Shadenuat

Diplomacy based character does't need a lot of XP. You can finish Arcanum at level ~30 without hitting anyone yourself with 6-7 companions in your party.

You're making a mistake assuming that "balance and mechanics", these little numbers under the hood, work in some sort of completely separate dimension from other design, like classes and what items they can wear. I never played a party based cRPG where mages in heavy plate behind heavy buffs hacked things away with broadswords and it was fun and balanced.

KNOW YOUR PLACE YOU DUMB INGREDIENTS Mile a way? Come on. And it's more about enemy movement speed than range. And I remember throwing spells a few screens far in ToEE.

Lephys, you're such a sophist it hurts. In isometric party based game, a locked door or a trap is just a small part of strategical challenge of the dungeon or encounter; they are often present and numerous. Imagine you'll have to go through a minigame to disarm every trap in Irenicus dungeon or open every door in Maevar's guild. You'll hate the game, the developers who made it and your keyboard and mouse when you'll be finishing the first three or four of those.

I only know you should't do that with random women on the streets. You mean grappling?

BS. There are fan made modules for NWN which return reagents to their proper place. Developers are just afraid to go there because they know they'll instantly get a load of problems with other parts of their game mechanics (like economics and encounters). What's your problem with range I have no idea. You're seriously pushing my limits man! First it's hammer, now it's shield! I can't compare a force of nature able to move mountains and strip people of their childhood memories to mundane items, give me a break! Because he's a fighter-based subclass? Wearing heavy armor should make you a tank, unless armor in game will be as superficial as in MMO's and it's rating will count in thousands of points. Wizard by his nature also has protective spells (Arcane Veil) which seem to be powerful enough people want to use guns against them. Now combine these two together and yeah, supposedly you should get a perfect tank. Decent magical system should provide as much tactical versatility as you want within realm of the class. ...what?

Dat estoc is so hot. ...oh, right, there's furry woman too. Okay, I guess? Proportions seem to be off. This is a ton more interesting than fire/water planetouched. Does PE even have Planes? Make Godlike look like they were cursed or blessed by gods unique to PE. How would somebody cursed or blessed by Woedica would look like? It would be much more interesting than any genasi.

I was. YES! I finally got an official permission! What stuff exactly? Casting times? Concentration? Reagents? That's interesting, but that just makes me wonder why even allow wizards heavy armour, because a spellcaster who can't throw spells fast enough would be subpar to any other. One thing which wizard could probably do is tank magical or elemental damage. So when a dragon comes for you with it's breathing weapon, wizard leaps forward, shouting Gandalf quotes and absorbs it's breath attack while protecting himself with armor against, I don't know, minions maybe? Then again, a clever wizard will just protect warrior instead and send him forward so... yeah. And there are clerics for that, too. Which, by the way, asks for a question - why would you want a wizard with buffs (in heavy armor and with melee weapon, that is) when you can have a natural - a cleric?

What a surprise for IE games fan. (Did I get sarcasm right this time? I'm not very good at sarcasm, I am practicing). Well, in D&D it's reagents, although they were't implemented in IE. However, there are still things like time and concentration. A spell is something which generally requires verbal and somatic components, as well as time: wizard stands there, waves his hands, shouts magical words, all that while praying noone will hit him with sword while he is doing his stuff. For a wizard acting in melee, that would just look silly (because he will be hit). Which means a melee build should either work on buffs or instantaneous spells. Something like Warlock's eldritch weapons, maybe? Buffs are just passives. Passives are boring. Magic which is instantaneous and uninterruptible means that magic can be used without concentration, focus and challenge. Magic which can be used without those is boring too, because it's not mysterious anymore, but something you can do on a whim. And so on. And I am not okay with melee wizards. What you describe is the worst thing which can happen with class systems. It makes them completely superfluous. Oh, and all the glorious butthurt which comes with classes sharing similar roles, but having just... that... little... difference... in performance... enough to start crusade wars. Luckily, that MMO **** will be as far away from P:E as possible. I hope.

And facepalm emoticon, too. These forums lack facepalm emoticon.

These forums lack a good sarcastic emoticon, sadly. When you base a class around specific strategical points and learning curve (like "low armor", "low melee capability", "high preparation costs", "high long range capability"), making these points optional just takes away challenge and the soul of the class. Call me class purist, if you like. Yeah, just in this situation you are promoting to use hammer for even more bashing than it does already. Instead of building bridges or whatever. Any time you give wizard heavy armor it gets broken. Hence tankomages.

Lockpicking/trap disarming should take one click of effort and time.

Random ideas Osvir-style - Thief using silent takedown to remove enemy scout, so party can avoid ambush or do their own ambush - Thief seeing cones of vision and cones of hearing of enemies so whole party could avoid enemy groups - Thief revealing Fog of War twice as far as any other character - Thief climbing the window or ruined tower to throw party a rope or unlock a door to second entrance otherwise being inaccessible - Thief climbing the ceiling Catwoman style and moving there, where no other party member could move, revealing whole map and traps before proceeding forward into dungeon - Thief being able to eavesdrop or collect rumours - Thief going stealth with a gun and backstabbing, I mean, backshooting enemy mage through arcane veil point blank into oblivion

Thanks, I just switched to other browser (IE), that helped.

Generally NPC's standed there? (I should probably check on that one, not sure) It still was painfully small. I generally prefer solid interfaces which hold up for main theme of the game. If well made, they give a game distinct feel, the learning pattern, can be actually fun to explore, and are actually easier to get into. Total modding of UI to your taste is only fitting MMO's, in my opinion.

The text panel at the center made dialogue feel very solid. It had infinite amount of scrolling space for text and replies, portraits felt natural, NPCs standing at the center of it felt natural, and you did't have to roll your eyes all over the screen to read text in little box there somewhere. It looked important and made game more about "reading". NWN2 had the worst readability ever.

I want to hear what solutions they came up with for that; how is it possible to micromanage a party of characters who's classes all have sorts of active abilities without playing game in permanent "P" mode. Sure. (Because they will provide non-spellcasters with all sorts of abilities, that's just a given concidering what we've heard so far and how it looks like D&D 4).

IE games interface was pretty solid, it could have used a larger bar for spells and speeding up pre-buffing time somehow, but that's it. However, IE was also minimalist when it came to character abitilies. Warriors having one simple attack was only changed in IWD2. Rogue abilities were set in stone. Only spellcasters required a lot of control. In IWD2, it became obvious that IE interface could not support each and every class having load of abilities. To do something as simple as making warrior use power attack, you had to go into special screen, scroll through +1, +2, +3... ...+whatever power attack icons and finally pick one. Same for bard spells. So I'm wondering what they are going to do with it. I REALLY want to see interface implementing unique class features in it naturally instead of souless and bland WoW'esque drag-n-dropable icons. Maybe there would be a large something in the center that would change depending on what class you selected? Like a tome for wizards, or stealth gem for thieves? Maybe some of the abilities will be integrated into the interface organically permanently? I would like to know.

Nothing wrong with keywords, but Obsidian best experience comes from playing with their dialogue trees, so it would be just appropriate to use for successor the same thing that worked in IE games so well. Wasteland 2 is just being Wasteland for people who liked Wasteland. There is no universal truth about how dialogues should be done in cRPG's, and keywords can be just as fun as any other system. Fallout actually had keywords as additional element. Wizardry 8 had keywords as it's basic dialogue system, but supported it with some regular dialogue picks when needed. Morrowind was another game where keywords worked well.

Weapons are just tools. They get dull, they break, they often just not suited for specific combat challenges. They should be replaced to show player's progress in game. Place a few skillpoints in swords, grab a feat, and you have both familiarity and freedom to not bash everything with the same weapon over and over again because game implies you'll get some hidden perk for that.

Why does nobody read words like "personally I think would be more"? Also, it's not DS system, it's your basic 4ed system and it does not explain how buff times will be handled or how will they avoid the long prebuffing which happened always in IE games, which is what most people here are interested in (probably).

Karranthian I can't save or even give a link to pictures you post, cause with r-click they just stretch on screen. Any help?

I don't want somebody to become master of ranged combat by throwing his hammer at people (hah, what an irony that in D&D there are actually some famous examples of that). Classes are not realistic. They never were or will be. Any human being can change it's "class" given time and effort. Don't mix verisimilitude into something which exists as a purely game mechanic tool. Classes are there to provide you with combat role, to ask what you're good at, what you will suck at, and what companions you'll have to take and deal with to pass through the game (in short, they are strategical "toy').

I generally don't like compromise, at any level of life. It's usually a decision which leads to dissatisfaction of both parties. So if Obsidian decided to go for class system, I would like it to be class system in all of it's oldschool glory; a restrictive system, with high value and set role for each class; a system where you have to deal with group of specialists, make tough decisions and take risks. If they feel that class system can hamper roleplaying or is too restrictive for their taste, then it's better to just use a good skill-based system. Otherwise I want my frail pathetic 4 HP mages whom I have to nurture and feed xp from silver spoon, until I master the class to the point of it becoming a truly unique one. And in my head, that does not include neither swords nor DPS zap-wands.

OH NO SHREK PLEASE N---