PrimeJunta

At this point I think it's better to think of it as a pre-order rather than backing a project. If you have issues with the way it's worded, then wait until it's released or they formally rename it (which, IMO, would be a good idea).

Yep, they already covered that in some detail. My favorite thing is still skein steel—drawing a soul out into copper, then alloying that with iron to create a supernaturally strong steel. Evil of course. If I was an evil overlord, I would so do that to all my enemies.

@Stun Nope, having stamina drop to 0 doesn't make you Maimed. Having health drop to zero will, and if you get hit when maimed, you die.

Before reading anybody else's lists, and trying to be as specific as I can instead of "IE game successor is awsum," that is, listing things specific to PoE. Pluses: + The era. Renaissance-level settings are way underused in fantasy RPG's. + The coherent lore and worldbuilding. What we've heard about the states and cultures of Eora makes sense in a way that few of PoE's peers do, and the lore about souls gives a great background for magic. + The class differentiation. Instead of having several almost-same classes (fighter/ranger/barbarian/paladin, wizard/sorcerer, cleric/druid etc), each class has clearly distinguished strengths and weaknesses. + The scope for variants within classes. In AD&D advancement is almost completely on rails, and in D&D3 core (not counting prestige classes) there are very few ways to build an optimal character within a class. + The melee rules. I really like what they've said about (dis)engagement and the various abilities classes have to play with on the battlefield. Minuses: - Some of the mechanics could use better grounding in the lore. For example, the skill bonuses for many classes seem pretty arbitrary; just assinned so that each class is a little different, with a transparent post-hoc rationalization for them. Why not allow players to pick them on character creation if they're not central to the class's mission (like Rogue and Stealth?) - Not convinced about the monk. Both the concept and the mechanics seem contrived and out of place. - Not convinced about the stronghold design. It looks slapdash and not something that would actually work as a stronghold. - Not convinced about the art direction with Glanfathan ruins, especially the statuary. Looks too modern and familiar to my eye. - Not convinced about orlans. From what we've heard, they seem a bit tacked-on gnome/halfling substitute (plus, furry).

You know what's the problem with these class updates? They make me go "now that's the class I want to play," every. damn. time. And I've already used most of my paid vacation for this year.

As an aside, the only alignment I really like in D&D is True Neutral precisely because it's such a bloody impossible ideal to live up to. The way I've envisioned it is as a 'God's eye view' of the world, a totality where everything relates to everything else, and concepts like good, evil, law, and chaos are just somebody's opinion, and being born, living, suffering, and dying are just sh*t that happens. If you're actually in the world, how are you supposed to live with that? (Also the way most D&D modules and cRPG's did it--"in the name of Balance, quoth the Druid as she sicced her badger at the bladelings"--is just dumb. The major exception are the Dustmen of Planescape: Torment. They had a somewhat coherent philosophy of life built around True Neutral, and a few of them seemed to even grok it.)

The vibe I'm getting is that animancers are more like astrologers or alchemists—researches of forbidden lore who mostly hang around in their libraries and laboratories making discoveries and doing horrible things with the results. We've heard of skein steel (drawing a soul into copper and alloying that with iron to create an extra-powerful steel), or binding the soul of a person permanently to his body so instead of dying he'll become a fampyr, darghul, and so on. This doesn't feel a natural fit for an adventuring class. I would be surprised if there aren't important NPC animancers we get to interact with though.

I care. I just made a wager. Which I'm going to win.

I would like to have a few highly powerful weapons present in the game. I would absolutely not like them to be as common as they usually are in current games. I think acquiring one should be a special event. Distributing them with random loot is not much fun. Fighting a big powerful plot-important meanie to walk away with his sword can be fun, but that's what you do like, in every cRPG ever so I'd prefer they do something a little different, at least some of the time. Some ways of gaining special weapons that I've enjoyed: Hunting for them by following clues in Morrowind Finding pieces to assemble them like in BG2 Sacrificing to a god to be granted one, like in NetHack That one badass sword on top of the pyramid in Gothic 2 that I had to sneak like mad to get Betraying and killing all your companions to bind their essences to something that used to be called the Scythe of Chauntea like in MotB So yeah, that kind of thing.

Maybe they'll have pantaloons?

Can you name a male NPC in The Witchers or other mainstream RPG's which do better?

Yet the same game (series) has women NPC's with more personality and agency than just about any RPG, does its best to allow you to create emotional connections with them, and writes relationships with them that are not pure ego-gratification. While both games had features that were similarly problematic as anything else out there, IMO it's not fair to dismiss them because of that without even acknowledging what they did better and, yes, more maturely than any other mainstream title I can think of. Triss, Shani, and Ves are not props, objects, eyecandy, or cheap thrills.

You most certainly can fake those vides. Forsaken Fortress did if not exactly that, something dangerously close to it. Specifically, during the Kickstarter and the updates they presented gameplay video showing combat, animations, lighting, base building, and what have you, and ALL of it was fake. As in, not in the final game, and the final game, such as it was, didn't look even close to similar. Making a fake gameplay video with little toons running around in a scene with some FX laid on top but no underlying mechanics, no or extremely limited user controls is MUCH easier than making an actual game that's actually playable, let alone fun.

I understand why they did it (i.e., to avoid punishing players who like to switch party composition), but I thought it was a lazy way of doing it. P:E's solution sounds much better. If I know they're getting stuff done while I'm out pursuing the main quest, leveling up makes sense.

Man, if any thread ever needed a whaambulance, it's this one. Grow up people. In the meantime, pass the ointment.

There was a recent interview at Red Bull Games where they said that yeah, there will be racism. Also drugs and prostitution. I guess that would make the P:E subtitle Sex & Drugs & Rock* & Role. *Adra

There has been a change. P:E has reversed the publisher/studio power relationship. Obsidian is producing a significant new IP which they own, and they, rather than the publisher, are calling the shots. I too would love to see our current entirely ****ed up IPR laws, and the attitudes and economy underlying them, change. That however is a bit too much for a game studio that's in the game business rather than the revolution business. If it can shift things somewhat in a saner direction, that's all good as far as I'm concerned. In the meantime, Obsidian just like most of the rest of us has to operate in a capitalist economy where salaries have to be paid, IPR lawsuits avoided, and sales made. If they can do all that with a 100-person-plus studio, while at the same time making significant strides to break the AAA-production-based publisher stranglehold and making some pretty damn good games they've more than earned my support.

I agree with Kjaamor here. In NV they made ammo crafting a thing at least. My personal favorite in this respect though is Arcanum. There's only one type of bullets, to be sure, but if you're a gunslinger you pretty much have to make your own or go bankrupt. Digging around in rubbish bins like a hobo actually makes sense in that game, and it's the only game I've played where that's the case. "Oh goody, some charcoal, a rag, a railroad spike and a spring!"

Although P:E is probably not that game, I would like to see one where social rules governing carrying of weapons are enforced. Only nobles carry swords openly, nobody walks into the lord's presence armed, and armor is only worn when expecting to go into battle. That would make room for all those neglected weapon types. Could even have whole categories of concealable or disguised weapons -- walking-sticks with lead poured into the pommel, sword-sticks, boots with sewn-in sheaths for knives, a belt that doubles as a garotte, and so on.

...without going grimdark for the sake of grimdark. That's about how it's shaping up AFAICT.

Delays are symptomatic of underlying problems. While any project can get delayed once, a repeatedly delayed project is likely to have other visible issues that will make it less than great.

Having crowds of people wonder around for flavor is nice. Having them speak generic greetings or background chatter is nicer. Having all of them be discrete individuals with hand-written dialog is a silly waste of resources. I.e. if it was me, I might add procedurally-generated crowds where appropriate. Mix and match heads, hairdos, and attire, give them random lines of chatter, and a generic label so you don't confuse them with characters who matter. Just not so dense crowds that it makes getting from place to place a chore.

I believe this is how it's going to be. I remember the devs mentioning that you'll need to do stuff for faction reputation in order to progress, but what you do is largely up to you. I.e. you have to eat a cookie but you get to choose which one to eat, and they won't make you eat all of them.

Unlikely. The stronghold was a stretch goal, whereas exploration is one of the core planks. If you don't like exploration, you probably won't like P:E. Likely. There are no alignment mechanics, but there are faction reputation and personal reputation mechanics. These ought to support a much broader range of paths than simplistic good/evil(/law/chaos). Unlikely. Combat is also one of the core planks of the game. There may be nonviolent solutions to some quests, but this is highly combat-focused. Murder hobo was pretty much what all the IE games were about, except maybe PS:T and even that got pretty murderous towards the end, even if you were murdering tanar'ri and baatezu.

If you have to complete the optional content in order to beat the end boss, how is the content optional anymore?