PrimeJunta

To be fair, you could say that about most if not all of the IE games, and NWN, as well. Even PS:T had tedious mobs from Curst on out.

@KaineParker, no advice at this point. Well, other than my disdain for the D&D paladin class; my recent playthrough was with a similar concept but mechanically stronger (Lawful Good Aasimar Cleric -> Doomguide.) There will be more interesting combat encounters, but also many, many, many mobs to wade through. Which is why playing a pally (or a rogue or bard or fighter built for defense rather than offense for that matter) is kind of a chore. It's not that you won't be able to beat the encounters, it'll just take a while to hack your way through them. They will go much faster with a nice complement of area of effect spells, or even with a melee type built for max damage (Fighter -> Raging Berserker -> Weapon Master using a two-hander will mow through most anything really fast, and with the high Int you need for weapon master you'll have room for some skills that'll make things kind of interesting in other ways too; there's really only one encounter in the game that should give such a fighter some pause and that one's easy to beat with the magical abilities your followers will have). Of course you will have followers with some boss AoE spells later, but still.

@exodiark: The ending. No. Just... no. (I'm not putting in "Spoiler" tags as I assume anyone reading this is familiar with NWN2 anyway. If you're not, be warned.) "Suddenly, the dungeon collapses" is not brilliant. It's unsatisfying and dumb. "You win! Haha neener neener, no you don't, you're all dead LOL!" If I did that as a DM, my players would walk out on me, deservedly. Walking away to cheers and acclamations would have been clichéd, yes. But there would've been many ways to create a satisfying ending from the elements already introduced in the game, building on that 'deconstructing heroism' theme. Here's one which takes Ammon Jerro's fall to its logical ending. Consider the Ritual of Purification. That was built up to be a really big deal. As in, the only reason you were saddled with Ammon Jerro was that he had the missing part of the Ritual, and supposedly you couldn't defeat the KoS without it. Yet actually you don't need the Ritual at all. I didn't use any of it once. (Aside: nor the silver sword, for that matter, other than the single instance when you have to use it. My Holy Keen Bastard Sword +5 was more effective. In fact the "artifact" weapons in the game were way too weak; there's no way you should be able to craft something even close in power to them.) So, for example, why not do something like this: Really make it so that using all five parts of the Ritual is the only way to defeat the KoS, but doing so will cause the hero and Ammon Jerro take his place as the new Guardian of Illefarn. Ammon Jerro would draw from the Shadow Weave (for obvious reasons). You would draw from the Weave (if Good), or the Shadow Weave (if Evil), or your choice of which Weave (if Neutral). Then you would have to fight the being that was Ammon Jerro. Once you defeat him, you have a choice. If you drew from the Weave, you can choose to sever his connection to the Shadow Weave, which would destroy him and leave you as something very similar to what the Guardian was intended to be. Perhaps a Guardian of Neverwinter? Or you can choose to merge with him to become something different, a composite being drawing both from the Shadow Weave and the Weave -- what that could be I leave up to the imagination. Perhaps an apotheosis of sorts? Becoming a minor god? Or you can choose to sever both your connections to your respective Weaves. Narratively it would make most sense for this to be a suicidal move, but if you absolutely wanted to leave the option for a sequel open, you could bend this to make it the "OC" ending -- as the connection to the Weave fails, the dungeon collapses, leaving both you and Ammon Jerro trapped under the rubble, unconscious, merely human, but alive. If you drew from the Shadow Weave, Ammon Jerro will be destroyed, and you will become a new and deadlier King of Shadow, with the general consequences of the official 'evil' ending. Then have Zhaeve survive and narrate the ending from the perspective of someone residing in the Outer Planes. All of these would have made more narrative and thematic sense, and provided closure. (The other part of why the ending was bad was the dungeon design -- it was bland, boring, repetitive, and wading through crowds of monsters thrown at you and trying to wear you down through attrition is just tedious, not fun. To add insult to injury, there's the AI that doesn't obey orders and rushes off to attack when you just told them to read the True Names or hack away at the statues.)

I'll read 'em if you do.

(Does this count as thread necro, or is two weeks plus not enough?) @exodiark, yeah, I agree with a lot of that. NWN2 OC isn't as bad as its reputation IMO. It has redeeming qualities. The writing is actually pretty good on the "micro" level -- as in, the dialog flows nicely, every character has his or her own voice, and so on. The combat encounters are varied and even interesting most of the time (not counting the awful, awful endgame). There's plenty of variety in locations. They've done a great job working around the weaknesses of D&D 3.5, so you can actually make a big range of viable and powerful character concepts. The character-building is in fact the best single thing about it IMO. But the bad. Yeah. The writing at the "macro" level. Just terrible. Relies on really threadbare tropes, from the whole "ancient evil" thing to fridging not one but two women. The awful romances. The characters who really had no personality beyond class + race + alignment + quirk. Zhaeve, the embarrassingly bad Torment fanfic. The way the game saddles you with some characters whether you want them or not. The endgame. The horrible, horrible endgame. On this playthrough, for example, my character would not have asked any of her companions along for the endgame unless they volunteered and she was really sure they wanted to do it. That means Ammon Jerro, Zhaeve, Khelgar (probably), Casavir, Elanee (probably), Grobnar (possibly), but certainly neither Neeshka nor Qara -- I hadn't even adventured with Qara one single time except for that one plot-related excursion. That whole part made no sense. Nor stuff like a simple farm girl suddenly blossoming into a level 16 fighter. I mean, really? But really. Whoever approved that endgame needs a spanking. It was bad. Then again maybe it's an Obsidian thing, as the KOTOR 2 endgame was just as bad if not worse. (The MotB one was kind of OK though so maybe they're learning.)

I'd drop long-term buffs altogether. The bad ones you just ignore, and the good ones are just a chore to apply. Put those effects on items instead; they still take up slots which involves a meaningful strategic trade-off, but it removes the chore part of it. Short-term buffs OTOH make for one kind of extremely fun gameplay, as long as they're powerful enough to make a real difference. In fact IMO one of the problems with D&D short-term buffs is that at higher levels they, too, last too long. You can memorize two or three Battletides and Hastes and you'll be all set for the whole day, more or less.

As an aside, D&D paladins make no sense to me and never did, in any of the editions. They're basically gimped fighters with some relatively useless magic abilities and a strict code of conduct. You can get a much more powerful holy warrior based on the cleric class, without even multiclassing to fighter, never even mind some of the absurdly powerful divine prestige classes.

And I support your ability to play the game you want to as well. P:E will surely allow you to save-and-reload all you want, hunt for random monsters to kill all you want, and trek back and forth between dungeons and shops all you want too, if you consider those enjoyable activities. It just won't reward you for it. Now, what was your complaint again?

These Pally abilities are seizing my imagination. I'm seeing Drill Sergeant L. Goode and his merry squad of adventurers. - "On your feet, soldier!" - "Aww, did Private Grunty get a boo-boo? Would he like a plaster? MOVE IT AND CHARGE YOU WORTHLESS TUB OF IRON RATIONS!" - "Stunned? STUNNED? <slap> FORWARD MARCH OR I'LL SHOW YOU STUNNED!!"

And this is where you keep being stubbornly wrong, Gfted1. "Gaming purists" -- i.e., those of us discussing degenerate strategies like the one you're describing -- are not mad at players for exploiting them. FWIW I did exactly the same thing in exactly the same place. What we do is just this: (1) Ask if an activity is enjoyable or not. (2) If we decide it's not, have a preference for games that do not reward the activity over games that do reward it. Many of us feel that farming, grinding, save-and-reloading, rest-spamming, trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop etc. are not enjoyable activities compared to, say, exploration, discovery of lore, finding treasure, solving problems, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies that stand between you and your objective. Therefore, we prefer mechanics that do not reward the former, but do reward the latter. I still don't get how come you take it as a personal slight, or a criticism of your style of playing these games. Note: I do get the appeal of the hunt-for-monsters-to-slay-for-XP mechanic that was so central to Baldur's Gate (although much less so for BG2 or the other IE games). I realize this is close to the defining characteristic of BG-style gameplay for some players, and that these players will miss it if it's not present in P:E. I do not fall into that group myself, but I understand where they're coming from. I think there would be more enjoyable ways to implement a similar feeling, though, but that would be a bit of a tangent.

I will play a wild orlan paladin and name him Mewbacca. After I finish with Thelonius, monk. Digging the paladin mechanics. Nicely differentiated from the other fighters, and I especially like the work you're doing to make the concepts fit the lore. "Buffmeister" isn't my favorite mechanical role but I'd sure like to have one in the party, OTOH if you make the world reactive to the paladin's lore-position, even a little, I would want to play that as the PC at some point.

Language geek here. Clean, phonetic spelling is boring. I would love it if orthography reflects language history in the world of P:E. Just stick an appendix somewhere in the manual that describes the phonetics, orthography and (even better!) grammar and vocabulary of the languages, and I'm a happy panda. Even better, have different spellings for the same things depending on who's talking. And misunderstandings. Tangent. You'll find a spot on a map in Southern France which is marked "Temple des druides," Temple of the Druids. It's a small stone ruin built partly into a cave and partly under a big rock overhang. Popular with hippies. However, the story of the name is much funnier than if it was actually a temple of the Druids. Turns out that some time during Napoleon III, the official cartographer showed up and started marking up places of interest. He, naturally, spoke French. The locals, naturally, spoke Provençal. Not the same thing. So he asked them what this spot is called, and they said something along the lines of "toumple dei drudas." "Cool," he must've thought, "Temple of the Druids." And duly marked it down. Thing is, in the local patois, 'toumple' means 'cave' and 'druda' means 'prostitute.' The place was actually a spot where the poorer village prostitutes went with their johns for a little privacy. So the locals called it the Cave of the Whores. I would love to see this kind of misunderstanding in P:E too.

Not to put too fine a point on it, BruceVC, but do you only make connections to female NPC's with your peen?

Well, we know that (a) the game is going to be combat heavy and a completely "pacifist" play-through will almost certainly not be possible, (b) character-building is strongly combat focused, © there will not be combat XP, and (d) there will be no systemic loot (i.e., all loot will be hand-placed, including death drops). From that we can infer that grinding will not be possible. Knowing JES's design priorities, it's unlikely the game will have opportunities for other types of farming either. On the other hand, since the game will have quest/objective XP, "completionism" will result in faster character progression. So "grindy" players will be scouring the game for quests rather than monsters. I too would like to see cRPG's break out of the mold where violence is the main mechanic with which you interact with the world. Perhaps T:ToN will go in that direction; I don't think P:E will however.

More like conflating than equivocating, methinks. Thing is, as you say, it's never been done right. That means that the people who want romance options are talking about the stuff that's been done wrong. I do not want any of that stuff. I'm also something of an empiricist, and I understand at least something about what it's like to write stuff. Based on this, I think you're being, frankly, unrealistic. You want something that probably can't be done -- at least not by the people making these things, within the constraints under which they're operating. Attempting something that can't be done usually doesn't turn out well. I would prefer to avoid that. You do know that = is commutative? If a = b, then b = a. So you are equivocating, and you most definitely were equivocating when you claimed that my opposition to in-game romance implies that I must also be opposed to all forms of in-game personal affection- Could you? Wow. In that case, I would humbly submit that we have reached an impasse. You believe that it's a realistic proposition. I do not. We have both made our preferences clear. Given the stage the game is in (nearing production), I would expect these decisions have already been made in any case, so all we can do is wait and see. If they do manage to put in romance options that aren't 'romance options' and do not eclipse non-romantic interpersonal relationships, then I will be duly chastised and salute them for their writing skills. Until then, I remain skeptical.

Needs more hyperbole.

That's because you're equivocating. Of course not. That would be silly. Blam. That's the equivocation. "Romance" != "personal affection" and being opposed to the one in no way implies being opposed to the other. The problem with romance in games -- especially multiple characters as "romance options" -- is that if you write a character as a "romance option," then you automatically do not write the relationship with that character as some other type of interaction. The one rules out the other. Perhaps not in theory, but in practice it does -- or can you name one cRPG that has (a) "romance options" and (b) meaningful interpersonal relationships with those "romance options" that are not romances or truncated romances? Yes, absolutely -- I would like to see cRPG's explore these other types of relationships with NPC's besides stale fanservice romance. "Romance options" poison and drain the blood out of all other relationships. So away with them I say. Write a game with varied, interesting, and deep interpersonal relationships of various types. Then we'll talk again.

I actually liked one of the DA:O origin stories. Only one though, and the disappointment was that much bigger when the game completely failed to build on any of it. Which one, I hear you asking? Dwarf noble. Why? Because it's the only time ever, in any computer game, that I've seen a believable depiction of an ancient caste-based society in all its hidebound, backstabbing glory. Hell, the lower castes aren't even allowed to look at you, let alone address you, and you talk to them through an intermediary (when you have to). Seriously good stuff. And then it all fell apart with that dudebro back-slappy king and the rest of it. The return to Ommazzaarrooammhmm or whatever it was called was the same ol' superficial fake-caste-pap as ever, compleat with the democratic egalitarian good-guy dudebro who would make it all better and practically sign the Bill of Rights, Declaration of the Rights of Dwarf, and the Constitution all at once. That alone makes DA:O one of the bigger let-downs for me among computer games actually.

I'm pretty neutral on the romance thing, I think this is the first time I've looked at this thread....however, this always makes me laugh 362% on kickstarter of what they actually wanted to make the game, plus whatever they've made since...people are tripping over themselves to hurl money at obsidian, as well as other studios like inxile and double fine, yet every suggestion is always met with "Nooooo...limited resources" it just seems to be an excuse to try and stop them adding a feature you don't want. I know they are not limitless, but how much do you think they need? $10million? $1billion? .....they didn't seem to think so. As far as romances go, as long as they are well written and optional then I'm fine with them Resources != money. Also time, ideas, creativity. Write a character as a romantic interest means NOT writing that character as something else. A player not pursuing the romance line will be interacting with a half a character. Rhett Butler is not the same character as Dirty Harry, and you can't "add a romance sub-plot" to Dirty Harry without fundamentally changing who Dirty Harry is. We all have preferences about how those resources ought to be used. I consider romance subplots generally a waste of time. I won't throw a hissy fit if they're in (although I probably will if there's another Elanee or Casavir in there!) but I'd rather have them focus on something else. They, naturally, will do as they see fit.

That would make sense if romance was free. But it isn't. It carries a cost. The characters have to be written with that option in mind, and with a representative selection of player-character roles in mind. All that constrains other possibilities for the characters' story arcs, not to mention writing, design, and development effort. Some of us "romance-haters" feel that, resources being limited, there's more gameplay enjoyment payoff in spending that coin elsewhere, especially as one of the biggest studios in the business makes a point of servicing "romance-lovers" already. Short version: if you want a BioWare romance, why not play a BioWare game? Obsidian doesn't do romance much, and when it does, it usually doesn't do it all that well, even by cRPG standards. (Exhibits A and B: Elanee and Casavir. Exhibits C and D: Safiya and Gann, two excellently-written characters that turned incredibly awkward the minute their romance arcs started.)

I bet they're going to put in a wild orlan romance just to troll us. Also make it the only romance option, and make it unavoidable.

Good thinking, @Chilloutman. Why not make magical light do stuff normal light can't do? For example, it could desaturate everything it lights (=drain it of color), saturate it (=make colors brighter), decrease or increase contrast, cast no shadows (=illuminate everything evenly), etc. All of these would be dead simple in a computer game and would make magical lights look genuinely unnatural and, well, magical.

@ORDUCKMANIAC... no. Just... no. (I dig the update though, even if the take-home message is just that everything is going smoothly and everyone's having a good time with it.)

@teknoman: I agree. You could additionally make the game somewhat intelligent about offering time-limited quests. The usual 'lawnmowing' way of playing cRPG's is to go to a hub, talk to everybody, get all the quests, do all the quests, come back and get all the rewards. This is pretty silly IMO when you think about it, but it's the most efficient way to play most games so it's not a surprise that most people do. Time-limited quests don't work all that well in this type of system, as you'll easily end up with several timers running and some will run out, and there's no way to tell beforehand what will trip a timer. So you start fudging the system: "I have this (relatively lenient) timer running, but I better not talk to anybody until I've finished it so I wont accidentally start one" or, on subsequent playthroughs "Note to self: don't talk to merchant for kidnapped-wife quest before resolving poisoned-man quest." I would prefer a game that offered its quests more organically, which would make it easier to stay in character too. Timed quests would work in such a framework. Just not overdone, otherwise it becomes just another type of railroading.

Hey, I have an idea. How 'bout we discuss Anita Sarkeesian's excellent video from today? :ducks and runs: