Jarmo

Tried to play Arcanum (for the first time) sometime last year. Saw how horrible the graphics are, gave up in agony. Steeled myself a few weeks later. Got to the first village, gave up. Let it stew for awhile, tried again, gave up on the crash site after 20 minutes of playing. Watched an Avellone Arcanum video, decided to try yet again. Finished the game, loved it, finished it again with another character (full mage). Made a tech character and played halfway through with that, but then didn't. It's completely playable and awesome, but the initial awfulness barrier is a cold dark wall of ice. Couple of notable things. - The opening areas look just bad, the big city and a lot of other areas are much prettier. - Trying to play on realtime setting makes your brain bleed. Turn based combat is ok. - Don't go tech, go magic.

Or does it also govern actual healing? As in, a real strong guy can wrap the bandages real tight!

Well yeah, "might" could be changed to "Soul" or "Funk" and the damage would derive from that, or damage could come from charisma. But I can't see them doing a 180 on the no dump stats rule.

The same. And it pretty much is set in stone. And I guess it's time to move on. My opinion mirrored. I'd pick relatability but understand how functional game also has it's appeal.

I don't think resolve would need any other benefits, it'll be super important for frontliners as is. Seems a heavy armor fighter with high might and constitution but low resolve, would be butchered by lightly armoured dextrous combatant with faster attacks. Fast attacks connecting and breaking the slower moves of the heavier fighter.

My take. The last couple of hours were an endless horrible grind and I hated every moment, I'm never going to replay BG1 (because of the ending). Starting at what point? The final fight in the temple? Before that? What was that place you entered into the.. what was that now. From thieves guild into the maze system thing?

My take. The last couple of hours were an endless horrible grind and I hated every moment, I'm never going to replay BG1 (because of the ending).

There's basically two directions to approach the difficulty/challenge/build of combat. One is from computer games direction and the other is from tabletop roleplaying direction. Neither is inherently wrong approach. In computer games, there's a boss and when you fight him you find out he has a special attack of rushing you fast as a lightning and then devouring you. You must dodge or block or somehow stop him. But when it's all of a sudden and you're unprepared, you'll likely fail. But you can also have superior reflexes or just luck and be successful on the first attempt. If you fail you retry until successful. In roleplaying tradition, if a GM puts in an unavoidable combat situation where the party has a very, very slim chance to come out alive from, he's a bit of an arse. It's like putting you up against a werewolf and not providing any hints towards you not actually being able to harm one without silver weapons (assuming that's not common knowledge), maybe it's not silver but cardboard weapons in this universe. Computer roleplaying games can lean on one direction or another and it's not wrong as such.

As such yeah, and one of the staples of CRPGs that's annoying me more and more. Shadowrun returns was really bad about this. Then again, there's the: "Hey, I made a tidy profit on the 76 million gp's worth of goods you hauled here! I'm now one of the biggest merchants in the coast and decided to improve my wares accordingly."

Limited gold can work, as long as there's some merchants with practically unlimited amounts.* And as long as there's a barter system and the most annoying faults possible are avoided. I just hate it when there's a merchant with an ivory sword worth 5000 gp to sell, I have a 5 sets of knightly armors for which he's willing to pay 1000 gp's per set. But he has only 500 gp's of gold so he can't buy a single one, while I have 2000gp's so I can't buy his sword either. Making the trade is impossible because of advanced realism. * because if I have items that are highly priced and therefore in demand, there neeeeeeds to be a way to sell them. Maybe the payment is delayed or whatever.

I think you're making a strong point here. Not only it is a sign a dungeon is too long, it's a sign the devs realized the dungeon is too long. I make an exception to the dungeon length where the length is meaningful, like in the Endless.. paths.. deeps? Or whatever, where you've stumbled into something humongous, like the underdark. Lot's of fighting in a strange place, and then you stumble into a refuge, a village of some silly gnomes or something. Works for me. But it doesn't work if every second mages tower is big as hell and has some shopkeeper that decided it's an awesome idea to set up a store right next to a lair of some hellspawn beasts.

I'll clarify (or maybe further muddy up) my previous post about game length. I don't dislike long games as such, and it's not like I have any trouble wasting 100+ hours in Total War, Skyrim or New Vegas. It's more to do with what kind of drudgery the going is and how informed I am of the length of time spent. Like, if you're playing and FPS and there's a group of enemies to deal with. And they just keep on coming, like if you spend 25 minutes in the same fight just shooting the mooks and have no idea if it's going to last for another hour. That's when the game starts to annoy and even if the total playing time is only 5 hours I'll be burned out before it's over.

a) In some way yes. Most likely in contrast to general opinion here, I've never played a game I felt was too short. As such, some like Dreamfall which simply ended unfinished with a.. ummm.. that's it, buy the next in the series if I ever get around to make one.. But proper games no, the length of Shadowrun returns was fine for me. Unlike BG1, where it was just fighting in endless mazes for forever hoping I'd finally reach the damn ending. Usually I get real frustrated in dungeons when I see I didn't reach the boss yet and there's at least another level to drudge. Bazillion short tasks are super fine though. b) In some other ways yes. Especially when there are real damn hard fights where you pretty much have to memorize what's going to happen, like... when you get that boss down, another will rush in and cast death on you and if you haven't prepared yourself beforehand that's it. Or when the difficulty is such that every street thugh is more skilled and faster and stronger than you and has more hit points than the whole party combined. Not so much if it's difficult but fair. But it still might start to feel more like work than fun. c) Mostly this. I'm not fondly remembering times when I had to draw area maps on paper, wall section by wall section, simply to avoid getting hopelessly lost, or write down stuff that's in the quest journal in these days. Or any other busywork that you just have to do, just because.

I've now watched a bit over 5 minutes of the first one and can testify it's real good stuff!

That rather happens when you force your ethics on others. Guess the moral is you should think twice about what's ethical and what's not before starting to burn people. Then again, this stance can lead to passiveness in front of real evil, which is also a bad thing.

One annoying thing all of the strange companions had in common? Let's put it like this: A hero, a floating skull, a demonic floating mass of tentacles and an ancient bear god walked into a bar... and nobody gave a damn. Sometimes there's an encounter or two based around people trying to burn a drow or just beat up a thiefling, but after you're through with that, it's business as usual no matter who you have around. You have the common enemy of all mankind with you? Meh, whatever.

I'm slightly optimistic myself. Sure, I don't have the hand-eye-coordination I used to and my patience and willingness to effort is way thinner than before. But I have, in the past few years played Torment and Arcanum for the first time and enjoyed the experience. Then again, Arcanum did take several efforts to get into, I've tried twice to get into new Jagged Alliance but gave up, also twice the older JA2 and gave up on that as well. I just give up. And the cracking of puzzles and such, heck I even googled up the answer for a couple of Skyrim pillar rotations. I just don't have the patience to think for more than a minute, or in skyrims case, spend time seeking the clue. Also, just bought Lords of Midnight from GOG. I played it a bit in the last century, didn't win then though. I realize I'd need to mark up armies in paper and draw the moves if I want to win... and... hell.

That's where evil and good start to get interesting, chaotic vs lawful as well. My take is, if the conquistadors perceived the aztec culture as evil, their lawful good course was clear. Slay as many as necessary, just crush the evil and force them into the arms of christendom. Death of a million is peanuts compared to the whole races spiritual salvation. If the conquistadors resorted to treachery to reach their goals, blackmail and murder, stuff they know is basically wrong. The end still justifies the means, they're still good, just not lawful good. If the conquistadors did it all mainly to get filthy rich by looting gold and everything else was just an excuse, then they were evil. Or it could be some middle ground in the neutrals. Maybe the causes were pure, but not quite enough if there wasn't a golden incentive. The Aztecs then? So they captured a whole bunch of people, ripped hearts out in sacrifice to some gods? If they did it just for the giggles, or out of boredom, they were some kinds of psychotic evil monsters. But if they truly believed it's the good and proper thing to do, gods need to be satisfied or the whole world ends!! Sucks for the prisoners, but hey, a bunch of neighbors vs the end of the world? Could be anywhere from lawful good to chaotic good to chaotic evil. Depends.

Not specifically, to my knowledge. But I'd be super million surprised if there weren't any. Also I'd expect rare epic stuff to look different, but not in an epic thundering three meters long two meters wide cutlass of doooom kind of way.

Probably a human fighter. Rogue and Wizard are also possible choices, depending on stuff we're yet to find out. (can I make how effective spellsword battlemage, how fightery rogue can you make) Other races and the exotic classes are for potential replays. The first time I play, I'll be the nice hero, up front and center.

Or your LIGHTNING! *villainous cackle* BTW, fully armored knight is grounded. Might get burns, but much less vulnerable to electrical attacks than someone wearing leather or something..

It's not being considered.

From the article in Woldan's post: Oooo yeah, I want the one in front. That's one manly gun! Make mine double barrel though, and I'd like the option to use shotgun type grapeshot. Anyway, I'd still assume, in this case a paper target would be something more like 1x1,5 m with a man drawn on it. Even hitting one like that reliably would be something to be real happy with. I guess I'll walk away with the notion amusettes were real damn surprisingly accurate, but go no further in the specifics.

Even considering the barrel length, that is so unbelievable I actually can't believe it. Unless the sources mean, you can hit an A4 paper on an extremely lucky shot instead of being able to do it reliably. I mean, that's the kind of accuracy you'd be happy to get on a WW2 antitank rifle, and those were rifled long barrel things. Not saying it's not true though, just that I'm not a believer on first hearing.

The obvious reason would be the cost. Assuming of course that a skilled magician charges more than a skilled weaponsmith, which might not be the case. Anyway. Some thoughts pop up. Alchemy would be the more logical companion to firearms than "plain" magic. Aven assuming magic, it'd work on the same principle as magic arrows. The gun takes care of propelling the whatever magical bullet you happen to have. Maybe it's an explosive shell, or one that superheats. Maybe it's a kind of a shotgun shell filled with fluff that puffs out an acid poison cloud or a cone of flames. Or maybe the wand of light attached into the gun would act as a laser pointer of sorts? :D Some sort of special permanent grease spell to make sure the barrel is frictionless?