IndiraLightfoot

I respect those who enjoy pre-buffing. I have other things that seem boring to others that I sometimes enjoy, for instance, save scumming and inventory shuffling. To each their own when it comes to CRPG habits, hehe.

For any potential non-American buyers of SK Early Access: It's a Steam game whichever way you twist it, so buying it directly off Stardock on their site will give you a pretty decent discount compared to Steam's price on it in Euros. In my case, I saved almost 5 Euros (or like 7,5 dollars) by buying it there instead of Steam. Also, they already have a 15% discount going right now and like 10 days onwards.

The games just get bigger and bigger.

ShadySands: What melkathi said! Also, Sk uses the latest FE engine, but it feels in many ways like an entirely different game. Right now, it's more like a grand under-dog saga, where you are under immense pressure to gather strength and allies to defeat the Sorcerer King (think LotR and the Shadow King in NWN2), but with a pretty active DM client, and lots of crafting and cool items, spells, and then a little 4X building cities on top of it, sort of.

gkathellar: Just because I suggested stuff that others had asked for doesn't mean that I like it. I love rangers, but have nearly never played a dual-wielding one. Also, I don't like Drow at all, let alone Drizzt. I really love your rangers, so I'll join you in your nerdrage!

I never liked all the pre-buffing either. If they are short in duration, I can see no harm, really, but overall I'm happy they are gone.

rjshae: I never thought about it like that, almost realistical, and your suggestions makes sense. I just went with some stereotypical thing (which doesn't make sense), so short weapons it is, or perhaps a spear.

Ooh! There's even a timeline. Cool! Oh, and here's that vid where Brad is talking us through the basics of Sorcerer King: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVifSmMiZPE EDIT: Two super-cool features that I forgot two mention about SK: It's a 4X game that for the first time make full use of multiple cores on your PC! So multi-threaded joy! When you hit End Turn, the Sorcerer's turn will always fly-by. And speaking of End Turn, this is finally a game, where you can't click End Turn and forgetting something obvious. If you have an empty production queue or some un-picked new spell or research, this will replace the very End Turn button with info what you need to do first. Brilliant! EDIT 2: And obviously, the world is about to go belly-up, and everything is about survival, so there is no gold!

Hehe! I've already taken a peek or two at it. My main gripe was the graphics. While all nice and making me feel young again, I had a hard time with that hurdle. I will give it a second serious checkout, though. Also, I find it very cool that all of their games are part of one and the same world, universe, lore, whatever. That's fab!

I'm so happy that I managed to snag a Founder Edition in the nick of time, otherwise I wouldn't have these lovely Ice Wargs, for instance.

Doppelschwert: No worries, mate! You make some good points. My using "skill monkey" was unfortunate. I just wanted to give a picture of a less-combat oriented Rogue. This may sound absurd, but I actually do roleplay my party members in a CRPG, and often I gimp them a bit or even roll up WIS, INT or CHA heavy fighters in BG, for instance. For me, it's an important aspect of a good CRPG (I am a pretty old PnP D&D:er at heart, that's why). So even with self-made parties (using no companions), I roleplay them all through the game. Here's my doing it by the way: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68266-bgee-indira-lightfoot-and-her-bad-band/ And yes, I am that crazy. So, that's why I describe them as varied. The same goes for youngsters claiming that D&D was imbalanced etc. No, much less than you think, in P&P, that is. However, in a computer RPG format, it became slightly bonkers. Back to your suggestions: I agree with you on the dual-fork skill tree criticism. It would perhaps be too class-like locking it all in with two branches on a skill tree. Your suggestion sounds better.

melkathi: That sounds awesome! If you ever meet them again, tell them that they have made a truly fantastic game. I tried Endless Space over at a friend's but never got it. But I saw EL and really liked the graphics and the music, and then it turned out to be brilliant. What a superb effort! Oddly enough, Steam is down, so I'll show you some more pics from my Early Access Sorcerer King in the meantime: Scouting ahead, and soon dead? Heh! It looks like an arch-devil in that grove. My scout is super-weak, and that demon is like 40-50 times stronger than my unit when I mouse over it, and the Ai is pretty decent. All the monsters you see on the map will try to corner me and follow me and then move in for the kill. I lost my new-found administrator that way: There sure is treasure, and a lot of it has to with crafting: An example from the crude crafting screen:

melkathi: Please do. The first few hours, you are like on Cloud Nine and just seep it all in, all the while pretending it's CiV or something. Eventually, you'll get the hang of it, I suspect, coz I haven't yet.

That is correct. And doesn't help you one bit. PoE is a spiritual successor to the IE games, not the D&D rule system.It's quite clearly not intended to be a carbon copy of the mechanics, as evidenced by the fact that they work pretty much completely different. A ranger without a pet would be rather different a class. He'd basically be a fighter. Heh! You misunderstand me. I'm just comparing the superior class variety those pc-game-adapted versions of D&D gave us as players, nothing more. Although I do really like D&D, each of its iterations had plenty of problems, faults and absurdities. The goal for PoE is to surpass that IMHO, since it was designed as a CRPG from scratch. But one thing you are entirely correct about: It was wrong of me to remove the ranger's spirit animal from that dual-wielding branch. It should of course remain.

Doppelschwert: Like it or not, the IE games were based on versions of D&D. PoE has all the way been in the spiritual successor of these, from the KS promo video, to basically all texts Josh have ever written on PoE. So, I do respect the design intent. In fact, Pillars of Eternity even uses the concept "IE games" in its tutorial texts at the very beginning, for instance when you make a new game and pick difficulty. Pick Hard, and it says "This difficulty is suited for IE games veterans who want a challenge". And no, I don't suggest new classes. Perhaps you reckon a fighter that gets to specialize with a bow as a new class, I don't. Nor do I see a ranger wielding two short swords as a new class, or a druid specializing in summoning animals. This has nothing to do with D&D. I'm also asking, like lots of other people, for a bit of wiggle-room in each and every class. There is almost more in-class variety in the new Gauntlet game for heaven's sake! And another no, this time, on making a number of fighters in BG1. They got different weapon styles, but more importantly, I could vary the attributes and get something different RPG-wise and combat-wise, even dual-class them. And BG:EE's class kits (from BG2), made them almost like different classes, but still they were not. Having said all this, I do agree with you that we need to come up with new and cool talents as well, and your suggestion sounds mighty darn fine.

I believe many people expect the classes in PoE to be much more flexible and varied within each class than how they have appeared in the beta, and I'm pretty sure that Josh is well aware of this and he wants to rectify it. They expect this because: -In the IE games, especially for characters at low and mid level, you built your fighter or your cleric as you saw fit, via slots, with a few weapon proficiencies, and more importantly, using the weighty attributes (which PoE sorely lacks), you could end up with quite different fighters and clerics. I have played BG1 so many times, and I have indeed made for instance an entire party out of fighters. And each fighter got a distinct role and competence. That's pretty impressive. And let me say this: It was an easy party to play compared to a party of all mages. -People want their characters to feel unique, and I am a firm believer in attributes being an important factor. For instance, in WL 2, I love that the attributes are that important. -In the IE games, you could multi-class. With this feature gone in PoE, it's even more important to have a few multi-forks at level 1 for the classes -Also, with IWD2, you had D&D 3.0, and also in NWN1, and later D&D 3.5 and NWN2, and all of that set a new standard. Making a character was almost an entire game itself. I absolutely adore 3.5 for that. So, NWN2 offered so much replayability that it's ridiculous. Unfortunately, from those classes I have levelled from 5 to 8 - and thanks to testers like Mutonizer, I have seen the level progression from level 5 to 12 - I can tell, the PoE classes have nothing on the freedom described above, neither in AD&D nor in 3.0/3.5, in fact, not even close. Very few things happen, and when they do, it doesn't feel varied and significant enough for an endless replay value (high standards, I know, but I want PoE to deliver that. WL2 can, so why not PoE?) Without multi-classing, and sadly without attributes that matter much, multi-forking for classes and heaps and heaps of talents and feats are the only remedies I can see for a decent class development in PoE right now.

Well, this is perhaps asking for too much, but I know plenty of people have asked for something similar, so here goes: A number of classes need to have some multi-fork (often dual) already at level one, where they get to pick one branch or the other. Here are a few rough suggestions. Rogue == Assassin (like it's atm) OR Thief/Scoundrel (more social, more skill-monkey) Druid == Shapeshifter (like it's atm) OR Plant Bender OR Animal Summoner Fighter == Melee Tank (like it's atm) OR Marksman Ranger == Ranged Specialist with Spirit Animal (like it's atm) OR Dual-Wielding Blade Specialist with no Spirit Animal Then they get to pick from talent pools with passive and active abilities every level, some related to the class, and others to the class-sub-branch picked at level 1, perhaps this can shift every other level?

For the party members that may be true, but certainly not for the baddies. There, combat needs to be revisited and adjusted. As things are now, even oozing green blobs would outrun a cheetah, and all this is because the game won't to deter kiting - whether via ranged weapons or "cheap" long-range spells.

AlekzanderZ: Something like that would do the trick, indeed! The good thing is that Josh is now on the prowl for a neat extended and improved talent/feat system, so chances are good that these posts will be read and considered by the devs.

Great list. However, just for ease of reference, post that list into the forum directly, instead of having it in a dropboxed Word-doc, some of our systems react to that intrusion. All we want is a good read, if we don't have the time to watch your vid in its entirety.

Well, *cough* more or less, what I mean is any 4X games that are non-historical, if you will. I'd gladly count Alpha Centauri as one, for instance, and of course, Civ: Beyond Earth as well, who I'll soon get my greedy hands upon.

Heh! I'm a bit burnt out on the BB 301 at least. I need a juicy update to get going again, I reckon. And the xp system debate was horribly exhausting. I still honestly think that tiny xp rewards for encounters would have been the best. Scrap the WL2 mini-rewards for skill uses (which I would be totally fine if PoE had, actually. I wouldn't mind. But all the time, before the xp system debate/debacle, I was under the impression that Josh & Co aimed at the following simple and pretty cool solution: -Each encounter has a value in xp. -If you sneak by the enemies in that encounter once (it should require skill and a bit of good rolls), you get that xp reward -If you kill the enemies in that encounter, you get the same xp reward -On top of this, we would see quest xp and sub-quest xp If OE would implement this I'd jump up and down in a sofa harder than Tom Cruise did.

There's something very nice happening right now when it comes to 4X Fantasy RPGs. A couple of days ago, Endless Legend was finally officially released (Metacritic 81, userscore 85), and I've stolen this review of it by BananaBucket: "Endless Legend has soul, it's a work of art. I've played every hex strategy game since Civ, the original, and none other than Alpha Centauri have pulled me in like this one. So many brilliant design decisions and innovations, such great story, writing, music and illustrations. Every game I've played in the last decade could learn from looking at this game and thinking about how their work shapes up terms of concept, design and execution. I was a professional game reviewer and this generation seems to need some experience to recognise a truly great single player game." It's absolutely amazing (although buggy, three crashes to desktop in like 10h so far). It's like Civ5 with hexes (it has all that strategical depth and sometimes better (like Diplomacy) - yes, even trade routes, city building), but then it has like well-written and varied quests (some on par with at least basic CRPG quests) sprinkled into the mix. The artwork is astounding! The music, the interfaces, everything, is bordering on masterpieces. This French dev team Amplitude Studios have surpassed themselves and done something fantastic. Sure, there's but eight factions to pick (but they are crazy-different in a good way), gold is instead Dust, and the gameplay is very much a matter of exploring and adventuring (with a few fights here and there). And these instances of combat take place on the map/terrain features itself, with terrain modifiers, in some absurd fantasy-Godzilla death matches! It's unrealistic, but very fun and French! Oh, and it has seasons, like At The Gates will have (another 4X game coming out next year, which I backed on Kickstarter), which seriously affect movement, production, trade, and so forth. And you can make or redesign your own units easily, and hire heroes at a special marketplace/adventure hall. All this is done in a better way than Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes (which I really like too) You find lots of loot, and you can improve crafting via city improvements. The skill trees are amazing, much nicer than CiV, well, I could go on and on. It's a true 4X RPG gem! As if this wasn't enough. A couple of days ago, Stardock, the makers of Fallen Enchantress and GalCiv, released an Early Access beta version of a very new type of 4X RPG. It actually has a DM in it, with thousands of quests at its disposal, including scripting events and lots of non-combat, non-fetch quest-stuff, and everything is reversed - when you start, the Sorcerer King has already conquered the world and is about to become a God, casting a divine spell Dominion on the world via eight shards - all this to ensure that each playthrough will be different. Examples of very early quests/DM interactions from my first test of the game: So, each playthrough is an asymmetric war against the mighty Sorcerer King. Building cities, strengthening armies, grabbing items, completing quests, and rallying independent factions, you’re trying to grow strong enough to off the Sorcerer King before he can destroy the world. Though he’s more powerful, like any good villain he doesn’t outright crush you. Your goal (kill the Sorcerer King) is wholly different than the Sorcerer King’s goals (destroy the shards and therefore the world). The Sorcerer King doesn’t play by the same rules – he operates on a completely different level than your scarce resources allow you to. A sophisticated “Game Master” AI controls his forces and other events in the world, managing pacing, reacting upon your choices, which resources you gather, etc, and generating threats to ensure an engaging game from start to finish. Most importantly, there is a doomsday meter up on the screen, which will fill up (but it can be slowed and even slightly reversed), and when it is filled in its entirety, it's game over for you, so no more dragged out "I need to finish 50 turns but I know I will win"-4X moments. The graphics so far is pretty simple and cartoonish, but gameplay-wise it is all clearer than Fallen Enchantress, so when all this has been polished, I think it came become a unique 4X fantasy RPG.

This list that Josh just provided is simply brilliant. If you compare it with my OP and many of the issues that I and others have had with the game (even including small-increment xp!), Josh & Co is intent on fixing it all and giving us just that. I told you so! OE does listen, and this definitely and unsurprisingly includes Josh. There have been plenty of people flaming people criticising the points that Josh now will make sure PoE includes. If stubborn fans like Sensuki (the epitome of what I mean by this) and plenty of others here hadn't pointed these issues and shortcomings out over and over, often systematically, and sometimes bluntly, we would perhaps not even have gotten this necessary delay and all of the fixes. So, give it up for all of those who dared to complain, criticize and whine while at the same time coming up with potential fixes and alternatives. These are not nostalgic grognards, but experienced and diligent peeps who have been voicing valid concerns. If so-called OE yes-men had their way, if I put it drastically, then we would have gotten a premature release and a potentially great game getting butchered, and then OE's hard work would've been all in vain. That list right above feels like sweet, sweet victory to me and several others who have been posting a lot in these forums for one reason only: helping OE make the best game they can possibly make. We are fans that care about the heritage and the future of these games, and especially of OE's fantastic works and contributions in this genre. This is not design by committee, nor is there any reason for envy of any of us forum contributors because we got in a point or two, or for a dismissal of us as loudspeakers that drown a plethora of unheard shy voices. We're giving all of this feedback, often and loudly, because we want OE to succeed with this game. Everybody is free to do the same. I am for one is proud when I see Josh's list above, and once again, to all who have been delivering good and honest feedback on the PoE BB - you know who you are - great work, gratz on a job very well done!!

Sensuki: I backed Stasis on Kickstarter and I don't regret it for a sec.