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Rink

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Posts posted by Rink

  1. It's not the same bug, but when your teammates are sneaking and you are not in pause-mode while talking to an NPC then the sneaking guys will slowly go invisible even when they are standing in clear view of NPCs. If you exit the dialogue box now and press pause, you can pickpocket everyone and plunder every container as long as you are fast enough.

  2. I am someone who almost wasn't able to play past the haunted mansion in vampire:bloodlines. Not only because I almost got a heart-attack after only approaching the house (when the lights shatter). Luckily such effects are harder to do with party-based isometric settings and there seems to be some differences in what people here understand about horror (largely because for me scaryness and goryness are very different. Fallout had a lot of brutality, but never really made you feel scared for example).

     

    I don't mind brutality in some quests like the skinner-quest in bg2 or some quests or dungeons where the athmosphere (story/music) makes me feel on edge, but I also don't like it when every place makes me feel uncomfortable. It should be a good mix and not become alone in the dark/amnesia from "scaryness" and not diablo from goryness/splatter.

    • Like 1
  3. I think if mages could produce the currency of the game, then the "king" would firstly punish the mages and try to stop them and secondly introduce some security against that and have other mages cast very special spells on the currency (visual effects on the coins for example) so the currency made by the king differs from the currency that other mages are able to produce. If the king doesn't do that then the currency will not work in the way it is supposed to (giving him the power to buy soldiers, goods and labour without having to really do anything himself). Is exactly what we do today with our currency: we try to make them in a way that it cannot be copied by others.

     

    I like low-magic-fantasy because then you really do not have many of the problems we are discussing here. Nevertheless it is true that magic would affect economy if there is enough of it around and that most fantasy-games ignore this aspect. I like magic to be quite rare and low level spells to be more "expensive" than other solutions. So while you CAN use a mage to make fire, it should be easier to take wood or coal and generate heat this way, because spells are limited in uses per day, magic users are not easy to find and are more expensive than miners that get coal. But I don't mind some traveling mages going from village to village solving problems with magic like making it rain, animating scarecrows and the like. That surely would be a good business.

  4. The game is going to be moddable, right?

     

    Afaik there will be no open mod-tools for the public. Probably because they want to make an addon and a next game themselves.

    But maybe that changes later if the game has enough popularity and they do not fear our competition (for example if they develop the next game with better graphics and all and want to keep us playing the first game until it comes out ;)).

     

    It really is funny how many here do not see what the pro-romancers mean with romance (hint: it isn't just sex) and keep standing on that point until the bitter end. This topic wouldn't be alive if there weren't so many people that would "love" to see romance in the game. It would be nice, if they made "semi-romances" like in P:T and let the other guys have the possibilty to break the NPCs heart and smash the feelings of the NPC in their face and I am sure both sides in this topic will be happy. :)

  5. Hard choice, if I know something about the game I usually take a class that makes sense with companions and their classes.

     

    I usually go for the rogue if I know nothing about the NPCs/game or if I expect there to be enough with different classes in the game, now we will not have that many NPCs in the game and it is often useless to have two rogues in the party. So it will depend on how good the NPC rogue is (how appealing he/she is to me) and when he is introduced to the game (if it is late in the game, I usually also play rogue).

     

    Second choice is usually a healer, so cleric, but since healing magic is rarely found in the game, I am not sure if this class will be my cup of tea. Have to wait and see.

     

    Third choice will be the Ranger.

     

    But I will have to wait and see before I can decide.

  6. I usually reload as well, why would I have a partymember in my party and just let him die. If I don't like a partymember, I usually don't take him with me or send him away. The only time I didn^t reload was in BG1, where u could have some NPCs only toegether with others. So one night Jaheira ran into lots of spiders, alone and without any armor on, on accident of course.... Didn't really help, in BG2 she was alive again and Khalid was dead, maybe that is only fair.

     

    Why would they make quests about the death of NPCs? I would try them all and then reload and have the NPCs alive and I think that is exactly how most of the players would play that (if they do that at all). I think they would rather make quests that only appear when you have 2 NPCs together in the party than deadquests if they really have more ressources for more party-based-quests.

  7. I like environments that have variability in them and vegetation/plants, so heterogenous forests are my favorite.

    I don't like the environments that are plain and are seen very often in rpgs in exactly the same matter, so snow, ice or sand as far the eye can see and nothing for the eyes to enjoy, no nature, no secrets or dangers that you cannot see beforehand.

     

    I agree with Monte Carlo that tunnels definately should be in the vote. I would have chosen it as "I don't like it"-option, because that is the only thing I have seen so much in games that i like it even less than flat, samecolored, vegetationsless backgrounds. Unless they are very variable and innovative of course.

  8. No. I think this topic is quite amusing :p

     

    I don't care if others now reduce the character to the only thing that really isn't classicly estetic on this guy (the hair) and bash him because of that. I like the idea of the character and I don't really mind how he looks and I am sure the looks fits Fortons character or history.

    I would like it, if other NPCs / random people like kids in cities would pick on him for his hair and clothes and I would even more love it, if Forton had a badass answer to them and that they should not judge the book by its cover. Actually I am just waiting for someone of the development staff to do that in here :p :D

    • Like 1
  9. Like the art, thanks for sharing!

     

    Like that better than the concept art and more detail makes her a lot more interesting, because the brain starts to work and make up stories of her past, present and future.

     

    And I am sorry but I have to say that now (even though it is nothing about the art here)... Cadegund..... brrrrr... that name still sends the bad kind of shivers down my spine, it reminds me too much of old german names that today are associated with very hairy and manly women like Kunigunde or Brunhilde, but then again the ending -gund means "fight" in old german, so probably my associations are exactly what this name should make me feel, I just hope it is not another man in a females body just because some writers do not know how to write women in fighting scenarios :D

    • Like 1
  10. Never used things that were "branded" as drugs in computergames, no skooma, no pills in fallout universe and I guess I wouldn't do it in P:E as well. Probably because I always feared something that is labeled drugs to have very high and negative sideeffects I didn't want to risk (and if it only does affect your combat-abilities, it is even more useless as you can always just reload without negative consequences :D).

    But then again you do not have to "brand" something to be a drug anyway, you can call it medication and you don't have to make it illegal in the game (as there will be no cars anyway :D If something is illegal, I guess it should have good reasons that fit in the scenario for that).

  11. I agree that cities should have people in them. But I also like it, if those people that have nothing of relevance to say are named accordingly like in BG. So you do not have to run after guys that run around in the city and have nothing to say to you anyway.

    I don't think that is going to be a problem to be "animated", since it wasn't a problem 10 years ago.

     

    Abandoned city in the jungle: sure! Doesn't have to be one of the two big cities in the game though :p

    • Like 1
  12. I agree that arachnophobia is one of the most common phobias around. But I don't know if there are many with that problem here, bg1 and bg2 had "big" (Well on the screen they are still tiny) spiders in them and I don't remember any mod that took them away. I know people that have phobias from snakes, rats, mice, dogs - very common too, flies and even frogs, mostly only one of those animals, so I guess if they make something hardcoded for one phobia, then other may want something against their phobia as well.

    It is okay if there is an easy way to implement a mod to change the looks of some opponents (so for example you could change a number in an ini file and all spiders would look like bears instead of spiders).

     

    By the way: one of the treatments against phobias is exposure therapy. Means: if you have fear of spiders, you will have to be around them until your brain accepts that they are not so scary after all. To avoid them altogether (what makes sense if you have such a fear) usually makes fear even bigger. Just a hint :)

  13. Like others have said: Bg2 had a lot of locations that are not shown on worldmap, if you just look at the number of maps then imho BG2 was bigger in terms of different locations than BG1, just that more locations were "children" of other locations (so you could only access them from other area) or main plot locations that you couldn't return to once you completed them. I liked BG2-style a bit better after a while, because it does reward you more for exploring and the world felt less empty than having all that locations where nothing was going on and only few sub-locations could be explored.

     

    I would like the world to be big, but I measure that more in terms of hours of captivating gameplay instead of number of locations. What I do want to see is variability of locations, especially if the dungeons will be plentyful as I fear them to be. I don't really like dungeons too much, I like to breathe fresh air while adventuring, it is okay if they do not appear all the time though and if they are made in a way that makes them appealing through variability. Skyrim had some nice locations in dungeons but many did look very boring and gave me the "not again" feeling. But okay, that was of course even worse because the opponent-types were very limited and no tactics needed to beat them (how many enemy-types are there in that game? 3? :D). I rather have a bit more variabilty and a world filled with quests and wonder instead of the same dungeons all the time.

  14. I like the way fallout new vegas handled it with reputation for specific locations depending on your actions.

    I am not sure if karma systems prevent people from killing everything though, if they aren't somehow connected to the main plot (like villages and citires helping you at the end of the story depending on karma/reputation). If it is possible, then people will just make the quests and kill everyone after all quests are done for the loot. I am not saying they shouldn't be able to. I am just saying karma/reputationsystems do have to have some consequences till the end of the game.

  15. I don't think I have seen all information about the story yet that some of you may have read. But with a soul-centred setting and P:Ts story in my memory I would think that you are correct with your expectation of that your soul/part of your soul gets stolen/lost and your body still lives and you want to get it back and then later realise that not being affected by things other people with souls are also gives you other unique roles to play in the history of the world (well the usual saving the civilisation/world stuff).

  16. Haven't read every post here. But like many here I think New Game + makes sense in games where there is no difficulty selection and thus you are able to play the game later with different difficulty. Some games make it easier (import character with all his stuff), some make it harder (harder bosses, no items or stuff imported) and usually those games do not offer any other character you can play with anyway, so replayability would be low otherwise.

     

    In P:E we have different difficulty levels AND we can just make a different character that would play differently. Plus there will be expansions where you probably can import you characters (so there has to be level-cap in main game, what makes game+ to develop your character useless).

    If you make a game + where you can also take your items, then some quests may break if those items can be questrelated or mainquest related.

     

    That's why I think game+ isn't needed, an import of a character from different savegame of course is ok, but with level-cap still active to avoid ruining expansion and without items to avoid problems with them in quests and main quests and the testing for that.

  17. I think walking around murdering babies and puppies is less evil and more "sick", so someone with huge mental problems. I don't think such a guy would be a good villain at all.

     

    I like it when in games you get to know the villain during the game. So in the beginning maybe there is a problem you run after rather than a villain and if there is a villain it is good in the beginning if you just see him as evil until you have more information. But then during the game you should get to know more about the villain, his character, his motivations, maybe because you meet him, maybe because you follow him and maybe in the end you yourself are the villain that killed all his family, friends and race.

    It may be classic and boring, but it beats the villain being just plain evil, sociopathic and egocentric or mentally disabled/crazy by miles. I rather have more grey than just black and white.

     

    about game of thrones: I agree with the OP. while in some books some persons may be vey egocentric from one characters view it usually gets different in other books. Some villains may be "evil", but they have clear motivation and drive and that is done quite well, I think. I also like how you have to change your view of them when you see things from their perspective and understand their motivation more clearly.

  18. When discussing realism, this things are important to me:

     

    1. Consistency: I also think that realism comes from the world you create. So the world should be explained early on and this rules should be used consistently.

    2. Balancing: For the gameplay to be balanced, many things have to be weighted unrealisticly (so weapon-types are comparable in damage, all weapontypes you can specialise in should be found in the gameworld - so not like bastard swords in Baldurs Gate 1 :p, every armortype has its part to play instead of one type being clearly overpowered etc).

    3. Middle ages lore versus fantasy lore: well fantasy did take a lot of stuff from the middle-ages when it was created. But fantasy now has a ruleset of his own that most players want to see in a fantasy game. I think for size of weapons and all there will have to be a comprimise between fantasy coolness and middle-aged realism. It would be strange for everyone to have very short swords just because in our middle-ages ressources where hard to find, swords were very heavy, and people were a bit shorter and didn't have lots of muscles because of food scarceness etc., especially if all this things aren't the case in the setting (see point 1). On the other hand it also would be strange if all weapons were huge and even our small framed mage can wield them like a piece of plastic.

    It is easy to use the ruleset we already know for basic things. So having axes not only for chopping wood but also for our dwarfs to chop enemies and stuff like that. We all know many fantasygames already and I think it is easier to explain a world starting with a lot of this knowledge than to create something completely new and having to explain everything to the players. Create new things that are additional to the setting is better than changing the understanding of things we already know. For example someone said some posts ago, that in game of thrones the clothing was like some of them never saw winter: well they didn't, because the last summer went on for about 16 years. So the author took something we knew (summer as a season of the year) and turned it to something differently (heating period over several years) and that seems to confuse some people and made them think the setting world does not work consistently (while it totally makes sense in this aspect).

    4. "real" realism: I think nobody wants it, we don't want to have to eat all the time, go to the toilet, we don't want random sickness that we cannot control or heal in any way, we don't want accidental death, we don't always want to have friendly fire (don't mind that for magic area spells though), we don't want to play a game that is as boring as our every day life, we don't want to play a game where the things you decide do not matter for the world around you. Everyone in this topic when talking about "yes I want realism" has his own idea of what he wants, but it are always only some aspects of reality he/she wants to see in the game and never complete realism. So I think this people should clarify what aspects of realism they want to see and why and maybe make their own topic if it makes sense (just like some did for weapons and armor and stuff like that).

    • Like 1
  19. The problem with Irenicus' dungeon (and all starting dungeon's for that matter) is replayability. The dungeon is interesting the first time, but after a couple of times just becomes repetitive.

     

    But isn't that the same to all dungeons that are linear? I mean not only the starting dungeons are linear, there are also a lot of other linear dungeons in many RPGs. Of course if you start a lot of games and never finish them the starting dungeons are played a lot more than others, that I would understand, but why would people only play the first two acts and then start over without finishing the game so often that they get sick of those starting parts?

  20. Yea, write me in PM what they think of people here please :) (they usually don't know Switzerland and think about Sweden with blond girls - that is better since the bank scandals though :D)

     

    Yes, epic fantasy is often based on an objective view of moral relativism, viewed through the eyes of a Sociology junior.

     

    I prefer this to the view of black and white/good and evil with nothing in between :) Especially if a game wants to be "well written" like P:E seems to be.

    I think there are a lot of fantasy RPGs where there is just black and white and villains are just sadistic, egocentric maniacs without more depth to them. There are tons of RPGs were I made genocide after genocide to some clearly intelligent "animal"-races just because they were bad and colored red to start with so had to be killed. For me that just isn't fun. But maybe I am getting old and weak... :D

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