IndiraLightfoot

Given the historical era that PE adapts and expands into a fantasy setting, I'd say that headgear will be the character marker of the day! I mean, look at all the hats and the hoods, as well as the plumes and feathers that come with them. Also, several types of hoods were long and pointed back then. Shoes as well can serve as identity markers. I'm so curious if Obsidian has gone all-in garment-wise.

As there seems to be a solid support of turn-based CRPGs, preferably classic-tinted ones, may I treat you with a turn-based game by Guido Henkel, producer of Planescape: Torment, Arkania etc? It's called Deathfire, and it needs all the support it can get over at Kickstarter. I'm not saying that I know it will be great or anything, but I think it can't hurt lending a helping hand to such a worthy cause. Here's the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/g3studios/deathfire-ruins-of-nethermore *End of shameless plug*

Hiro: We're just pulling your leg here. Of course, BG, IWD and NWN were RTwP, speaking game lingo. But the point about them also being turn-based D&D-wide is a valid and quite important one. Believe me, I have modded a few myself. You could say that RTwP with D&D-turns in-engine is a gimped RTwP.

Hiro: It's two systems clashing. The IE games were built on turn-based PnP D&D. Turns are at the core of the game system there. Most stuff revolves around that. You wouldn't be able to play BG, IWD or NWN games, if they weren't turn-based. The devs went to great lengths simulating your RT experience in combat in those games, but it's all for show, really. Like it or not, they are indeed turn-based games, disguised as RTwP, "Pause" being "act or let your party die" in certain situs.

Hiro: See my reply - in-engine, they were turn-based all the way. They are D&D-games, after all. No need to be snarky!

Sorry to do exactly what you asked us not to do but I did support this game through KS and I needed to vote for what I felt was the correct direction for the game, but I do feel bad as if it wasn't for your post I wouldn't have known about this poll Same here, I'm afraid! Hehe, you shot yourself in the foot with this topic, as you brought attention to the vote for all that also would like turn-based, and there are plenty here, I think, who agrees with Niko's oh so valid points just mentioned above!

BruceVC: In a sense, you're absolutely right, as they are full-on built on turn-based PnP RPGs. And I went over to the site just now, and read through all the arguments, especially weighing in InXile's pros and cons, and my vote landed on turn-based. It's a very tight race right now, so keep voting folks!

I suspect this topic will be moved to Computer and Console soon. However, both turn-based and RtwP can be great systems for CRPGs, or bad. Neither is game-breaking per se, and I would argue that both are equally gamey, as they can't compare to RT, unless you turn RTwP into RT by refraining from using pause, which I've done a couple of times in NWN2, for instance.

JFSOCC: I agree with you 100%, and I do love that show. It's fantastically well written, and works for kids all the way up to grumpy semi-old men like me!

This is exactly what happened to my first party in BG1. I recall this like it was yesterday! :D Ah, the fond memories of being torn to pieces by serrated fangs the length of scythe-heads...

Thanks for the link, Sensuki! The article certainly reveals how game journalists receive ready-to-write packages to take home, but one thing was naïve in the article, that other journalism hasn't degraded to this. I'm afraid it has so, and it's been like this for ages, even before the internet (although just for a few years then). The news you see on TV? Most of it is stuff they've just picked up from news agencies. Medical journalism? Don't even go there. The list goes on and on. Nonetheless, it's a sad state of affairs, and one that will not change in a heartbeat.

Prometheus: Nice digging! Well, I can say this much: I wouldn't mind having her in the game. These are fabulous pictures/characters!

Bruce VC: Agreed! But it's even more entertaining to ignore those warnings and go ahead and fight an uphill battle and come out on top, and then you get to hear a few barks like: "I didn't know I had it in me", "We're all knackered and next to maimed, but we still get to see another day.", "Did I just get hernia because of this hideous brawl?", "You were lucky! I got spider veins in my once beautiful thigh."

Hi! I browsed some images of PE on the web, and then I saw these images of...well...what? http://www.enizr.com/games/announcement-trailer-for-obsidian%E2%80%99s-$11m-kickstarter-rpg-project-eternity.aspx They are Elves, I reckon, going by their ears. But then what class? Or are they even God-touched? Are the one to the right a druid? Help me out here. Are there any info on these two? Or are thy just from some other game?

I stand corrected: I'll rephrase that: "within 4,096 Planck times in the system of Planck units."

If I can't warp time and space within the first 4,096 Planck uinits, I'll declare the PE universe null and void. From my fingertips, there will smatter bursts of negative-pressure vacuum energy sucking the souls out of the entire in-game cosmos.

Snow elves! Finally!! Everbody ought to jump with joy! At least I do. In D&D, I loved those snow-themed monsters, like Winter Wolves and Snow Kobolds. And now we would get a playable winter race too in a CRPG. Update #10 Nov 19, 2013 A Closer Look at Characters We still have 18 days left in our campaign to get “Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore” funded, and we are still confident that it is possible to reach our $390,000 goal. It will not be easy, but with your help, and with the help of the press and our own doing, we hope we will be able to increase the influx of new backers once again, to help carry us over the finish line. As you know, every backer is important to us, and with the added rewards we announced the other day, we were very grateful to see many of you upgrading their pledges. It helped tremendously, and the entire Deathfire Team thanks you very sincerely. With that in mind, it is time to dive into more details about the game itself. Races and Classes, and the whole SpielWe have discussed races and classes in the game a couple of months ago as part of our Developer Diary on the official website, but I thought it would be a good idea to reiterate some details about characters in “Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore” once again here, for every backer to see. As you certainly know by now, character stats are very important to us in this game. With the help of our Psycho Engine, all the character attributes — visible as well as hidden ones — help us create characters that will be richly varied and will feature unique personalities. Because we want the game to be accessible to players who do not have a lot of experience with deep role-playing systems, we decided to keep the character generation fairly straight-forward and easy to use. So the first thing the player will get to choose for a character is his or her race. We are offering six races - Humans, Dwarves, Snow Elves, Wood Elves, Halflings and the vicious Tarks. Each race has certain modifiers associated with it that will affect the character’s final traits. Snow Elves, for example, have a higher resistance to ice than Humans. Halflings are more dexterous than Dwarves, while Tarks are experts at taunting; that sort of thing. Naturally, you can also determine the character’s gender and name at this point and then continue on to select the character’s class. “Deathfire” offers eight available classes, Warrior, Crusader, Scout, Shadow Dancer, Shaman, Druid, Wizard and Sorcerer. The female counterparts for these classes are currently called Valkyrie, Scout, Shadow Dancer, Shamaness, Druid, Witch and Sorceress, though these names may not be final yet. Each of these classes is specialized in a certain area of expertise and, like the race, comes with modifiers that affect the character’s final skills. It is a carefully balanced system that took quite some time to get right, and I expect to tweak it still, once we begin seeing these characters spring to life in the actual game. The next step will take the player to the base attributes. They are automatically rolled using twenty-sided dice and consist of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Based on these values, as well as the race and class modifiers, the computer also calculates a number of other attributes, such as weapon skills, attack and defense values and others. The base stats also affect the damage the character can do, the amount of magic points he has, and the armor rating. Some additional values are being calculated and kept invisible to the player, just to keep things manageable. A look at the base stats [Click to enlarge] If the player is not happy with the distribution of these values, a single click will roll the dice anew for a complete, new set of values. The next step takes us deep into the character’s traits and disadvantages. In order to create a role-playing experience that has real depth and gives the player breadth in shaping their in-game characters over time, “Deathfire” currently offers 34 different traits, packed together into various groups to easier track them. The character traits at a glance [Click to enlarge] The first group contains Resistances, controlling how well the character can withstand various types of damage. The Body Skills determine how well the character can handle himself physically and is therefore home to things such as Balance and Speed, among others. The list continues with groups such as Nature Skills, Craftsmanship, and Mental Skills, as you can see from the screenshot below, each with a number of individual attributes that determine the character’s innate abilities. And then there are the negative attributes, called Disadvantages. Everyone of us has lost his cool before, so why should our game characters be any different? In my opinion, negative attributes bring zest to the game. They give heroes personality and, from a design standpoint, open up an endless array of opportunities for great character interaction and mishaps. What we are looking at here runs the gamut from ordinary Temper tantrums, to a person’s Fear of Height, or Arachnophobia. But it also includes values such as Greed, Superstition and Pessimism. As you can undoubtedly tell, there is a lot to allow us to color characters and create interesting gameplay moments, but it can also feel overwhelming to the player. Therefore we will also have an optional game mode that will hide away many of these attributes and let the computer control them for you. As outlined previously in our Psycho Engine Update, “Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore” uses an intricate artificial intelligence system to manage characters, based on all of these attributes, as well as the ones hidden below the surface. Taken together with the data retrieved from the game environment and the logic that drives the Psycho Engine, all these values will shape the behavior of each character in the game in all of its details. I think it is easy to see how such a wealth of information about characters can help give the game depth and create interesting situations, particularly since the NPCs and opponents feature the same set of values to drive the Psycho Engine with behavior of their own. Did we whet your appetite already? Team Q&A: Michael Flad Hey Michael. What’s your job on the Deathfire Team? I’m a programmer, and because we are a small team, there are many hats to be worn at all times, since we don’t have the luxury to have a dedicated specialist for every part of the game. But to me, that is one of the reasons why I love to work in a small and independent team. There’s a new and interesting challenge to be found around every corner. What are you working on at the moment? Right now I’m working on our Psycho Engine AI framework, that we use to control all the creatures in the game. One of my big goals is to make this all very dynamic and less predictable, while still serving the purpose in any given situation in the game. It’ll actually be a pretty cool system and you can learn more about it in Guido’s Psycho Engine Update from a few days ago. What’s your typical work day like? Well, since we are a distributed team I work from my home office, and after getting up and taking a quick shower, I really need a cup of fresh brewed coffee and have to go for a walk with my dog — it’s a decent enough way to really wake up and to get ready for some heavy thinking. I’ll do a quick email check and then just dive into whatever I’m coding at the moment. I usually do this until I’m either hungry or tired, or both. Typically I try to eat healthy light food, so I won’t get tired and lethargic, and depending on the time of day, I either continue to work on my current task again or I'll take the dog for another walk first. While I’m working, I tend to listen to ambient music, and I absolutely love to discover new stuff every few days on Bandcamp, which, I may add, is also a great site to listen to some great soundtracks from indie games. Besides working on Deathfire, how do you spend your free time? A large chunk of what free time I have is already mixed into my work day, such as the time spent with my dog. But apart from that, I love going to the movies and watching TV shows. Some of my all time favorites are The Sopranos, The Wire, Dexter, Entourage, Rome, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and… of course on the #1 slot, Breaking Bad - I love how they managed to evolve the characters season over season. What games have you worked on before you joined the “Deathfire” team? I think it is pretty cool to let you know that I started working as a professional game developer, working on “Realms of Arkania: Shadows over Riva” at Guido’s company Attic Entertainment Software, along with our artists Marian and André. But even before that, I already knew our other artist, Thomas. We had done some game development on the Amiga together. Along the way I have worked on a number of released and (sigh) canceled titles, big and small, such as “Sovereigns of the Seas (aka Herrscher der Meere),” “Wildlife Park” and others. I also wrote an engine for point & click adventures, that was used to release four or five games. In addition, I’ve also worked on various mobile projects on virtually all mobile platforms. I can’t talk about the canceled titles though… NDAs and such. You understand. Anything else we should know? The cake is a lie — but I guess most of you knew that already, didn’t you?

Ouch! I hurt my eyes rolling them back into my head... Perhaps, but what about a cigarillo in the corner of some NPCs mouth? Will there be tobacco in PE? I assume drinking and alcohol is in as a vice. I want to meet cool dudes like this:

This is a REALLLY good point. I bought the just out Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition from Beamdog and wanted my main character (fighter) to go a different route than normal. I thought, hey I bet bastard sword and off hand short sword or shield might be cool? I am not dumb though and did my due diligence. Come to find out there are hardly any bastard swords in the game and the best bastard sword is a joke compared to even the second or third best long sword or top two great swords. If I went that route I literally gimped myself simply because the game did not have a great end game bastard sword... period. this is one of the reasons why I wanted crafting so badly. If you can make your own damn Bastard sword, you don't have to worry about what the game provides, you can provide it yourself. As someone that initially didn't care much about crafting, this very argument alone has won me over. Let us craft, or have a very balanced supply of all weapon groups!

Sophos: Yes! And the heraldic symbols and the landscapes, I don't know, but weirdly enough I come think of surpsrisingly fun strategy game back in the 80s or 90s: Warlords I and II Battlecry etc: http://www.google.se/imgres?imgurl=http://www.armchairempire.com/images/Reviews/pc/warlords-battlecry-2/warlords-battlecry-2-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.armchairempire.com/Reviews/PC%2520Games/warlords-battlecry-ii.htm&h=1024&w=1280&sz=319&tbnid=UbJKwZoKHM6ctM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=113&zoom=1&usg=__559CKCRxlieO8IDjbZShUH-fYlE=&docid=V0aqU7TGUJIYQM&sa=X&ei=TVeLUu-2KIav4ATC5oDYCg&ved=0CDMQ9QEwAQ

I'm so excited about this game that I'm gonna explode. I look forward to it so much, and these wonderful slides caused a mental landslide in my synapses! : If Obsidian starts a new KS for PE2, I'll be there, count on it.

Ulquiorra: I wouldn't say they are all the same, but there are no choices. It's an extreme case of bare-bone toon dolls - everything is item-based. I love huge complex systems where I can try to tinker with various builds and such. In that regard, I'm really enjoying PoE's huge, but cumbersome passive skill-tree. I wouldn't dream just picking one of the cookie cutter builds there, as that would destroy all the fun. I'd like to make a build on my own, one that can make it at least decently through Merciless and beyond. What I want to avoid is what Karkarov brought up: A situ where there's just one uber-build that rules them all.

Deep down, I know that you are right. Still I hope that there will be plenty of them, at least, and perhaps they can make the best ones not too far off the charts as well. It really seems Josh & Co are going all-in in their efforts to make the game balanced in this regard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erthun0Pauc