Death Machine Miyagi

It might impact how you play the character and how you respond to events if you know your character's background, personality and beliefs. Mostly for the ultra RP centered folks. Normally I don't bother, but there was a brief time where I played the BG trilogy mod, which allows you to edit your journal, and not only wrote a long custom background but also kept my own journal notes about events in my character's 'voice'. It was fun for a little while, but I couldn't keep it up. Too much work for too little payoff. Its much more fun in pen and paper games, where you have a DM/GM who can actually make stories around that background and your character's personality.

I was thinking of playing a rogue, since I usually play a wizard or fighter type and I'd like to try something new. As for the party composition, in addition to the main PC rogue, if its anything like BG I'll have a fighter-type, a wizard-type and a healer-type at minimum. Beyond that, I'm more interested in which companions I enjoy having around more than I am which class they are. I don't think I'll be designing any characters other than my main PC.

There is precedent from our humble developers. A high endurance trait accompanied by ample sexually experience and/or the Kama Sutra Master perk in Fallout 2 led to considerably more satisfied sexual partners. It also led to a better audition for the porn studio in New Reno. Here is the formula for porn star success from the Fallout wiki: if you have Kama Sutra Master if you have Sex Appeal if you are Sexpert Yeah. Suffice to say, as much as I enjoyed Fallout 2, there are parts of that game I wouldn't be all that eager to see revisited in Obsidian's future games.

I'm pretty sure Game of Thrones legitimately has a sex and nudity quota they feel obligated to meet, no matter how little sense it makes or how little it advances the plot. Its why they feel enormous plot points and major scenes can be excised without fanfare but they absolutely must make room for a gratuitous five minute scene in the brothel. Suffice to say, really hoping Obsidian is taking notes on what not to do based on GoT.

I'm not a prude and I'm not bothered by sexually explicit content, but I can't say the prospect of it fills me with a lot of enthusiasm either. Its too easy for it to be done poorly or done excessively, which ends up being the very opposite of 'mature', and I have no interest in such stuff being played for fanservice. By all means, if nudity or a sex scene is legitimately done to advance the plot or better establish a character, then go for it. But if anyone thinks that just because it can be there it should be there, then I'm going to have to disagree. Strongly.

Oh yes, I'd very much like to see your attempts to manipulate a situation blow up in your face sometimes. The problem with trying to play the chessmaster is that the pieces don't always move the way you intend. Nor should they. Still, the ability to even try and play the master strategist is something missing all too often from RPGs, where you often feel like a helpless pawn of whatever random NPC you're meant to listen to. Allowing the player to feel like they can be in control of events, rather than at their mercy, is difficult but extremely worthwhile. Here's hoping Obsidian makes the attempt. I have a good feeling about it from what we know.

Spoiler-free synopsis is pretty much the last paragraph: We don't yet know what the story of PoE is going to be about. It may be on too personal a scale for the same kind of approach. Yet, on whatever scale, I kind of hope we'll see more quests that have me focusing not just on the immediate objective, but how that quest and my approach in resolving it fits into and changes the bigger picture. I would like, at some point in the game, to realize what my larger goal is and be able to manipulate people and events accordingly. Not sure how much the rest of the post needs to be marked for spoilers. I mention at least two of the big factions in the game, who you'll hear about in the first town you start in, and allude to the outcome of some quests and the potential fate of a smaller faction. There's an allusion to something that happens at the very end of the game, which is probably what needs to be covered up the most. I'd edit in spoiler tags, but I guess the edit button disappears after a while. Sorry.

No, not talking about the game's length. I'm talking about strategy. Looking back, one of the things I liked most about Fallout: New Vegas was the sense that I was pursuing a certain end, a vision of how I wanted the Mojave to look when all was said and done. When I went for the Wild Card ending, for example, I did so by deciding on my view of the various factions of the Mojave and then dealing with them accordingly. I didn't like the Legion, so I did everything in my power to dismantle their war effort. I killed both Caesar and Legate Lanius, despite having stats high enough to talk him into leaving, because I wanted as much of a power vacuum as possible so as to see the Legion destroy itself from within as quickly as possible. I was aware that this would likely make life in Arizona much worse in the short term, but considered destroying the Legion worth that price. I was ambivalent about the NCR, realizing they would eventually be my enemies (at least in the short term), so I also subtly undermined their war effort by, for example, not turning in Hanlon. I persuaded the Khans to head north into Wyoming rather than assist the NCR or Legion, reasoning that the Khans being allowed to regroup and rebuild would provide an excellent future distraction against any NCR efforts to reclaim the Mojave from me. I saved NCR's president, following House's reasoning that he would serve me better as a scapegoat for the lost war than a martyr. I wanted to ease my way back into friendly relations and trade with California as soon as possible after my little coup, so I resisted the temptation to have General Oliver hurled off the dam and tried to remain as cordial as possible when I told him and his men to get the hell out. Many of these decisions had little or no in-game impact, not even in the ending slides. There is no word of what happens to the Legion, for example, if you beat them and kill all their leaders. Yet all through the game the set-up had me approaching quests in this way. I was playing strategically. I was thinking of the long game. We don't yet know what the story of PoE is going to be about. It may be on too personal a scale for that same kind of approach. Yet, on whatever scale, I kind of hope we'll see more quests that have me focusing not just on the immediate objective, but how that quest and my approach in resolving it fits into and changes the bigger picture. I would like, at some point in the game, to realize what my larger goal is and be able to manipulate people and events accordingly.

True. But at least in the United States, the popular perception of slavery is white people enslaving black people. I'm guessing reversing those roles will end up antagonizing some people, regardless of how little sense it makes to get upset by it.

Nothing would enhance the experience of PoE's richly detailed game world and elaborate storyline quite like being ganked and teabagged by a group of powergaming 13 year olds, accompanied by cries of 'LOL get rekt shrub'

I want to see Vailian slave traders, as well. Not just because of the explosive effect of having the dark skinned Vailians seemingly be the advanced culture that enslaves more primitives peoples, but also because I'll be curious to see whether the writers can distance themselves enough from a modern viewpoint to present slavery and other such things from the viewpoint of the Vailians themselves. In Baldur's Gate 2, 'slaver' was shorthand for 'evil', and typically meant you would be killing the slaver in question shortly after meeting them. The game felt like it had a very modern perspective on thing, in which slavery is an unquestioned crime against humanity and killing slavers was encouraged by everyone of good alignment. I'd like to see some Vailians who are entirely decent people in other respects and yet still hold slaves because that's the culture they grew up in. Its so much a part of who and what they are that they don't even think about it. If you start a grand crusade to liberate slaves in their territory, a bunch of otherwise entirely sympathetic characters won't see you as a brave hero so much as a dangerous fanatic, a sort of pseudo-medieval John Brown.

Yep. There aren't any. Which is wise. Always hated that about AD&D 2nd edition.

Given the amount of effort that is very obviously going into making the world of PoE feel authentic, I would find this very, very welcome as well. Or at least some friendly tips in the character creation screen about naming conventions somewhere so the character name seems to fit better. In RPGs, I just can't bring myself to name my character after particularly famous real world figures or famous characters from literature. If I do, every time I spot my character's name I get dragged out of the game. If I use the name of a real person, it has to be something that doesn't immediately conjure up immediate historical connections in my mind. If I use a name from literature, it can't be friggin' Aragorn or Legolas or Bilbo, it would have to be some minor secondary character whose role in the story I barely even remember. Well, okay, I would do it sometimes back when I still played MMOs. Way back during the early days of WoW, I had a dwarf hunter named Don Quixote with a pet named Sancho Panza. Or maybe just Sancho? Can't remember if you could give pets last names. Anyway, that was fun for awhile.

A lot of times I steal names from lesser characters in fiction. For example, I had a female character named Dunia after Raskolnikov's sister in Crime and Punishment. In other cases, I do a wiki search for some cool historical names to steal or use google translate to find a foreign word for some trait my character is supposed to possess that sounds like it could work as a name. And then there are the times when I'm just completely lazy and throw random syllables together willy-nilly until I find something that sounds vaguely name-like and not too stupid.

I think thieves are perceived as weak because most players were basically playing them like a fighter who does the occasional lockpicking, but that's not the game's fault. A thief who relies on backstabbing or traps has his uses and can be quite effective. This guide is pretty good. For me the thief's ability to detect illusion alone was golden, something most players have probably never used. I haven't really played druids excessively, but I do think that they have a spell selection that adds something to any party, the insect spells and some rather useful summons come to mind. The thief class itself wasn't the problem so much as the complete lack of reasons to play one as single class. As I think Gromnir said earlier in the thread, all the abilities you needed as a thief could be obtained quite early, giving you little reason not to play as a mage-thief or fighter-thief. I loved my chaotic evil half-orc fighter/thief, and ran him straight from Candlekeep to the end of Throne of Bhaal, but I hated every single class thief I ever tried and always ended up abandoning them before long. As for druids, there were only a few spells that separated them from clerics, and unfortunately some of the ones they were missing included Raise Dead, Resurrection and Greater Restoration. Also, their stronghold quest line sucked.

I honestly don't care all that much about class balance. It's important in multiplayer games, but in a single player game I find it more important that all the classes be interesting to play, unique and functional. It doesn't bother me if wizards are more powerful than warriors or thieves or whatever else in the long run, so long as all those classes are fun and offer a variety of unique and entertaining play styles. If you can accomplish that, than even if you don't technically need anything but a wizard in the late game to curbstomp everything your path, people will still bring other classes or play other classes because they're entertaining to play. Baldur's Gate 2 had plenty of brokenness in its class system. The infamous Kensai/Mage, for example. Yet a Kensai/Mage could be a great deal of fun, broken or not, and isn't that the whole point of the game? To have fun? Its not like WoW or something where one class being overpowered derails the game for everyone else. It's just you. If you don't like how OP that class combo is, don't play it. In BG2, I found much greater annoyance in classes like Druids and single-class Thieves that were both weak and boring, the latter being the far greater offense.

I took the use of the word 'quadratic' as a reference to this trope from TV Tropes.

Neither of which are in any way essential to the game or story. They should not taunt my inner completionist. For the record, I used to be so obsessive-compulsive in how I played the IE games that I would refuse to leave a screen in Baldur's Gate until I had removed as much of the black Fog of War from it as I could. Crazy? Yes. Yes, I suppose so. But to have a companion unobtained and a boss undiscovered...GAH. That's just sick.

I doubt you will. The Modron Cube was a parody dungeon, the in-game explanation being that it was made by modrons to investigate why people like repetitive dungeon crawlers. You can get through it without doing combat by the way, just immediately run for the exit as you enter a room and you'll be gone before they start their dialogue. Yeah, I know it was a parody. Its just that a joke is funny the first time and irritating the 50th time. And I've tried running through. The Hard Constructs still tend to get in a few good whacks, and I end up having to make my own map so I don't get confused as to where I've been before as well. It would have been perfectly fine if there hadn't been anything worth finding in there, and you could just walk away when you were bored with grinding and the joke had worn thin, but the maze contained a party member and a boss fight.

In regards to Planescape: Torment: 1. I also regret just how much more material there is for a mage. It would have been nice to make a thief or a fighter a more rewarding experience. As it stands, I've never finished a playthrough of P:T where I wasn't a mage with high wisdom, intelligence and charisma. Lack of wisdom, especially, closes off way too much of the game. Rather a foreshadowing of how the need to have influence with Kreia to understand the plot of KotoR 2 kinda made me feel restricted in how I played that game. 2. As for grinding? If you're really set on doing so, Undersigil is a better place to do it, at least in terms of experience. Get a whole batch of those worm-things to follow you. When you have a bunch of them on screen at once, cast Cloudkill and watch the XP roll in, especially if your Nameless One is alone. For the other things down there, there's that insect swarm spell; cast a few of those and they die in batches as well. I hated the Modron Cube. Hated hated hated. I hated that I had to make my way through it on hard to get Nordom. I hated that I had to continue making my way through to fight the Evil Wizard. I hated how utterly, utterly repetitive it became as you had to enter the same damn dialogue over and over and over between rooms, only to fight 1 to 3 of those absolute pain-in-the-ass Hard Constructs every time. I hope to never see a dungeon like the Modron Cube again. In my eyes, they were to P:T what the sewers were to VtM:B. They represented a failure of game design. But I never worried as much about grinding as you seem to, so it wasn't as much of a problem for me.

The more that I think about it, the more interested I am in seeing how culture works as opposed to race. If possible, my first character is also going to be from the Vailian Republics. I like the Renaissance Italy aesthetic.

That would be an example of how lots of people behave when they believe really, really strongly they will reincarnate. Beliefs are subject to doubt, whether openly acknowledged or not, and contradiction by other beliefs. Moreover, behavior very often defies stated belief. To take a closer and more familiar example, there are billions of Christians in the world. According to their generally-accepted belief systems, the just/believers will go to heaven and the wicked/unbelievers to hell, for all eternity. This has been an enormous part of Western culture for millennia. Of those billions, how many do you suspect behave in a way that rationally reflects that belief? How many are fervent enough believers to treat the existence of Hell the same way they treat the existence of....say, Australia? Faced with an existence which is the equivalent of a drop of water next to an ocean....an infinitely vast ocean...how many nonetheless would be just as terrified of receiving a cancer diagnosis as any secularist? How many would spend just as much money and effort fighting it, trying to avoid that eternity of bliss they think they're going to for as long as they can? How many have told or laughed about jokes about Hell, where they presumably believe people are suffering endlessly at this very instant, when they would probably find jokes about a man who burned alive today tasteless? How many treat those they believe are probably going to Hell the same way they might treat someone who is standing on railroad tracks in the path of an incoming train; i.e. sparing no effort to convince them to stop doing what they're doing? This is not to say that all but the most fervent believers are lying about their beliefs or that they're hypocrites. Its just to say that I think there's an element of unreality to an unproven belief for a whole lot of people, a kernel of doubt and uncertainty that causes vast numbers of people to behave in ways which don't accurately reflect their stated beliefs. I think that kernel of doubt would vanish pretty quickly and behavior would change subtly or radically if we could without the slightest trace of doubt identify the existence of Heaven and Hell. And so would it change if they knew, with near absolute certainty, that this life won't be their last and they'll be back again and again and again in various forms. (Oy, hope that didn't open up an enormous can of Real World religious argument....)

Too much content over quality, the game bores me and go I find something else to do. Too much quality over content, I play the game, enjoy it, then get annoyed when it ends so fast and/or discover how locked on railroad tracks it is. Since the latter at least involves enjoying the game before getting annoyed, I'd say it wins by default.

The dragon thing makes a lot less sense when you remember that Bhaal's entire plan relied upon his children dying to fuel his rebirth. If that's your plan, why would you breed with a species that lives thousands of years and makes mincemeat out of entire adventuring parties single-handed? Makes them dying on schedule rather frustrating, doesn't it? Lots of little, easily killable things makes a lot more sense. But then how would ToB have thrown in the obligatory gigantic boss battles? So whatever. We've got a dragon Bhaalspawn with an adult son. I don't think the writers of that expansion pack gave enough of a crap about the lore to care whether it made any sense, just so long as it provided a big battle.