rjshae

I'm hoping that the PE pantheon doesn't try to be too logical about its structure. Historical pantheons are often like extended families with strange, quirky stories, eccentric relatives, and often contradictory, emotion-driven behavior. They aren't organized like a thesaurus with everything laid out just so.

I really enjoy well-done humor, but some types of frivolity can ruin the experience of good drama. Silly deities thrown in for comic effect is absolutely the wrong thing to do in serious role playing drama. Likewise with Monty Python references and sci-fi one-liners. Toss these on the pyre of incongruous ruminations. Good humor is hard to do; stupid humor is best left for spoofs and robot chicken episodes.

I think it would be fun if there were a new companion you could add to the party once you reach the bottom of the endless paths, thereafter opening new conversation threads and side quests. But I'm not sure what type of companion you would find down there that could survive. Perhaps somebody frozen in time?

Good news: Sui Generis just made their KS goal with a few hours to go! This project should be interesting to watch. It's technically very interesting; I'm just not sure how good a game they will make. We'll see...

Yet another reducio ad absurdum argument. You are the perfect example of why options are needed; your expectation of the game is wildly different than others.It's a balancing act on the part of the developers. You want a game that has no options, but which you wouldn't play if it didn't meet your expectations. How does that make any business sense? It doesn't. If you don't like the options, don't use them. If you don't like the developers spending time on options that others like, well that's too bad.

Whine, whine whine. Where did all of the real gamers go?

It seems like this gets back to the Pareto Principle. There are options the developers can provide that make the game a different experience and satisfy a significant portion of the audience. Then there are minor nuances they could provide that make a small group really happy, but most people will just ignore. I'm not sure what the correct balance is, but I suspect it is in the single digits.

I had this crazy idea for a freedom of speech solidarity T-shirt. It makes a particular reference to the Egyptian court's recent decision to sentence seven Egyptian Coptic Christians to death in absentia. Basically, the graphic looks like the old Norman Rockwell self-portrait image, except it would show a bearded arabic muslim male painting a picture of himself. Next to it, the caption reads, "Egypt sentenced me to death in absentia, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt". What do you think? Would it get me targeted by somebody's hit squad?

Hmm, there's perhaps a few problems with this idea. If my PC starts believing in a god of rhubarb, does that god suddenly pop into existence and start granting priestly powers? It's a chicken-and-the-egg situation. If the supposedly factual creation myth states that the gods created humans, but humans created the gods, then how did humans pop into existence? What if there was the godly equivalent of souls? These paragon souls take a more refined shape, form, and function from the interaction with mortal beings, but they continue onward, in some manner, after their last believer has died. Perhaps they slowly return to the primal essence from whence they came, then are reshaped, or reshape themselves, into another divine being.

Well, the PC version was due out 10 minutes ago. The other releases were delayed because of a crashing bug. Ouch!

Wait, you're unhappy because, despite all of your accomplishments, the nobility is still snobbish toward low-born peasants like you? Guess what, me bucko... that's normal.

That's good, but... in IWD I often ran into pathfinding problems because of the large party size. Collisions occurred when I tried to move the entire group along a narrow path, causing half the party to take the long way around. I hope the developers are going to test for that case; using just two characters may not reveal the problem.

Really? Not everybody wants the same thing, and many of the preferences being expressed are incompatible. Options allow you to tune the game the way you want to play it. That's not bad design; that's marketplace flexibility.

Well... whatever weird or wacky ideas I may have had for a pantheon I've added to a netbook called the Diadamon Pantheon, which was last released in the 9th edition back in 2007. It's not going to be updated again and is freely licensed under OGL, so basically help yourself to any notions therein you find useful. Thanks.

It's not a rant about DA2. It mentions about what it did wrong and I learned from what it did wrong. What I've demonstrated applies to ALL RPGs, or should, if they are to be called RPGs. RPGs are ABOUT their worlds more than anything else, DA2's world was not convincing - it wasn't plausible, consistent or conveyed. What DA2 does wrong is very important. But it's not my focus of this topic - it's to remind Obsidian to focus on conveying the images, the sounds, the feelings of PE's world - as well as a logical consistency to its world and people. Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir, but eh, why not. It's the internet. Perhaps I want validation, or my points disproved, which I don't see you doing. Do you know how utterly arrogant you sound? It doesn't lend your message any credence. Basically you read like a troll. As with any game, DA2 had its good points and its weaknesses. I personally found it entertaining enough to play it to nearly the end. It has some design elements that remain appealing to me. What you need to do is accept the fact that it is mainly an action RPG.

Well hopefully we'll have limited zoom on the main view and we can use the mouse wheel for that.

From a purely schedule- and cost-driven perspective, I don't think that adding destructable environments will make sense. The latter is more suitable for action RPGs. It would make more sense to focus on more widely-applicable elements, such as getting the spell effects and character animation looking good.

One thing that could be done is to store checkpoint data in memory at key moments of the game; each time you save, you're saving the checkpoint data rather than the current state. This will require you to replay the game from the last checkpoint. It's somewhat similar to how saves work in DS2, except you don't have to retrace your steps as much.

Wouldn't it be better if our peculiar selections for a character build weren't considered a "mistake"? Otherwise this advanced planning just looks like min-maxing to me.

A decent idea; I could definitely see a grapple-type attack being implemented via a spell-like special attack that effects both parties. I don't think it should be a full stun effect, but it could definitely give some action restrictions to both. You could even have multiple, cumulative grapple effects against a single target. A simple visual effect, like an appropriate spell going off (Bigby's grasping hand!), would provide all the graphics it would need.

Given the nature of this game, I suspect that most structures will not have destruction mechanics. Maybe barrels. The only physics we might see would be from rag-doll physics, knockdowns, and perhaps trajectories from projectiles and explosions.

Another DA2 rant. Yawn.

I don't know how much of this we're going to do, I like all of those ideas and I think it would be fun to build an AI that can do them. We'll just have to see which of those behaviors is a "fit" for the game. I think we'll almost certainly have smarter AI that will try to do things like protect a spell caster or other weak allies. That kind of things isn't too difficult to implement and makes for a more interesting challenge. Thank you, David. I can understand that some of this type of AI might not be the best fit for a tactical game of this type. Still, some type of group tactical behavior would be nice to see, even if it is just cooperative behavior between neighbors in the mob, or targeting specific enemies. Whatever you decide upon, I'm sure it will be enjoyable. Thanks again.

Inevitably all slaves turn on their masters, just like the slave rebellions against the roman empire. With the major difference that a band of mages is far more dangerous than gladiators. So whatever society cooks that up will be probably a short lived one. Well, no. These slave-wizards are not dangerous because they are taught a different style of magic. They don't know spells for hurling fireballs about and they can't learn such; they know spells for cooking cabbage, cleaning chimneys, and sweeping the floor.

We're assuming that the wizards are free to contribute to the economy as they will. But what about a society that enslaves wizards? Or rather, a society that looks for slaves with wizard-like potential, then trains those individuals in a more constrained form of magic? What then? You can get your wizard-slaves heating your boiler rooms and providing water for your fountains, yet they have become the lowliest members of society. I'm not sure what means they'd use to maintain control over the wizard-slaves, but the Romans managed (for the most part) to maintain careful control over their gladiators; some very dangerous individuals indeed. Perhaps there is a crystal collar that can be used to suppress spell casting unless allowed by the handler? Maybe the form of spell casting allowed can only be used with certain scarce material components that are carefully monitored by the masters? Or maybe it uses prepared runes on parchment paper, with the masters controlling the special ink required? At any rate, this would allow wizards to contribute to the economy without having any significant power.