PrimeJunta

So, another Chosen One Who Must Save The World thing, then. Meh.

I know! Let's discuss whether it's appropriate to discuss what to discuss ITT. Hours of fun guaranteed for all.

FWIW I would love a good AAA RPG. It wouldn't even have to have particularly hardcore mechanics. Give me Mass Effect 2 without the cringeworthy writing and with different planets that actually look different -- like, you know, not having the same font for shopfronts all across the galaxy and her exotically alien races -- and I'd be happy as a clam. But they are few and far between, since neither BioWare nor Bethsoft -- the two main purveyors -- can into settings or writing. I have high hopes for The Witcher 3, though.

Interesting that you brought up Arcanum, because it's a perfect example of how kill XP makes a complete mess of character progression. There are a couple of pretty neat set pieces there which involve closing a portal or stopping zombies from spawning -- but due to the kill XP, the player's incentive is precisely not to do that, but rather farm them for XP. That said, Arcanum's game balance is so utterly out of whack that it's not even funny; automatic XP isn't even anywhere near the top of the list of its problems. It's a testament to the game's excellence in other areas that it remains such a classic despite all this. Again, it's clearly entirely possible to balance a game with combat XP reasonably well, even if the game is relatively open. It's just a lot more work than if you're only dealing with hand-placed quest/objective XP -- and for a story- and quest-driven game, quest/objective XP is more aligned with the game's overall design.

Oo, my favorite minefield. Full speed ahead, then, and damn the torpedoes. From where I'm at, some people say some annoying and counterproductive things in the name of 'social justice' -- i.e., to combat sexism, racism, homophobia, and what have you, in the geek/gamer/atheist/etcsphere. For example, I'm not a big fan of language policing or, especially, of white middle-class American males schooling people about how to speak about this kind of stuff. It's irritating and IMO often counterproductive. It also often runs straight into a wall: some language police who's vehemently opposed to mansplaining has no problem yanksplaining what a particular British vulgarism 'must' mean with no understanding of the context. Similarly, I'm bloody annoyed at the way BioWare for example is going -- instead of, like, not putting in massively objectifying romances and lingering gratuitious T&A shots, their solution is to put in EVEN MORE objectifying romances but with men and aliens of all possible orientations, plus beefcake. That's not progress, it's INCLOOOSIVE! like in that Codex meme. However--and this is a pretty damn huge however--the degree of annoyance of these annoying things is utterly trivial compared to the degree of damage done by the problems "SJW's" care about. The bald fact is that if you are a woman gamer and say anything in public that is at all complimentary about feminism, or express irritation about being treated as a "girl" gamer, and so on and so forth, you run a real risk of getting your inbox filled with rape and death threats, getting doxxed, photoshopped into animal porn, and so on and so forth. So if Sensuki gets butthurt when someone calls him out for using the phrase 'girl gamer,' well cry me a river. Get back to me when somebody's made Flash game where we can punch your face and see the bruises build up, sent you a couple hundred emails telling you what they want to insert into your orifices prior to dismembering you and eating your liver for dinner, and then posted your home address online. So my beef with "SJW-ism" is the same beef as with "playing the race card." Sure, I'm sure you can find an example of someone actually playing the race card or being a white knight/SJW -- but that's a good deal rarer than having someone play the "playing the race card" card or trying to shut down a discussion by going LOLSJW. And both of these problems fade into insignificance when compared to the sh1t uppity b1tches have to go through if they have the temerity to, I dunno, post a YouTube critique of sexism in a video game. In other words, I think discussing whether some particular instance of SJW-ery is actual SJW-ery is a huge waste of time, and is in fact usually exactly what the individual making the accusation wants -- instead of talking about whatever incident prompted the comment, we've been derailed into discussing whether PrimeJunta is a white knight and SJW. And yes, I do think the culture must change--and it is changing. The tricky bit is changing it in a way that doesn't create a stifling climate where everyone has to tread on eggshells for fear of offending somebody. Not sending people rape threats, and not trying to ridicule people who publicly say that sending people rape threats is a Bad Thing, would be a good start. SJW out.

Aggressive, Benevolent, Clever, Cruel, Stoic, Passionate, Diplomatic, Honest, Deceptive, Rational. Source: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Disposition

Exploration is one of P:E's core gameplay planks. I'm pretty sure they want to give us exactly that. I'm also pretty confident in their ability to deliver. We will see when we will see, of course, and if there are lots of wilderness areas with nothing there but wandering monsters, then I agree that they will have failed on that point. As to scale, P:E is about halfway between BG1 and BG2. That's a big game.

Of course, an alternative would be to have less loot. But boy would that cause howls.

Josh has previously said that there are no aggro mechanics. That would imply no taunt.

I understand the general approach is to tie all attributes to suitable role-playing (dialog) options. Wanna be a mean intimidating brute? Pump Might. Wanna reason your way of situations? Intelligence. Figure out people's motivations and play upon them? Perception. Impress them with the strength of your personality? Willpower. And so on. There isn't any one stat that covers all social situations anymore, which is a very good thing IMO -- it always bothered me that a big, mean, ugly brute of a fighter was at a disadvantage in Intimidate if he had dumped CHA. (I used to houserule this, by the way: I allowed low-CHA brutes to flip the sign on their CHA modifier for Intimidate.)

This is a very strange thread.

IMO the best argument for no kill XP is that it makes the developers' lives easier. With kill XP (or picklock XP, untrap XP etc), every time they place enemies, traps, or locks, they'll have to take into account the resulting XP bump. Adjusting XP for each type of beastie in the balancing phase will have global effects, which may throw parts of the game out of whack. If additionally you want to offer roughly equal rewards for nonviolent solutions, you'll have to somehow scale the placed XP to account for that (like in Stun's example). It most certainly can be done, but it's a quite a lot of work. If all XP is hand-placed, it becomes much easier to fine-tune rewards and character development. Combine that with a somewhat open game structure with areas of varying challenge, and gamers who want to push into a tough area early will still get their challenge and correspondingly larger rewards (in terms of loot and, presumably, XP, if XP rewards are scaled to match the challenge). That's a big labor-saver, and given the limited time and budget with P:E, it will result in a more polished game. The second-best argument IMO is related to player behavior. Every game sets up reward systems to steer players to behave in ways the game's makers think will be fun. If the game's makers think that it's fun for players to focus on objectives rather than, say, backtrack to untrap any traps they missed, unlock any locks they missed, and kill any beasties they missed, then it makes sense for them to set up a reward system that encourages that. If they feel that it's fun for players to go around killing things with everything else secondary, then of course kill XP makes sense. Put another way, kill XP makes perfect sense for the IWD's and TOEE, but a lot less for PS:T, with the BG's somewhere in between. I think BG1 would have been just as fun if XP was awarded for exploration rather than combat, and BG2 would've been just as fun if XP was only awarded for meeting quest objectives. While I know the rush of seeing the character go up a level after a tough fight, and that rush is arguably pretty central to the IE games, this trade-off is still worth making IMO, especially if the gameplay is story- and quest-driven. There are minuses, but the pluses outweigh them.

We had several long and sometimes acrimonious discussions about this when the decision was announced, which was quite early on. You're not the only one who feels that way, but you by no means represent a clear consensus among backers. I get the feeling that by now those of us who disagreed with the decision have by and large come to terms with it. You, fortunately, aren't a backer, so if it's a deal breaker for you then just don't play the game. In any case by now it's baked into the system and there's nothing you can do to change it.

I'm tempted to create a few sockpuppets just so I can vote "no no no" several times. But I won't because it would violate mah integrity™.

Wat, you don't want to ride the bull?

I wouldn't count BG1 since Candlekeep is the obvious place to start exploring. With TOEE you're pointed directly towards the moathouse after you meet with your contact, so you'll end up straight there if you're just following the breadcrumb trail rather than explore Hommlet and talk to everybody. Which is what I did on my first attempt. It did not end well. I did get roflstomped when I first left Candlekeep, but that was at least a half an hour into the game.

There were what appeared to be lootbags left on the ground after the bodies disappeared. Perhaps they just didn't want to waste time looting to keep the demo flowing.

Come to think of it, I don't think the first ten minutes of any of the IE games or their successors was hard at any difficulty, except maybe TOEE if you beeline for the moathouse instead of running errands in Hommlet to get you to level 2.

I also find the low-res model jarring because everything else looks so wonderful. I would've preferred a drawn paperdoll with worn items represented as boxes containing the inventory icons. This, however, is an extremely low priority for me.

Agree about Ixamitl. Touch of puffy pauldron syndrome there, and I can't quite tell how it's supposed to fit together.

By the way, I really dig the paladin's breastplate in the gameplay video. It looks exactly like a piece of low-grade mass-produced armor should.

@Sedrefilos Josh already said they're going to increase the fog of war radius. So no sweat on that one.

Seconded. Jade Empire is IMO the best game BioWare has made. I think the secret is that it doesn't take itself too seriously and doesn't try to dial the epic to awesome all the time. It's the only BioWare game that doesn't read like bad fanfic and doesn't make me facepalm constantly. As to the romances... let me put it this way: I don't think it's possible to do a BioWarian romance better than in Jade Empire. If you like that sort of thing, I'm pretty sure you'll love it. The action-RPG-lite gameplay is adequate for the job too, and the plot has a few neat twists. While those twists once spoiled stay spoiled, I did enjoy playing it through multiple times with different characters. The experience isn't drastically different, but there is enough variety in gameplay plus the open palm/closed fist thing to make it kinda worthwhile. And, of course, Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard. I'm ready to let a quite a lot slide for just that. Jade Empire makes me a little sad actually. If BioWare had stuck to pursuing that direction instead of going all grimdark endoftheuniverse darkspawn bloodspatter, they could've made a whole bunch of really cool games which I would've enjoyed too—and I think so would the fanbase who loves their current work. It's the only BioWare game since BG2 where it feels like everybody involved thoroughly enjoyed what they were doing. They're much better at light-hearted, partly comedic cinematic action than Mature Treatment Of Important Themes. I'd say that you're only really likely to NOT like it if (a) you can't stand action RPG gameplay, or (b) you're expecting something epic, sprawling, and free-roaming. 'Cuz it's not; it has a hub-and-spoke structure but there's no backtracking and the sidequests aren't all that interesting (except Kang the Mad's, and you really have to work for it to get it—if you do play it, pay close attention to Kang the Mad or you will miss out).

Well huh. It's like they never stopped making these.

IT'S ON!!!