IndiraLightfoot

Glad to see that you bought it, because I'll be the third signing party under this question!

A) This concern is quite valid, and it's something I'd like to hear more about from Josh & Co. Personally, I really want a game where I can move about and explore as freely as possible (even if there are some linear maps sometimes or whatever). If I happen to trigger a quest, that's fine, but if I'm not that should be perfectly fine too. B) Indeed. That's a classic RPG encounter. And if you survive it, I really count on that amounting to what Tim Cain call an "accomplishment" and that we get some kind of objective xp for it. This should apply to all situations as this one described, even if you kill them each and every time. That's up to the player to decide. C) I loved those encounters. Unfortunately, later in NWN 2, they were nearly non-existent, and things didn't get better with that mock competitor party stalking your own all the way into your Knight Captain Keep. Oh, how I wanted to eradicate that party!

I'm like that a bit too. I see greyed out squares on the map and it bugs the heck out of me. I got my party up to level 3 and haven't even thought about entering the lighthouse yet. I'm taking it nice and slow, reading all the lore books and song books and stuff. I'm yet another of those that compulsively has to light up the tiles on the mini-map. And like you, Keyrock, I'm inching away through the game, even looking for secret nooks and crannies. And that updated monster folio is great. I love how you can watch little animations of foes you have vanquished. A certain regal arachnid comes to mind.

Three hours in now, and I'm still having loads of fun! Some is because of nostalgia, I get all giddy when I drink weird goo in all kinds of colours from barrels and then get rewards like "+1 res earth magic"! The fights are just about casual tough, especially semi-boss and boss ones. The party chatter is fun and very old-school (like Wizardy8), and the quests so far have been very CRPG standard, but sometimes that's just fine. I will be playing this game a looong time, and it really grows on you. Decent music as well. And the recipe-hunting goblin Kengi is a blast! :D EDIT: BruceVC: It was my first Uplay-game too, hehe!

Stun, I took the liberty of reading your posts in this thread as a whole, so then I summarize them here with my comments. I think you are making your points clear and concise, and I do think that you will be pretty happy about PE after all (but only Josh & Co can confirm this): Stun, you want PE to be as much in keeping with BG2 and similar IE games as possible (although of course with D&D being left out). That goal you share with Monte Carlo and many, many others. In the post above your emphasis is on the fear that Obsidian will "totally black out" or "outright eliminate" xp from engaging in combat. To make things simple: You would much rather have kept the kill xp system from the IE-games. This is a great post and very clarifying as well. You recognize that an xp system other than a kill xp one promotes true role playing. Your fear is, once again, getting NO xp for doing something (killing, but also for other actions during a quest, a part of a quest, an objective or what not). I get you loud and clear. The example is an extreme one, but it would in many ways suck if we would haul our asses through all of those levels (or even just a third of them) and not getting any xp. Even worse, if something happens during that play session you would get nothing (*shiver* indeed!). I know the feeling. In Dishonored, if you go for no-kill playthroughs, you can have acts that take one and a half hour if you are a completionist like me, only to find at the end info splash screen that a single guard you silently rendered unconscious died (perhaps from some rats having devoured him in some dank corner). A fighter should be rewarded xp for fighting. Basta! Stun, to be honest, I adore that kind of system from the IE games and have nothing against it whatsoever. And indeed, it would be awful if there were some very fast and lazy, let's call it cheap and dirty, way through an objective xp/quest xp-segment, and still you get rewarded the same as someone doing brilliant and varied combat for hours through the same content. Once again, very nice examples! That adventuring party ambushing our party. I mean, either that event is treated as an objective that needs surviving to get the xp (I used to deal out xp that way when I was DMing sometimes, instead of end of session-xp), or we don't get a single xp. It can't be both, right? The same goes for random encounters. And as for the hordes of monsters that we hopefully will slay in good order, will they just be cobwebs brushed aside in order to reach the Holy Grail Indiana Jones-style at the end, and after runnin gout of the dungeon, then Indy got that xp of his? That would be ridiculous and just plain wrong. The last example here is your best one in that post; and it actually reveals something important about PE. It can't be quest xp only, because else it would destroy the whole exploration concept of the game! It simply has to be accomplishments like Tim Cain said, and these must mean chunk-by-chunk xp. I'd love to have Josh confirm this, but most likely, we can almost talk of encounter xp as part of PE's system. And if it's not, I am more or less on your side, Stun, in this argument, coz how else are they going to solve it. Quest xp just won't cut it. Racking up a bunch of kills is probably not an accomplishment, but killing the enemies in an encounter so the toggle turns to peaceful green again, as it were, bloody well be counting as one. Once again, Josh, please confirm! But till then, my answers to that multi-choice question is: C! We will be rewarded for killing things (encounter-wise and quest-wise), and if we do that a lot, there will be more rewards coming our way. Gold and loot shouldn't indeed. And may I add, each encounter should reward you with a bit of xp as well, it simply has to. That IWD2 scenario is really scary, and I see now what your worst fear is: A PE where if you don't take quests you wander around in limbo getting no xp at all, and hence no char progression etc. That would be a buzzkill and indeed a very pointless game. With this many solid arguments on your side, I just wish for Josh or Tim to pop in and tell us that our party doing exploration and combat without necessarily any quests on will still be rewarded for true accomplishments, that is, encounters.

Kingdom Come is now funded in just 40 hours! 300K quid, just amazing!!

I'm happy to say that the game has been officially released, and it's a smoking hot nostalgia trip to be sure. Aside from some crappy textures, I had a very fun lunch playing it. The whole thing puts a smile on my face, and finally I got a goblin chef in my party, and that for just 100 gps.

Weirdly enough, this is my sentiment to the tee! A cool Nikita Sheila with a smorgasbord of dirty, cruel, and disgusting men to dispose of. Let the arrows fly, I say!

Amazingly, they got over 200,000 quid now, so that's more than two thirds!

Indeed, too much balance and you have probably wrecked the game, since whatever character you invest in, you'll get more or less exactly the same sense of power and progress, as it were. As for you other worry, I do understand where you come from. I've played all those great D&D CRPGs so many times, so I really hope that the vibe is lost on the way, and "vibe" being in this case: atmosphere, some of the basic RPG systems, a reasonable PnP-feel, scope, a decent freedom of exploring and doing things in my own way, and yeah, even combat and speech skills. Btw, the stealth system is a new one, but for me, it looks very promising indeed.

This can't be emphasized enough. It will be certain parts in complex sequences that can be attempted to be solved in fashions like those.

Fair enough! If anything, adding a female pc will certainly lend plenty of opportunities for roleplaying.

LordCrash: You'd be surprised, but there were a few women in battles even in the Middle Ages, among them bow hunters on horseback among the Mongolians, strong cross-dressing female warriors in the Balkans, and in France there were a few as well, Joan of Arc, most notably.

That would be excellent! Mongol invasions ftw. I played a turn-based Djingis Khan-game in the 1990s that I adored, so that would be great. And yes please to bowman options.

I know, keeping it real. I get a Chivalry & Sorcery-vibe, a PnP RPG that was very demanding and entertaining when I played it long ago.

I'm intrigued by the objective xp as well, and I have faith that Obsidian will balance things so that stealth and sweet-talking will be context-sensitive, difficult and varied, just as I hope combat to be, and from what we know so far, PE will still be a very combat-heavy game.

Thanks to your kindly tip, I was able to back this promising game quite early on. Thank you, SophosTheWise!

With this thread title I'm trying to capture the most discussed issues in the "Can I Even Handle A game Like PE Any Longer?"-thread. As it's reaching its max number of posts, I've started this one, for those who wish to debate these issues further. And please keep it reasonably constructive and civilized, folks (mental note: this includes me as well)!

I agree that the simplest way to go is to reduce the objective xp if sweet-talk solutions were involved (proportionally, of course, depending on how many they were). It makes sense too. A few clever words versus melee with plenty of eager opponents and damages and perhaps new abilities experienced from those same opponents and what not. The latter certainly should entail more xp rewards somehow, at least in theory.

Good points, Prime Junta! And we already know that increased difficulty will be, amongst other things, the same as increasing the number of enemies. So why not increase those detection circles and make them bigger? Or why not increase the number of talk checks necessary to pass a certain encounter/situation? And why not design the game around this kind of incremental jogging of difficulty? Well, I for one, have a strong feeling that Josh & Co have done just that.

I know what you mean. So many CRPGs are sorely missing this functionality. I'd be very grateful if a comparison feature like that was included.

I reckon it's a bad idea too. I can live with it, but I think at least the periphery of the AOE should do some damage. And like I've said elsewhere, for an AOE attack like fire, acid or a blizzard, I would love to have a fuzzy edge in effect, so you can't predict the outcome of such powerful forces all the way. There should always be a risk involved in these cases, but that's just my take on it.

Imagine stumbling upon a spaced out potion-of-Perception junkie! And potion-of-Resolve junkies probably will be found dabbling with souls and science.

Indeed. Wouldn't be cool if they had side effects, or at least that you run the risk of getting addicted? I mean, like BruceVC mentioned, it's too easy to shake the disease/addiction via one of them super meds lying around almost everywhere.

Hiro: Still got your blinders on, I see. See the post above yours. From your recent reply above I can tell that you don't like to get replies like mine, or rather like yours, as I only reflected back your own argumentative kind at yourself. Not very fun, huh? Just lay it off and give it a rest, Hiro. I know you can contribute better than this, rather than have your true colours pasted all over. And it's true btw, I love smilies: