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So what? I cannot see why this is a problem. PE is a single player game not an MMO. They don't have to balance classes so that a spellcaster is equally powerful to a fighter in each battle. Looking at BG2 which is my favourite RPG, I liked the fact that spellcasters were powerful when they had all their spells available and "useless" when they were out of spells. It added depth to the game and made me play them with care. If the PC starts out solo they need sufficient abilities to deal with encounters. This can be handled either by giving mages abilities or by making the encounters so trivial that they can be completed by a mage poking things with a dagger. Personally, I much prefer the former approach. Also, while it's true that classes needn't be equally useful in every encounter, they do need to feel comparably powerful overall. Few like to feel that the kind of character they prefer to play is less than useful. If you heap restrictions on mages compensation will be due. I assume the major part of the game will be played using a party so I think that's what the developers should focus on. In BG2 you gathered a group fairly quickly. And in a party you typically have different strength and qualities in the different individuals, just like you have in different pieces in chess. In BG2, wizards were one such piece which could be powerful if you played them right and "useless" if you played them bad. Diversity makes a game more interesting and I hope PE will feature this a lot.

So what? I cannot see why this is a problem. PE is a single player game not an MMO. They don't have to balance classes so that a spellcaster is equally powerful to a fighter in each battle. Looking at BG2 which is my favourite RPG, I liked the fact that spellcasters were powerful when they had all their spells available and "useless" when they were out of spells. It added depth to the game and made me play them with care.

Loved the riddles in BG2

Personally, I would love to see the spell system in BG2 revived where you really thought twice before casting a spell. Choosing spells was the most fun part in battles. And I also liked the fact that spending up resources/spells in one battle had consequences afterwards. I believe this was a key part of the game in order to make battles interesting. I sincerely hope they're going to mimic this system as much as they can in PE. I know they're talking about fixing things which was not satisfactory but I would do so restrictively just not to "mess up". I mean, there's always room for improvement in coming sequels if they "play safe", but if they invent an entirely new spell system which the old fans don't like they might not even get a chance to a sequel.

Magic system in Baldur's Gates had other flaws than rest spamming (which really was more a symptom, than cause). Low level wizards often could not perform their planned role and were often pushed as background ournament slinger. And on medium levels they usually could take care of the encounters by themselves but usually they had enough spells for one to three encounters, where big part of players used rest spamming as answer. And in some encounters wrong spell selection forced player to load and change his or her spell and try again (and this is not strategic or tactical thing as most cases player didn't have any advance warning of what they spells they will need in upcoming encounter). And there is also other flaws in that system, so I am all for to try fix these flaws but still have best parts of that system. If cooldowns is one of the mechanics which they think gives them ability to do so, then I am okey to see what they can come up to and not shoot them down, because one of the many mechanics what they have plan to use is cooldowns. When they have more than only faded outline about their system, I can give my judgement that will it or will it not work better than D&D's system in IE games. Now I can only say that they right with their statement that magic (and combat system overall in IE games was flawed) and they should be careful to not transfer those flaws on their new system. And their design goals, keep good things from IE games, fix flaws and bring something new on the table, strike for me to be just right kind of attitude, but maybe that is just me not understanding perfectness of the old system. It would be absolutely great it they're able to make a splendid spell system like that in BG2 even better. Personally I would have a very cautious approach trying to alter that too much, I don't think it's as easy as people might believe. Also, I think announcing PE as a revival of the old legendary classic RPG games and then decide to use a concept like Cooldowns is a bold thing to do. Cooldowns with its reputation and the association to actions rpgs it has in an audience like this. Obsidian has certainly put themselves under a lot of pressure. I think now, they have to come up with something really great in order to please old BG2 fans like me.

I'm wondering which part of that wasn't clear. Admittedly IWD combat was used as a more specfic example and not BG2, but both systems would be equally vulnerable to these criticisms over rest spamming and the unrealism of spell memorization and all the rest. The various views can be divided into two factions. One likes the old combat systems and would kill for a BG3 or a IWD3 or a PS:T-2 that is identical in every way except for the story being a sequel, but may or may not be thinking (as I am) don't try to fix what isn't broken and first do no harm. The other faction may have utterly hated those combat and magic systems and strongly prefers a newer, esoteric, or some completely novel combat mechanic. I am sympathetic with some of these new (to me) systems like fatigue and the only system I really have a major problem with is cooldowns (of any sort), but I don't consider the old systems broken in any way. Not even slightly. I only left the dungeon to rest when my characters were on the edge of death and likely bleeding out. It was a kind of retreat. To me "rest spamming" wasn't any sort of problem I needed to solve. To me there was no conceptual problem with a once per day spell memorization system. I liked the fact that mages were limited in the number of spells they cast per day and that eventually they would be reduced to slings or crossbow bolts. I liked the fact that you weren't omniscient enough to predict what spells you always needed and that that sometimes resulted in a less than ideal battle strategy or even a party death and subsequent reload. I liked the fact that one price of exploring with a mage, of all that power, was that you might use up more game time than you might otherwise have with a melee only party. I was always disappointed when there was no real meaning to the passage of time that penalized you for this, but that wasn't such a big deal either. I think a main story that takes into account the passage of time would be nice and would help balance out the power of spell casters vs melee characters to an extent, but it isn't a deal breaker for me if that isn't in. Of course, I don't think forcing all classes to rest every 16 hours or suffer a gradual decline in abilities is at all unreasonable or undesirable. Perhaps some races could get by with less sleep, but certainly humans should require at least 6 hours of sleep per night to even have the slightest chance of fighting with their maximum ability. And enforcing a 16 hour waking time between sleep would seem to solve this whole non-problem all by itself. Obviously sleeping 8 hours ever hour is not particularly logical or realistic, and I never played that way in the first place. The only justification for it might be soloing as a mage, in which case it might be nice to turn off that requirement or allow some kind of soporific drug/herb to allow you to sleep so much. If not being able to memorize 100 complex spells at short notice is unrealistic then what about continuing to walk around with heavy packs and fight multiple life threatening battles that wound much of the party and then just continue on forever without sleep? I just don't get all this fuss over walking to a safe place to rest? Is it really that tedious to do? So tedious that it is worth risking the fun of a hugely enjoyable and proven combat system? To me the risk is not worth the possible reward, if any. Why not respect the proven systems of the past and try to add options for players who didn't like them instead of simply removing the old system and possiblly destroying the entire experience for the players who loved BG2/IWD/PS:T combat just as it was? How? 1. (easy) Introduce an insta-camping function/button/option that has some canned animation of leaving a dungeon and making camp and then returning, possibly with various sub-settings like the option to start you back at the beginning of the level or the beginning of the entire dungeon or which makes you wait for some set amount of time as well. After all, this is Josh's argument in favor of cooldowns. Just automate the process and be done with it. Is this the equivalent of a resting cooldown? Yeah, but it's optional. I don't think a lot of us who loved the old combat mechanics have a huge amount of difficulty restraining ourselves from engaging in game mechanics that we don't like. Just because a resting bypass button or checkbox exists does not mean we have to use it. 2. (more involved) Automatically (or manually) record a sort of macro of movement events between the last place of rest or last viable place of rest (presumably outside of the dungeon if you are in one). Then just play it back in reverse, rest, and play it forward again. This mostly just elminates the canned nature of the animation in solution (1) while still mitigating a lot of the tedium complaints about resting, especially if there is the option to speed things forward by 10x or 100x or whatever. 3. (considerably more involved but with additional benefits including greater replay value) Take a page from BG2's book and implement more than one sort of arcane caster class in the game. You could have a Vancian mage, a BG2 style sorcerer, a fatigue based caster, a mana+reagent based caster, a ritual+reagent based caster, a prayer based caster, and even a cooldown based caster / magic spammer or any subset of these that includes the old style mechanic as well. Each casting class could be more or less balanced with each other through playtesting. It is a lot more work admittedly, but it would also allow for a great deal of replay value playing all these different sorts of casters. It would also allow the sort of innovation that Josh seems to be interested in. You won't risk ruining an entire game just by having a single class that many people dislike. If you don't like a class you don't have to play it. One disadvantage may be fitting it all in with the game narrative/setting. Now it might be argued that the encounter system as a whole cannot be balanced properly for at least the first two options. That if the encounters are mainly designed for the players who play the old way that things will be too easy for the player who can insta-regain all of their spells at will like BG2 Wish spell cheese or one of the "infinite spells" exploits. I would argue that the difficulty system can mitigate this imbalance. Different players prefer different level of combat difficulty in any case. Having choices to increase or decrease encounter difficulty is an important game mechanic and one of the few that can be very much improved compared to the old IE games with their "every enemy does 50% more damage" crudeness. Actually having this option could in itself be considered part of the difficulty system. Although I do believe in combat fairness and that if you can insta-regain all of your spells enemy mages should be able to do the same. So it could just result in casters killing off non-casters very quickly without otherwise altering the game difficulty significantly. I'm also very disappointed with the recent announcements from Obsidian regarding use of Cooldowns in PE. As stated above the only flaw with the system in BG2 was the rest spamming and for me that was a minor flaw. Didn't even think of it until people brought it up here. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that the real reason that they're going for Cooldowns is implementation time and effort. Mainly cause It's easier to balance. Both individual and series of battles and also classes like Mage/Fighter. Question is though, why does a single player game has to be perfectly and evenly balanced ? I say, let people find out things for themselves. I'm really afraid of getting a game with battles more of the streamlined "lazy" Dragon Age kind as opposed to the diverse, strategic ones we had in BG2. Still going to back this project though I'm no longer feeling as optimistic about it.

That is likely more common, but isn't being "wasteful" something that's only appreciated in retrospect? I.e. conservation strategy is only strategic if you have some sort of understanding of what you're going up against. In most cases, you don't know how many enemies you're going to fight, how deep the dungeon is, or what spells any given caster has at his or her disposal. Is it "wasteful" to cast fireball on 6 lizard men? Is it wasteful to cast it on 4 lizard men? What if one of them is a caster and he's casting hold person? What if there are only 30 lizard men on the level? Obviously, conservation strategy is playing as economically as you can all the time. For me, that was one of the fun challenges in BG.

Agreed. That was the brilliance of the BG games, you had to choose when and on what to cast your spells on carefully. Made up for a much more tactical combat as contrary to the cooldown system where you basically always cast the most powerful spell available.

Michael Hoenig is listed in IMDB as the composer for Baldurs Gate 2 / TOB. Is that true? Was he the mastermind of that exceptionally good music ? It was pure magic, simply legendary, those games would not have been the same without it. If its true, I would ten-fold my pledge just for having him as a composer for PE! In-game music should not be underestimated. It might be the one thing that ultimately decides whether a game is successful or not!