start the game...

it's funny, since US mannens cry at the sight of woman's nipple while EU mannens cry when something is brutal... Fortunately I live in a country that does not give a damn for any of these cries

I was browsing the website from time to time to check on some updates. I was rather wondering if anyone was closely following the development of that game and is a veteran of previous Age of Wonders titles. But since you've pre-ordered I can only assume you are happy with what will be provided (possible bugs factor excluded) From what I understood, it's 6 classes and 6 races, so there is 36 possible combinations, right? Or is it that class is locked onto the race?

No romances is fine for me. I've never put much attention to it and was rather annoyed by it in the most recent Bioware productions (DA2 / ME3 - hump anything mentality) I'd rather have more fleshed out side stories and believable motivations for joining forces, other than "hey, you helped me in the brawl in some random tavern. So you are going after god killing abomination. May I join you for the kicks of it?" Writing a good romance is a material for a whole book. Actually how many WELL WRITTEN romances you have in literature and let alone in other media, which are way more time/resource constrained? Sure I can have some random hot babe for rubbing the protagonist in some espionage action story, but I would hardly called that a romance, and even that should be slightly believable. The companions that will join you will be "paragorns / common type" of their race and culture. First, how hard would it be to break through some cultural differences, not to mention even bigger topic of racial differences and "chemistry" The game probably will be better without romances, and surely much better than the game with bad romances

This is my main concern with summoning. Tossing an additional ally onto the battlefield, even if all it's doing is soaking up attacks, is immensely valuable. perhaps, there is some resource system that could manage that, for example the more summons you throw the less other spellcasting you can do, so you can either get more meatshields or toss more powerful and crowd controlling spells. I'd rather have my summoning abilities limited by resource management and not arbitrary number of summons / spell duration cap. It really annoys me in all sorts of games, that even when you reach super high levels of power, killing groups of enemies with a single lift of a finger, you cannot contest with in summoning contest with some low level dungeon random encounter caster.... It mostly makes summons useless in games. For example NWN series was really bad in that regard when it comes to summons (as well as shape shifting). Plz, when designing things like shapeshifts / summons, make sure that the player should be limited only by his resource management. be it relevant corpses/ingridients/spell components/power or focus sustain

Is anyone still following this game? It is almost ready. Now available to pre-purchase on Steam. Any thoughts from the people following the game?

But if you would not hit the target, the skill check would not proc right? and you could manually dodge spells, arrows etc, right? so it was some kind of an odd hybrid, but still I'd say it was more player driven than character skill driven combat.

Combat was more player skill driven (dodging, aiming, etc), and the ability to join every guild ( IIRC and also every house?), and the learning by doing mechanics which led to things like spam jump, sprint, etc.

Playing Skyrim, starting to appreciate the game for what its designed to do, although I still feel the story telling and NPCs simply suck. If you max out sneak and archery, the game is EZ mode. I can just stand in shadows with occasional roll to another spot if too many things are coming in my direction and slowly kill any enemy. I think I killed my first masked guy (the liches with unique masks) at level 11-13 and kited to death a blood dragon, not to mention killing a master vampire and gargoyles on lvl 7. The same thing bothered me in F:NV. if I had any rifle with a scope, I could clear all areas safely. I prefer RPGs being more about my character build and the characters skill in given field, instead of a twich game play of action games and shooters. On the other hand I liked the game design in Deus Ex:HR, but that was not an RPG. It was an action game with a relatively good story. This thing bothers me a lot. I never liked Morrowind because of that, I also disliked the way ME2 moved the series into more shooter genre, and I would say that even Alpha Protocol was a bit meh in that regard. If the combat checks are player skill checks instead of character skill checks other than tactics, than i tend to mvoe the game more into action gaming, which if done good is still fun, but I'd rather have character skill checks in cRPGs over player's reflexes check.

Somewhere between Oblivion and DA2.... hard to decide. If it comes to non high budget titles, i'd say Arcanum, due to awful AWFUL combat mechanics. While the game had some really cool ideas and features, that one thing just made it unplayable for me. There are some games I did not even touch due to bad opinions, hence there are probably even worse games, but I did not play them (fortunately)

IIRC you took the hardest guy to start with. Hacking is usually useful, but you need to keep in mind that higher level PSI skills cost A TON of skill points...

3+2 i think. Can't recall now

@up, best screenshot ever, a dunce in a labcoat with a shotgun... :D

Magic hammer? But if it was magic, why would the head need to be so massive? If magic is making the hammer lighter then that undoes the entire purpose of having the head that large in the first place (i.e. so the it will be heavier and strike with more force). If magical force is what is creating the impact (sending out a shock wave or whatever) then the size of the head almost doesn't matter and it would be more practical to make a hammer with a small head, since it would do every bit as much damage yet be much more portable. Edit: Wait, I think I just answered my own question. The hammer is magical and the size of the hammer head is simply for show. Homeslice is obviously trying to compensate for a lack of size somewhere else. Perhaps the magic is about ability to give wielders the feeling of carrying a lighten than feather weapon? yet in the hands of non-magically bound owner it's heavy as ****...

I'd love to play Darkensang a bit more, but the controls, especially camera control... just ughh...

All settings, as in also the ones that are not in the 4e?

@Monte Well my approach would be: 1) Keep stats 2) Keep alignments 3) Keep classes and races 4) CONSULT anything that would potentially affect the established lore - so this would be only addition to your points. If someone would like to pull off another demi-god being, spawn of dead god like BG series, they better be consulting this

yup, feels like a return to the BG saga

I have a couple memorable ones: First Dawn of War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJU5kUj6Puo Warhammer: Mark of Chaos (if only game was of the same quality back then ) And one of the most memorable WC3 cinematics - shame that WoW butchered that franchise for me:

Considering that NWN was easier to play through than BG I actually believe that. Wasn't NWN 3.0 and 3.5 ed? while BG was 2nd ed?

I'd say it all comes down to mismanagement of the D&D trademark/franchise in the last couple of years. Then some larger publishers decided to try out new own IPs in RPG department and they worked out well, bringing more money to the IP owners. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a D&D based game because there is so many opportunities given the lore of that setting, but then again, who would try to touch it now?

There was also Temple of Honk (goose) in the 9th release

I assumed that if formations would be implemented, it could have been improved upon, by adding custom formations in a 9 point grid 123 456 789 The skills could still be useful, as taunt would affect for example all sides of the grid, etc. The grid system has its pros and cons, same as free movement system. Grid allows for more tactical placement, while free movement added more angles of engagement, but it had some issues as well, especially in M&M6-9 it was making ranged combat superior by simple backpedaling. I am on the fence here, free movement allows for things like flight and larger angles of engagement, but grid allows for more tactical challenges. Perhaps going grid is better, but then I'd like to see farther distances of initiation and some more balance tweaks to ranged combat when compared to the current iteration. The power balance of spells in M&M 6 surprised me. first of all mana potions are scarce and not so potent. 2nd, their dmg scales by number of dice rolls per ability points and other various effects depending on mastery level. I also liked the different initiative values based on speed and recovery. so for example some of your characters would have two or even three moves while enemy would have one, and that also was going other way around. As for day/night, etc. Yeah, perhaps some might seem like a chore, but it was also adding some "living world" feeling to it. In grid based it seems to be redundant though. The light types and spells enhancing dark vision should apply to night though. On the magic types, well the only real thing I missed was a cleric subtype as the only class with access to GM light magic was a paladin, but his other skill sets didn't really allow for a good caster build. Adding perhaps one more archetype for each race would help that, and add some more GM combinations as some weapons hardly could be used to their full potential (for example two handed swords?)