PrimeJunta

The feelz would be quite different. I think per-rest spells are fairly central to the DnD experience, so going with a mana system would probably have taken it too far from its roots. I don't have anything against it either, in principle.

Technically, in AD&D elvish magic-users don't regain their spells by sleeping, because elves don't sleep. Instead, they need to meditate for about 8 hours. (That's hard work by the way. Speaking from experience here.)

Yeh, I don't think it'd do any harm to let you cast buffs out of combat. As you say, the short durations have already taken care of the problem.

No news on AI behavior scripts.

Uh. If the devs didn't think they know how you want to play, how would they be able to make a game in the first place? That's kind of the first and fundamental question any game designer has to figure out.

Indeed, except that it's a bad design choice, unlike having 4 difficulties. Says you. I say differently. What now? I dunno. End of discussion?

Indeed, except that it's a bad design choice, unlike having 4 difficulties.

I like bestiary XP though. Getting XP for learning things makes intuitive sense and if properly balanced™ with the number of critters in the game won't turn you into a murderhobo. But yeah, no to lock/trap XP. (At this point I'm kinda past caring about the XP system; the endless arguments about it have worn me out. A little burned out on the BB too, truth be told.)

@archangel: would you be any less free to pick those locks or clear those mines if the game didn't reward you for it with XP? If not, why is it better to get XP for it than not?

Not at all. Difficulty settings change the rules of the game. Playing on Easy is not more efficient than playing on Hard, because you're not playing the same game. I'm all for difficulty settings. I'm also all for self-imposed limitations, but designing the game around them is dumb. Putting in a mechanic that's easily circumvented with another mechanic is dumb: you might as well not have put in the mechanic in the first place, rather than assume that your players are stupid or so larpy that they won't make use of the obvious hole.

If a game rewards savegame abuse, I abuse savegames. I'm like most humans: I respond to incentives. In WL2 for example I savescum locks and traps. That's the most efficient way to play. The game would be better if it didn't allow it, e.g. by having a fixed random seed for these checks.

@JES That's an excellent list. If you get all of those ship-shape, I for one will be an extremely happy camper. You didn't mention targeting reticles though, but I believe someone else already said they're in the pipeline...

Yeh, Tuchanka was pretty good, for storytelling and environment anyway. Didn't much care for the boss fight though, and the rest of the gameplay there was as flat as everywhere else.

It's not cosmetic. The attribute bonuses have been nerfed through the roof. Previously 18 Might gave you +36% damage, and changed your Morningstar damage (base 18-28) to 24.48 - 38.08 Now 18 Might gives you +16% damage, and you get 20.88 - 32.48 Pretty big difference. 18 Dexterity used to give you 18 Accuracy, now 18 Perception gives you 8. And so on and so forth. You do realize that now values below 10 give you penalties? I.e. going from 3 to 18 gives you -7 to +8, whereas previously it was... well, 3 to 18. That's pretty much the same thing (assuming the baseline has been adjusted accordingly).

You must be really old. I was promised a corporate-controlled globalized dystopia with cyberspace, anonymous anarchist hacker communities, designer drugs, no privacy, and lots and lots of personal electronics.

I know how you feel. I had to do a Mass Effect rant too when I finally got around to finishing the trilogy. It's kinda funny actually, what provokes these rants. For me at least it's not enough that a game is just bad. Those mostly just make me go :shrug: and move on. It's when a game has genuinely potential and then falls flat for some dumb reason or reasons that I feel a rant coming along. BioWare excels at that. It's like they serve you a delicous bowl of meatballs with spaghetti but then it turns out half the meatballs are actually dog turds. Y U PUT IN THE DOG TURDS???

Huh, that is some cool art. That's something at least. Also, @prodigydancer has terrible taste.

I backed Stasis as well. It looks very cool. Don't want to spoil myself by playing the alpha though...

Some people here apparently have this really romantic idea on how stuff gets made. Like it springs pure and fully-formed from a genius creator's forehead. It doesn't work like that. Trying things out and throwing them away, discussing ideas, putting numbers on a spreadsheet to see how they pan out, and showing it off to gauge reactions are all a part of it. There's no way Obsidian could turn us into designers simply because the range of opinion is so broad. What they can do is get an overall vibe of how their decisions are received, then change things and bounce them off us again. We're a sounding board. It doesn't really matter that we don't know what their priorities are, because our job is to let them know what our priorities are. And then it's their job to sort the signal from the noise and decide what to do about it.

@Sensuki Hey now, I'm not exactly from the Codex even if I have a pretty old account there and have started posting a little bit lately. At one point it was about 95% wannabie 4chan and 5% substance; nowadays the ratio is a lot better, to no small extent thanks to the distinguished gentlemen you listed.

NWN had a pretty good implementation of DnD. DnD itself stinks though.

Oo, my favorite troll on a roll again! Yes. Next question? Yes, with qualifications: I'm willing to compromise a LOT on graphics, animations, and FX to get more content. I would not be willing to compromise on the quality of writing, quest reactivity, or systems depth however. Ha! This is wonderfully nonsensical, even from you. Earlier you claimed the quantity/quality trade-off is an actual false dichotomy; now it's an "illusion of false dichotomy." That's pretty awesome; even "illusion of false dichotomy" is pretty good. Also, "tricked." Cool. We already established, though, that we do care more about quantity than quality, with the narrow definition of "quality" you use above. No, that would work perfectly well. I'd be quite happy with six, three, or zero classes, if I had as much possible variety as with the 11 classes we have here. Thing is, it's not the number of classes that takes work to develop. It's the variety, however you distribute it. And, as stated above, I am willing to give up a lot in animations, graphics, etc. to get more of that variety. Certainly creating highly polished reactive classes etc. Thing is, this game was not created for "most people." It was created specifically for us annoying nostalgia freaks. An interactive novel is a linear experience with little reactivity and little gameplay. Just having a lot of writing does not make a game an interactive novel. If P:E has plenty of reactivity, lots of alternative ways to do things, and lots of optional content, it is not an interactive novel. Would you post a video of yourself doing a dramatic reading of this paragraph? I'll take "Leave Britney Alone" or "Angry Saruman." Your choice. You have such a winning personality that I'm sure they'll take your advice and get right on it!

And that's your opinion, archangel. I'm not familiar with 5e, so I will grant the possibility that it is even better. However, the P:E system is a lot better than any DnD edition until that. It avoids the mechanical chaos of AD&D, the rigidity of DnD3's feats, attributes, and classes, and (to a large extent) the pigeonholing of DnD4, while maintaining most of what works about all of them.

@Karkarov yeah, that. About BG1... again, just coming from an almost-completed playthrough (headed towards Durlag's Tower)... yeah, most of it really is nothing that special. There are cool maps and cool encounters there, but most of the maps are fairly empty, most encounters consist of select all, target, attack, repeat until dead, with occasional replenishing of arrows, and most dungeons are frankly really, really bad. Remember those cramped labyrinths full of kobolds around Firewine Bridge? I must've aged ten years navigating those with the fabulous IE pathfinding; the kobolds and traps were more of a distraction compared to that. From where I'm at the BB map compares extremely favorably to most areas in BG1. There are better ones there, for sure, but then I'm pretty certain the BB maps don't represent the best of what P:E has to offer.

@Darji and others: ain't gonna happen. You want P:E to be something it doesn't try to be. The mechanics are fundamentally fine and already a LOT better than (A)D&D in almost every way that counts. The game has improved tremendously from BB.278, and I already find the combat more enjoyable and varied than comparable-level combat in BG1. Give 'em a couple of months to improve the combat feedback and sort out the glaring balance issues, and it'll be not just passable but damn good. (Edit: same goes for everything else. Some classes for example need work, but to get them up to scratch they just need more and more varied talents and spells plus some numbers adjusted, not fundamental redesigns. Etc.)