IndiraLightfoot

Feargus just confirmed in Matt Chat that it will be released this year! And the release date will be dropped next week. Now wonder we don't get much of devs here on the forums and no update - they're busy as bees patching this up.

Around 12:00, "Pillars of Eternity will be released this year!" Feargus, you intrepid man! He also says that DA:I has most likely been moved out from this year. "Our artists are moving on to the expansion pack in the next week or two..." But we need more item drawings and portraits and... At 24:00: Undead western, horror western, zombie western... Go, Feargus, go!!

Here's some music that would have fit F:NV like a glove, methinks. I have this thing for Nick Cave, and his collaborations with Warren Ellis are beyond excellent. Have a listen! Doesn't this capture the bleak harshness of the wilderness and grim conditions a few humans tried to carve out an existence in?

GrinningReaper659: LOL! They all left in disappointment, I'm guessing. I already know a few, which is really sad. If only the devs had commented on this fast, on their stance on the xp system in practice, and also given us some more definitive pointers on what can or can not be changed.

Sensuki: How scathing were the criticisms for WL2's alpha (beta) version early on compared to what you've seen here?

Thing is: The veil's already breached for me. And I can't wait to try all those classes out when combat does work one or two patches ahead. And it would be sweet if I got to see them level up for the first time too.

Keyrock: What game are they from?

Yeah, those outdoor areas, they are like a few groves, some patches of tall grass, interrupted by stone formations, and not comparable to what I felt in BG1, for instance, that I actually explored wildernesses. I did replay it not too long ago, the EE, and I had expected them to feel bigger: extended, expansive, heck, even vast (it's an illusion, of course).

DnaCowboy: I did make one (it was closed down because of the heated debate, heh). You can find it under Combat and Mechanics. Merely 10% out of 200+ peeps wanted the system that's in now: quest xp.

That shares a lot of traits and events with my playthrough, which I simply stopped, because it all didn't make sense any longer.

Zansatsu: As a fellow exploration lover, those are really cool ideas to build some reward systems on, and they could very well work for PoE - even though they aren't spiritual successor-stuff, if you get my drift.

Tim Cain in Update #7, PoE: "For many people, an RPG is really defined by its combat. These people spend most of their time killing things and taking their loot, and leveling up is just a means to kill bigger things and get better loot. But for other people, an RPG is about the elements of the game they experience when not in combat. It's about the NPC's they talk with, the places they travel to, and the choices they make, including the choice to avoid combat altogether." This clearly shows that OE are aware of this dichotomy, but I think they are over-emphasizing the divide. I can't speak for everybody else, of course, but isn't the beauty of the IE CRPGs, their fantastic offering of being both the RPGs Tim Cain describe above at once? I'm also happy to see that it is acknowledged that an RPG is defined by its combat, mainly killing things, loot, and levelling up, since sometimes that doesn't count, or get thrown on some imaginary ARPG scrap heap. Any IE successor really must be about both, and Obsidian new this from the get-go, thankfully. Tim Cain, Update #11, PoE: "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." Tim Cain, Update #22, PoE: " rjshae asks... Back in the BG series, experience growth was relatively slow and it felt like an accomplishment to reach a new level. Since then, D&D v3.5 rules came out and level up began to feel almost like a cheesy accomplishment that didn't require much effort. That has become the trend in modern games: leveling up after every few battles. I have to wonder how this will be handled in PE? It sounds like Obsidian wants to return to the style of the BG series, which would seems to entail a return to slower level progress. If they do allow a more rapid level up, I hope they tone down the power growth rate so that lower level monsters remain a challenge for longer periods. 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. I agree that frequent level-ups make the event feel less special, so we plan to space out these events over the course of our storyline. The first few level-ups will occur relatively early in the game, but the pacing of the subsequent level-ups will be much slower. For people who enjoy level-ups, they are free to use our Adventurer's Hall to swap out new companions frequently, so they are always leveling up new characters to use in later parts of the story. For people who aren't sure what character classes they will want to have available in the end game, it's always nice to have the choice of having all of them." On the stuff high-lighted in red: I suspect I may have misunderstood that, and I'm most likely not alone. Re-reading it, it can be interpreted as xp for levelling up only occurring along the quest lines at certain points, like we see in the beta, and that from mid-game to late-game, it will be really far in-between those quest xp moments. This is not objective xp or quest xp, but rather story xp, in a way. On the stuff high-lighted in green: That's a weird remark, really. *Raises hand slowly and looks around* "I enjoy level-ups..." No, seriously, is Tim implying that you get to level up more often through some revolving door hireling business going on in the inns? It seems like it: one thing, though - there aren't any more xp to dish out, so it will definitely not work that way. If you shift companions or self-made characters from the adv hall, you'll have them under-levelled (unless they automagically level up with you, like in NWN2 - which I didn't like that much).

Anything that makes the game not live up to the standards Obsidian are aiming for, which means it can be more or less than expected. It all depends on where they have their threshold levels. I really do hope that they wait until they're satisfied with the game in its entirety (if not every detail). It's a matter of cost and intrepid instinct, though.

Although I don't agree on everything, what a great post with a superb vid to beat, Endrosz! I still share Sensuki's sentiments that the invo mini-game, if done reasonably well, breaks up the pace of the story delving, combat and other adventuring. It also has a therapeutic value as a solitaire, and can work decently well as a strategic limiter too. I'm not saying it's a fun game, but it makes sense and creates a nice rhythm to a CRPG. If everything is streamlined, we will soon not be playing at all, but pseudo-playing a CRPG, which is where actually many AAA titles are today: they almost lack gameplay entirely, but the graphics and sounds/music are great.

I really liked the more minimalistic UIs for ToEE and the NWN series, except for the radial menu atrocities. That was really annoying.

No please. This one, started by a moderator, will suffice.

Ribbing Josh or any attempts at Being Josh Sawyer, getting inside his head and hunching around on 7 1/2 floor are futile. And like others have said, he's absolutely great at what he's doing. Fallout: New Vegas alone says it all. It also bears repeating, as someone that's modded CRPGs a lot: It's all within the realms of clear possibility to insert an xp system of the kind found in the IE games before their estimated ship date at the end of this year. Don't believe anybody telling you otherwise. We can only go on what we see: -This is perhaps the most discussed topic of them all since the beta released (and it was certainly discussed intensively before that in waves) -It is one of the very few that Josh and others have avoided (Sking is an exception to the rule) -They haven't been entirely forthright with this (Like MC wrote: They've almost "snuck it under the radar.") I have literally received very upset emails from KS-backers of all tiers on this very issue -Their only reply (Sking) to having it retro-fitted now as a toggable xp system option, even with the help of volunteer modders, was dismissed as something that can be added by modders after the game is released This, I believe, means either one of two things: 1) They are still discussing this in house over at Obsidian, and they are working on a sustainable solution, which will satisfy both camps of all the thousands of backers, believing that it's important to keep all of their fans happy 2) They are dead set on this. In fact, it's so important that in this very case, they stick with their vision of reward incentives for the game, and any feedback is ignored

Brace yourselves for speed runs in PoE! *Shudder* Programmable mouse macro: Stealth+stealth+stealth+stealth -skipping loot -still be bad ass via quest givers -use macro again

I'm sure as heck waiting for some feedback on the last straw I'm grasping at right now: the sub-quest xp. How often and when?

What Salvador Dali would've come across like if he had been young today and a game designer.

I've been meaning to post that a long time. Thanks, illathid!

Indeed. Brothers in Arms XP!

Apparently not. Some of us (no names) don't want to see xp numbers very often. Hehe, it's like my "Carthage needs to be destroyed".

Bulkbu: Josh is practically an accomplished linguist. Right now, it's one of the things that stand out as really lovely and promising about PoE right now. Kudos to Josh for that. It must have been hard work coming up with semi-made-up, while familiar tongues.

The current UI would have been quite fine, given that I really like ToEE's more minimalist UI approach, but! After having played the beta, and noticing how much it plays like a different game from those classic D&D CRPGs, I'm now accepting a more clunky approach, even if it eats up screen real estate. I like playing fast, almost like in a RTS, when it comes to RTwP, so in that sense an RTS-UI like COH2's make much more sense - and it has a big board along the bottom, and all buttons needed placed there. It doesn't have a combat log, nor a party with summons - and here those things are centre stage, so why not place the actions of the characters you control at the bottom in the centre? I'm no slave to combat logs, but they are very important references in IE games, even for a D&D buff like myself - I wouldn't miss it for the world, so, having played M&M X like 100 hours, I can tell for a fact that their UI actually works pretty well, and reading that combat log is no problem at all. Notice how we all speak of the importance of combat and the UI - the game is so combat-focussed that we need it to even surpass the UI of an RTS to be perfect and enjoyable? But still it has nothing on the fact it's no sold as a real CRPG, and the IE games before were just a kill-stuff-repeat-mechanics CRPGs.