PrimeJunta

The hat. I want one just like it. With orange plumes. I will wear it always.

Still in re BG: whoever thought that getting randomly struck while lightning because of very frequently occurring weather conditions was a good idea ought to be spanked. Hard. Lawnmowing is getting boring. I'll probably head to Baldur's Gate next, see if the story goes anywhere.

Tried one more time. Played through to the Mines, re-recruited Yeslick, flooded the mines, traipsed around the map. Yeslick's timer is still running. Oh well, no cleric for me then I guess. I'll have to make do with Ajanti's lay-on-hands and lots of potions.

Oh, and, I checked. Yeslick left, again. Killing and raising him did not stop his quest timer; wandering around the map for a bit got him to leave again complaining about those stupid mines. Do any of you know of a way to really properly reset his timer? This time I did keep a save when I entered Cloakwood so I'll only have to replay that part to get back to where I was. I really have no luck with clerics.

Pocket knives and shotguns in rural areas are tools, not weapons. I'm sure back in the day hunters carried bows, knives, and axes. But you don't see people in full combat armor, with assault rifles and hand-grenades. Also I think you may have misunderstood me: I'm not calling for "no combat scenarios in cities." Quite the contrary: I'm calling for different combat scenarios in cities. Back-alley gang wars, fought with knives and cudgels without armor, rather than longswords and longbows and full plate. A palace coup, where you infiltrate the royal ball, stealthily assassinate a couple of key people, and then take control. That sort of thing. Not because it's more realistic -- although it is -- but because it would provide more variety, support a wider range of character concepts, and just be fun. This would have to be fully supported by the character system of course; you could have a specialized warrior who's deadly with an arquebus and pollax, a specialized commando lethal with cloak and dagger, or one who's pretty good at both, with the appropriate tactical consequences.

Lots of points there. I'll pick only one for now. Randomization and replayability. I'm not a huge fan of randomization except for games actually based on it, like roguelikes or Dwarf Fortress for example. It tends to fit poorly with hand-crafted content and have a generic, soulless, bland feeling to it. If it's as light as you suggest, it won't change your experience all that much; if it was BG you'd have the same playthrough, more or less, except sometimes you'd get that +1 short sword a hair earlier from a random loot drop, at other times you'd not be able to find a Stinking Cloud scroll anywhere. Not enough to interest me at least in a second play-through. In my opinion a much better way of enhancing replayability is through multiple solutions to problems, and through branching story- and questlines. If you can get to an objective by fighting, talking, or sneaking, your experience will be very different each time; you'll need a different type of character or party, and will be doing different things. If choosing to help Gravlax the Lich opens up a series of quests that end up with you setting fire to the High Chapterhouse of the Paladins of the Living Salmon, whereas helping the Paladins leads to a series of quests where you hunt for Gravlax's phylactery, again you'd have a completely different experience. If each of these quests has multiple solutions and varying outcomes, again, massive replayability. Even if each questline has exactly two branches, you can get massive replayability by having them affect each other through different outcomes or rewards so there's more variety than the simple "good path" and "evil path" in the above example.

I've been to a war zone, and my wife grew up in one. Openly armed people who are not part of the armed force -- militia or regular military -- that is in control of a zone tend to get shot on sight. Fully-armed freelance adventurers are not tolerated at all. You do see a lot of the particular armed faction that's in control of course; a part of that control is showing up and asserting your monopoly on the use of force. There are mercenaries, but they only gear up after they've got a contract with the local warlord, and then only when they're on an operation. Even in anarchic situations you get militias who set up zones of control. The block in West Beirut where my wife grew up was controlled by an extended Druze family which turned into one. They kept the other militias out and the people in safe, more or less. When a heavily armed regular military showed up -- the Israelis in 1982, the Syrians on several occasions -- they tucked the Kalashnikovs and RPG-7's under the beds and faded out sight, only to pop back when the regulars left. Carrying even a concealed weapon if you're not part of the militia would have been extremely risky as you're likely to be stopped at a makeshift checkpoint and patted down, and militias tend to deal with such stuff harshly. Hell, sometimes they'd shoot you just because they were having a bad day. I'm fairly certain the same logic has applied to every war zone everywhere, more or less, barring interludes of pure every-man-for-himself chaos. If you're part of the force that controls the ground you're on, you're armed. If you're not, said force makes sure you're not armed. So there's almost invariably a single group asserting monopoly of use of force in an area. If there are two, you get a battle. Unaffiliated, fully-armed individuals are not tolerated; they're treated as enemy combatants by default. Which is why being a skilled knifefighter or unarmed combatant is a much more practically useful art of violence nowadays than being a skilled swordsman, even though a katana is an obviously deadlier weapon than a fist, foot, or butterfly knife.

Okay, another Let's Play interim report. Faffed about with my multiclass character a bit, but she was too fragile to have fun with. So I gave up and decided to brute-force things and rolled up something I've never actually played because I don't care for the role: a paladin. Cavalier to be exact. Now I have a steamroller. Imoen, Minsc, Dynaheir, Kivan, Ajanti. I traded in Ajanti for that dwarf fighter/cleric from the Cloakwood mines when I got that far. Cutting through stuff like a hot knife through butter. Almost too easy, except very occasionally; some of the random "You have been waylaid" encounters can get hairy if some nasty beastie gets at Dynaheir. Inventory management is a drag. Nice sense of exploration and discovery; there's a secret or two on every map and it's fun to find them. With those boots of speed I'm lawnmowing like a boss, too. But damn this thing is bugged. I did flood the damn mines, but that did not reset that dwarf dude's quest timer! I got suspicious when I tried talking to him and he was griping about aimless wandering instead of flooding the mines. Wat? I flooded 'em! He was right there with me all the time! So I tried it: saved, then marched around the map for a week or two, and sure 'nuff, he walked out on me. Time for the Internets. According to that, a killed and resurrected party member's quest timer gets canceled. So he had an unfortunate accident, and then got raised courtesy of the Imam at the Süleymaniye Mosque ^H^H^H Temple of Lathander. Now he has nothing to say to me when I talk to him, so mmmmaybe that sorted it. Unfortunately Ajanti drowned in those mines, so if I'm losing the dwarf dude again I am going to be seriously pissed off at this game. The whole party's at level 6, except him who's 5/5, typically for multiclass. I do not want to grind up to that level again, especially as now I've lawnmowed a great part of the map. Fun level? Varying between mostly tedious and pretty fun. I do get the appeal. I also think the genre has progressed hugely since. It's mostly the dopamine reward circuit that's keeping me going, not particular interest in the lore, world, gameplay, or characters. It's not bad as such, but I still think it's among the weakest of this line of games I've played. The only ones I liked less, I think, were Shadows of Undrentide and Throne of Bhaal. (I have played most of the IE and NWN games; so far I think the only ones I haven't played are ToEE and IWD 2.)

Yeah. Most fantasy cRPG's which have people traipsing around in full plate armor toting claymores are silly when you think about it. That's like driving into downtown NYC in a main battle tank, then going shopping at Macy's in a heavy flak jacket and kevlar helmet while toting an assault rifle and a belt full of hand grenades and extra clips. I have a feeling Mr. Bloomberg would have something to say about that.

@AGX-17, those are pretty superficial criticisms IMO. They're not fundamental to the setting or the design ideas in it. The magic/tech balance thing is simply a balancing issue -- either nerf magic or make tech more powerful; problem solved. I'm surprised nobody's (apparently) modded this in, as it should be technically dead easy; just adjust some constants here and there. (Lots of playtesting though.) The throwing thing is a simulationist criticism. It's only valid if you accept the premise that a game ought to be realistic. I accept that premise for certain types of games -- for example, I like Rome: Total Realism a lot more than vanilla Rome: Total War, precisely because it strives to be more realistic; no flaming pigs and what have you, but lots and lots of different flavors of spearmen. However, that doesn't apply to most games IMO. Some games are designed for the gameplay: chess, to take an extreme example, is not a particularly accurate wargame, but it's a fantastic game in its own right. Others are designed with other goals in mind. A cRPG for example can be any number of things -- it can strive for verisimilitude (low-fantasy, with a clearly-defined set of rules governing how magic operates, for example), whimsy (like Arcanum or Fallout), surrealism and atmosphere (like Torment), high/heroic fantasy (most of the IE games other than Torment), and so on. The verisimilitude/realism requirement applies to each of these to different degrees. Where will P:E stand? We'll see when we'll see, I guess. Going by the chatter in the weapons and armor design thread, though, it seems like they are going for a degree of verisimilitude in that. If that's the case, then yeah, throwing daggers should have pretty limited utility. That said, what I would really like to see is a variety of scenarios with different constraints on what you can do. Almost all fantasy cRPG's are really monotonous in this respect -- other than the obligatory "you've been thrown in jail and lost all your gear" episode, you go into every battle fully kitted for combat. I'd like to see other situations as well: stealthy assassinations at the royal ball, cities where only guards and nobles are allowed to wear armor and carry weapons openly, that sort of thing. This would open up a huge and rich range of gameplay and character concepts -- daggers, for example, would suddenly be extremely useful in circumstances where you can't carry a sword or spear, nor wear armor. A master knifefighter would be deadly, where your master swordsman would be in real trouble without his sword.

I don't like this idea, except for the odd -- very odd and very subtle! -- in-joke, maybe. "Property of Mourns-for-trees" on a bottle of razorvine extract in IWD is borderline OK; visiting a shared location... no. Just... no. The problem is that the two universes are metaphysically incompatible. P:E's universe is all about souls and the transmigration thereof; Numenéra is grounded in Clarkian "technology so advanced it's indistinguishable from magic." Monte Cook explicitly rejects magic as magic in Numenéra; it's all hyper-advanced tech that looks like magic. So the only way to combine the two would be to declare that P:E's magic, souls, and gods are all just hyper-advanced tech too, it's just that the people in P:E don't realize it. That cheapens the whole setting IMO. An even cheaper trick would be to go with a D&D:ian multiverse. Don't like that either. So -1 on this idea from me. Keep 'em coming though.

Re pay, it's very common to have bonuses of various types in this industry, as well as profit-sharing, co-ownership and so on and so forth. Where I work for example distributes 10% of net profit as bonus pay for all employees. It's also pretty common to have a bonus if your project goes under budget. It wouldn't strike me as odd at all that crowdfunded projects would have bonus structures tied to the success of the crowdfunding effort -- especially so in a creative field like games, where as I've understood it a bunch of the people working on the pitch worked for very low or no pay with an understanding that inXile would make it up to them if and only if the pitch succeeds. With risky ventures or startups, it's also fairly common for devs -- especially experienced devs who have other options but really like the idea of the startup -- to agree to work for less than industry average until the venture is profitable, in exchange for a stake in the company. In both cases, a highly successful crowdfunding campaign could mean higher pay for the devs. I do not see anything wrong with that at all.

Word. The Numenéra system is an example of streamlining done right. Meaning: it's a system designed with a clear and specific goal in mind -- to provide just enough structure to make it feasible to run a story-heavy RPG campaign. For a Torment game I'd say it sounds just about perfect. It would be a poor fit for a combat-heavy, tactics-heavy game though -- the wrong choice for P:E, for example. I had the book ordered before T:ToN was announced, actually. My current D&D campaign is winding to a finale, and I wanted to do something different next.

@Razsius, I already have dual wielding and the kits; they're in the Trilogy + fix mods which I installed. I'll pass on the Wild Mage. I gave that Archer kit a long, hard look, but I really enjoy playing a 'caster and you can't dual or multi a ranger/mage, so I don't think so. But thanks for the tip. Yah, Dak'kon is awesome. The CTD's, not so much. How many circles did you unlock? You sure you got all of them? Also I agree about the game systems getting in the way. With no missile weapons low-level combat is... not like BG. OTOH you can't die, and you can Raise your companions, which makes it a fair bit more forgiving in its way. And... IMO with PS:T, turning down the difficulty to make the systems less of a chore is no sin.

It's a fair cop. I didn't like some of them, some of them didn't like me. Oh well. Mistakes were made. Dualing to Cleric -- yeah, that'd work, my dump stat is WIS. I think I'll just call this one a loss and start over. All part of the fun of it. At least now I have an idea of what party members are available and where. Maybe I'll go with Imoen, Minsc + Dynaheir, that paladin dude just north of Friendly Arm, and Branwen to start with, then swap out Branwen for that dwarf cleric I just lost once I get that far. And play an elf fighter/mage specializing in longbows with a side helping of longswords. Or two-handers? Whoever made the game seems to like making boss greatswords... That should give me plenty of archery power, enough crowd control to swing the tough fights, and just enough healing power to stay alive. With no dualing just because it's such a drag. (Whoever thought up that rule should be spanked.) And I can always turn down the volume so I don't have to hear about Minsc's hamster.

It's funny, that. Cheating completely ruins a game for me. I'll exploit the bejeezus out of it but once I bring up the console, I completely lose interest. I'd rather start over. Just not sure if BG is enough of my thang to do that. Maybe later. I think I got a pretty good idea of what it's about as it is. Oh, and, being the racist human Lawful Goody type, I already turned Viconia over to those good peacekeeping Flaming Fist types, so that option's a no-go as well. Oh well...

Okay, how screwed am I? I'm basically out of cleric. I swapped out Branwen, who didn't like my style anyway and took off. Then I found a cleric I like, that dwarf in the Cloakwood mines. So I swapped out Jaheira and Khaled for him, and went to grab that paladin dude instead and do some adventurin'. And... I didn't know his quest was on a timer. By the time he started to nag about it, I was several days away from the mines, and he quit the party before I made it back. So I'm basically all out of cleric. The only healing power I have is that poor paladin's lay-on-hands. The only other divine caster I've come across is a druid in Cloakwood. Suggestions? (N.b. -- I don't keep backup saves, only a quicksave and the previous autosave. So I can get my gear back from that dwarf by going back a notch, but that be about it.)

Okay, now I've got to go see how hard Durlag's Tower stomps on me. I'm not sure which chapter I'm in, I stopped paying attention to the numbers. Five maybe. That ranger dude started nagging me about the bandits so I wiped them out and got another screenie with some s-l-o-w narration pointing me towards Cloakwood, so naturally I took off in the opposite direction. Really hating that cramped labyrinth dungeon full of lightning traps and respawning kobold commandos with fire arrows. It's incredibly tedious as the only way not to get my squishy rogue constantly turned into a flaming pincushion is to creep s-l-o-w-l-y along so she'll find the traps before stepping on them, with my fighters close behind to mow down the kobolds when they pop up. That's not hard, it's just excruciatingly slow and tedious. And the cramped corridors play hell with the pathfinding so I have to micromanage the characters to keep them from wandering off across half the maze to end up in the corridor behind the wall. I'll probably just leave and look for something else. And Raz, no, I hadn't played BG before. I have played BG2 through several times though, but this is not the same game at all, it feels so different it's like it's not even in the same series.

Oh, and, another interim BG Let's Play report. Now I'm up to level 5-6. I dualed Imoen to mage; she's now T6/M4, meaning still fairly useless although Stinking Cloud and Sleep are handy enough; one more level and she'll get L3 spells, which should make for even more rest-spamming. To fill in until she gets her mad thief skills back I picked up someone who wanted to raid a cave with flesh golems in it. Her banter is getting on my nerves a bit but she's getting those traps cleared nicely enough. Those flesh golems proved good grind material to get Imoen her first few mage levels. Jaheira is unhappy with my leadership, presumably because I'm too much of a goody-goody for her True Neutral druidness. Mowed through the bandit camp leaving behind mostly a bloody smear; no trouble there. Now I'm traipsing around some old ruins full of kobold commandos shooting fire arrows, which is a bit tedious, but perhaps the reward will be worth it. Anndd... it's getting a wee bit monotonous again. Feeling a little stalled. But we'll see where this goes next. There's an ominous Durlag's Tower on my map, perhaps I'll check that out after I clear these ruins.

@Jarmo, at least for me the glory of Fallout is in the writing. Fallout's combat is IMO worse than in any of the IE games in fact; if it weren't for the glorious death animations it'd be just about intolerable. And it's not that it's turn-based; in fact I prefer turn-based for isometric party-based stuff. However the world is quirky, funny, loaded with layers upon layers of satire and commentary and play upon tropes and what have you, and the dialog is mostly nothing short of brilliant. Monty Python meets Beaver Cleaver in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. The point? Graphics and gameplay systems age, but good writing stays good forever. That's another reason I think PS:T has a real shot at immortality -- the stuff that makes it worthwhile won't be out of date as long as people are able to read.

That. I'm surprised TBH. Maybe there is hope for humanity after all. Once we're done with this, let's go and sort out all that foolishness in the Middle East.

You know, Razsius, I think it was that same interaction that sold me on PS:T. Up to that point I was more like "wait, wut?" but from there on out I knew I was dealing with something unique and unusual. So yeah, you have it now.

Thanks. Things are getting easier. I dropped off Garrick and got that ranger dude instead, which bumped up my offensive power a fair bit. I think a bard is a pretty good addition around levels 1-2 actually because the problem is that you're whiffing all the time, and +1 to hit for everybody can make a big difference. My party is now between levels 4-5 and I'm coping pretty nicely by now. Splatting ankhegs without much trouble. I like divine spellcasters; they're good all-arounders and having lots of healing power is good. I had Xan tagging along for a bit but he was too emo for my blood so I dropped him off, although Sleep on a bandit group was, indeed, very effective. But I think I'm over the initial hump. I'll dual Imoen after another level or two; I want to bump her find traps/open locks skills up to respectable levels before I do that. I'll only dual Athia late, perhaps not until BG2. And you know what? Now I get where your "combat XP FTW" party is coming from. BG is extremely grindy. Half the fun is finding tough but just-killable enemies and splatting them to level up -- and you do level up pretty fast that way. There is definite enjoyment to that dynamic. It's like going back to the old days of dungeon-crawling D&D with graph paper and entering a 30 x 30 foot room with an ogre guarding a chest. Nostalgia. I can understand how that would become the definitive, core Infinity Engine experience for you, and how you'd be seriously miffed when it's taken away from you. Personally... I'm kind of over that gameplay mechanic, much like I'm over playing tabletop D&D with graph paper and elaborate dungeons. It was fun, but I'm older now, and I'm looking for other things. For me, Torment was the definitive IE experience -- not because it was perfect (it certainly wasn't!) but because it showed that a cRPG could be more than just good clean gnoll-splatting fun. And ironically Torment wasn't really all that good a fit for the IE and the AD&D ruleset. I think there is a possible synthesis to be found between the two styles, though. It could be possible to have enough grindy elements to make that aspect of gameplay appealing; enough tactical fun to make that part worthwhile, and enough story and depth to make the whole thing worthwhile. P:E could very well be that synthesis. So thanks for encouraging me to give BG another shot. I still won't miss combat XP in P:E -- but I understand why you would, and sympathize... and if they change their minds about it and put it in, I'll be happy for you. And I'll keep playing. Re Torment, it sounds like you know very well what you're doing. Perhaps... too well. For me, the real key to enjoying it was to hit myself on the head with a brick until I stopped metagaming, and then enjoy the ride. When I returned to it this time, I played in self-imposed "no savegame abuse" mode -- I did whatever I felt was right and never looked back. I only had to "cheat" twice over the entire game; once when I painted myself into a corner and once when I picked a game-ending dialog option. (The Modron Maze doesn't count, since that's designed as a place for grinding.) And I'm sure I missed stuff or picked sub-optimal choices at times. It was also an enormous amount of fun. Torment is really all about paying careful attention to what people are telling you, and following up. And examining absolutely everything, especially weird items in your inventory, not just once, but multiple times. It's all about attention to detail. Not just mechanically talking to everyone and then ticking off questions.

I agree, except more vehemently. The strength of D&D was always in the settings and supporting materials; as a system it's between borderline unplayable (AD&D) and passable but not brilliant (D&D 1 and 3). But what other system has everything from Dark Sun to Planescape, Al-Qadim to Oriental Adventures, Forgotten Realms to Ravenloft, all fleshed out in loving detail -- and ties it up into one gloriously chaotic multiverse? Haven't played 4E although I have the core books. Read them, decided I don't want to, thought it would work better for a computer game than 3E. @Razsius: I'm playing at Core Rules difficulty. Gibberlings and gnolls and such aren't a problem, but anything with missile weapons is, and there are a quite a lot of missile mobs in there, and the AI seems surprisingly adept about focusing its fire. I am playing missile-weapons heavy; I'm keeping my kensai Athia's throwing axes for special occasions, but other than that my tactic is to kite like a real hero, with Imoen and Khalid on bows, Jaheira and that Swedish lady on slings, and the bard dude singing encouragingly, which makes a visible difference to THAC0. And if the terrain is suitable, I have Athia and Jaheira switch to hack mode to block passage while the rest of the gang keeps shooting. I'll probably switch out the bard later on when combat isn't so whiffy and get a ranger instead. That pretty much devastates anything slower than my party that doesn't have missile weapons. I played BG2 as a kensai/mage once, and while I originally wanted to play some other character concept (which is why I tried out all those others), I ended up falling back on this after my others... failed to catch, as it were. But a mob of skeleton crossbowmen, kobolds with bows, hobgoblin elite with bows, or plain ol' bandit archers... yeah, owie. About character concepts in PS:T, by the way: I find the most enjoyable way to play it is not to have one. Just pile your character points in WIS, bump up your INT up to 18 but not past, and split the rest between CHA and CON (don't push STR past 15, there's no point whatever you're doing), and then switch character classes on the fly, as situationally appropriate. Or if you like, stick to one "primary" class -- fighter or mage -- and switch to the others temporarily when you need to. You'll lose a little powergaming-wise since your XP pool won't all go to one class, but IMO it feels more fun and natural that way, and you get to find out and use all the weird and oddball stuff you find, and have deeper and more interesting conversations with all of your companions. Plus if you're really concerned about the XP, there is a grind-o-mat in there which you can use too (although it won't make a difference once your XP shoots up into the meellions near the endgame). But you really don't lose all that much; the combat near the endgame is a drag anyway and one more weeaboo spell effect that'll cause a CTD as likely or not isn't likely to turn the tide.

Resurrecting this thread, mostly for Razsius's benefit. I've started another BG playthrough. Did the canonical modern install, i.e., Trilogy with the fixpacks (but no restored content; IMO that's mostly not worth it), widescreen, all that commotion. Started a couple of characters. Squibs. Still hating it. And then... not. I'm in fact sort starting to reluctantly like it. The ambient sounds are really nice. The music still doesn't do much for me, but hey. I did three things. One, finally manage to come up with a character I enjoy playing. She's a kensai, specialized in axe (because there's both a throwing and a hacking version, and I would expect there's a throw-and-return version somewhere in there later too, at least in BG2 there was). I'm planning on dualing her to mage later in the game, probably pretty late though. Also start-scummed the bejeezus out of her to get ridiculous stats. Dump stat is WIS, everything else is... high or very high. And I spent a bit of time adventurin' with only Imoen, basically just harassing the local wildlife to get both of us up to level 2 reasonably safely. At least now the entire party has double-digit HP, which means that one-shot kills are a lot less frequent. Two, I cranked up the frame rate to 45. Yay! I'm no longer crawling excruciatingly slowly across the map, but rather moving at a reasonably quick rate, but not so quick I lose total control of combat. And three, I stopped trying to follow the plot. Switched off my brain and am just exploring and doing random sidequests. Rescued Dynaheir and promptly booted her and Minsc out of the party (because Minsc won't shut up about his damn hamster; getting on my nerves). There is enough stuff in those "empty" wilderness areas after all, to make them worthwhile. Playing with Jaheira + Khalid (thinking of offing Khalid because he's almost as annoying as Minsc), whereas Jaheira kicks arse, that Swedish priestess who was turned to stone, the bard (Garrett, what's his name?), and Imoen. Got my party to level 3 or thereabouts, and haven't even checked out those kobold-ridden mines yet. And it's starting to be fun in a "more innocent time" kind of way. Lots of stuff to do, lots of places to go. I still kinda hate the gameplay though. Low-level D&D is... unpleasant. It's basically save, encounter, flip coin, win/try again. Over and over again. I don't like having to constantly save and reload; it breaks my immershun. And if there is a way to play combat-heavy low-level D&D that doesn't involve constant reloading... well, I haven't discovered it. When your party has low-enough HP to be one-shotted by lots of enemies, that's kinda how it is. Frankly I don't think this sort of thing would pass nowadays. Combat in Age of Decadence is brutal but the whole point is that combat is not the only solution. In BG, it's all combat, all the time. Nor does it have the almost-universal trope of having a safe-ish tutorial from which you emerge at a roughly level-3 competence level. But yeah, I think it's... growing on me. If I'm still liking it by the time I hit level 6 or so, then I'll officially declare my mind changed.