Hiro Protagonist II

Like Rjshae said. Original BG1 was almost like this, and I was ridiculously happy and proud when I finally got my magical weapon. No it wasn't. You could get the Ring of Wizardry, +2 Varscona Long Sword and other good magical +1, +2 and +3 stuff near the start of the game. Things like Wand of Frost and Ankheg Armor. As I said before, having high level items like the +2 sword didn't mean anything because your level was too low to hit anything. Hiro: Did you really play the original BG1? Because the points in your first posts basically chop off BG and other IE games at the ankles, and then you end this post by saying what I said: That BG1 got it right, but then you go and say that BG2 and IWD1 also got it right. You can't have the cake and eat it. Now, what's it gonna be? Yes of course. I've played every character class, soloed with a Bard and many themed parties in BG1, including a Rogue party and a Mage party. And it doesn't chop off my first post. You could get many high level magical items at the start of the game. The only game that didn't get it right was IWD2. This is like my anti-list of how to do loot. Less armour and weapons? And trash loot needs to be able to do something. The helmets in IWD2 at the start of the game did nothing. There was no point having them. Just have gold sitting on the ground instead because all we're going to do is sell it to a merchant. At least the trash helmets in the BG games did something. Magical Jewellery and special items shouldn't be so rare that there's only a couple in the game. I finished IWD2 recently and half my characters had blank slots because there wasn't enough rings, necklaces or anything special in the game. No loot bags? They've been pretty much a staple of the IE games with IWD1 and BG2. They're a must have. Also, if you're going to have an adventurers hall where we can make out own characters, then a party of mages should be able to have access to scrolls. This is where the IWD games fall down when making parties of a particular class. While it's fun to take a party of mages through the game, it's also frustrating when usually only one scroll exists for each spell. If you're not going to reward players with loot, then you've taken a fundamental positive experience out of the game which is the game reward system. I sincerely doubt you want the anti-version of my list. That's Diablo 3, a fun ARPG, but not at all what I want to see in Pillars of Eternity. Obviously, with a system like what I'm proposing, there won't be lots of junk loot (unlike yours), as that entails a system overflowing with items. Every item in my system counts, and merchants wouldn't sell very much at all, and only a few things at the time, and these change over time, a bit like an unmodded FNV, actually. And loots bags just felt too arcade-gamey for me, I want real bodies, corpses, cadavers - Hey! I like playing a necromancer every once in a while. What can I say? I don't see how that's Diablo 3. Diablo 3 can be finished with only self found items which I've done. I have 1085 hours played, 10 level 60 characters and 4530 achievement points. 3 achievement points off a perfect score. All in about 8 months of very casual playing after it went live. Never bought anything off the Auction House. I gave up on it early last year.

1. Any game that has a save anytime or check point option will always be used and most likely abused. It's just not crpgs. A lot of different types of games have it. Mainly due to you don't want to have to start the game from the beginning again. If you cut out the save anywhere option (like in the IE games) because some people look at it as save scumming, it won't stop people going back to a previous check point to restart that part of the game. If I stuffed up, I can always go back to a previous check point. All it will do is change save scumming into checkpoint scumming. 2. This game is presumably for a niche market. Not necessarily for casual players. It sounds like you want this game to be partially mainstream so all can play even if new players don't have any prior knowledge of the rules system or setting. I don't understand why you want to go out your way to make the game mainstream when it's a niche game for mostly serious crpg players. If people want a mainstream game without having to do in depth research skills, spells, tactics, and just sit back and relax, then there's always arpg's like Diablo 3. 3. Even with 4E, you only have a set amount of healing surges which only heal 1/4 of your hit points and depends on class and modifiers. For instance, a Rogue, Wizard, Ranger, Warlock usually only get 6. And once you use them, they're gone. And it's very difficult to be healed once you have no healing surges. I think there's a special type of potion that can heal you, once you use up your healing surges. The only way to get them back is an extended rest. After playing 4E pnp for two years, one of the problems we faced was my level 16 Rogue (as well as some other players) would use up our healing surges after 2 or 3 encounters and we had to use a ritual (Comrade's Succor from memory) to transfer healing surges from one party member to another. It ended up becoming a metagaming tactic to get through the encounters. But at least you couldn't do it all the time because the party member who had the most healing surges would also run out by giving them to us. We found we had to use a lot of tactics and really work as a team for each encounter if we couldn't extend rest. It would be good if PoE had something like Comrade's Succor that could transfer health. It's one option to avoid resting all the time. Otherwise, I can see a lot of people trekking back to a safe spot to rest, myself included. 4. Isn't this with all games. You're playing any type of game (crpg, rts, fps, ... ) and you come to a point where you get your arse handed to you. You reload and change tactics. 5. I agree that random rolls on learning a spell or picking a lock are pointless. Make them thresholds. If you have the ability to learn, search, pick a lock, then make it so. If you want random chance, make it an option in the settings. Just like toggle max level hit points, although I assume most people will have it on. But at least there's an option to turn it off if you want an ironman challenge. 6. I don't see them as mutually exclusive but rather integrated with each other. This is pretty much for all games imo. You adapt because it's interesting and enjoyable as well as wanting to enjoy other parts of the game. I haven't come across a system that you couldn't meta-game. If you've studied the rules and know how to tweak your character, it's hard to ignore the meta-gaming side of it if you're that way inclined because as a player, I want to have the best character to play with, not a gimped character. This goes with all games, pnp, crpgs, etc. Unless I want a gimped character on purpose. I'm playing Traveller pnp at the moment and I did the same in meta-gaming a new character. My friends did the same. It's the DM's job to scale the encounters to our characters. And bad characters aren't so gimped that you can't play. Whether it's crpgs or pnp, I've had bad characters with poor stats and was still able to get through encounters. You just change your tactics so you can survive. As Stun said, a game system is set so there's a low and high range with starting stats and that character should be able to get through the game. Whether you have meta-gamed or not, an OP character will have different tactics to one who has a gimped character. A player should have the ability to get through with both extremes and still provide a challenge to both sets of characters.

The problem is from what Josh has indicated, there won't be any dump stats to dump things like DEX because the system is designed not to make a bad character.

I think by curtailing bad and creative builds, it also curtails overpowered builds which is what Josh wants to eliminate. The 'degenerative' gameplay of munchkins which is only a small part of what made the IE games so enjoyable. The creativity of building characters that you wouldn't normally build, whether they be bad on purpose, good or overpowered. I get the impression all the characters will be pretty much the same with a small variance +/- in some skills.

I think this is true for all games, including IWD2 and 3rd Edition. I posted my party in another thread and who would have thought you could take a level 1 Rogue right through to the end of the game and not have to level them up? And you could multi-class the Rogue into something else like a Mage and level up that Mage? That a single level of Rogue was enough to search, disarm traps and open any locks in the entire game. All you have to do is level up their skills Disable Device, Open Lock, Search. While you levelled up the Mage levels as well as theirs skills in Concentration, Knowledge (Arcana) and Spellcraft. I'll have to check my save game but I think my Drow Rogue/Mage ended up being Rogue(1) / Conjurer(14) by the end of the game. It does sound ridiculous as you couldn't do that with 2nd edition, but you can do it with 3rd ed in IWD2. I found 3rd ed quite inconsistent, being able to metagame with having a level 1 multi-class Rogue at the end and still able to get through it with ease.

It says on the official patch: NEW STUFF - Added new powerful armor into stores and random treasure tables in the later portion of the game. Are you able to clarify the second part of this? What happened with the random treasure tables in the later portion of the game? I found in my recent play through that there wasn't much in terms of magical loot, except for the overabundance of returning frost darts in the first half of the game. Then you get to the underdark merchants and then you see some nice items but not much. It's not until you reach Kuldahar that you go on a spending spree and buy everything in sight and clean out all the merchants which at this stage, you have a ton of gold to do so. However, while all six characters will have some great items, they'll still have empty slots unless you're still wearing the +1 Cold Resistance items (which don't mean much) from near the start of the game. There's also a serious lack of decent armor for mages. There are virtually no wizard robes in the game. there are 2 or 3 unique robes, 1 or 2 of which you wont find until the final areas. And aside from those the only robes you will occasionally chance across are adventurers robes. None of the other various robes in BG2 and the like. Maybe because I had some spell casters in my party that I found the game had a lack of worth while loot for these characters. My party consisted of: Shield Dwarf Fighter(4)/Barbarian(x) Shield Dwarf Battleguard of Tempus(x) Human Morninglord of Lathander(x) Drow Rogue(1)/Conjurer(x) Human Sorcerer(x) Aasimar Sorcerer(x)

This is like my anti-list of how to do loot. Less armour and weapons? And trash loot needs to be able to do something. The helmets in IWD2 at the start of the game did nothing. There was no point having them. Just have gold sitting on the ground instead because all we're going to do is sell it to a merchant. At least the trash helmets in the BG games did something. Magical Jewellery and special items shouldn't be so rare that there's only a couple in the game. I finished IWD2 recently and half my characters had blank slots because there wasn't enough rings, necklaces or anything special in the game. No loot bags? They've been pretty much a staple of the IE games with IWD1 and BG2. They're a must have. Also, if you're going to have an adventurers hall where we can make out own characters, then a party of mages should be able to have access to scrolls. This is where the IWD games fall down when making parties of a particular class. While it's fun to take a party of mages through the game, it's also frustrating when usually only one scroll exists for each spell. If you're not going to reward players with loot, then you've taken a fundamental positive experience out of the game which is the game reward system.

That was one of the problems with IWD2. There was a huge outcry when the game was released with having very little magical items. Later fixed to some degree in the patch with more loot later in the game, but still a problem early on in the game. When you have to patch loot and fix the loot tables in the game, then the original game is fundamentally flawed. Both BG 1 & 2 and IWD1 had it right. And even if you did get a high powered item near the start of the game, your characters were so inept they couldn't hit anything. eg. Varscona in BG1. One of the best swords in the game but you rarely hit anything because your thaco was so poor until you were mid level. So you didn't use it until later on.

limiting gold and magical items is a bad idea. Yep, I've been playing for the last 5 hours and all I have is this lousy +1 sword. A Good way to frustrate players and turn them off the game.

I'm the opposite to most people in this thread. I'm hoping the game will be like the IE games in scope, tactics, gameplay and complexity. However, not as complex and bad as the Fellwoods in IWD 2. The Fellwood maze is a perfect example of what you should avoid doing to players.

Apparently there will be Steam achievements.

When have Gamespot ever been relevant? I think I went to their site once about ten years ago.

Mature means all the things we used to see and experience as kids hanging out with our older brothers and their friends when we weren't supposed to.

Similar. TPG $49.95 for ADSL2+ unlimited, 15 mbps. old grandfather plan including 500 minutes of free phone calls every month.

I want a massive game. 100GB or bust. HDDs are now Terabytes.

eh. I thought you were already playing it since you posted three screen shots. And I only came across one of the meme references, the one with the guy sitting in a chair being shot in the knee with a bullet. Oh yeah, it's quite good and like fallout.

I don't have the problem with keeping the name Strength. If PoE is anything like the IE games, you're going to need a minimum STR to be able to pick up and wield weapons or hold items in your back pack. eg. Two Handed sword, Requires min 8 STR. I don't recall seeing in this thread what attribute is for holding weapons and items in your back pack. Words like Power seem a little off with having a minimum x Power to hold my back pack / items in my inventory.

Applebane in IWD 1 is only a +1 dagger with no other properties. I've never recalled ever seeing it probably due to selling it with all the other +1 items.

I'd have to agree. Considering the cost of the pledge and how it was advertised on the Kickstarter page, it was to be an epic high level weapon, armour or artifact and one of the best in the game.

tl;dr

Been playing this for the last couple of hours and really enjoying it. No bugs I've come across and playing on max settings. Really intuitive gameplay and feels very much like Fallout. Enjoying the story as well.

No one got a OUYA or backed Double Fine Adventure? Seems to be plenty of rage on the Kickstarter comments. I only backed 4 games. Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, Torment, Stasis. Pretty happy so far and not disappointed at all.

While Obsidian haven't dropped the ball, I can't help feel they've fumbled a little with the Backer site. If they had the site up a couple / few months ago, Obsidian would've had a revenue stream coming in with new backers that could've upped their pledges from the Slacker Backer tier including additional funds with the addons. And there should be an option with being able to go back and select an addon with your current order, which would be more money for Obsidian. Obsidian could've had the new stretch goals announced earlier and up on the Backer site already with more money coming in. Now that it's a week before Christmas, we won't see these new stretch goals added until Obsidian come back from holidays. Maybe mid January or February. And then there's the new Kickstarter game Obsidian wants to do hopefully in March or April. It all feels a little rushed at the moment.

That is atrocious writing. I haven't gone that far into the game. Obviously the bullet to the knee was in reference to the meme and I wouldn't mind that. One reference I wouldn't mind but having three? Using the arrow and crossbow bolt as well is just plain bad.

I decided to forego my Green KS Badge. I could get it if I wanted to but much rather be without it. It makes my posts too long as well.