Osvir

Hasn't Beamdog been pretty open about wanting to do Baldur's Gate 3 and almost hinting at it as something they might do? I remember reading something about it~ "When we are done with Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition" or something like that... or were they going to IWD:EE and PST:EE as well??

I guess this is an update to my previous post (The Steam Charts for Divinity have rocketed as well in comparison to previously). Divinity: Original Sin is selling really well: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-03-divinity-original-sin-larian-studios-fastest-selling-game-ever They are also still on the #1 spot on Best Selling game on Steam.

I speculate whether or not animancy/soul magic is used in different industries, in a sort of avatar the last airbender type of way-ish-esque. Farmers who move water to sprinkle on the fields, a night patrol who lights lanterns with a flick of a finger. Like, if you have an ability to manipulate souls, then you can put that on your resumé and get a better job in the world of Eora. These are, of course, just speculation. Nothing too common but there could be some cases where people use magic for their day-to-day tasks, you don't need to only shoot lazer beams and rain chaos in combat~ This is also partially wishful thinking and to see some basic home-usage-magic. Maybe some builders are well versed in animancy and can build buildings by using it.

An idea, something I'd like to see in a MOBA. Something like League of Legends/DOTA or any other top-down MOBA out there, competetive gaming. But the key difference between all of those is that this wouldn't be a Champion or Role specific MOBA, instead it would be based on Items. Depending on what you buy you fulfill a role. Item-Based Classes. You'd also have a Character Creation, where you can build your character height, weight, eye color and so on. The bigger the character the more health but slower attack speed. The Character could be editted between games, like Masteries/Runes, for different types of plays between games. This way you'd play with your own Character that you've made and build it to become the class you enjoy to play through items. World: - Different competetive maps, with more level designs similar to Counter-Strike, Battlefield and similar instead of having just 3 lanes like in League of Legends or DOTA. More variants for maps. - 5v5, soldiers vs soldiers. - Minion waves are army robots~ - Jungle minions could be beasts and aliens, as well as some robotic technological stuff General Idea and Difference: - You start off as a standard infantryman and build your character through items. - A bot support could grab an early game drone that heals. - An adc gets a pistol, some ammo and a knife - A mid character might start with a rocket launcher, and then eventually build a one-man tank - A top or jungle player could get some trapping nets and some melee weapons/armor and/or muscle stims Items: - Everytime you level up, your items you have equipped also levels up. So you become better and gain abilities with equipped items. - Ammo is limited, which means that you will have to conserve your ammonution for last hits and What do you think? Do you know anything like it? In Dota and LoL and most MOBA's I know you pick a champion that has a couple of abilities already, but what if you got to create a character yourself and fight with that character on the battlefield? I've thrown around a similar idea for Diablo 3, and I think that Diablo 3 would benefit a lot from a MOBA-like PvP mode, where it could be Hell vs Heaven and you control your own hero.

The Scholar: Whilst the Scholar is in no way a fighter, and is best to keep far back in the band of heroes (or villains). The Scholar specializes in History, Philosophy, a sharp wise tongue that is easy to get caught up with. Of course, a Scholar is also seen as a ravaging madman by many, this is due to some Scholars getting lost in the Soul of History, and are assumed to gain scrying abilities far far far into the future, these Scholars are called "Doomsday Scholars" and their minds lost in multiple dimensions. Their eyes and mind seeing a most distant apocalypse in a parallell continuation of the universe. A potential outcome. A Scholar's magic is mystical, and as mentioned above, is called "Soul of History". A Scholar can remember past lives, and also future lives. But it is a dangerous path to take, and many fine Scholars have lost themselves in the "Labyrinth of Time". Time is a constant and confusing thing, as there are infinite amount of instances where life goes in different ways and paths, and only the Scholars who can maintain their minds in one timeline achieve masterhood. Concept Abilities - A Scholar is in a way a Time Mage who can warp time and space. Their signature style is called "Weave of Time". - A Scholar does not have any abilities or spells that deals damage, but are more a support role and town-heavy characters. - A Scholar can give boosts to the Party when camping, raising "morale" by telling stories or educating the other party members of the world. - A Scholar can fast travel on his/her own between cities, it makes the party smaller (5 party members) during travel, but you'll always have the best merchant and best Charisma character when you are in towns. - A Scholar and a Doomsayer Scholar are both great distractors of guards. For instance, if a Doomsayer Scholar starts crying out the end of the world near well guarded treasure door, the guards will investigate and potentially arrest the Doomsayer Scholar (which you then can rescue later). Or a regular Scholar can go up to the guards and use a distraction ability a la "Stay a while and listen"~ e.g. "Did you know this building was built in bla di bla isn't it fascinating?" etc. etc. and meanwhile your Rogue can sneak by and take all the treasure. - A Scholar can identify all items, and also gives identified items a permanent bonus. This can be seen as the Scholar identifying the blade and telling it's history to the Fighter, which in turn gives the Fighter more respect for the blade and more confidence wielding it. This goes for any character wielding the blade. E.g. Samurai-styled "Way of the Blade" honor-stuff. - A Scholar is also wise in the ways of herbs and plants, making him a light medic. - A Scholar is a very wise man or woman, and is very often a low-priority target in combat and on the world map. Lowers random encounters and is almost never targeted in combat. - The Scholar is a Teacher, whenever the Scholar levels up every other character in the party gains extra Skill Points (If Pillars of Eternity uses a similar skill system like F:NV). The Architect: I don't know what this class could do. But I like the title as a class. I'm thinking a Wizard of some kind that can create constructs perhaps. Different types of walls (Thorn Wall, Ice Wall, Fire Wall etc.) perhaps, could be fitting. Uses a different type of technique of animancy, "Hold Person" stuff. A lockdown Wizard. Soul Gambler/Vampiric Wizard/Fampyr Mage A Vampiric Wizard or perhaps even a Fampyr Mage who feeds on other characters life force to cast magic. Both party members life force and enemy life force. But it's a double-edged sword, other peoples/foreign life force is unstable and not so cooperative and can backfire, but the most powerful magic/damage-wise. Using your own life force is harmful to yourself but most stable. A Wild Mage variant~ Likewise, the Gambler could be a Fampyr, one who has been given immortality by a mad animancer, and the only way to stay sane and living is to drain others of their life force through magic (instead of eating flesh, the Fampyr Mage drinks soul essence). If not maintained the Fampyr Mage eventually becomes a Dargul, and could potentially even become a boney skeletons. However, those who are very strong in their Souls (I almost wrote "strong in the Force" lol) retain their mind in spirit-form, and becomes what people call a "Lich". A strong Fampyr Mage = Does not lose their sanity/memory/mind by becoming a skeleton, instead they become an immortal being. The drawback is that if a Fampyr Mage becomes a Lich and they are defeated, their Souls then become trapped in the place they died, and shakes in limbo in a constant nightmare of pulsating between the living universe and the dead universe which is why it is most important to kill a Lich in a place that is easily buried, for if a lingering Lich Soul is engaged by a witless wanderer, there is a high probability he will become possessed. A great signifier that a dead Lich is close by is that the environment becomes much colder and trees and plants are rotten and dead. There is a story of one Lich who died in a once beautiful forest, but after a band of adventurers had slain the evil being, the entire forest became corrupted and blighted by massive evil of all of the Lich's Souls that he/she had consumed under its 1000 year lifespan. Gunslinger/Gun Mage Albeit the guns in Eora does not reload fast, there are those who have found solutions. A Gunslinger has practiced this new type of weapons in the world day and night to either become a historical figure (like "Billy the Kid" conceptually) by being the first Gun Master in the world, or by becoming a part of some Gun Squad in some army. To become a soldier. The solution the Gunslinger uses to become the fastest shot in time is using several guns. - A Gunslinger can carry up to 6 small guns, and reloads faster than any other class can. - A Gunslinger can also modify their guns and has different ammo-types as abilities. - A Gunslinger has a branching build path called "Gun Mage", which allows the Gunslinger to shoot elemental bullets that has different effects (Ice = Slow, Fire = Burning, Water = Poison, Earth = Stunning)

This is the steam chart for Divinity: Original Sin, it got a full release yesterday (June 30th) http://steamcharts.com/app/230230 It is also the best seller on Steam currently.

Premade stories is something we're getting in Pillars of Eternity (as it seems from reading the preview articles): The whole NPC Banter early game that defines who your character is sounds like premade stories that you puzzle together to shape something. It sounds really great and I believe it will be a great mechanic. We'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the NPC Background Banter uses some key words only that you can't Edit (due to them being important to the story of the character later on, or can be used in dialogue later on), but maybe there are other sections of the background that are open-ended and can be played around with. This was originally an idea I got for Wasteland 2, where this idea fits much better, but I thought that I could throw it in here as well because one idea isn't entirely exclusive to one specific game. "Hugs" are in Wasteland 2 for instance

If you have a quote for this, please share. I got a very different impression and would love to be wrong. I don't have a quote but my impression is that classes will be flexible within their class roles (though, not necessarily different from their class roles). A Wizard in robes versus a Wizard in heavy plate armor for instance. You could probably specialize your Wizard to become a swordsman even, but it's not going to be the best kind of swordsman. Both are Wizards, but they are just different kinds of Wizards with different specializations. A Dual-Wielding Fighter in Medium Armor might be a great single-target DPS killer, whilst a Sword & Shield Fighter is a crowd-control tank. Both are Fighters, but just different types of Fighters. This is mostly my impression of what Obsidian has said, but there's also a hint of wishful thinking.

Hiro & Bruce: There's a private message section where you two love birds can engage more intimately with one another. Or with me if you feel this post of mine offensive I like to immerse myself in video games but LARPing while playing video games may be going a little too far for me. I put on my robe and wizard hat.... jokes aside, "LARPing" is a bit of a stretch, a poor choice of words I suppose. What I meant was not "act your character out" live in reality whilst playing the game (that would be silly and possibly entertaining to watch... maybe...) what I meant was more like "act your character in your mind", virtually~ I guess.

I guess it is a couple of things: 1) LARPing: You like to roleplay? You like to immerse yourself? Then a character biography is a great tool and help to achieve this. 2) It's fun to write your own character, or use a character you've played with in another game and then insert them into this new world. 3) Gives a sense of purpose to the character. Why is this specific character in this world and who is he/she? 4) It gives the Player "control" over their own character (most modern games use "vanity" as a way to give the player control over their characters. Appearance, name, clothes etc.) Yes, I remember this too. The question is... is it something that will be refered to later or is it just for flavor? Having the option to write your own custom backstory is something good I believe. @Thread: Additional idea that popped up~ - Apart from having a descriptive box during character creation giving the player a very brief idea of the world they are going into, it would be cool to have a minimized world map that you can enlarge/minimize to also get your bearing of the world. For instance, you read the descriptive box and read about the lands to the east, then you can parallely look up the world map (close at hand) to also get an idea where your character comes from. 1) Descriptive text of the world = Aid to understand the world so you can place your character in there 2) World Map = Aid to understand where your character comes from Of course, at the same time this is nothing that would need to be implemented whatsoever because any player can just alt+tab out of the game or research the plot before playing the game. It's just not as accessible nor very incentive... Obsidian could, of course, maybe do something even simpler and give the Player an incentive to research the world, maybe by referring to a Manual Page in the Character Creation or something.

Hi! So I got Wasteland 2 from Steam and absolutely loving it. It feels slick! Regardless, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Character creation. Some backstory to the idea: Wasteland 2 has a very nice chargen, there's lots of pieces you can put together to create the character. I do have one issue with Wasteland 2's character creation, and that's the biography/history section where you can write your characters history yourself. Wasteland 2 has a very open ended beginning so your character can truly be anyone... but who is anyone in the Wasteland 2 world? When did the fallout begin? What are the factions? What are their roles? What's the timeline? I had no clue at first (I have now both looked it up and got some ideas from some replies on the same issue on the WL2 forum). Regardless, these are important things for the Player to be able to insert their character into the world authentically. The idea for Pillars of Eternity & Wasteland 2: Make it a bit easier, accessible, for the Player to write their backstory. Give some pointers or hints about the world in some descriptive tooltip-box of some kind during Character Creation. Hover over a "?" (Questionmark) and some text pops up. Maybe have a bullet-point list of some important things~ I don't want to write "My character is an X coming from Y" and then when I play the game/progression I don't want to encounter something pointing out my own created loopholes or flaws in the story saying "There hasn't been anyone coming from Y being an X" if you catch my drift. In my opinion and experience, I find it way more fun to play as a character that makes some sort of "sense" that they are in the world. I get more invested and immersed writing a backstory. The thing is, I don't think the majority of gamers will alt+tab out of the game and research the story/lore to be able to write a "proper" character or even write anything at all. I have created many characters in Wasteland 2, but only written what I think is a proper story for 1 character. I know Pillars of Eternity will have some sort of banter early-game that creates your characters backstory so maybe this idea isn't entirely actual for Eternity, but I wanted to throw the ball here as well as I think it's a valuable addition... just in case it works. It's an "Easily Implementable Idea" as well. I think it is something to consider... what do you think?

This discussion makes me want a non-magical animancer scholar class T-T a Loremaster~ a 100% out of combat class

Good eye & catch! :D

Can some items "grow" with time? Legendary items? Weapons become "famous" and can add to minor NPC reactivity? Perhaps not as extensive as Fable 3 but... but in its most simplistic form, a concept, leaning in that general direction~

But a "puzzle" in this form? :D A door you might find, if you look close enough? For instance, instead of going straight into the open big entrance, one goes up to the broken bridge and the scripted interaction above pops up? Could work?

This is probably an area where Vithracks like to hang out did the GamersGlobal say "Steam Early Access" or only "Early Access"? Because on the pledge tiers here it says "Backer Beta before the general public" or something along those lines. Then again, I think Steam Early Access is something kind of new since the Kickstarter began.

I had forgotten about this guy, itmeJP. He does D&D. I also found this guy, ZiggyD Gaming~ Path of Exile & Diablo 3 it seems. He does have an abandoned Baldur's Gate LP which doesn't look too good. I don't know, you could throw Obsidian/Paradox (the one in charge of the marketing) a bone about these guys maybe TrueNeutral? AngryJoe+TotalBiscuit though, they do in-depth coverage, that's the best stuff in my opinion... Lets Plays are a bit... ugh... but I can't deny that they generate exposure. EDIT: And the Yogscast

I can't follow your post Darji. Are you saying previews are going to fade away? @TrueNeutral: I don't know anyone either.. well, AngryJoe got in on an interview and I think he's branching more and more onto the PC, or maybe that was the PS4? JesseCox and wowcrendor (I know Jesse does Lets Plays of rpgs) were at E3 but I don't know if they were at Obsidians backroom showing... dodger and Felicia Day was at E3 as well.. last time TotalBiscuit did an RPG was a Kingdoms of Amalur promotion and he said in that one that "I don't have time to do RPGs anymore, I want to, but I simply don't have the time"... there was probably more people there too that's outside my radar~ I don't think there's anyone who covers RPGs primarily as their YouTube trade. Northernlion got the roguelikes, AngryJoe got Xbox, TotalBiscuit does a lot of indies (but also some AAA titles), Jesse plays a lot of different games, mostly(only?) Lets Play stuff~ gets covered over time. Pillars of Eternity could be a great fit for JesseCox because he does the whole episodic thing... good long-term exposure but maybe not the best coverage with Lets Play+Commentary. RPGs are hard to cover in a first-impression video I think. The Polaris Network is like, the first big YouTube Gaming News Network... I guess? They try to do the press thing at least. They might have someone maybe.

You should read it again and you should read it a bit more closer and not fall for "headline" bait. I recommend everyone to read it ^^ and yes, YouTube is killing traditional gaming press. It's not killing written journalism, but the "traditional" way of doing it is going to go out the window eventually. *dramatic voice* "Life as we know it will never be the same!!!"~ jokes aside, traditional press/hype/marketing is and has been changing. I have more to say but it's going to become a giant "TL;DR" post so nevermind. The Gamasutra article is already "TL;DR" for many people, so I don't want to drain your reading energy on my post @Obsidian: You need to contact big YouTubers 2-4 weeks before your release date, give them the review code so that they get first-hand "Release Day" preview/review/first-impression videos. This will maximize exposure, and maximize interest for the YouTubers. EDIT: Relevant to both the article and YouTubers: https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/479283553403162624

Did you read this article Darji? EDIT: It's a great article don't get me wrong. I'm just wondering.

@fetfreak: I imagine the different parts of modding, in terms of difficulty, looks something like this: Easy: - NPC's (Clone an already existant NPC and mess around with all the values, name, stats, equipment etc. etc.) statwise only - Items (Weapons, trinkets, equipment etc. etc.) statwise only - Quests - Dialogue Medium: - Triggers (I could put this in "Easy" as it is something I know how to use and I know the function of them, I just always have trouble with it) - Scripts Hard: - Textures Harder: - Models Hardest: - Areas Of course, someone who is great at modeling might find it really easy to model stuff, and thinks scripting or even narrative stuff like coming up with a good quest is hard.

I've started writing a questline idea a bit, but if anyone's interested I'd like to bounce it a bit Currently I'm calling the quest "hungry children" and... it's kind of self-explanatory in a world with how the undead are handled in Pillars of Eternity it's a working title. The quest begins when you're walking in the city, daytime, in some area with lots of people. A child is running and screaming for help and his/her father is chasing after him with a cleaver. "What do you choose to do?" Now, I'm thinking of having this be either: A) A domestic fight, the father has treated his child poorly in some way (child abuse) and the child has resisted and bit the father B) The child has been treated by a mad animancer, used as a subject to perfect his own techniques of immortality, the child bit the father in hunger. Regardless of what's decided on, the child disappears in the commotion. The father is apprehended and then you can go to prison to interrogate him and/or talk to the city guard to uncover that something is going on the city... people are missing/disappearing. There is a bit of a moral dilemma here that I want to invoke in the Player. Because the Player might know about the cannibalistic nature of fampyrs/darguls, and might instantly think "This kid is a monster! Let's cut him down!" or "I must protect this child!" only to later be faced with "This child is a monster! Damn!". But then again.. what if this is simply a crazed tyrannic father? Decisions, decisions. You'll be able to talk to the child later down the quest and either find out that the child is in fact a monster by unfortunate circumstance, or that one of the child's friends (who happen to be...? ) had taught the child to "bite" the father if he was abusing. Moving on, you'll eventually uncover more and more, and find the culprit* through a series of investigations. One scene I can think of is, you're entering a dark "room" and you see a child facing a wall. When you reach the child and talk to him/her you'll start a dialogue that should invoke a creepy feeling in the Player. As the dialogue continues you'll see one child at a time appear along the edges of the fog of war (surrounding the player party more and more). The quest is completed when the monsters have been dealt with. * Unless the culprit has been eaten himself by his own creation's hunger. What do you think? Suggestions? Feedback?

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/8607/page/2

edit: bah! why do I spend energy on this? This will suffice:

Bungie really did kind of set a new standard there didn't they Chilloutman? @nipsen: These are all the google results from page 1 I got from writing "Best PC RPG of all time" in google.se (my region). It's kind of inconsistent. No "Search Tools" used, I don't know dates of this stuff (saw one saying "1 year ago" or something like that). I'll counter your question with: Why do we like old stuff? Links lead to the "top stuff". 1. IGN not PC specific 2. Metacritic (By Metascore) Metacritic (By User Score) 3. N4G which leads to Gameranx 4. Videogamer Does not look like they care much for the Infinity games whatsoever: this 5. whatculture It's "The last 10 years", WoW was in there as well as Final Fantasy XII. So not purely PC either. 6. PCGamesN list in no particular order 7. ComplexGaming "Best 50 PC Games of all time" not specifically RPGs. 8. Giantbomb discussion thread 9. Giantbomb user "best of list" a console RPG fan 10. PCGamer best of PC EDIT: It's a great question, "what is the appeal all about?". For myself it's about the culture, the history of it, big impacts in the video game industry and so on. It's also from reading and hearing how many companies started (Blizzard for instance) and how it was in the beginning. Some of the best games in history aren't graphical wonders, and they rely purely on narrative wonder. The Harry Potter books are great in my opinion, the movies are good. The games are horrible. Why? The games aren't genuine nor are they authentic. I checked the Spoony Experiment and his Ultima 9 review (which goes through all Ultima games). Why is Ultima 9 primarily "bad"? Because it's not authentic or genuine to the rest of the series. I find older games more genuine and authentic to themselves*, and you can feel and notice that they are works of passion. Whilst in a big studio with 1000's of employees I think that passion of the top designers dissipates into some sort of void. Or big studios become so dependant on stockholders that they become more like a news company I don't know... stockholders are demanding and want more winnings each year so you got to make more money than you did the last year or they're going to leave you. *Not all of them. And there are certainly new games that are well developed and genuine and authentic to themselves as well. I'm just painting a broad picture and trying to figure out my own answer to "what is the appeal all about?"