IndiraLightfoot

Oh, this discussion again. Here are the quotes (also, again) from Obsidian's KS for PE: "Project Eternity (working title) pays homage to the great Infinity Engine games of years past: Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. Project Eternity aims to recapture the magic, imagination, depth, and nostalgia of classic RPG's that we enjoyed making - and playing. At Obsidian, we have the people responsible for many of those classic games and we want to bring those games back… and that’s why we’re here - we need your help to make it a reality! We are excited at this chance to create something new, yet reminiscent of those great games and we want you to be a part of it as well." This is what it says on the label, on the very front page, from more or less day one IIRC. It pays homage to, it's reminiscent of, and it recaptures the atmosphere of, the great IE games, but they say they will create something new. However, unfortunately, they also say: "We want to bring those games back"!! That I think is something of a misnomer, and one reason why so many expect it to be more or less the same as the IE-games. And just to be clear: I would jump at the chance to buy BG 3 with AD&D rules if it ever got made, since I love those golden oldies to bits. However, I also appreciate Obsidian's ambitious attempt to renew the genre, based on their vast experience in making these games, coz there is certainly room for improvement here and there.

This is also very interesting. It was hotfixed a couple of days ago, it seems: "Hey all, A series of hotfixes will be deployed today making more adjustments to overall reward structures within the game. I wanted to take a minute to explain the reasons for the changes that we are making. A driving goal of our design has been to make killing monsters feel rewarding, we want you all to find tons of cool items that you are excited about but more importantly we want you to have fun while doing it. Rifts have always been intended to be the most efficient play method in the game, currently they aren’t for a number of reasons. Part of this has to do with the high level of efficiency in farming that players find doing things like farming Manglemaw, Razorclaw and any other number of unique monsters. Another contributing element is that farming chests without having to actually fight monsters is far more effective than actually fighting the monsters. It is very important to us that chests are exciting to find and feel rewarding but presently they are far too common and reliable to farm in certain areas of the game. Finally Kadala, she has always been intended to give players some degree of control over their item upgrades. While we don’t want players to simply pick and choose from a list of items at an excessively high cost, we do want you to have an answer to the question “How do I upgrade my boots?” Kadala is meant to be that answer, she is meant to give you some direct control over the types of items you find. Since we are increasing the overall reward structure of the game she is also going to be increasing but by a larger amount than the rest of the changes since she didn't feel rewarding enough to us. Without further delay here is a list of the changes that will be coming in the hotfix. The Bad! Unique monsters now drop less items. *Uniques were dropping far more loot than their difficulty would warrant. Chest spawns have been thinned out across all acts of the game. *Ideally chests become less common and something that players can’t flip games to farm. It is our goal to make them feel exciting and rewarding when you find them. The Good! The bonus legendary drop rate for rifts is being increased from 25% to 100%! *This means that while in a rift your chance to find a legendary item from monsters, chests, elites, and everything else is double what it is outside of rifts. No this does not mean opening bounty bags in rifts is the new hotness. ;P Kadala’s legendary drop rate has been significantly increased. *Blood Shards are meant to be a compelling element of rift rewards and something players are excited to get." This means that Rifts, Kadala and Bloodshards are your best bets right now. I was playing with Bendu in our clan today, and out of the blue dropped a really nice pair of Firewalkers, and know I think I know why. Bendu is a lucky charm and read the hotfix above.

Oh, I missed that important bit of info! I think I missed the entire patch. Thanks for letting us know. Another piece of info that many miss because it was hotfixed last month is that the elemental skill damage bonus no longer applies to physical damage skills, so you need to pick elemental skills now to have that sweet extra eDPS from items with +% elemental skill damage. It should be called iDPS, because its invivisible in the stats shown. Weird, but true!

Consider this loadscreen tip: "Barbarians and Monks have 30% damage reduction unlike other classes like Crusaders (sic!), Demon Hunters, Witch Doctors and Wizards". Although, somewhat surprising, since it is a tanky holy paladin, it actually is, at its core, just as squishy as my DH atm. Weird, but true! And yes, I also felt that my Barbarian was more of a fortress than my Crusader.

I'm a huge fan, so I agree 500%!!! And I really love what they have done after year 2000, so many masterpieces. They just hit my chords. That "Pay what you you think it's worth"-campaign was brilliant. I ended up paying more than your standard album price at that time. Since then, they seem to have gone all DRM-free, which is great. However, in their case, I'll pay up big time to listen to their latest stuff.

When in doubt, Radiohead!

It's a pretty important feature, I reckon, and I sure hope it's included in some form or another. I also hope we get to see a huge variety of barklines, some VOed, in inns and similar establishments. I even demand the usual burping and farting, along with loud hickups, slurry speech and imposed bad singing, as well as an assorted collection of nice murmurs.

http://http://images.lolstream.com/assets/media_show/293__f4f7db6cb6201254bfe831767cd736ad.jpg

^This! Hades is one of my favourite mythological settings, as it were. All of the sudden I feel a strong urge to play Titan Quest coming on...

Chicken.

You're right about the xp-farming, but perhaps it will be resource farming (loot) instead. I haven't a clue. And annoyance, good point yet again (provided this feels rewarding and fun enough)! Lastly, I didn't mean DS3, but Diablo 3, where using area/portal waypoints is a way of survival. However, early on, if you did so, critters, and even bosses, automagically healed up to max again.

Gosh, no! But saying that Diablo ain't a CRPG isn't exactly heretic. It goes by the faulty label of ARPG, but to me it's just an arcade game with lots of lewt.

I hesitate to call CRPGs with a fixed character for RPGs. Sorry the Witcher-series, but that's how I feel. I want to create my character, if only by fiddling with some numbers and picking some appearance and background.

I'm so happy I can burst! Great post, Malc! And in my excitement I posted your link on another forum, and they insta-removed it, and referred to legal reasons. True story. :/ EDIT: I just checked. Some moderators there work for Firaxis. I guess my most recent experience confirms the existence of this game. Yay!

While I love your scenario here, it's actually technically not a sucker punch, since bosses on their own turf tend to know what's going on, and seek out intruders with no mercy, especially when they are weak and vulnerable. While in theory, it's nice with groups of baddies replenishing themselves if the party leave a few of them behind, it leads to a number of problems: - so-called xp-farming (as any respawns will be farmed, unless there's a pool of baddies that gets depleted) -annoyance (you thought your party made it pass Fargath Falls, but no, lo and behold! The death crabs are all back again, with a vengeance) -stinginess on behalf of the game itself (cf. in early D3, if you jumped into an area waypoint or onto a portal pad to save your sorry ass, the critters got back to full health when you peeked in again to see how much they were bleeding, also need I even mention the disaster of enrage timer on everything. In short, Blizzard removed these features and never looked back.) First and foremost, the game should be fun and that includes the gameplay. Any kind of monster-replenishing features needs to be top-notch if it should be included at all.

I had no idea! He certainly seemed fit enough in all those episodes! I'll never forget when he jumped from a slippery ledge like a 70 foot up a cliff right by a waterfall, just to copy the world champion in free-diving. He's just so darn crazy-brave!! In another episode, he gets dragged out to sea off the coast of Upstate New York and literally fishes with a rod bobbing in ocean swells. I mean, that series alone is worth giving him some championship medal!

I've so far only appreciated one wrestler of this kind, and that's after his career: The Speedo-flasher and fishing-freak Eric Young! That weird man and his beard has been doing some amazing fishing on Discovery Channel in Off the Hook.

I hope you're right, coz that slow coach he showed us is almost unbearable to watch. It reminds me of a pretty decent game back in the day, though: Decent.

Do you have any idea how fast and furious the game will be? And will it be large-scale spaceship battles faction vs faction? Perhaps you'll even see great Enterprise and Galactica starships and battleships.

Malc: I watched it. Why on earth is the audience behaving like Beatles-fans, and over this, at that? It looks like a space shooter with seven years on its back. It's way too sluggish for me, and the shooting effects are too measly. So, in essence, this is the notorious Star Citizen, with mp, of course?

Yeah, that's the crux of it! For instance, playing D3 hardcore and D3 softcore are almost two different games. In the first one, I emphasize defences, healing and sneaking and escaping if something is going all south. In the other, I just chill, experience some dialogue, take in the battles and the sceneries, and basically just look for upgrades. I guess, it's like flying a Cessna vs playing a flight sim flying a Cessna.

Alrightie then! Ready for another Sanctuary-report? I've started adv mode with my DH (as she's my new-found love), and did a couple of rifts. I reckoned the drops were pretty bad. However, at the end of rifts there were some tough guardians to make up for it, and some of them didn't give up their loot even after death!! This was some Ghom-like rift guardian, and his toxic vapours lingered forever. No, I'm not kidding! I don't think it's intended, since all the loot was underneath, so getting each piece was putting your life on the line. The allure of Torment 1 difficulty became too strong for me, so I began trying it out with my DH (see specs for it in my lengthy post above). Monte Carlo even joined me in my new endeavour, but like he put it, we "couldn't even dent them". Well, after he left, I 've kept at it, and also I began crafting and using Kadala and the Mystic. Well, two days later, having played my DH exclusively. She has found or Kadala-swapped items so that all but two items on her body is not legendary items that I've then adjusted at Myriam's stand. Kadala is a cruel mistress. It took me 33 quivers to get a legendary one. And I think I had 12 gloves going before I got some nice legendary pair. My equipment now include shoulders that heal me to full health if I'm about to die, boots that make me faster, the lower health I have, and a cloak that casts Caltrops for me (I started using that skill to slow people already and gain that nice 10 % crit chance bonus when standing on one). I've also crafted a few slots onto legendary items, since gems are more powerful than I first realized. I saved and saved to get some royal ruby to put in my legendary 2H crossbow that freezes critters for like every 10th shot. Since I had played all characters through, I already had almost all gem plans in place over at Shen's, so now it's just a matter of cost and patience. I've also changed my Vault to a rune that stuns opponents when I roll over them. Very useful vs bosses. In essence, I've made a fleeting tank-DH. I always run into the fray and stand on an automagically placed caltrop circle and just give them Fan of knives hell, and pump up hated with grenades. Some day, I'll transmog my crossbow into a proper weapon, a dagger or a sword of some sort. She's easy to play, and if anything goes bad, I have legendary bracers (crafter through recipe) that lowered primary resource cost with like 30 %, so Discipline vaults and caltrops are basically free. I just roll away. I've also plenty of healing when bombarding them with hatred-generating grenades and 57 % crowd control reduction makes her Jailer, Frozen, etc, almost laughable. It's a pure joy now. And her she is, ready for torment 2, with almost 450K in DPS:

Ouch! Those three words at the end of your sentence don't sit well in this context.

Hormalakh: My sentiments, exactly! Post of the day!!

Me too, Endrosz! And I really do hope they have that kind of beta campaign for PE too.