Keyrock

Prosper's creations - Obsidian Forums tested, Cthulhu approved!

Skipping SoU? HotU is definitely the highlight of NWN. The original campaign and SoU are both decent, but HotU is flat out awesome. I've played through HotU probably nearly a dozen times, it's just that much fun. Altogether I've logged somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 hours in NWN, including the mountains upon mountains of user created content.

It's not like the story is particularly engaging or important. It's a loot em up, the story is "kill thousands of enemies, pick up mountains of loot". Just be thankful you're not playing Two Worlds. That game still takes the cake for cringeworthy dialogue as far as I'm concerned. Compared to Two Worlds, the voice acting and dialogue in Torchlight 2 is academy award level.

On the plus side, there's not a whole lot of it in the game.

That's great to hear. I scooped it up a couple of days ago but am waiting to finish the main story before playing it. The trailer certainly made it look pretty fun and wacky. Out of curiosity, about how long is it? (If you've completed it) I have just bought Sleeping Dogs and will be playing it after Risen 2. I am glad its getting good endorsements While I have not yet finished the main story, so this is subject to change, I'm strongly leaning toward Sleeping Dogs being my Game of the Year. The game is far from perfect but I've had a blast playing it. I'm 30+ hours in (I've done tons of optional stuff like races, drug busts, favors, etc.) and have loved every second. I find pretty much everything in the game to be fun, even the driving, once I got used to the twitchy and kinda weird driving model. Even after having kicked the **** out of hundreds of dudes, I still immensely enjoy beating them up. I love hauling ass through the city (it definitely helps that Honk Kong is such a fantastic setting). I like singing karaoke. I love getting into firefights on foot and in vehicles. I love on foot chases. I really love action hijacking. I still always have a big goofy grin on my face whenever I play the game, it's just really fun.

That's great to hear. I scooped it up a couple of days ago but am waiting to finish the main story before playing it. The trailer certainly made it look pretty fun and wacky. Out of curiosity, about how long is it? (If you've completed it)

I personally have thought for years and years that the D&D concept of Armor Class was antiquated and heavily flawed, so in this case I believe they are fixing something that is broken. That's just my personal view though, I'm sure some people think the D&D Armor Class system is perfectly fine, they're entitled to their opinion. I am not claiming the old system was perfect. But I believe that I much rather see Obsidian focus their limited resources on creating stories and content with the old proven system then trying to dissect every piece of game mechanic and reinventing it. I would much rather see them operating under the old constraints trying to build the best (new 2014 version) IE game possible. I would hate to look at at project eternity thinking that we didn't learn anything from Masters of Orion 3. Fair enough, but I've heard the folks at Obsidian state in the past that the D&D ruleset was in many ways a handicap on what they could do with games, hence why they are making their own rules and mechanics from the ground up. If you're going to make the mechanics and rules from the ground up, you might as well examine all the aspects of it so that you can make the best ruleset possible for the game you are creating. I understand the reasoning behind "don't change things just for the sake of changing things", and it is sound reasoning. "Don't keep things the same just for the sake of keeping things the same" is just as sound reasoning in my opinion.

I personally have thought for years and years that the D&D concept of Armor Class was antiquated and heavily flawed, so in this case I believe they are fixing something that is broken. That's just my personal view though, I'm sure some people think the D&D Armor Class system is perfectly fine, they're entitled to their opinion.

I loved Amnesia: The Dark Descent, even if I could only stand to play it for 45 minutes maximum before I would need to take a breather to calm myself down. This new game looks like it will be fantastic. I really love Frictional's approach to horror, which started with the Penumbra series. I like how horror is built on anxiety, feeling of helplessness, anticipation, atmosphere, and mind f*cks, rather than startle tricks (monster jumps out of a closet... I'm looking at you, Doom 3) or scary looking demons, splatter them with your plasma rifle.

So would you rather they not update us until such info is ready, which could be months? Or would you rather they rushed the mechanics so they could update us often and have concrete facts for us? I thought it was a "good update" because it shared insight into the considerations they are making when thinking about how to implement mechanics. I find that kind of stuff more interesting than "here are the mechanics, period." Oh? Those are the only two options? Either I want rushed BS or I don't want anything at all? Please. All I want in the updates is a little more content that's related to PE, which during the Kickstarter didn't seem to be a problem. Did you really think that the amount of content and information, and the frequency of the information, would continue at the pace it was during the Kickstarter campaign after the campaign? Did you think that they just magically had an endless stream of information ready to go perpetually? It only makes sense that Obsidian divulge all the information they had ready during the campaign as a way to stir up interest and contributions. Now that the Kickstarter campaign is over all that information has been divulged and the new stuff will trickle in more slowly because they are in the process of planning these things out, settling on mechanics, fleshing out the world, etc... All these things take time and effort. Again, I personally really like it when they let us in on the thinking process and the considerations they need to take into account.

So would you rather they not update us until such info is ready, which could be months? Or would you rather they rushed the mechanics so they could update us often and have concrete facts for us? I thought it was a "good update" because it shared insight into the considerations they are making when thinking about how to implement mechanics. I find that kind of stuff more interesting than "here are the mechanics, period."

Other - Armor mitigates damage, reduces the chance to take severe wounds (damage directly to health), and applies movement (dodge, dexterity) penalties in some combination depending on how heavy the armor is, the amount of coverage, and how protective the armor is. Light armors generally mitigate little damage, have a small chance to reduce severe wounds (damage directly to health) and have little or no movement penalties. Heavy armors mitigate a lot of damage, greatly reduce the chance to suffer direct health damage, but have major movement penalties so you get hit more often.

I think armor can be tied into splitting hit points into health and stamina really well. Heavier armor and armor with greater coverage could not only mitigate more damage, they could be much better at protecting against damage directly to health. This could be done as a percentage of damage or simply a chance to prevent damage directly to health completely. For example, a suit of plate could mitigate 6-8 points of damage and have a 90% chance of preventing health damage (damage that would have otherwise been direct health damage now becomes stamina damage). A leather jerkin on the other hand could mitigate 2-3 points of damage and only have a 30% chance of preventing health damage. On the other hand the suit of plate would have a 4 point dodge penalty, whereas the leather jerkin would have no dodge penalty at all. Now wearing the leather jerkin you're more likely to dodge attacks completely and take no damage at all. However when you do get hit you take a lot more damage and have a much higher chance of suffering a serious wound (damage directly to health). Wearing the plate armor you are likely to get hit a lot more often, but each hit will do much less damage and the chance of you suffering a serious wound would be very small.

Along those lines, instead of superior firearms being 'magical', I'd rather they were simply technologically advanced. Made by a gunsmith with a superior alloy or with superior craftsmanship or a superior design. In practice it would still be amount to "Musket +1" or whatever, it would be purely a semantic difference. Edit: Also, relevant:

Scooped up the today. Looks like a fun take on the Zombie DLC that every single game put out. More importantly, it features Not Ping, my favorite of the girlfriends in the game. Sleeping Dogs is quickly becoming my GotY for 2012, I just can't get enough of the game and can never wipe the goofy smile off my face while playing it.

I didn't vote since there is no real combination of votes that comes close to expressing what my thoughts are. Obviously we're not going to get full sex scenes in this game because those types of cutscenes are simply beyond the scope of the game and can't really be done well with small characters in an isometric view. As far as sexual content being included in text form, or having partially, or even full, nude characters in the game, I'm fine with that as long as it makes sense for the world and the situation. I don't want sex to be added to the game just for the sake of adding sex to the game, because sex sell or whatever. However if it makes sense for there to be nudity or sexual talk or innuendo included in a scenario, and this goes for explicit language too, then I say go for it. The best example of how this is presented to me are The Witcher games, minus the sex cards in the first game. The game takes place in a dirty world full of discrimination and debauchery. The games don't skirt around any of this and present sexual content or explicit language where appropriate, but don't just shoehorn explicit material into the game where not appropriate (again, minus the silly sex cards from The Witcher 1). If, for example, in Project Eternity we stumble upon a woman who's about to get raped, whether we decide to stop the heinous act, or not, it would make sense for her to be shown partially (torn clothing) or fully nude. If there's a heated argument between drunks in a run down tavern going on, it may be appropriate for them to be swearing at each other and using racial slurs appropriate for the world.

I've backed so many projects that my wallet is crying: Double Fine Adventure Wasteland 2 Shadowrun Returns Make Leisure Suit Larry Come Again Jane Jensen's Moebius Project Fedora/Tex Murphy SpaceVenture Grim Dawn Expeditions Conquistador Broken Sword - The Serpent's Curse Project Eternity Obviously nothing is certain until these, and other, projects come to fruition, but so far it seems that the winners with the whole Kickstarter thing blowing up are: 1) PC gamers 2) Linux gaming 3) Unity game engine

Unfortunately flight brings with it a WHOLE BUNCH of extra considerations for developers to spend time and resources on both in and out of combat and including, but not limited to, potential breakage of quests and/or mechanics. The amount of time and effort that would need to be put into considering all these mechanics and consequences would massively take away from other parts of the game. In other words, not worth it within this limited budget.

I'm all for variable difficulty levels and selectable optional mechanics, in that regard, from everything I've heard and read about Project Eternity should deliver in troves. While I have yet to play the new XCOM, going back to the original game, I thought that attrition was an extremely important, if not downright vital part of that game. I'm all for developers giving players maximum choice in what mechanics they want to use or not use, but in this particular case if they simply force you to deal with character death (or replay lengthy missions), I can sort of understand it, since, if the new XCOM is anything like the old, attrition is such a key part of the game.

Alpha Protocol is tons of fun, I plan to play it again soon. My biggest complaints about the game are the sometimes terrible enemy A.I., somewhat inconsistent stealth mechanics, and somewhat sub-par shooter mechanics (outside of some really cool skills). Still, the story is great, the game is very engaging, and the dialogue mechanic is straight up brilliant.

It's been a while since I played BG2, but I've played several archer-heavy parties in D&D cRPG games and they generally fared quite well against spellcasters because I was usually able to disrupt their magic before they got much of their stuff off. I would usually have such a sheer number of missiles heading toward enemy spellcasters immediately upon sighting them, that even with some of those missiles missing, something was bound to get through.

As much as I hate level scaling in games I actually think it makes sense to some extent in the context of a loot em up like Dungeon Siege 3 or Diablo. I think the design Crate is doing with Grim Dawn is the best solution. They're going with limited level scaling. Each region in the game will have level scaling in a limited range. So for example a region where typically your character may be 15th-20th level may have a level range of 10-30. Thus if your character is below level 10 the enemies will still be at least level 10 and if you're above level 30 the enemies will never get more powerful than level 30. This allows for the game to provide you with a constant decent challenge when played normally, but also allows you to stick around in an area and grind until you become godlike (compared to that area) if you really want to. Or if you want to run ahead and run into an area you're not supposed to be in yet at your level you can and you will encounter monsters likely to obliterate you rather than weakling level 2 trolls. Speaking of Dungeon Siege 3, I completed the game a while back playing with the all-girl assault squad, I was Anjali and my companion was Katarina. I plan to give it another go in the future, likely with Lucas.

Absolutely. NPC should not automatically be trustworthy, they should have their own motivations. If the PC does things to anger or frustrate said NPC, if the PCs faction preferences don't align with the NPC, or if the NPC just happens to be a dirty, greedy scoundrel and sees an opening to make profit at the PCs expense, they should by all means betray the PC if it is in their nature to do so.

Wait until you try the drug busts that include thin-air enemy spawns behind your back. Fully armed with automatic weapons of course. Already did one of those. While I'm not a fan of enemies spawning out of nowhere (Dragon Age 2, I'm looking in your direction), in this case, while it did startle me, it didn't frustrate me. Just had to scramble to get to the other side of cover. At least getting in and out of cover actually works somewhat consistently in this game. In GTA 4 you never know what's actually going to happen when you try to enter cover.