IndiraLightfoot

Here's a blasphemous thought: Imagine Blackguards' combat system married with PoE in its entirety.

I reckon this is a good sum-up of what is not very nice gameplay in the IE games. Hence, I'd rather have NWN2's system of AoO, but improved of course, with top-notch feedback and adapted to PoE. Presently, the disengagement system is far too flawed. It needs an overhaul.

Personally, I love the music, but this... ...is actually quite correct.

Hmm. I read that as praise and confirmation that there is at least some validity to its score.

But currently plays assome...

It's a cavalcade of fantastic areas. Kudos to OE's area design team. No shortage of talent there, apparently! It looks stunning. If they would nail the combat in time for the release, the potential for a new classic is very high indeed.

At the very least, any disengagement attacks should be plain to see and hear for the player. We can't have invisible attacks that only show up in the combat log.

Josh's answer: "Hi, Sensuki. Right now I'm trying to focus most of my efforts internally on bugfixing and getting team feedback. That isn't to say that we're not doing any tuning, but we're in a stage right now where I'm trying to temporarily limit outside input. At a high level, my feedback would be that I don't think it would be good to switch to "natural die roll only" for crits for a few reasons. First, it creates a separate type of resolution for attacks, one based on modified die roll and one based on natural die roll. Second, it means that "true" crits and misses are things that the player achieves purely through random chance instead of by pushing the odds in their favor. That's the AD&D style, but I never thought that resolution model was rewarding because it never happened based on me doing something other than rolling the die. That said, I could see a scenario where crits occur on higher rolls, e.g. 105+, meaning you need more significant Accuracy advantage to even have a chance of pulling them off. Even so, I don't personally think that the Crit system in place causes serious problems. While +50% damage or duration is not trivial, it's also not insanely powerful. In some cases, the Crit exacerbates what is an extant balance problem like a Paralyzed effect with a base 20s duration, which is nuts. In that case, the base effect needs to be modified. DT can be harder to balance than DR and DT + DR can be even harder, but DR alone has a lot of problems. First, DR-reliant systems cause a huge inflation of damage values as the DR values start to rise and the characters' HP are also rising. Unless you tightly control DR escalation (a problem in its own right) eventually you wind up with armor absorbing 80%+ of incoming damage on massive hits against characters with enormous amounts of HP. In Fallout and F2, DR was the primary component of high end armor and it led to plinking back and forth until someone was hit with an armor-bypassing x3 crit to completely annihilate the target. With DR, you also eventually "run out of runway" in terms of equipment progression. You have 100 points to play with, that's it. Unless the progression is really tightly constrained (in which case you won't notice much change), you will eventually top out where the equipment can go. Though it's more difficult to balance DT than DR, it's not incredibly hard and in the BB areas I really haven't done much tuning at all. People have moved around creatures and whatnot but I haven't been trying to create the perfectly balanced area or anything. There's another element that can help alleviate some of the pain of low damage vs. a particular DT type, which is to raise Min Dam Through DT to 20%. It's currently 10%, which is half of what it was in F:NV. I've talked to QA about Dexterity and they completely disagree with it being a dump stat. Its effects are harder to observe but speed is always valuable. Armored Grace is not the same as an 18 Dexterity because Armored Grace affects Recovery Time, not base speed. Dexterity actually directly affects base speed, which means in turn it affects Recovery Time because RT is derived from the time to perform an action. Weapon Focus grants the same Accuracy bonus as 20 Per to one class of weapons and has no effect on Reflexes. It also stacks, so I don't really see how that creates a problem. I could see bonus Accuracy from Per going from +1 to +2 and Dam/Heal from +2 to +3, but from +1 to +3 is enormously influential. An 18 would be +21, greater than what you'd get from an 18 on an attack stat in A/D&D (already too high, IMO). QA also disagrees with you on Intellect, though we're doubling the AoE effect that it has because it was never actually supposed to be 3%, but 5%. After fooling around a bit, 6% seems a bit better. It has a large influence on AoE. While you could argue that classes don't necessarily need huge AoEs for their attacks/spells, watching them dramatically shrink is actually a real problem that they have to deal with. Interrupts and Concentration need to be communicated better on equipment/attacks and the character sheets since people still don't really make the connection that the basic offensive component comes from the attack."

Gorbag: That's sad! Myself, I have so many hours on it that you can wake me up in the middle of the night, and I will make my mid-level party survive a nightwalker or two, guaranteed!

Sensuki: Intel has always become spooked by NWN2 for some reason. I have had AMD all the way, and it usually runs nice enough. That said, the engine has loads of problems, but it runs at least.

prodigydancer: That's a fair word of warning. Reviews nowadays don't mean zilch. Only way to find out is to play the games ourselves.

Seari: I haven't played the whole thing, but most of it: but it's pretty decent, although a bit empty and wide, if you know what I mean - uneventful. It's on par with the OC's Act 1 stuff, but it has nothing on MotB.

Seari: Zhjaeve is a nightmare!!! "Know that..." That character, and then Neeshka, plus that annoying Grobnar (both forced on you at certain segments in the game), I absolutely loathed. Elanee and Qara are not very nice companions either.

Sensuki: That's correct, and Josh did bite his knuckles over those darn orc caves and canyons that never ended for years. He did not like those. EDIT: Another cool thing about NWN2, after I had done four "competionist" playthroughs (that was before I had opened up the hood as a modder), I happened to stumble over a couple of dungeons (areas) that I had missed. I was so taken aback by that - oh, the joy!

Also, as for Act 2 and the NWN2 OC, some people loved the trial bit (which is a bit dragged out), while others detest it. I for one love it, probably because of Sand alone. Have him along, and then let him be your trial lawyer, it's hilarious! And his bantering with companions, it almost makes me wanna fire up the game right now. EDIT: In some bizarre way, Sensuki is sorta Sand of the Obsidian Forums, and I mean that in a good way.

kirottu: No. It doesn't affect your DA:I one bit.

I agree it is really fun making crazy builds, but I still prefer the more tame multiclassing system. Yeah MotB is amazing, but the OC is just awful. The main two things that make BG2 better are the graphics and the combat system. But mostly it's that the former is a full package, while the latter is just a slice of the cake. The OC has a worse reputation than it deserves. I mean, the areas with orcs and bugbears, for instance, is hideous. But overall it's a pretty cool, though generic story - almost LotR-inspired. However, it's all of those minor areas, and the very different moods in them that does the trick for me, and some odd solutions to quests, and some memorable chars I still can't get enough off, like Sand. The last dungeons at the end was rushed (they even admitted as much), but the ghosts telling the sad story about the Shadow King is very cool, not too mention some of the Neverwinter adventures, and that always übercool Ammon Jerro. Kalacha!

Since I'm re-playing BG1:EE atm occasionally, I reckon the path-finding in the indoor and dungeon areas is better than I recalled it to be. Is this because the EE has those 40K nodes activated? Or will I need to do that in the EE versions as well?

As far as I can tell, after having read most of the interviews, it's gotten 8 out of 10 all the way up to 9.5 out of 10, which must be considered a huge success.

Nice answers, Sensuki! Nope. I never did enter that path node increase command. And several of my "bad" points on BG1-BG2 definitely apply to NWN2 as well. In fact, the very best builds could become the ones that took the longest to use in combat (very good on defence - often cleric-based builds), so in NWN2, there were some awkward high-level moments. Thing is, such flaws aside, these games were excellent and provided me with countless hours of CRPG fun. And right now, PoE's combat alone would prevent me for getting something that is equally long-lasting and fun. In fact, it's pretty darn awful.

And, may I add, most of them seem to be about the combat itself, as well as combat feedback, and a few UI issues. As for the story, the characters, the area grapics, the music, the sound FX, etc, it's very hard to tell. But it seems to be very promising from what I can tell from all their updates and the little BB.

I simply mean that multiclassing in AD&D, and in part in 3.0 D&D, isn't nearly as fun as that in 3.5 - which I adore. The best multi-classing system ever. I'm probably an odd fella here, but I actually hold the NWN2 series as my all time favourite CRPG (much thanks to MotB, sure), and BG1+2 as the second best. I wouldn't be here on these very forums if it weren't for the fact that I reckon Obsidian made a magical CRPG that I have enjoyed thousands of hours in. The OC alone, I've played dozens of times - not kidding. So, yeah, I am a big fan of something that many people just shrug off as a bug-infested mediocre CRPG. However, to me, it was a pinnacle. *Runs away and takes cover in fear of getting bombarded by stones Monty Python style*

"Empress of Orlais, home of some of the dodgiest accents this side of 'Allo 'Allo."

As much as I love BG1+2, (and PST, IWD1+2 not as much), there were indeed plenty of things that were bad: -Pathfinding -The lack of item comparisons -Inventory at times (although the invo shuffle is almost meditative in its own right) -More items should have been stackable -BG2: Too linear, I preferred the sense of a more open world in BG1 -BG2: Some of the maps were not very interesting (although very lovely graphically). Once again, I preferred, the relative vastness of the BG1 outdoors -I love all D&D except the 4th ed (which is tolerable), but still in my book: 3.5 > 3.0 > AD&D -I actually prefer NWN2's AoO over the BG-games lack of it -It would have been nice for clearer UI feedback when it came to spellcasting and what area it would affect (but on the other hand, surprises are cool) -Level 1 and 2 are far too RNG gods-dependent, which is the price to pay for turning D&D into a computer game -High level fights can become a bit dull and repetitive at times, not to mention too long in duration -It would have been cool if combat in IE had been terrain dependent, with elevation taken into account, etc -The fog of war and several weird abuses relating to that was not good (I'd like to see a CRPG with a line of sight system á la CoH2) -The variety of weapons and items vis-à-vis class and alignment was far too small and punishing in the non-EE versions -There should have been more ability checks, class checks, race checks, etc, for role-playing reasons -Overall, the IE games didn't give enough sense of being lived in (Ultima VII did that much better, for instance) -Multiclassing could have been improved -As always, when certain classes went past level 9 or so, the character building ceased to be fun and eventful enough -Thieves were in some respects a broken class (of course, disregarding IWD2 with 3.0 D&D I could go on and on and on for pages. There are oodles of stuff that were bad in the IE games, but they were certainly brilliant, anyways. For PoE, I simply presumed that the seasoned Obsids would take the best stuff from the IE games and then create something even better.

Yuniko: I just tried it on your last post. You like something, and then to the right of that like there is an X and it says "Unlike", and when I clicked that, my like on your post disappeared. It's in the lower right corner of the post. EDIT: It's not an "X - it's just my forum graphics getting messed up again.