rjshae

I was disappointed that the designers caved on the equipment maintenance feature instead of simply making it an option for the expert mode. Otherwise I've been reasonably pleased by the various concepts presented.

I really hope you guys are being facetious... 'cause I want to live long enough to become a cyborg and spend my life exploring the galaxy and uplifting new habitable worlds.

I could see an abstracted mount system being beneficial for an overland map. A fully mounted party should be able to flee most encounters, or to fight on more favorable ground. Likewise, a mounted foe against an unmounted fleeing party should be able to maneuver them into an unfavorable tactical position, or an ambush. The party should be able to park their mounts at a location in order to advance on foot, thereby reducing their detection radius. The location of their mounts could then represent their camp.

Drakensang has a mana cost, or rather an astral energy cost. You can change the actual cost of the spell by modifying the power per use (up to your trained limit). Thus if your astral energy is low, you can choose to cast weaker versions of the same spells. It also has a spell-casting time.

A weapon needs to "do something extra" to make it special. Even if that something is just an improvement to your reputation.

What you're describing is a weapon with enchantments, something that some posters don't want. Some people don't want enchantments at all. We've seen stuff like this in the IE games. Items like Balduran's butter knife which I always sell because I prefer a knife with an enchantment that is useful in the game for characters like my Mages. Yes there are a small number of outspoken posters who are adamant about having little to no magic. I don't agree with that preference--magic may be uncommon, but so is the party. They are more likely to run into holders of such equipment than is the average person. From what I've heard, the enchanted items in the game are going to be on a par with the content in the IE games.

I don't see the point. Why would you keep a legendary sword that is just the same as a normal mundane sword without any enchantments? Especially when a regular +2 sword is much better in battle. I'll take the +2 item over a mundane legendary item without enchantments any day. It might be cool to have a magical sword that became more effective based upon the context. Magical weapons may possess a certain sense of place and may choose not to reveal their full power until the circumstances are right. In an ordinary battle against grunt guards that legendary sword may choose to behave in an almost ordinary manner, but in a battle against a powerful figure of evil the sword would assert itself and become a weapon of terrible vengeance.

This Excalibur never really did anything that any other sword couldn't have done, with the exception of getting stuck in a rock, it was a symbol. Weapons with a small bonus and a backstory are the way to go, rather than making something so powerful you feel you have to use it. A mythical sword that never existed... never did anything? Imagine that. I think you have to consider the context -- in our mundane world swords became famous because of their owners. In a realm where magic is powerful, it may well be the other way around.

Blackguards release date pushed back to 2014... but only to January 14. Definitely looking forward to this.

A thought that occurs is to use an overland map similar to SoZ with a scaled down ship model controlled by the player. Encounters are represented on the map by other ship models--most are friendly--or giant sea creatures. As in SoZ, once an encounter occurs you're placed on the battle map and go directly to boarding combat. For a future release, of course, blah blah blah...

Reaching for the bucket of popcorn...

Some days I think we need a cute cat pics thread...

Where is this magic button ? I've never seen it. Per Gfted1's post: Click the little arrow next to your avatar in the upper left hand corner of every page. Choose My Settings. Choose "Ignore" Preferences. Add names. The blocked postings appear as gray bars, which you can still open view if you choose. I wish more forums had this feature, as well as the Like button...

Expendables with storage requirements: once you unseal and activate them, they gradually lose potency. An example would be a potion in an opaque container with a carefully sealed lid. Once opened, the effective number of doses decreases at the rate of one per day. Hence it's better to wait for the right time then use it up all at once.

you can ignore people? Yeah, I have a list of about a dozen. You probably know who they are. Occasionally I check to see if their replies are worth following again... nope.

^^^ Heh, somebody with poor grammatical skills complaining about dumb people.

Or your reading comprehension is lacking. Hes clearly mentioned that he is not seeking attention nor is he upset that information is posted on multiple other sites, but instead that the same information that is shared on multiple other sites is ALSO shared here, where the devs work, and where backers would expect to find that information. A note regarding reading comprehension: I was commenting in general rather than the specific individual.

That's how it works for special abilities in the DA games, and in the Drakensang series. It's less of a problem than you might think--the net effect is to create more of a variety in the powers that get activated. The player has to be a bit judicious in when and where they use the powers, so it motivates some tactical planning.

Well I could be wrong and you could think you're just posting a normal, harmless 'opinion'. Possibly I'm misinterpreting it as a spiteful expression of entitlement. In that case I would need to apologize. But you followed that up by the obviously trollish 'Fanboi Polizei', so I don't think I'm mistaken. Welcome to my ignore list. Wow, way to overreact I know the word entitlement gets thrown around the internet all the time as some sort of "knockout argument", but really, PE backers are entitled to know what's going on, since they have funded the game. Also it's absolutely legitimate to want to have more updates and information and everything PE-related. Instead of always interpeting everything as "spiteful expression of entitlement" you could just see it as eager fandom. Perhaps you're right. However, in the past multiple posters have expressed the opinion that they'd be happier with fewer updates. (The logic being that assembling updates requires time better spent on what we're backing.) Few if any seemed to object to the idea. Now some other posters appear to be bashing Obsidian because they aren't being lavished with attention, or that the attention isn't being focused for their ease of viewing. I suppose it's ironic in a sense.

^^^ Perhaps the Stronghold can be mod-able to give it alternative themes?

Well I could be wrong and you could think you're just posting a normal, harmless 'opinion'. Possibly I'm misinterpreting it as a spiteful expression of entitlement. In that case I would need to apologize. But you followed that up by the obviously trollish 'Fanboi Polizei', so I don't think I'm mistaken. Welcome to my ignore list.

So how do you characterize when a game is "successful"? There's many roads to success, and each is only going to appeal to a subset of people. I find a game to be successful when I don't quit from lack of interest, when there are multiple elements I find enjoyable, and when I return to it later for a replay (preferably with mods). For me, Fallout 3 satisfied all three. Other people saying that the game was "unsuccessful" just tells me they have different criteria. Hence I probably wouldn't trust their judgment in deciding what games to play.

Who got the job of dog's body?

Well...he was a Ph.D... If I would see a book written by him about chemical engineering, in which he has that PhD, I wouldn't even blink at that PhD on the cover, but on space opera? I don't see that helping his writing about blue alien lesbian sex. All I can say is that I did find him terribly entertaining when I was a young teen looking for a sci-fi fix. Must have re-read the series at least three times. The science is horrible, of course, but it was good fun... which is part of the appeal of space opera. There were rumors at one point of Ron Howard gaining the license for Triplanetary in order to make a film. Nothing really came of it though.