neo6874

Gog has since started offering mac games, so Obsidian will likely use them for the Mac release too.

lol, no nipsen. Gifted1 - your image is broken ... this one will work I think (hope)

"Normal" is normal difficulty, probably along the lines of "Normal" from IE games (BG, IWD, etc). - AoE spells hit everyone - equal crit chances for PCs and NPCs - properly-leveled enemies for the encounter level (i.e. an ogre mage instead of only goblins)

I would imagine that wearing "male" armour as a woman would at the very least be uncomfortable (similar to grabbing a shirt that turns out to be too small, even though the label indicates it should fit) While this doesn't mean that armor has to be as over-sexualized (as in NWN, and most other games), it probably would mean that the upper torso section of "female" armor (regardless of type) would have some accommodation for the wearer's comfort. Alternatively, they could be using it to show off a bit(see: King Henry VIII's armor)

Thing is, if you're coming back with 15 longswords from the bandit camp, the smith won't be melting them down but rather giving them a once-over ("yep, it's still usable") and then selling them back out -- possibly to the king or a local lord so they've got their armory well-stocked (or they're having to re-stock their armory, because of whatever happened that made them rely on adventurers to rescue their daughter). Obviously some of them will end up as scrap, but this is why he's only giving you 1-2 GP for a sword that he's gonna turn around and sell for 5-10. Just for numbers, let's say 2/3 of your swords are good -- which means he's lessened his workload by 10 swords already ... or say a full week's worth of work. While this doesn't mean he can get on vacation or something, it puts him a week ahead on other orders.

They are bound by law. US courts have found that kickstarters constitute a contract, and in the kickstarter FAQ, it says backers can take legal action if creators don't deliver. That said, the real issue is whether someone wants to go to court for $15 to $5000 bucks over minutia. yes, they're bound to deliver the product they promised (i.e. the game, and any backer bonuses), same as any other pre-order scenario (barring scrapping the whole thing - in which case I am unsure of whether or not there is any "return moneys" clauses for Kickstarter). If Obsidian ships PoE and it turns out to be terrible in the eyes of some "faction" of backers, that's too bad because Obsidian delivered what they promised (an Infinity Engine "Spiritual Successor" to the AD&D games of old, set in a new world*, with new mechanics**). * "not Faerun" (PoE continent / world name escapes me) ** "not d20" (which requires licensing from Wizards / Hasbro) Edit -- to clarify ... so long as they "deliver" PoE (regardless of whether or not the purchaser ends up liking it), Obsidian's end of the contract is upheld. However, I think Obsidian is pretty acutely aware that they have to deliver something that's considered to be "good" by the backers overall (even if I don't like this part, and other people don't like that part) if they want to keep this going.

I think one thing a lot of you are overlooking is the era this is set in. Making arms and armor is tedious. There's no automation/mass production/etc. that we've come to rely on for all our things -- sure the lower quality stuff (e.g. spear point, conscript's sword) might be semi-mass produced by casting the main body then simply sharpening it ... but the "high quality" stuff (i.e. "mundane" stuff we buy/sell) and the top quality (masterwork) stuff takes hours, or even days to make. So yeah, an adventurer coming back with 15 "trash" longswords that cost the shopkeeper 15 GP to pick up just saved him several days of work. And that's not even considering armor ... which takes weeks, if not months to produce.

D&D game I'm part of the previous adventuring party (they all died ) found a stash of 30,000 GP ... ... worth of Copper Pieces. They spent like a full in-game month carting it back to their "base" (old warehouse in some small town). So I can see the use of a "bigger stash" that isn't always with the party. However, I'd say it should really be two stashes. Stash 1 -- Limited, but accessible at the pre-defined campsites. This represents your pack animals/cart/whatever that you use to carry the majority of your things that you don't need all the time, but still don't want to trudge 2 weeks back to town to replenish. Extra potions, scrolls, camping/cooking gear, vendor trash, etc. Limited to the carrying capacity of a pack-horse per party member (up to 450 pounds for a horse, or 600 pounds for a heavy horse -- using D&D numbers). This assumes that at the very minimum, the main character owns a horse from the get-go ... depending on the actual story reason for you being thrown into the adventure, I think this could make sense. Stash 2 -- Infinite, but only accessible once you've obtained your stronghold. Idea is that you're storing nearly everything in your keep, and it's just being transported to you when you're in town (rp reason -- you sent a missive to the keep to say "we'll be in [some town], send [stuff] there" and send the transporter back with the stuff you've collected. Granted this is just an off-the-cuff idea, and is probably bad for various reasons.

Thing is with D&D (sorry, I have to use the reference ...) things went more toward the "encounter scaling" that some people have mentioned -- and it works out pretty well (IMO). If you're level 3 (for example), you fight the BBEG (say a crazy necromancer), and maybe a skeleton or two. Say the cleric is ECL 2, and the skeletons are (combined) ECL 2, for an ECL 4 fight (because it's supposed to be hard). If you fight him at L5 ... the L2 necromancer gets replaced with a L4 one, and he summons zombies instead (or maybe a zombie that if you kill it before the BBEG, he then summons skeletons). If it's not a BBEG fight, then things only rarely scale (e.g. "this is supposed to be an ECL 10 fight ... but if the party is >L12, make it an ECL 12 fight by replacing [creature_set] with [new_set]") Games that do level scaling poorly (Oblivion) usually leave it pretty obvious -- e.g. going to that rat-infested basement in the first town (when you're normally L2-3) at L8-10 means there's the same 5 rats, but instead of it being a cakewalk, it's just as hard as when you were L2 (if not harder, because the rats are always you plus X levels, and their creature type gets abilities or something).

Not exactly. The "rogue skills", like trap disarming, pickpocketing, stealth etc. were cross-class skills for everyone not of the rogue class, meaning those other classes are only able to put 1 point in them for every 2 levels they gain, not every level like a rogue can. And furthermore, only a rogue (or other "rogue-like" classes in other books -- e.g. "Complete Adventurer") could even hope to find a trap that was DC 20+ (via the "Trap Finding" class ability) ANYONE can take 10 at any time when they are not under duress (i.e. not in combat, or falling off a cliff, etc). The Skill Mastery ability removes the "not under duress" clause to the taking 10 rule -- so if I'm in a fight, I can take 10 on a tumble check, or hide/move silently so I can get sneak attack damage.

I kinda skimmed at the end ... Level scaling (if done properly) is pretty good. I mean, you wouldn't expect that a D&D Module built for a party of L10-15 characters would have a ton of ECL 3 encounters (or ECL 20) -- and it probably even has some caveats for the encounters (if party = L10, then gnoll x4 ... if party = L12, then gnoll x4 + gnoll shaman) However, when done poorly (I'm lookin' at you, Oblivion), it makes the game an un-playable mess, because you never get any of those "hilariously easy" fights that happen because you've been fighting enemies of your party level, or +1-2 for a long time ... then you get one equal to, or -1-2 your party level and just stomp all over the thing (say a gargantuan scorpion ECL 10, when you've been fighting ECL 12 wraiths the last two or three encounters).

"Fear" is an awfully strong word. I mean, it's not like you're going to lose sleep when your hand-painted Warhammer figures fail to flinch and ragdoll when killed, right? ...right? I'd lose sleep if they did that.

it's (likely) like IWD/BG/etc. You target the guy you're gonna kill (red ring, or other "obvious" way to know who you're locked on to), and the game rolls your ATK against his AC, and you either hit or miss. No need for you as the player to time the shot, or click in the right place. (note - PE doesn't follow the d20 system, so references to 'roll' 'atk' and 'ac' are just because I can't remember the exact words/mechanics they're using for each).

Not sure if this was the original intention or already suggested in this thread, but this would be nice to see in PE as well; the game will tell you when your party has received experience, and only the numbers are omitted (from both the bottom log and the character screens). It would be nice to know when the game is rewarding XP during quests and encounters (since the XP system is accomplishment-based, we won't be seeing a ton of these messages all the time). I guess I'm only asking for this because I want to know how intelligently designed their XP system is. Yeah, I think it was kinda going that way. Personally, I don't mind if there are numbers given, but I'd rather see it doled out in bigger chunks, but infrequently instead of "killed a thing, xx XP".

I thought it was going to have spellbook based casting... It is - you need to have the grimoire containing the spell(s) you want to cast equipped during combat. edit - per the PE wiki pages (http://eternity.gamepedia.com/Wizard#Spells): So it kinda looks like a mix - you can "memorize" spells, but you need notes on it in your currently equipped grimoire in order to actually cast it.

Mook, Underboss, BBEG

Thing is, teh PE beta isn't actually "here, play the first chapter" (or whatever), but sounds more like it's gonna be "here, play this totally unrelated to the campaign module and break whatever you can".

I think what'll end up happening with me is that I'll play it through once, not caring so much about "completion percent" (i.e. find and kill BBEG, game over, do whatever side quests I get but not necessarily seeking them out). Then I'll go back in a little while with a new character, and try doing/getting everything ... but play more like it was a PnP game (i.e., tell myself "look self, you can only play this on Thursday nights from 6-10PM" or something) edit - though it totally depends on when PoE actually releases ... If it's spring, then I might start with the "you can only play on Thursdays" rule, because of needing to do spring/summer things - taking care of the lawn, gardens, etc.

They've already said previously that you only get experience for accomplishing objectives, not for all fights (however, some fights are objectives). My example was only supposed to read off like the "recap" of a D&D gaming session (our DM gives us the XP at the end of the night). I understand that PoE doesn't give XP per kill. The DM (game) knows this: - 3 fights, combined total of 800 XP per L9 character - Saved the brat - 400 XP per character - Killed the bandit leader - "missed" 250 XP Party: Lephys - L8 Bard me - L9 Wizard you - L10 Fighter JFSOCC - L9 Cleric (someone) - L9 Rogue Party gets told: - Lephys, you get 1300 XP tonight because you're ECL 8 still. - neo, JFSOCC, and [whoever]; you all get 1200 XP because you're L9 - aname, you get 1100 XP because you're L10 edit -- Now, I know that in this breakdown you're still getting XP for the fights -- but not in the 'normal' cRPG way of rewarding it as "killed bugbear, party gets 100XP ... killed another one, +100 XP ... ". Really, I'm just listing it as something that the DM/game is tracking because the DM/game needs to -- suppose "encounter" would be a better word than "fight", since an encounter doesn't necessarily mean "combat".

oh right - the "and now fight these goblins, which are exactly like the last goblins, except they're red and hit a little harder" stuff ...

Yeah I could live with that however they would need to be clearly defined as "baby dragons" (i.e. size and personality) as opposed to just a different level, and whilst i accept that there can be a few different colours with distinct personalities and levels of strength lets not get into Diablo re-colour territory here shall we? Agreed, and I figure Obsidian is good enough to be able to do that. As for the colors -> I was just pulling things outta the D&D books for example. It's been ages since I've played Diablo(II), so I can't really recall what they did with dragons.

I don't mind seeing some/all of the XP notifications -- but since they're doing it as "objective based" rather than "combat based" XP, it's easier to "hide". I wasn't as clear as I intended to be in the last post. What I mean is -> turn in the quest to save the mayor's daughter, you get 1250 XP (hooray!). The game (internally) keeps track of things: - Fights (overall) = 1000 XP - Save the Girl = 250 XP - Diplomacy/Intimidate/Bluff/(the other one I'm missing) the bandit leader to save her = +250 XP - other secret stuff = 500 XP When you turn in the quest (successfully) you will MINIMALLY get 1250 XP (all the fights and saving the girl). If you do the secret stuff and the "conversation win", you can get another 750 XP (or something between +250 and +750 depending on how many secrets there are, and their XP value). The "GM" just tells you "The party gains 1250 XP each" when you turn in the quest - but not that the 5 fights were each 5000 XP, and that the girl was 250, and that you missed 250 for the convo win, and that you missed 500 for ~secrets~.

Yeah, run it like a P&P game... you have your "game night" where you get into two "big" fights, four "easy" fights, save the mayor's daughter, and get safely back to town. You get 800 XP from the fights (unless ECL is either greater than or less than the CR of the encounters, in which case you get slightly more or less XP); 450 XP from saving the brat; and unknowingly miss out on 250 XP for killing the bandit leader instead of reasoning with him to let her go.

They could always use "Wyrmlings" in PE1, and "Adults" in PE2 (replace with level-appropriate CR ages as necessary). Hell, that happened in PnP games all the time ... CR2 encounter would be a Wyrmling Black Dragon (0-5 years old), but a CR 13 is Mature Adult(201-400). Note that due to ability progression, colors change pretty often (I just found 2 "black dragon" encounters where the dragon CR matches the party level). Going with straight white dragon: L1 - Wyrmling (CR = Party) L2 - V. Young (CR = Party) L3 - Young (CR = Party) L4 - Juvenile (CR > Party) L5 - Juvenile (CR = Party) L6 - Y. Adult (CR > Party) L7 - Y. Adult (CR = Party) L8 onwards follows the 4,5,6,7 progression with the even level encounters having Dragon CR > Party, and the odd level encounters having CR = Party.

I think it would make more sense if there was a way to "lose ground" (or better yet - assess a situation, like in the example). In cRPGs, a fight turns into "die, reload, try again" instead of "oh crap, we didn't anticipate there'd be a lich with the orcs ... RUN AWAY!" where the BBEG and (some|all) of the other minions won't chase you all the way across the map. Edit -> This is mostly because of how the "fog of war" works (or at least the "exploration" of the map) coupled with the computer always being able to know "yup, *that* particular house cat is definitely the player's familiar, even though there are 37 other cats wandering around our camp". It'd be nice to get it more like PnP gaming where you can have BBEG fight, lose ground (say down 20' of corridor to the previous room, where baddies won't follow (and/or be stupid enough to let you draw them out for easy killing), and then bar the door behind you), and then re-check the room (or accidentally find the secret passage lever) where you can sneak a rogue up to a balcony and survey the room ... then get a mage up there to rain firey death on at least the minions, so it's your party and the lich...