ilintar

Bump - is there any chance for this to get fixed? I'm having the same issue. I did the ritual, but I did it via talking to the NPC and not clicking the pillar, I got the reward crystal but the quest does not complete.

Betrayal at Krondor

The "player skill based" approach basically either means FPP / RTS style micromanagement (combat) or minigames (non-combat). Up to date, I have only seen one cRPG handle non-combat minigames correctly and that's Betrayal at Krondor (okay, on second thought, Pazaak in KoTOR also makes the list). The reason for that is that minigames might be fun and innovative the first three times you play them, but then usually become a tedious and repetitive chore. Plus, a focus on minigames in a cRPG game makes many skills that are supposed to be important for your character irrelevant, since you can usually beat the minigames anyway (hacking in Deus Ex: HR being a prime example). The BaK approach of word-locked chests was fun simply because each puzzle was different, so it presented a challenge (and the really nice touch was that the puzzles containing especially valuable items actually referenced in-game lore, so you were rewarded for exploring the game world). Therefore, I think it would be better to use character skill for most checks and use player skill only for things that aren't tied to character skills anyway. As for combat, implementing sufficiently many tactical options (BaK again comes to mind with its use of positoning, LOS blocking and movement-related spells) makes combat enough player-skill based without adding unneccessary "action-rpg" elements to a classical RPG title (I'll play StarCraft if I want to practice kiting my units while casting abilities around).