LordCrash

Well Lanyon has all but said exactly that. He's criticised changes from the only IE games, waxed lyrical about how amazing BG2 was and used the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" at least once. yeah, with nobody I actually meant just myself, I admit it...

Actually, I think for romances to be realistically represented in these sort of games this is an important factor. Perhaps one of the things I dislike about romances in so many CRPGs is that you only have the option of initiating a romance with one of the romancable NPCs, and that so long as you select the right dialogue options they will reciprocate. Meanwhile, in the real world, I've been attracted to lots of people who never felt the same way towards me and vice versa. In fact if a romance system is going to represent real life relationships, at the start of each game a random, hidden roll should be made determining which NPCs can be attracted to the main character, what sort of approach they find attractive and what sort of relationship they are looking for. Your female Watcher fancies Aloth? Too bad, the random roll determined him to be gay this time round. You want a deep committed relationship with Eder? Too bad, he's just looking for something casual. While I find the basic idea behind that interesting I have serveral issues with this suggestion. First, from a purely technical perspetive, this would require a massive amount of additional writing and scripting, building a whole range of different combinations that might occur due to the randomness of the system. It's highly unlikely that any developer will ever be able to deliver on such a promise in the context of a CRPG. Second, from a narrative perspective, randomness bears a lot of risks, first and foremost the risk of a broken consistency or lacking writing by design. It's almost impossibe to both deliver well developed and written characters and randomized character traits. It's actually the opposite approach to character development. What I agree upon is the much too big focus on player agency in romantic elements. In most games which include something like that the whole course of relationship seems to be decided by the player. While I understand it from a design perspective (especially in an RPG) that you might want to give players as many agency as possible this bears the risk that it leads to a very one-sided and even immersion-breaking narrative. It's the typical RPG (and general video game) trope that the whole world depends on the character and obviously nobody can't live without the PC or decide stuff on their own. It's really hard to make that right since every compromise might disappoint somebody, either the people who feel that they had too little influence and that the agency was ripped from them or the people who feel that their PC is the center of a superficial, unbelievable narrative in which they can't be immersed. I don't know any golden path here but my personal suggestion would indeed be a compromise that includes a wide variety of different elements, some including short agency and short satisfaction (why not just a possible quicky at the campfire?), some including long time agency (more in the line of the typcial romance dominated by the PC), some including elements in which the PC can only react, some including elements (like relationships between NPCs) that the PC has no influence upon at all. RPGs need a new and more mature way of included emotional and personal elements for creating meaningful relationships that go beyond and break the limitations of the typcial "Bioware romances". Randomness isn't the solution imo since it doesn't promise more depth and better writing or a higher satisfaction for and emotional engagement by the player. A new approach to this topic needs to be based on a broader vision for possible human interaction on an emotional level and it should include a bigger variety in both form and method to cover the issue.

This might be an unpopular opinion but the reduction to five party members could just mean that Obsidian is trying to bring down the complexity of encounters, making them easier to create. The less dynamic elements involved, the less hassle. It might be that the party reduction doesn't really offer better gameplay but just less work for Obsidian. This way they had to create less enemies and less tactical depth. Maybe they learnt during the development of Tyranny that a smaller party results in easier and faster encounter design, shortening development and reducing the necessary workload. With the inclusion of multi-classes and sub-classes and the rise of completely that will follow that inclusion they very likely looked for ways to reduce the complexity again in order to make the game more manageable and less bloated. Reducing the complexity again by reducing the party member might a be a prime motive for the designers from their point of view, making their life easier. From a gamer perspective who loves the tactical depth of CRPGs and how loves the flexibility for both gameplay and narrative options a big party delivers this is a frightening and sad perspective, to be honest. I'd rather stay with traditional classes (maybe sub-classes included) and 6 party members than with multi-classes and only 5 party members - a combination of both elements seems to be impossible for Obsidian to deliver upon.

I really get and share your cirticism. While PoE is by its very nature a deep tactical game many of its systems are imo overloaded and needlessly obtuse. I miss the good old simple dice rolls of D&D.

Yeah, the Win10 store would only make sense if they ever made an Xbox version - which will likely never happen.

Nobody said that they should copy the old games wholesale. The problem is that they didn't exactly copy the good elements and that the newly added stuff didn't really hold up to the old stuff either. PoE copied way more elements from IWD and PS:T than from BG2 and while you seem to like that, I don't. I think PoE, while still being enjoyable, indeed ended up vastly inferior to BG2 in almost every possible way, including both gameplay/combat and the narrative/companions/topic. And with the way PoE turned out to be I doubt PoE2 will become much better. After all, Obsidian hasn't proven to me at all that they could improve on the old formula. If anything PoE is more out of touch and obtuse than the games of old and especially BG2 - and I'd hardly call that a good addition or a good way to move forward. So I don't see why I should have trust in Obsidian that the reduction to five party members will in any way benefit the game. But well, we'll see. It's not like they will change that anyway. Alia iacta sunt, like the old Romans would have said.

I fixed that for you :-P No, it wasn't. That's what I said. BG2 is far superior to any other IE CRPG. Don't even try to deny it. Heretics like you are the reason why PoE will never become a true classic. Shame that Josh ticks the same. PoE2 is more or less doomed to become a mediocre game (like IWD was), with MCA's getaway now more likely than ever before.

There was 5 cRPGs released on Infinity Engine, 4 of which were wildly different (BG1 is very different from BG2, IWD1 and 2 are their own thing, PS: T is its own thing) I enjoyed Baldur's Gate for semi-open world exploration, Icewind Dale 1+2 for fun dungeon crawling and PS: T for excellent writing. BG2 dropped semi-open world exploration from the original and only kept the writing that I perceived as "Meh" so there you go. Luckily, PoE is mostly a mixture of BG exploration, IWD dungeon crawling and PS: T - styled writing, so I'm all on board there. PoE has the exuberant combat focus of IWD1/2 and tries to somewhat recreate the pompous and highfalutin writing of PS:T (without ever getting there, for better or worse), that's right. Sadly it has hardly any element of BG2 at all. And no, exploration was not the core USP of BG2, not even by a far stretch. I thought PoE2 might be a step in the right direction but I fear it will be the exact opposite.

I can't understand how some people can claim that they loved Infinity Engine CRPGs while they also claim that they didn't love Baldur's Gate 2. For me, this is and ever will be a contradiction. There never was a better CRPG ever before and there wasn't a better CRPG ever after (until now at least).

There is hope: That's the core problem with this whole topic here. PoE is no sandbox game like Skyrim where you just imagine that you'd have an intimate relationship with any of these (female) companions for hire. PoE is like a novel, an extremely story-driven game, with walls and walls of text talking about almost anything and pondering on high-flying philosophical concepts and external stories - while sparing out anything remotely personal and anything that could be considered a statement of mutual affection between important characters (not necessarily romantic) on purpose. It's a question of consistency, you know. If you say that you can fill the blanks with your own imagination they could just reduce the rest of the text to maybe about 10% of the original draft - because the same could be said about EVERY topic in the game, not just about romantic stuff or anything that is on a deeply personal and emotional level.

I'd really like if they just put all the additional money in better and extended playtesting and bugfixing. So the only stretch goal I really "need" is one that makes it more likely that the game is really finished at release. As a huge fan of CRPGs I want to play the game right at release and I certainly don't want to be abused as a community beta-tester whose experience is plagued by technical errors, graphical glitches, quest or even story breaking bugs and unproven, shaky mechanics.

lol, I was waiting for somebody to say this. I'm glad to deliver.

Another blow for the old Infinity Engine and D&D feeling... What's still nostalgic about it? The GUI and the 2.5D perspective? Not enough, meh...

The new stretch goal is a serious disappointment IMHO.

Nice try, but Feargus said that Josh will talk about design, not romances.

I liked Dungeon Siege 3, to be honest.

Wait, really? Imo Dragon Age: Origins (while being enjoyable, don't get me wrong) was worse than BG2 in almost any possible way. Calling it a successor to BG2(/ToB) is really a bit much...

Ironically, that's exact the same thing Bioware said when people criticized the combat and other elements in Dragon Age: Inquisition... In my humble opinion PoE's combat mechanics were worse compared to those in BG2. PoE only felt needlessly obtuse and complex for the sake of complexity, while being constantly impeded by a clunky GUI.

And while they're at it they should cut the heavy handed UI as well. No need for that if the D&D feel is gone anyway...

To me it sounds like a completely obtuse concept that has no foundation in reality. It's a philosophical concept that sounds interesting, yes, but at the same time it's something nobody can really relate to. No empathy possible for "soul ripping" or "being awakened". It's not an emotional motivation that normal people can understand and therefore feel, it's the typical stuff (over-)ambitious writers mistake for good storytelling while completely missing psychology.

Well, PoE is still a story-driven game. It's not a "make-your-own-story" open world game like Skyrim. I don't see why the story in Pillars must be pretty impersonal and unemotional by definition. I mean, it's already there and it won't go. I just don't think that the story in PoE provided a good peronal motivation for the PC in many aspects, especially when we look at the main story. In your opinion. Naturally. Everything I post is first and foremost just my opinion.

The problem with this is if Obsidian goes too detailed in what the character wants, loves, cares about, etc...it will go too close to a "predefined" character. Since this is a Role Playing game you are expected to some extent fill in some of the blanks. Make up your own reasoning on what your Watcher cares about and why s/he acts the way s/he does. I've played through the game dozens of times and have never had an issue. Now I'm not saying more choices would be bad. In fact I'd love to have more flavor text based off reputation, race, class, profession and such that would further allow you to build your character. But forcing certain traits onto a character like I said is making the Watcher too close to a predefined character. What if I want to play as a ruthless Watcher, yet the devs add some predefined text about him doing X because he cares about the world? I don't want to force any trait on the PC. I want situations that emotionally affect the PC on a very internal and personal level. HOW the player react to that situations is completely up to them and Obsidian should offer different way of covering with the situation. Classic example for such a situation: A person the PC loves dies. Maybe his/her mother or his/her sister/brother or his wife/her spouse. That's something that would probably affect everybody. It's not a limitation of roleplaying. It's now up to the developer to offer different ways to react to that. One possibility could be the wish for revenge. Another one could be to close the world out and revel in sadness. Another one could be that the PC wanted to help other people in memory of his/her lost one. That's the kind of direct, personal, emotional motivation that drives a believable character. And that's just one example, a journey/adventure should be full of events that might change how the player reacts to the world, both intellectually but also emotionally. Companions - as close brother in arms that gather around you - are a near perfect possibility to explore such personal topics that establish, change and deepen personal motivations. And of course that doesn't exclude possible evil ways. It's a very flawed concept about evil characters that they were not driven by their own motivations that seem plausible and valid in their perspective. Often people do bad things while thinking they'd had no other choice or while thinking that this might be necessary for some greater good. That's the interesting kind of evil that is also deeply rooted in emotional experiences and aspects of love. Heck, very often evil characters are defined by a lack of love. This is the very reason why they exist and act in the first place. Most evil actions make absolutely no sense at all if you don't inlcude aspects of love in the narrative. Huh? Lots of the great sci-fi classics have little to no romantic or sexual aspects, though none of them are explicitly aro-ace either. I speak about "aspects lo love", you speak about "romantic or sexual aspects". Yours is just a tiny part of mine, hence the difference. What's a "microaggression"? And I don't try to defend anybody nor do I have any kind of agenda, mate. I just want to discuss a certain topic with others, pointing out my point of view. You're free to disagree but I'd like to see some arguments of your own instead of just trying to assume that I had some secret tactic or agenda... And I DO think that all important aspects of the human life are about various aspects of love (in a very broad meaning, for example including motherly love or even affection covering a good friend). My definition of love here goes way beyond anything that is covered by romance or sexual actions.

Hm, I would at least include the name of the game in any way. But enough of my irrelevant drivel, the majority vote will take the reign.

Whatever, I will probably ignore you in the future since it doesn't seem to me you'd really think it's necessary to respect other people in a discussion. Have fun though.