IndiraLightfoot

IWD2 was linear, and had too much fighting even for me - the story part was too thin - I just stopped caring. The combat challenge, however, was very nicely done, especially in the early maps of the game. Still, ToEE, now with the Eight mod, is the pinnacle of party-based D&D CRPG combat, IMHO.

Waywocket: That is my understanding as well, which is a pretty exciting, although new, mechanic for me in a CRPG. I've started to warm up to it - but it needs better displaying.

They already said that the exploration was to be like BG, and the combat/dungeon crawling was supposed to be like Ice wind dale. As for the story; it was pitched to be like Planescape Torment. So in terms of story you should be set. Heh! Yeah, they promised us the best of both worlds! No pressure, OE! So far, it's looking bright for the story part. We are all holding our breaths regarding combat systems, rewarding gameplay (including the xp issues), as well as meaningful exploration: right now the maps are too crowded, mixing that with the non-finished fog of war, and you could easily be swarmed by beetles).

That wasn't what the mage battles were like. Of course they were like that, you closed the distance to the enemy wizard. When he started to cast his defensive spells you ran away, waited the spells out till he was defenseless and spammed him to death. Your two statements don't go together, rationally. Either you stood off screen and spammed stuff and exploited that system weakness or you closed the gap - not both. And there are heaps of ways to dispose of a defensive wizard like that. Heck, you could even raise your own barriers, and let him do his thing, while you took care of other enemies.

Kharador: I can see what you mean. It should be a CRPG worthy of 2014, with some new and exciting stuff, on top of good things that really worked. It should rest on the shoulders of titans, if you will. Also, it should definitely not be a BG3, and as much as I love D&D, it should definitely not be a new D&D CRPG. I'm actually very happy about all the good and promising things we're seeing already in PoE. However, combat, xp and pathfinding aren't up to snuff yet. Far from it. Personally, I reckon they should lend heavily from the CRPG giants of yore - and just steal everything that worked great. Every poet is a thief, so why not game devs as well, devs that actually worked on those brilliant games?

I dont really think that spamming fireballs/clouds of whatever off screen was interesting or challenging. *Ahem* Some of us played those games for years without resorting to unrewarding exploits. Ondb: Yes. Those battles were wonderful and addictive. The replayability value was huge, very much thanks to the interesting and varied combat (if you allowed yourself to experiment with all the possible solutions - well, sometimes, there were obvious hard-counters, but still...).

These basic combat feedback functions are sorely missed! Love you for pointing this out, Sensuki! I have no idea how they forgot to bring over such important combat feedback systems into PoE, but there you have it - we really need to have this stuff in the game.

Alright, here comes a slightly lengthy and personal reflection on this issue, and no, you won't even get a TLDR at the end of it: I've been doing some soul-searching, more specifically, RPG-soul-searching, and after having dug through all the PnP RPG sediments, it can be summarized as follows: -I've been loving PnP D&D for a long time - decades. -I've been playing D&D, and DM:ed it as well, in two fashions: 1) Combat-heavy and story-heavy. It's like a very fun and rewarding combat simulator on the one hand, put a slow burner, it's almost like the gourmet slow food of hack-n-slash, and on the other hand, the story, the characters and the deep history of all the cultures and societies visited were just as important. It was indeed immersive and exciting. 2)Combat-light and super-heavy RPG-ing. You go full-on, in character, and everybody around the table (this was no larping) did their best to verbally roleplay their character. It's very intense and sometimes emotional, even a little draining. The combat is also a matter of roleplaying first and foremost. The occasional dice rolls are nothing but subtle pointers. -90% of my PnP RPG sessions have been like #1, and 10% like #2 Enter the computer RPGs. My first was a D&D adventure on Intellivision in like 1981 or something, with gaming paddles. It was a dungeon crawler, and hack-n-slash. Not until Pool of Radiance came out in 1988 - I played it on my beloved Amiga - did I get to experience a computer game that reflected much more my PnP experience of D&D. However, it was not #2, but #1, which got slightly emulated in that SSI game. Even if it never could live up to the story-heavy depth of my #1 version of PnP roleplaying, it was still a decent effort, and more excitingly, the combat simulator aspect of it - all the systems, with skills, experience points, weapon types, die rolls - actually worked quite well. It wasn't all great, though, since those systems were made for PnP, not a computer game and its need for smooth and fun gameplay. I really liked the game. Later, when that Dragonlance trilogy came along, I was hooked. This gourmet slow food D&D combat simulator worked very well on computers, and somehow I managed to sneak in some immersion there as well, perhaps because when I didn't PnP with friends, I used to draw maps and use die rolls, and roll up entire parties, all on my own, which I then got to take on all sorts of weird adventures - this was before I had a personal computer, so the concept of controlling an entire party on my own, while still doing some light roleplaying in my head, as it were, was not a new concept to me. The Dark Sun: Shattered Lands PC game convinced me even more that this formula really worked. I got hours and days and weeks entertainment from them! So, much later, when Baldur's Gate came out, I was ripe for the taking - and I was sold. To me, it was a masterpiece. So much love and PnP depth had been poured into it by the devs. I could really tell that. Also, it was pretty much an open world. I still remember the joy like it was yesterday. BG1 and BG2 also meant something else for me: I begun to replay CRPGs heavily - rolling up several characters and entire parties and enjoying them over and over, all because the brilliant and varied gameplay offered by the gourmet slowfood D&D combat simulator that the computers did really well. I went on, had loads of fun with NWN1, which also had persistent worlds, where I actually did roleplay on with other people for years (that's another story). Planescape: Torment also surprised me RP-wise. It showed me that you can make a game first and foremost story-heavy, and still have it work as a great game. In fact, and this is important, it would have worked fine with no combat, and no xp. I would have played it regardless - it was that good, the same goes for NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer. I really hope that T:ToN will deliver that kind of quality too in a year or three. However, those story-heavy-only games are in the clear minority. They are exceptions to the rule, you can say. Most CRPG fun I 've had, well, that equals gourmet slow food D&D combat simulators with a great story, deep cultural settings, and fun and reactive player companions in the party (or not, I've actually played much more with no such companions in my party. Normally, the entire party has been created by me. Forward to PoE, promised to be a "spiritual successor" of the IE-games, and the xp system and its present state (basically, quest xp only). Let's just say that it doesn't sit well with me. Why? I expect PoE to be story-heavy, with a rich background, lots of variety, epxloring, freedom, having cool companions and quests. Oh, it is! Check!! I expect Poe to be a gourmet slow food combat simulator that I can have fun with in months and years to come, replaying it until it breaks from wear and tear. Nope! I have to take specific quest routes in order to even earn a single xp, and all the sense of the constant trickle of rewarding poured into the combat machine I love to drag around is simply not there. It has vanished. Poof! Yes! I admit. I am addicted to xp. I am addicted to killing sprees, and I reserve the right, from my years of experience of RPGs, PnP and CRPGs, to call this deep roleplaying.

Err... right... But maybe I missed something. Which are those tags? Is there a list of them somewhere?

[joke] Yes. Please explain this! How? It's a burning issue. I'm sitting on hot needles right now. [/joke] It is an interesting question, actually - and it's related to that other thread about druids and rangers bringing animal companions into towns and villages, and why nobody reacts one bit.

It's pretty interesting. It's pretty simulationist, and it does indeed make all stats really valuable for probably all classes and weapon choices, etc. Its biggest flaw is that the synergetic effects are pretty massive all across the board, but in a weird way that could be seen as a strength too, since it would give us a plethora of fun options to try out.

Now that you mention it the experience thread in the gameplay discussion forum is missing a lot of people from the previous thread who where very active in the thread before the beta. The one thing that hasn't changed is that the hottest thread on the forum (which is the one about combat xp) is completely ignored by the developers. Right, because publicly weighing in on a thread that most closely resembles a middle school cafeteria won't make it degenerate even further into screeching white-noise or anything. The devs are acutely aware of the "passion" level on the forums and have evidently chosen to use it more as a listening post than a sounding board as development progresses. Heh! Pretty nice description. Though, I must say that Josh has popped his head in threads and given clear arguments and opinions, and also thrown out interesting questions at times, in topics even more hotly debated than this, so I'd presume that if he feels like it, he wouldn't hesitate for one sec.

redneckdevil: Read the new thread under "Combat and Mechanics": http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67140-experience-point-system-in-the-beta-and-onwards/ Seriously, read the posts in that thread from the beginning, and soon you'll know which problems will arise with the current system in the beta build.

Psst! I have a confession to make. I think experience point tables are pretty kewl, just saying. This flawed xp system makes me miss them pretty urgently.

Ink Blot: I like your idea! And if I were to expand upon it, I'd say make different quests behave differently too. For instance, another quest is worth 1,000 XP and you kill everything, you get 500 XP extra for doing just that. If you sneak past them you get 50 XP per sneak encounter and then the quest reward at the end is just 250 XP. In other quest, it is the sneaky peeps or the diplomats that get a higher reward for it compared to the melee bunch.

Namutree: Same here.

Raithe: Same here. I've tried that door with Mechanics 7 and with lockpicks on top (which says that they help enhance that Mechanics score), but they just won't open!

I haven't really thought about CRPGs and even PnP D&D in that way before. So I've basically been a digital mass murderer for the last three decades and more? I have actually reaped countless of lives. *Dramatic pause, staring in amazement* Who am I? Death himself? Oh, no, wait, that's the next D3 expansion, after Reaper of Souls, mark my words!

The atmosphere in the game world is very much like BG and IWD, but it hasn't got the depth of the best Ultima iterations, probably not even a third of that lived-in feel. D:OS certainly did a decent job at the latter, btw. This means that the concept/sense of roleplaying is leaning towards the story, the history and a few major and minor NPCs with cool twists and turns to them and it also leans just as much, if not heavier, on developing characters through xp progression and making plenty of choices during that advancement. Then, of course, in the finished game, you'll hopefully get quite reactive and non-hollow party companions too. Such a mix in a CRPG is very dear to me, so I'll probably love it, but for the Ultima VII fans, it most likely won't do the trick. It will do quite nicely, but it'll never fill its shoes - and it never meant to do that. It's trying to fill the shoes of BG or NWN2.

Yeah. Rolling for inititative, and the speed factors for weapons, they weren't really implemented in the IE games. You can actually perceive the difference between a dagger and a polearm, but the difference is minute and pretty inconsequential.

Wombat: That's true. They are far, far away from ARPGs, but that OE has made CRPGs that have rewarded me actively playing one of their CRPGs with zero xp after 7h is a first, I can tell you that much.

I've had one crash in 7 h, after Merdeth and her 20 hog companion copies, on a x64 Win 7 system, so perhaps it's hard to use Vista (I read a few posts about that) and other x32-systems.

Unfortunately, it's detrimental to roleplaying, especially in party-based CRPG - you won't get any character development (unless you conjure up your own fantasies of it in your mind) unless you follow a few "by-the-designers-approved" quest lines. That's just one step away from sightseeing games like Bioshock: Infinite. They are hardly games anymore - the mechanics are rarely used and usually just gimmick-y and for show. You never get to develop your character, do stuff the way you really want to roleplay, since nothing game-y really happens. Is it even a game if it's taken to the extremes, I wonder? I want oodles of choices, plenty of replayability and creativity, and freedom to explore in all kinds of orders. I'd think most people would expect that from a spiritual successor of IE games like BG1, BG2, IWD1+2, ToEE (Troika) - and also of games like NWN1 and NWN2. Sure, they weren't sandboxes like Skyrim, but they were open enough - especially when it comes to party creation and development, which solely is built, game-mechanic-wise, upon xp points and xp progression. EDIT: I have decades of PnP experience, a mix of RPG-heavy to almost hack-slash power gamers and grognards. I love that, but I reckon a computer game needs regular xp progression and it needs to regularly be rewarding player actions.

Yes. Happened to me too, in the same ruins. Even when I went back there, it returned. Weird.

The atmosphere, the music, the mood, the ambient sounds, the day and night cycles, the story, the sense of a juicy fantasy world with a long history and oodles of cultures... There are so many things in that regard that are truly great. The list just goes on and on. I also love character creation - but so far it has been a bit underwhelming, partly because these are new systems perhaps, but also because I've had a hard time levelling up any character. Due to my explorative playstyle and mayhap a few quest bugs, I haven't earned a single xp after 7 h of playing now with one and the same party. When that's sorted, I know this will be a fantastic character building game. Josh has really succeeded, it seems, in creating quite varied classes, cool races and background variations! I'll perhaps take a break from the beta for a while now (except for some char creation fiddling) until the following gets fixed: -Combat pathfinding -Weird in-combat skill-use freezes -Quest and xp bugs decently ironed out -Items disappearing (all my money and items, for instance, were gone after 5 h after I pressed "continue", but when I instead loaded my latest save, everything was still there. Phew!) It's shaping up to be an epic CRPG if you loved the IE-games and/or the NWN-games.