PrimeJunta

@Sarex P:E will have a level cap. Gaining XP faster will just make you hit that cap faster and then plateau. If the endgame is balanced for or near the level cap, you're going to be roughly 1/6 as powerful as a full party at that point. That should be bloody close to unwinnable from where I'm at, or else it will probably be too easy for a competently played full party. (Unless you level scale to total party levels of course. :ducks: )

I rarely play evil. I find it repugnant, and mostly it's just really badly written so not much fun. The one memorable exception is Mask of the Betrayer. The writing was fantastic, and having my character become a devouring storm of betrayal and destruction truly worthy of the curse was... awesome. I also felt really dirty afterwards. There was some really depraved and despicable stuff there. I loved it but would not replay.

That's what missile weapons are for. cRPG's -- where shooting fleeing enemies in the back counts as heroic.

Wasn't there that one samurai who got bored with the lack of challenge and stuck a pair of antlers on his helmet to gimp himself? Grogs. Heh.

I don't like inventory management so I'd rather have someone do it for me. It's a tedious time-sink, like grinding or rote pre-buffing. The bottomless omnipresent stash makes me very happy. If it has auto-sort so I can easily find what I want in it, I'll be even happier.

Good automation for inventory management is high on my wishlist. I hate dragging little pictures back and forth. If the IE games had had an "automanage" button for inventory I would have loved it. What automanage, I hear you ask? This: (1) Sort by type and value. (2) Put all objects into their respective containers (gems in gem bags, scrolls in scroll cases etc). (3) Distribute weight among party so that, if possible, nobody's encumbered. (3b) If not possible, drop any items worth less than 1% of your current GP, starting with the ones with the lowest price/weight ratio. (3c) If inventory is full, drop any items worth less than 1% of your current GP, starting with the cheapest, until ten slots are free. That would have saved much tedium.

At least for my first play-through, I'll pick my companions more for story than for mechanical reasons. For subsequent play-throughs, I'll go with whatever tickled my fancy most during the first one. I am intrigued by the idea of more homogeneous parties, in particular because most of those were quite hard to play in the IE games. I'd like to see what six fighters, or six rangers, or three fighters + three rangers could do, for example. Perhaps that would play a bit like a mini-RTS, with a good deal less player intervention than when dealing with magic-users. There are also interesting role-play type possibilities there. If you've read the Malazan Book of the Fallen, there are the Grey Helms, for example. Could I create a party modeled on them? A Shield Anvil (cleric), Mortal Sword (rogue, perhaps?), and Destriant (paladin, perhaps?) with three fighters, with the cleric, paladin, and rogue heavily martially oriented.

"Genteel butthurt" then, if you prefer.

I find these mechanical twists to combat extremely interesting. I'm imagining what it'd be like to play different kinds of parties. All fighters would play like a Roman legion -- marching forward in unstoppable formation, grinding down everything in its path. All rogues would be like a kung-fu movie, with them dodging and weaving through enemy lines to make daring and lethal stabs at unprotected body parts. Rangers would loose volley after volley of lethal arrows as their war dogs hold the enemy at bay. And barbarians... barbarians would be an explosion of carnage. (Of course I hope it won't be quite as easy as that. But I also hope it will have the variety.)

@Hormalakh I disagree... to an extent, and depending on your definition of 'quality.' For example, Half-Life 2 is extremely high quality. The gameplay is exquisitely balanced, it's virtually bug-free, and even after all this time it looks pretty damn good. Yet there's not a whole lot there, there, after you've played it through once. Conversely, Vampire: Bloodlines (without Wesp's glorious work) is a god-awful mess, yet there's a tremendous amount of replayability there. I played it through as a Malkavian, Nosferatu, Toreador, and Gangrel, and will probably crack it open again one of these years to play as the rest of the clans as well. It's the quantity that makes for the replayability -- the different mechanics, dialog twists, and reactivity. Yet both are Source engine-based first-person games.

@Monte Carlo actually, I do see that. I've even mentioned that my favorite Storm of Zehir party leader was just such a character. It's a perfectly legitimate preference. What I'm taking issue with is your expectation that it is so integral to the IE experience that Obsidian should share that preference. By all means argue for it; it's the, yes, entitlement that rustles my jimmies. If, indeed, it turns out that it won't be possible to gimp a build in P:E. Which is not a given. However, I like Josh's design goal of making all abilities relevant to all classes. In the IE games you couldn't play a viable brainy fighter or muscle wizard. Your muscle wizard couldn't wiz; your brainy fighter couldn't fight. If P:E's system does allow that, and makes those choices matter mechanically, it makes for more variety, not less. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned, and trading off the ability to gimp a build is a price worth paying -- especially as there are any number of other ways you can handicap yourself if you want to. I wouldn't even mind if they put some of those new-fangled achievements in to support that. Get a shiny badge for never drinking a potion, never equipping a magic item, or never wearing armor, for example.

Fair enough, Lieutenant. :salute:

There are areas where I would be willing to sacrifice quality for quantity. Others not so much. For example, I'd be OK with cutting a few corners with animations, models, and FX if it meant they can put in more different kinds of monsters, spells, and attacks. I'd also tolerate a certain amount of sloppiness in mechanics to get that variety. However, I would be much less willing to compromise on quest reactivity to get more quests, companion interaction depth to get more companions, or map variety to get more maps. Fetch quests, NPC's that are little more than an attitude and some combat barks, or another generic dungeon corridor map don't really enhance my enjoyment much. Put another way, NWN2 would have been much better if Grobnar, Paladin Whatshisname, Zhaeve, and Qara had been cut, with that attention put into fleshing out rewriting Elanee, Khelgar, Neeshka, Sand, and Bishop, and IWD 2 would have been better if half the repetitive, generic corridor maps and trash mobs had been cut in favor of fewer but more thoughtfully designed maps and encounters.

I agree re IWD 1. Unfortunately IWD 2 is just like IWD 1, only without much plot and atmosphere. Still slogging on through it but getting increasingly disillusioned. It's dull.

Did they? There's no polite way to put this, Monte, but I think a little self-reflection might be in order here.

@SqueakyCat, that's the point I'm making too. Monte Carlo is talking about reasonable expectations. In my view it's reasonable to expect what has been promised, and it is not reasonable to expect what has not been promised. There are so many things in IE games and so many gamers with so many different preferences that opinions on what "the IE experience" means are going to diverge very quickly the further we get from the core area explicitly defined by Obsidian. I believe that they genuinely do want to produce a worthy successor to the IE games, and they're doing their best, within the constraints they have, to make that happen. Quite naturally that will follow their interpretation of what "the IE experience" is. It is, in my view, unreasonable to expect that that interpretation will follow yours in any specifics, unless they have explicitly promised something about those specifics. It is, of course, entirely reasonable to argue about any of those specifics. Take Stun, for example – I disagree strongly with him on many points of his vision of "the IE experience," but I respect the way he's arguing it. He's not expecting Obsidian's vision to conform with his; instead, he's arguing why he believes P:E should follow that vision. That is in my opinion a whole lot more constructive.

Nice podcast. Not a whole lot of new stuff there, but Josh seems to feel pretty good about how the game is coming along. Optimism +1.

@Monte Carlo, here's the substantive part of the Obsidian pitch for P:E from the Kickstarter: "Project Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment. Combat uses a tactical real-time with pause system - positioning your party and coordinating attacks and abilities is one of the keys to success. The world map is dotted with unique locations and wilderness ripe for exploration and questing. You’ll create your own character and collect companions along the way – taking him or her not just through this story, but, with your continued support, through future adventures. You will engage in dialogues that are deep, and offer many choices to determine the fate of you and your party. …and you'll experience a story that explores mature themes and presents you with complex, difficult choices to shape how your story plays out." Which part, specifically, do you feel they're reneging on?

Sure. It's called a barbarian. Sure. It's called a rogue. Why? The way I see it, the character system in a game is there to support character concepts you want to represent with it. What difference does it make if your mob-fighting, hard-hitting, mobile fighter is called 'barbarian' as long as you can make one? The thing I liked least about AD&D (which was greatly mitigated in 3e/Pathfinder) is the way the classes were straitjackets. Pick your class/kit, assign your abilities, and your advancement is just about entirely on rails, a few minor features like which thief skills to advance or which weapon to specialize aside. On the other hand, 3e had way too many classes with way too little differentiation between them. The fighter, ranger, and barbarian are almost entirely interchangeable, and the cleric and druid aren't well differentiated either. Personally I prefer classless systems. Just define character advancement as skill trees, and let players go wild.

Out of curiosity @Monte Carlo, did you play Shadowrun Returns? If so, what are your thoughts regarding deckers vs. shamans? I'm asking because there was a lot of moaning about how the former is underpowered compared to the latter, and some of it came from people who were, at the same time, arguing vehemently that class balance in single-player games is bogus. I.e., I'm not convinced that everybody who beats that drum will actually enjoy it if and when they get what they asked for. Which is one reason I'm quite happy if class differentiation is through what their specific strengths are in combat (defense, single-target attack, multi-target attack, single-target ranged, multi-target ranged, buff, debuff, etc. etc.) rather than how strong they are. There's a massive amount of variation possible in the latter, without having to make a class unambiguously less powerful in combat.

Well, there's @Malignacious...

Read this thread. I already did. You listed one. Beholders. And yes, I went through the whole thread. How about actually giving examples (notice the 's' on the end of examples) instead of saying you did which you haven't. And I'm requesting specifics, not general monsters. As I said, a lot of quests gave you items that helped you along and gave you hints. To tell you the truth, I don't even remember the details. It's been a long time since my first play-through of BG2. What I do remember is that intense feeling of frustration and unfairness, and almost giving up on it several times. I'm glad I didn't because once I pushed past that point, the game opened up and it remains one of my favorites. I do remember exactly when that happened: when I took the slaver quest on the east side of the Copper Coronet. Until then, everything I had tried had ended up with a very quick reaming. Beholders. Golems. Vampires. A freakin' dragon for crying out loud. By the time I got to Kangaxx, it was a fun challenge, not a frustration. (Edit: this on top of my general beefs with AD&D, which I think is probably the worst mainstream system of game mechanics, ever. I only played it as PnP because of the breadth and depth of the lore, since I couldn't be arsed to port it over to some saner system myself.)

I didn't originally care for the looks of PS:T either. However, after I replayed it with the widescreen mod, I did, and now it's my favorite among the IE games in this respect too, with IWD a close second.

Read this thread. I already did. Because I used those D&D materials to run campaigns, not as bedtime reading. That means I used those parts which were relevant to my campaigns, and ignored those parts that were not. In particular, I ignored most of the monsters. I mean sure, I leafed through the monster manuals, but most of them didn't fit my campaign so I didn't do anything with them, and didn't know much about them. My longest-running campaign (at that time) was based on the Al-Qadim setting. I also was pretty stingy about awarding XP, largely due to my dislike of high-level gameplay in AD&D (IMO things get ridiculous fast once past level 12 or so, with the sweet spot between levels 3 and 10 or thereabouts). The upshot is that I had -- still have -- a pretty good handle on AD&D spells up to level 5 or 6 or thereabouts, and of the capabilities of the monsters I actually used in my campaigns. If I recall correctly, this included critters like geniekind, various desert-specialized monsters, various aquatic and semi-aquatic monsters (I had a Kuo-Toa civilization in there somewhere), yuan-ti and naga, rakshasa; there may have been a golem or two, but as I recall no abominations, and no dragons as monsters (as NPC's, yes). I.e., my knowledge of (A)D&D is by no means encyclopedic. It is a working knowledge I've gotten by running campaigns in it for a very long time, mostly in worlds of my own devising, and covers the areas which I needed to cover in order to run those campaigns. So I'm very comfortable with the Planes and many of their denizens (because I ran a Planescape campaign), with the stuff that went on in my Al-Qadim campaign, and with magic up to level 5 spells or thereabouts (towards the end of my campaigns a few of my characters did get access to level 6 spells and perhaps one of them even got the odd level 7 one, but that was for such a short time and there were so few they ever used that I never got a good feel for what's available at that level), but I only know the Forgotten Realms from computer games, and Dragonlance not at all. The state of my books tell pretty well what I know and what I don't. The PHB and DMG are literally held together with duct tape and have pages falling out even so, same thing for the Al-Qadim sourcebook, but my Monster Manuals are in good to near-mint condition, and I don't even have a lot of the supplements.

@Stun. You're incorrectly assuming that I didn't enjoy BG2's combat. I did. Eventually. It has its problems and could be improved on, but overall I thought it worked great. I enjoyed it so much I played all the other IE games after I finished BG2/ToB, and eventually got good enough at them that I'm having no trouble at all with IWD2. Not at your fanatical level I'm sure, but still competent enough that I'm only saving frequently because the damn thing occasionally crashes, and I clear most boss fights on the first try. What I didn't like about BG2 is that I remember when I first played it, I felt that it was unfair. It was constantly throwing things at me without giving any clues about what those things were. I did eventually figure it out, but I did not enjoy that part. It was tiresome, tedious, repetitive, frustrating. I made several squib builds and had to start over several times, then run through the content I had already cleared before. It was not fun, nor fair. I had read the manual quite thoroughly, and I had played PnP D&D for years. Yet I kept getting reamed by enemies I didn't understand, who were attacking me in ways I didn't understand. It was also the first IE game I played. I eventually figured it out and proceeded to enjoy the game. I remain convinced that BG2 would not have been any the worse if the Athkatla content had been staggered and spread out a bit, with clearer (in-game) indications about which quests are harder than others, and if there had been better -- or indeed any -- in-game information to be had about which monsters are to be expected where, what kinds of attacks and immunities they could be expected to have, and how they could be countered. I would not have wanted that information to be shoved into my face, but if there had been a grizzled monster-hunting veteran at the Copper Coronet who would give you pointers if you bought him beer, for example, it would have made getting into the game enormously less frustrating. I.e., it seemed obvious to me that the game was designed and balanced to be played with trial-and-error reloading. I felt then, and continue to feel today, that that's lazy and unimaginative design masquerading as challenge. If that makes me a mouth-breathing slope-browed popamolian responsible for the Decline, then fine, so be it.