IndiraLightfoot

I know, Sensuki. I just bit off the head of our pipe dream of some revived IE game. We have to accept that we get an entirely new game. Think, DS3 and NWN2 mixed hard in a blender, with a pinch of speed, and then we'll get an all time high!

And perhaps a bit blasphemous, but since combat is so far from the IE games, you guys should also give your own NWN2 (especially the all-party SoZ) and DS3 a whirl too. Especially get a feel for the combat. How do you like it in PoE compared to those games? I'm very interested in your reactions and which kind of improvements you see fit for the continuation of the beta.

Here's an interesting little read from EuroGamer: By Robert Purchese Published 10/10/2014 (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-10-solo-dragon-age-inquisition-has-200-hours-of-content): "Finishing everything - literally completing - Dragon Age: Inquisition will take between 150 to 200 hours, BioWare reckons. The main story, however, will take 20 to 40. That's what producer Cameron Lee told Polygon. "We're just making more. More and more and more," he said. "And it's all entirely up to the player. It's your world, your game." "Dragon Age games have never been small, although DA2 was far more constrained that Origins. But DAI offers an open-world and more freedom of choice in how you want to navigate and influence it. The same is true of The Witcher series and next year's new instalment, The Witcher 3. That game also boasts a huge open-world and freedom of exploration, with a 50-hour main quest and 50 hours of side-quests." "Role-playing games have never been short, BioWare's vintage catalogue included. But more recently, a focus on a cinematic presentation - and a focus on a console audience - has clipped their lengths. Until Skyrim, that is." "Staggeringly, Bethesda's technically-infinite open-world fantasy adventure has sold more than 20m copies worldwide - a figure mentioned by Bethesda earlier this year. To put that into perspective, The Witcher series (all games combined) has sold 6m copies (accurate as of autumn last year), Dragon Age: Origins has sold more than 3.2m copies and Dragon Age 2 more than 2m. Those are official and old Dragon Age numbers; DAO could be close to 5m." My comments: So, the DA:I game is huge. When I played through Skyrim in my thorough first playthrough, it took like 110 hours altogether, but the main story was just like 10-15 hours (perhaps less). I remember Bioware congratulating Bethesda on Skyrim and that they wanted to make something that open too, and of the same kind of humongous scope. Let's hope DA:I will be a much better CRPG, and if so, that they will sell millions and millions.

Icewind Dale EE is now available at Beamdog, with all the goodies from BG2 EE.

Some more info on my Arizona run:

Cubiq: Add to this that you can't escape damage either in PoE, at least not in the clearcut hit or miss RNG-minigame that came with D&D CRPGs, and you certainly need to pause more here. I still think the speed needs to be lowered, less damage needs to be dealt, we need easier escapes (at least a to hit roll and some NWN2-like AoO system) and we also need more misses instead of grazes.

Hiro: Interesting and pretty dismaying stats. Yup. Combat needs a pretty big overhaul. It shouldn't be or feel this way. EDIT: And I mean, come on, it's Sensuki playing - the guy with probably most hours on the BB - and still all this excessive pausing. A fight like that, by someone that seasoned, even if Medreth is supposed to be tough and our starting gear is too sucky for level 5, etc, shouldn't need any pause at all, or like 3-10 times, tops, if it was designed as a RTwP-CRPG (still speaking about a seasoned player used to RTS games).

I've avoided reading this thread, since spoilers abound. However, after 60 hours of playing, still with my first party, I have finally reached Act 2, as it were! Overall, this CRPG will go down in history as one of the classics. Sure, sometimes the combat and the far too few music tracks can make it a bit repetitive, and the graphics aren't always top notch (some areas have been rushed), but all the fun stories, the cool writing and the general feel with the overland map and you having a party that you feel you have full control over and one that you have made into something decently unique is absolutely fantastic. Great game!! My Arizona adventures weren't all smooth sailing, though:

This is what Obsidian "promised" regarding combat in their Kickstarter updates during their KS campaign: Update #3: "Formations A key element of the classic party-based tactical combat that we are developing is the use of party formations. As in the good ol' games, you can arrange your party in a large number of set formations. You can also construct your own formations if you want to get fancy. When moving companions, you have the ability to rotate formations for more precise positioning." Classic party-based tactical combat is at the core of PoE - they emphasize moving your party members and positioning them with precision. Update #12: "Kaaaboom asks… I was a bit discouraged when I heard that the combat was going to be RTwP (real time with pause). My question is then: how are you going to make the combat in P:E tactically interesting despite it being RTwP? Answer: Hmm, this is a bit of a loaded question, as it implies that real-time games aren't tactically interesting while all turn-based games are. Believe me, I have played plenty of dull turn-based games with very few options on what to do on each turn, and there are lots of real-time games that are incredibly tactically rich. Look at all of the real-time strategy games out there! So to answer your question, we are going to make sure that the distinct abilities that our classes will have will each provide different roles to those characters in combat, and that you will always have choices to make in combat about how to best position yourself and use your attacks. In addition, we are going to design the enemy encounters to be ever-increasing challenges, so that one way of fighting won't carry you through every encounter. You will be forced to mix it up a bit, tactically speaking, and use all of your combat skills to make it through to the end of the game. Let me add that as an Infinity Engine inspired game, our pillars of design include isometric exploration of a fantasy world and real-time with pause combat. Those elements are expected in our game, and we feel strongly about providing them." OE clearly states this is "an IE inspired game" with expected RTwP. They also intend to give each class varied combat skills and roles, and that various encounter will take different tactics. Update #16: "Opportunity attacks and flanking are definitely in, as well as charging. Grappling abilities will not be included." AoO is in, as well as charging apparently. Update #22: "We are working hard to make Project Eternity revive the spirit of the older IE games, and this includes making leveling up an important accomplishment, one that makes your character feel substantially more powerful afterward." The spirit of the IE games is to be revived! Oh, and after each level up our characters should become substantially more powerful.

Holy moses! That staggering number of choices was exhausting! It was pretty awkward to use at times, but I managed to endure the whole thing. It certainly brought back memories of DA:O. DA2, I just picked those options I saw fit during the slide show and let the rest of the tapestry fine pickings slide.

Dragon Keep goes live in about five minutes according to Bioware Twitter. Have fun, guys! .)

Cool, Keyrock! And all of the sudden it dawned on me - now I know why it's called Polka Dot - it's sorta Polish Dots. Here's the oldest still existing female garment in any of my family lines, an Uplandish Sunday dress from the 18th century, from a fishing community in the archipelago between Åland and Sweden in the Baltic. It's much more drab, I'm afraid.

$960 dollars to go. They have made it! Much, mucho mas George Ziets-goodness!!! Yay!

Yeah. I have 64-bit and 16 GB RAM with an SSD - and the loading times are barely noticeable. I've hardly crashed at all in PoE BB as far as I can recall. It can be a bit FPS intensive at times. My three frustrations are: 1. Combat. 2. Combat. 3. Combat. All the rest is shaping up nicely, and stuff that aren't perfect is easily tweaked.

I agree on where exploration xp should be rewarded. Otherwise obstacle xp, trap xp, lock xp.... Tomatoes, tomatos... As long as the xp rewards come often and in small increments I'm happy. Obviously, I'd been even happier if they would have stuck with the classic IE system for dishing out xp. Also, in the BB 333, it annoys me how each party member gets everything exactly the same. I do understand why this is the case, but the gamist in me prefers asymmetric xp gain, if ever so little.

^Spell. Level 11: Cotton Candy - Everybody in its area of effect is held in place in 10d6 hours.

Quantics: Only difference is: Those scantily clad guys sorely missed a tank. On the knockdown effect: A thud and your enemy subsequently falling should suffice. No need for any effect whatsoever. Hiro: Great Sydney Opera House screen background.

Malekith: Great post. And yeah, the engagement mechanic is problematic, bit not a big prio atm. I reckon we need a new test build for combat soon - in like a week or so, because combat is easy to test. They can use the beta testers pretty intensively for that vital aspect of PoE.

Ouch! So, this is all skill points we will get distributed? Hmm, no longer a fan. This system is very cool, but it obviously need to have skill point picking as a separate entity as its base, and these integrated effects should just be pretty heavy-handed adjusters on top of that.

What surprises me the most is this: Have the devs played the game all in slomo? Or have they actually sat down and played this combat for a couple of months now, and then they nod in agreement with their QA peeps and go: "Yeah. It's shaping up, guys! I really enjoy this. It's so intense, and there's no running away." I simply just can't believe it. I'm dumbfounded. I know that there is a small minority here that seems to like the combat as is, but most people seem to be really bothered by the speed and the chaos and the general lack of genuine possibilities and effective feedback of countering stuff without pausing! This should be possible in a RTwP-game. Since I am indeed a player that have played through the BG series and the NWN and NWN2 series with very few pauses, I can honestly say that this is an altogether different combat. It's something else.

Karkarov: I really like your vid, and your voice gives me cool man-of-the-world Morgan Freeman vibes. However, since I really like the concept behind that skill/talent integrated system, I feel the need to clarify one thing. Like Josh said on those SA forums, this is just a test build. In PoE, there will be plenty of skill points to pick separately as well, more or less like you did in 278 and 301, IIRC. So you will be able to make a fighter with mechanics, for instance, no problem. If he happens to like setting traps, he will get a bit better at that, that's all. As for the stats, I more or less agree with you. Dexterity should be named Agility instead, and it should increase Action speed much more. Compare this to WL2, where it really shows if you have a character with better movement speed in combat, or action points, for that matter. And yes, perception is a must right now. When I made my druid, I only maxed two stats: Might and Perception, because this is after all a game about killing things. DPS rules! Another agreement between you and me is thus that the attribute system doesn't accomplish what they promised us it would accomplish: We're no longer hard-pressed when we should pick stats. Once again, my ideal game would be a char creation nailbiter for each and every class. We need more ways to accomplish good DPS via all kinds of attribute combos, methinks.

First off. I see the opinion that PoE combat resembles NWN/NWN2 combat being bandied around. Well, it doesn't. Those AoO didn't make it become much closer to the mess we have right now. Even DA:O combat feels crystal-clear and tactical all the way compare to these supersonic hard-hitting, constantly health bleeding enemy maniacs that twitch like Butoh-dancers. It's like a wasp nest, where you prefer to just have one in the party take the madness, while the rest do glass cannon business, just like Hiro mentioned above. I wonder if what's really needed is building it all from the bottom up. Start with level 1 characters of classes and combos. Have them meet ONE enemy of "level 1", then another of the same level, and so on. Then do it all over with "level 2", "level 3", level 4"... Then you have your character level up, and then to encounter various baddies of level 1. Let it level up all the way to level 12, and keep the baddies at level 1. Then you rinse and repeat, but increase enemy level by one. Then test with two characters against one enemy, later two characters vs four enemies. Make a combat arena test trainer, OE! And have some peeps do combat hours on end in this way, after two weeks you will have achieved balance and pacing to combat encounters. Reiterate until 1 player character can stand up against a melee opponent of equal level at least for a number of seconds without this helpless sense of supernatural urgency overwhelming you. All enemies in PoE right now are like those twin ghosts in Matrix 2. Adjust damage and DT (armour) accordingly, and then lower the speed of enemies, and enjoy good combat in your game. Need I say that the speed of enemies was actually the worst part of Dungeon Siege 3.

So, you find info gaps and esoteric obscurity rewarding? (Perhaps you just hate them numbers - Mebbe they give you ARPG-vibes, I can understand that.)

You have, I assure you, unless you are a vegetarian. Even in Europe, where food regulations are harsher than in the US, a pretty large percentage of meat packaged as beef was horse meat, mostly from old neigh-sayers that were lying dumped along Romanian roads like road kill. Oh, and all food is organic. I've always thought that this term is so misrepresentative.