neo6874

I'd like to see it "random static". E.g. "Gruk'targ the goblin chieftan ~always~ has 'Goblin's Bite' (+1 magical weapon, +1d6 acid damage) as his guaranteed loot (plus some other trash - 25 GP, or a gemstone, etc)". However, on my playthrough, it's a longsword. On Hassat's, it's an axe. On Pegasus', it's a short sword. (and so on, through a handful of the major weapon types). To make things interesting, it's decided at the beginning of the game; no random rolls when you open the chest/kill the bad guy... for those of us who like reading every single "history" tome, hints about what it is. Nice thing is that Obsidian won't necessarily have to write numerous descriptions for the things... "Forged in the depths of [were ever], the Goblin's Bite has been carried by goblin chieftans for 300 years as a sign of their rule over the goblins of [where ever]. (more stuff here because it's too early without nearly enough coffee)"

Picturing the class quest for a society of flaggelants.... I'm picturing this --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgYEuJ5u1K0 or perhaps, the quest is actually to find the Holy Hand Grenade

*ghah* Now look what you did! *starts up BG1 ... click, click ... hmm, never tried a Paladin before ... click...* Same here (although I went with a Cleric)..

I'm smack in-between L and XL, and I have the exact opposite issue. If you wear an L, you're apparently supposed to have a very short torso (and arms), but if you wear an XL, you'd better be 17-inches wider than the person who wore an L. It's really quite silly. You'd think they'd just separate overall "size" (to oversimplify it), and length. That's pretty much how pants work. But no... I guess shirts are too cool for that. no, because that would make things far too easy.

Just going out on a limb with it (since we don't knwo anything official). I'm dipping into D&D rules a bit to flesh things out We've got our 10th level wizard and Cleric. WIZ has fireball (L3), magic missile (L1), Shield (Arcane Veil?) (L1), Stoneskin (L4), Teleport (L5) and 5 other things in the grimoire. He has 20 total slots, 15 "per encounter" and 5 "per rest". The "Per Rest" spells are his "L4 and L5" spells (because they're his most powerful). He has access to a total of 70 spells, at least twenty of which may not be "with him" (i.e. in addition to the equipped one, he's carrying 4 grimoires in his backpack, there's no guarantee that he's not overlapping some spells between them). CLR has all the typical spells of a cleric (healing, sanctuary, whatever), totalling 45 spells overall. He also has 20 slots, but 18 of which are 'per encounter'. (IDK ... just making this up...). Alternatively, his slots work more like a D&D cleric - he has "20 slots" that he can fill with whatever, but can ALWAYS burn any spell he wants and turn it into a healing spell.

I still wouldn't call that "up to" the bear, IDK, I'd call "got within 30 feet" as "walked up to it" (30' seems a realistic distance for a bear to get angry with you) . Although, yeah, I could see "it gets spooked and runs away" happening too. I'd like to see bits where you can make things go faster -> like in P&P RPGs. Nothing major, but having to fight with the pathfinding AI because getting stuck behind a building is actually "faster" than walking around the stables is a pain. Not to mention having to traverse the same stretch of ground 57 times because the arms & armor merchant is over here, but the temple (for potions, priest scrolls) is over there, and the mage's tower (arcane scrolls, wondrous items, etc.) is way over there...

I wouldn't be opposed if that's an option, though personally I'd take it a step higher than that. i.e. I get the BG entries "Talked to Captain Stupidface, he told me about Gale, the former captain of the guard who went crazy and killed his family. Asked me to bring Gale to justice" Asking around town, I find out that Gale ran off to the southeast (this doesn't go in the journal). However, I (as the player) can add it.

When's the last time you walked "up to a bear" in a video game before it started to become angry with you? You know, instead of "Oh no! You've entered the bear's scent radius, which is 7.3 miles! It naturally wants to murder you now, because it's obviously just a death machine, and not an animal that just so happens to hunt other animals for food when it's hungry. Also, it will never, ever stop chasing you now, ever..."? Last night, Baldur's gate; Area where Gorion gets killed. Bear shows as blue til you're relatively close (within sling range).

And this is really really a terrible vision of how the Dungeon experience. Seriously. Remind me of the mmorpg farming. I don't want to have to "farm" something in a single player crpg. I expect it to be a goddamn cRPG with a good story focused on my main character/s. It's actually more of a throwback to P&P RPGs rather than anything else. Yeah, you have your "crown quest" ... but there's nothing saying that you can't (won't) get sidetracked and start exploring some random ruins because you can -- the better hooks for exploring deeper are finding a key on the BBEG, and remembering that steel door you couldn't pick the lock on ... so you finish the quest, but then you start off exploring that. Really, cRPGs are pretty terrible in that regard, because they're like "OK, so you have 2 days to get my daughter..." (you do it) "... great, so now do this!" ... and very little in the way of "you know what, I just wanna go see what's at this old keep..."

I understood that the companion was optional (as far as I know all the companions are optional, actually), but my point was that people tend to feel like they're being punished when the game tells them "If you'd done something different a long time ago, you would have got something here" without ever giving them fair warning before hand. Like I said, I'm OK with it, but in general, devs like to avoid blocking off significant content due to choices players didn't realize they were making. Then again, AP had a lot of examples of players getting completely different options on how to resolve situations based on their past decisions, so who knows; maybe Obsidian would be up for it afterall. What if it was like this: You talk to the halfling Sneaky McSneak in some random tavern near the ruins of Od Nua she tells you of the rumors surrounding the ruins -- that maybe there are even levels far below the 2-3 that are "known", and that she's gonna find a way in. (blah blah, I'm headed out in a tenday, once my new armor is completed) You find her (or her corpse) later on, in level 4 or 5 or something. Because you rescued her from starving (or whatever), you're able to get her as a new party member. (You have a tenday or two to rescue her after she leaves town)

"Paladin" fits the bill right there .

is it bad that my immediate addition to this was "and some dice"?

Nothing more than "I backed it under Kickstarter" (also, IIRC, the KS bonuses are somewhat better than the "retail" bonuses for the various tiers -- nothing major, just an extra item or two, e.g. 2x or 3x digital game keys on top of the "boxed version" instead of 1 or 2.)

yeah, ways *out*. I was talking about ways *in*.

Having parts where "hey, this random skill I got was actually USEFUL" is always nice -- a lotta times in cRPGs your options are pretty much limited to "use rogue -> find trap -> disable trap -> continue on". I can't recall *ever* having a point where "oh hey, good thing I kept that ranger in the party for their tracking skill!"

Yeah, traversing 12 levels of dungeon again will suck -- but maybe they give us a "fast travel" option -- e.g. We've already cleared out everything up to and including L12, so we get a secondary set of map pins that take us to the 13th floor (or any other level we have cleared), unless we hit a random encounter along the way ... then we have to get to the exit on that level and can continue on. So: Open "Od Nua" map, choose to go to the 13th floor Run into monsters on random part of L3, kill them, walk through rest of L3, killing more things Exit L3 and get returned to map, choose L13 again ... Run into monsters on random part of L9, kill them, walk through remainder of L9, killing more things exit L9, get returned to map, choose L13 ... Make it to L13, proceed to kill things Edit for clarity -- The "random part" would be somewhere along the corridor that you actually have to travel to get to the next level -- so, for example if you're on a floor that works like L2 of the Nashkel Mines (where you go northeast from the bottom center of the map til the corridor dead-ends, then dead south) you won't be getting into a fight in the far northwest corner. it should be a time-based thing though ... so you can "quickly" get out to L1 without a fight if you've only been adventuring down there for three days ... but if you let a month of gametime go by (fixing your stronghold, other adventures, whatever), then new inhabitants start taking up refuge in the ruins...

Sort of, I think ... so it's 15 levels, right? Let's for discussion then say Levels 1-3 are your "the main storyline sends you here levels", depending on your current level, you might do OK in it or find it a bit difficult (but manageable). L4 will kick your butt (in a fun way) ... so you go out, finish up some other things, maybe level up once ot twice. Then come back, breeze through 1-3 (hopefully more monsters will be spawned, because traversing 3 levels of empty dungeon is no fun) ... L4 and 5 are hard, but do-able and give you "good loot" for your new level, you go to L6, find that it's kicking your butt again like L4 did a few levels ago ... BUT you're richer and have more healing spells, so you press on and finish L6 ... L7 nearly exhausts whatever you have left spell and potion wise ... so you GTFO and do something else. Later on, you go back and do L7-9... get beat up bad in L10 and leave You come back, do L10,11, get beat up in L12 and leave ... You come back, get 12-14 done, and 15 is too hard. You come back, finish 15 and the megadungeon story arc... (or, find out that obsidian was totally awesome and it goes deeper than they told us)

@kgambit - the second city is "Twin Elms". @Night Stalker -- agreed, #3 is out, because the "whole dungeon" isn't mandatory. Right now my understanding is that you're gonna be sent there as part of the storyline, but only to the first few levels (uh 3? whatever it started out as before the "let's make it huge!" goal was enacted); and there's gonna be some hook that makes you want to delve ever deeper into it from time to time (because it gets harder faster than you can level up)

Optional -- lemme put pillars on the side so if I wanna make it look like BG I can (Individually controllable, so if I just one on the left for the "game control" buttons - pause, game, map, inventory, character sheet, journal, etc. - I can do that)

I like Baldur's Gate.

Probably looking at all the support tickets raised by people following directions (hint: there's a big "contact us" button on the "tier selection" page ... also, immediately below the list of your pledges on the "Manage Pledges" page). As for your initial enquiry: Obsidian hasn't released anything official yet. So you're worrying about something that, as yet, doesn't matter. I imagine that the instructions on "how to do it" will be given out in update #7x, 8x, 9x, or 1xx -- whenever they get to the point when their distribution agreements are finalized with GOG, Steam, and whoever for Linux. LIKELY SCENARIOS: You "buy" the game from Obsidian (in the same manner as you "bought" your bronze badge yesterday/tuesday). At checkout, you choose your distributor (GOG or Steam or so far unannounced Linux Distributor), and then Obsidian will email you a confirmation with a GOG/Steam promo code. (This is probably more likely if you have multiple codes -- e.g. the $165 tier) Obsidian sends out another survey, like they did for the T-shirt/Credits (and other goodies for other tiers), where you choose "I want a GOG/Steam/Linux code". You get an email later with your GOG/Steam code. Then, login to GOG/Steam/Linux Distributor, buy the game, apply promo code for -100% price, start download.

screw the wilderness, add more levels to the endless dungeon Honestly though, I'm a bit torn -- more wilderness would be fun ... so long as they keep things balanced properly. What I mean is that, in BG1 for example, yeah I could go into the Cloakwood right after leaving Candlekeep ... buuut would get beat to hell by mooks intended for a ECL4 party (just making up the ECL). I don't want to see it being direct level scaling (because that's the worst) ... but throwing more mooks at you ... e.g. in D&D, a ECL 2 random combat might be 4 mooks, L3/2/2/1. a ECL 10 encounter might end up being 8 mooks, topping out at L6/7 instead of (still) only 4 mooks who're all L10(or higher, because mooks are "always" [you + 1 level] in that game). Granted, I'm saying this under the assumption that the player is intended to walk around to where ever they want, and aren't so much "on rails" (e.g. "You can find your stronghold at L1 by walking northwest ... but it's 10 areas, and the last 6 you have to run away from mooks because they'll kill you fast" is OK ... but "you can't get your stronghold until you finish [tasks], and then get a map pin" is not). Furthermore, I'm only talking about "random encounter" mooks and not necessarily "quest mooks". E.g. if you choose to walk through "Forest Area #4 of Eir Glanfath" at L2 (Ch. 1), because you want to ... you'll see spiders, bugbears, trolls, goblins, orcs, whatever, maybe run across a Bandit Camp (but there's only a few guys there) -- but then in Ch. 2, a farmer in Twin Elms mentions that the bandits kidnapped his kid (so the bandit leader and a lot of bandits are there now).

I hope that on "easier" settings, they leave in the "generic knowledge" (uninjured, barely wounded, injured ... etc), without specific numbers. For "harder" settings (and even optional on the easier ones), not a thing (ala BG1).

Lucky you, it keeps reminding me of that one Sword of Truth book that was so god awful bad I stopped reading it like 50% through, skipped to the last chapter, then said "Oh so that happens". The book in question was "Pillars of Creation". Yeah, that one was annoying -- the entirety of the book had nothing to do with the main characters (um ... Richard and Kalyn?, I think) until the last chapter... was glad I slogged through it, but still was very lackluster in respect to the rest of the series...

As stated elsewhere, I'm not so much "afraid" of what Obsidian will do ... but if I don't at least have the option for something like this Then I will be disappoint. Edit to clarify --> really the option to have a UI that surrounds the "Map" (bonus points if it makes things bigger and/or allows me to move stuff around, so it's not all cramped on the one horizontal bar at the bottom). Floaty UIs are nice when it's there as a reminder -- "Spell/Ability slot 'A' is Magic Missile", but with "play as the party" style games, I like it feeling a little more solid.