PrimeJunta

That won't happen. The backgrounds are prerendered, and maximum zoom is native resolution. Zoom in any more and it'll turn into mush.

Well yeah, you can make a ranged rogue, but he won't be all that great at it. Average ranged accuracy and no ranged talents. Only the cipher and ranger have above-average ranged accuracy ATM.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce the behavior, but this is what happened: 1. I used BB Rogue's Crippling Strike ability in combat. I do not recall exactly when, unfortunately. 2. Next time I entered combat, I noticed that the icon was green, like for an activated modal ability. When I clicked on it, I got a message "The ability is already activated." 3. The ability icon remained green through several area transitions, and effectively stopped me from using the ability. Notes: Due to the save/load bugs, I had neither saved nor loaded the game, and I had started a fresh instance of the client.

Yep. Although in PE a smart tank or strong mage are also viable builds. (The strong mage perhaps more so than the smart tank.)

@Karkarov Good points re the inherent tankiness of the fighter. So add the ranged options to the rogue, then. I don't really care which class is used as a base, but I want my musketeer. They have the best hats. Edit: Oh, ninja'ed by multiple posters. Anyway, I concur.

I am enjoying your butthurt, Helm. Please keep it up.

@IndiraLightfoot I get the vibe that T:ToN is all about story choices, not so much interactivity with objects in the world. Also few games don't sound cool in the concept phase. At least few that manage to get $million$ in crowdfunding. We'll see what it's going to be like when it's closer to completion. Tangent: I do like the writers and designers though. I'm especially intrigued by Adam Heine, that rarest of rare breeds, the non-obnoxious evangelical fundamentalist Christian. If he manages to work in elements of his worldview as cleverly and subtly as the Hindu and Buddhist elements were worked into PS:T, it's gonna be genuinely intriguing.

The modals are sticky. The per-encounter ones, obviously, are not.

You're right, @KaineParker and @archangel979. Point conceded, a melee ranger would be rad.

Haha that's funny. After I killed the Wolves I thought, now there's GOT to be some loot around here because there wouldn't be an encounter here otherwise, and I walked around the ruins in scouting mode. Didn't find anything though, I will go and have another look. It may have been in the other tower ruin a short ways from the wolves. Don't remember for certain.

(1) Very much the case in the BG's (and all the IE games) also. (2) I believe the tab-highlighting secret door is a bug. Normally you discover secrets by going into scouting mode and poking around. There are some that don't follow this. They show up with a pink outline.

There actually was some cool loot near the wolves. Not sure if it was near enough, but it was there. Enter Scout Mode and you'll see. I didn't find the map too jarring. I don't find it problematic that there's dangerous wildlife roaming around with no particular story role or reward for murdering them. If nothing else, it adds to the atmosphere, like those merrily bouncing deer but with teeth.

There won't be prebuffs in the game. That's been flatly stated as a basic design feature. They've been replaced with modal abilities, auras, and multi-purpose combat buffs--and by designing the encounters so you don't miss them.

Definitely an improvement. Not as aesthetically pleasing as the current one, but certainly more functional. I would also want to try swapping the portrait cluster and the combat log's position, but couldn't say which one I'd end up preferring without the option to try it.

Not sure about the dual-wielding ranger. The point of the class is that it comes with a meat shield. Making both Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear melee combatants kind of defeats the purpose IMO. I also think it would be simpler just to give fighters higher base ranged accuracy, but if the designers feel that needs an opportunity cost, then make it a talent.

@Polanski @Lasweetlife I think our 'disagreement' about the cipher and death godlike is largely a matter of taste. I couldn't even say why I don't like death godlikes; I just don't. Not very useful feedback, I know. I also agree that ranged and melee accuracy should be if not exactly equal, at least close. Having divergent values shepherds towards a particular kind of combat role without IMO good reason. -- Of course classes like the ranger and barbarian can be special cases; the whole point of the ranger+Pooh Bear is that the ranger is ranged while Pooh takes care of melee, and I can't really visualize a barbarian getting into a blood rage while plinking away from a safe distance. But for fighters, rogues, ciphers, priests, wizards, and the rest, I don't see a compelling reason not to have the same base accuracy for both types of combat.

If they had unlimited budget and development time, then sure. In the real world, though, they do have to consider payoff for effort. If it takes a lot more time to balance system A than system B, then they should only make system A if the payoff in gameplay enjoyment is commensurately bigger. I dig that we have different opinions on exactly how big the payoff from a well-balanced systemic/quest XP system would be, and, conversely, how much it would detract from enjoyment if it turned out they didn't have time to balance it properly and it ended up full of exploits or with some approaches consistently rewarded more highly than others, but it's not right simply to dismiss the cost from consideration.

Right, well I always remembered it as one of the Hardest fights in the game, and I replayed it last month and it was super fun. You face off against a Maralith who's immune to most weapons, a Hive Mother, A demonic archer with some +4 bow, a Kensai dude with katanas, a High level cleric and a Demon with a 2H sword. Riiight... yeah, I do remember that. It was a tough one. I'm really wondering how come Watcher's Keep made so little impression. It may have been because it didn't have much connection to the story so I didn't really care for what's going on in there, and I couldn't switch to NetHack mode for it. Guess that outs me as a storyfag... although that shouldn't be a surprise considering how I've rhapsodized over PS:T.

I can't match Sensuki's dedication, but I thought it might be useful to summarize my thoughts on the BB so far. I think I'll leave this build alone for now, despite having skipped some classes, notably the Druid. I'll follow the list of high-priority feedback requested in the announcement. Classes Fighter: With the rogue, probably the most restrictive and role-limited of the classes. I would very much like adjustments and talents to make ranged fighter builds viable. I don't think they'd displace the Ranger, because that class's gameplay revolves around the animal companion. Suggested talents (lifted from other threads): Swords to Crossbows (swaps melee and ranged base accuracy), Knockdown Shot, reuse of some Ranger ranged talents. It would also make possible a highly lore-appropriate "musketeer" build who opens up with a musket, then goes into melee when the mobs close up. Knockdown made it extremely useful to quickly put high-priority targets out of commission for the time it took to disable them with something stronger. Basis is good but needs fleshing out. Feels weak overall compared to most other classes. Rogue: Underwhelming. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the only tactic I discovered was hobble+stab-stab-stab. Just a point damage machine, and not all that great at point damage. Sneak Attack needs to be beefed up to make using it worthwhile. Adding Talents that inflict a larger variety of status effects could help too. Feels weak. Wizard: Predictable. I really liked the possibility to make an armored caster, and thought the increase in casting time balanced out the added protection nicely. I could finally use all those nice cone-shaped spells that were mostly doing nothing for me in the DnD games because it was usually just simpler to use something else. Spell selection is currently a bit lacking in variety though, like someone went through a checklist and put them in. In particular, I would like more spells/talents supporting gish tactics, for example something that gives a medium-duration Accuracy boost (rather than the ultra-short one from the L1 spell). It's solid enough but somewhat lacking in 'flair' as Sensuki puts it. Power level feels about right. Priest: Supremely useful set of buffs, debuffs, and heals making it one of the most strategically useful classes to have around. I thought it suffered a bit from the same as the wizard--it's more "fundamentally useful" than "fun." I also couldn't figure out many alternative ways to play it--it's basically a support machine hanging back casting support spells, occasionally plinking with a ranged weapon. Feels a little overpowered; some of those buffs seem to confer near-invulnerability for fairly long durations. Unfortunately I can't think of any simple ways to remedy this. I like playing frontline support characters, but that's already covered by... Paladin: Liked it a lot. The auras and per-encounter abilities plus decent melee skills strike a really nice balance between high-maintenance and low-maintenance. One of my favorite things in DnD based cRPG's was to build a melee-oriented cleric, throw Battletide, and wade into melee. The paladin feels very similar. Power level feels about right. Barbarian: Liked it even more. Lots of tactical variety here; armor up and take Hold the Line and you've got an excellent, strategically durable tank with serious damage output, or Wild Sprint to take out backrow squishies, then Defiant Resolve when you're about to go down. Everything could use more talents, but all in all IMO the best melee class by far. Power level feels about right, maybe a little underpowered. Cipher: One of my favorite classes although needs nerfing, especially durations and obviously Soul Ignition which lets you cheese through the whole thing. Cool take on the gish. I played this as a disabler/melee combatant: took spells like Puppet Master, that multi-target paralysis thing, and so on, and had a ball. Good job on this one; don't change anything (much) other than dial down the power a bit. Chanter: Another of my favorite classes although the summons are obviously way OP at the moment. Feels genuinely different: a low-maintenance caster is something new and cool. Again, don't change everything other than fixing the obviously broken bits. Power level is over 9000. Ranger: Not my thing, I think, but that's probably just personal preference. Gameplay is unique what with the shared health pool, but frankly it felt a little bit gimmicky, different for the sake of being different. Other than that, the implementation works well enough. Power level is too dependent on the animal companion; with the lion he felt too fragile, with the bear definitely overpowered. Needs tuning. Edit: forgot about this one -- Monk: I liked this more than I'd have expected. Main obstacle to enjoyment was the lack of feedback; you have to watch that Wounds counter like a hawk or risk taking unnecessary damage. Needs very noticeable visual/auditory feedback when the monk gains a Wound. Consequently I didn't play with it all that much. I'll file this under "promising," once the combat is more sorted I'll be able to explore it more. Seemed to have rather few talents to choose from; similar issue as the rogue, only with the monk it was ow-ow-ow-Stunning Blow, ow-ow-ow-Stunning Blow. Power level was about right. Druid: Did not play enough to be able to comment. Maybe in the next build. Overall: There were two concepts I wanted to build, but couldn't: the archer/musketeer (with no animal meat shield), and the wizard-based gish who self-buffs, rushes into melee for great burst damage, and then buggers off magically when the buffs run out. (The rogue's Escape ability would be rad for that, as a spell or otherwise.) Races Due tot he limited impact of ability scores on anything, the racial bonuses felt fairly insignificant; if this isn't changed I'll probably pick a race for aesthetic and role-playing rather than mechanical reasons. The aumaua are cool, as are the fire, moon, and nature godlikes; the death godlike doesn't really appeal to me. Never cared for furries so pass on the orlan. Elves and dwarves are what you'd expect them to be. I do like the ability to pick your culture and your background, and that they're not bound to your race. Again, mechanically no big deal but I hope there's some roleplay mileage to be had from them. Attributes Yeesh, almost said "won't go here again" but hey, once more into the breach. I have a few quibbles with them, PER in particular is too easy to dump, but my main beef is that they don't matter all that much. I've kind of gotten used to this already, but yes, I would like it to bite if I dumped something to 3 and feel the punch if I pumped it to 18. I also think that it would be aesthetically better to represent below-average adjustments as penalties and above-average as bonuses, rather than just add everything to a base, even if the numbers ended up in the same place. Equipment Overall, I liked the gear selection, especially the armor. I'd say the design objective of not having one objectively 'best' choice is close to being met here, although I suspect that if I wanted to minmax I'd just go with robes or clothes for the back row, with more variety in the front row. Edit: I have to add, I really like the way the armor looks, and the way they take on the color. Brigandine, padded, leather, and breastplate were especially nice. I even made BB Wizard wear padded armor just because I liked the looks. If you've managed to make armor look so neat I'll take a 20% casting time penalty for it, you've got to be doing something right. Firearms and arbalests felt overpowered, hunting bows underpowered, and I couldn't get a good handle on damage type vs. enemy. I figured out that you're supposed to crush bugs, but that was more by trial and error than by something I could more or less easily understand by looking at the system. So that part could use more transparency. Also if damage type/defense matters as much as it appears, I think it would be important to have more weapon slots from the start. The ability to switch between ranged and melee isn't enough if you also have to switch between crushing and slashing, for example. Some of the hidden powerful weapons felt appropriately punchy; I really dug the way it changed things when I found and started using them. Crafting and Enchanting Glanced at it, did not try due to all the inventory bugs. Maybe next build. Conversations and Quests Oh yes baby: The best part of the beta by far. Won't rhapsodize about the specifics here, just keep doing what you're doing. A+ Combat Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? Actually it's not bad. There is a good combat system underneath the bugs and overall lack of feedback, but it desperately needs digging out. Please, please, please take Sensuki's suggestion #008 to heart and add the combat feedback it deserves. As it is, it's desperately difficult to figure out what's going on, even apart from the bugs. Movement speed is too fast. Basic mechanics are, as far as I can tell, fun, varied, and interesting. Nothing wrong with miss/graze/hit/crit. Relationship between damage and DT was too murky; it really needs clarification e.g. in the weapon descriptions and combat feedback -- I need to be able to clearly see that my attacks aren't doing damage due to DT; as it is it's quite unclear why I'm doing little to n odamage. Relationship between stamina and health is crystal, except for the petrifying spiders thing. I thought that was bugged. If there's an effect that makes damage go straight from health, that needs to be made extremely clear. User Interface Character creation was fine. The main game HUD was... not perfect; again Sensuki has that part covered, although I kind of liked it that the character abilities popped up above the portrait. The combat log is a mess and in the wrong place; it needs filtering and more info displayed directly to be useful at all. Inventory, character sheet, and journal were fine except for the bugs. One consistent issue I noticed was a general dearth of "Accept/Cancel" buttons in dialogs; it's counterintuitive to accept choices by closing the dialog from the [x] and then going through a dialog. I'll probably return to this when going through builds with the most egregious bugs removed.

As an aside, I'm digging Skaen. A nasty god with understandable reasons for the nastiness, and cultists with similarly understandable reasons for following him. As a good Communist I had to side with them in the end too, of course; couldn't side with the parasitic class under any circumstances. Not your usual Ancient Evil.

It's funny, the Watcher's Keep never made much of an impression on me. I did go through it but I honestly can't even remember much of it. Wasn't there the Machine of Lum the Mad somewhere in there?

What do you guys consider 'accomplishment?' On a bit of a tangent, this whole debate reminds me of one of my pet peeves at work. There are two types of people: process-oriented and goal-oriented. Process-oriented people think that activities should be rewarded; goal-oriented people think that accomplishing things should be rewarded. I can't, in general, stand to work with process-oriented people. They're the ones who are concerned that you clock in at the right hours, make sure that everything is properly written down, call endless meetings to properly assign responsibilities, and so on. Goal-oriented people are concerned about what needs to be done in order to get that thing we're working on finished and out the door, what it has to be like, and so on. Of course some process and, in teamwork, a great deal of discipline is needed to actually do that, but I find it extremely important that goals go first, adherence to process second. I think this is behind my dislike of systemic XP. It's process-oriented, the game equivalent of making sure the T-45 form is properly filled and the hours are properly clocked. It rewards activity rather than directed activity. In a game which has goals other than "retrieve the amulet of Yendor from somewhere below level 20 of the dungeon" this just feels wrong. I.e. systemic XP only really works for me if the activity is the goal. This also reveals that I think of XP as primarily an incentive system, not, say, a 'simulation of learning things.'

One more reason to wish boss fights begone, yes.

Can't see how it could be related to drivers. Earlier you said you hardly ever loot anything: since this is an inventory bug related to pointers, and looting things puts pointers in your inventory, it sounds likely that putting things in your inventory could cause the bug to manifest. It certainly seems to happen less if I loot less.

I wish they'll lose the whole 'boss fight' concept. Have tough plot- and environment-appropriate enemies for sure, but not that "this is not even my final form" nonsense, hitpoint mountains you have to whittle down, collapse-the-temple-to-win, or complete immunities to bloody near everything. I hope Obsidian has grown beyond that. That said, I don't mind immunities or near-immunities to some or even many abilities. It would be a bit underwhelming maybe if you could just knockdown Darth Vader and then proceed to kick him to death.