Varana

The kind of multiplayer that the IE games had (which wasn't exactly "multiplayer" as used today; we would probably call it "coop mode") would be nice to have in a PoE game. But "nice to have" rarely comes free, and that's the problem. They could tack on a coop mode as the IE games did, with heavy issues: Apart from very fickle connection issues, dialogue in BG1 was a pain in the *** (anyone initiating dialogue interrupted everything else for everyone); in BG2, it got somewhat better (only story-critical dialogue did that, which created a whole new set of problems). It was somewhat better in IWD, because they were mostly about killing stuff and not much talking. The IE series could get away with it but if you deliver something like that today, internet multiplayer being almost ubiquitous, you get shredded to pieces. Relatively cost-effective, but also relatively sh**ty. Do the same, but do it well: Takes a lot of resources, and probably doesn't bring in enough additional players to justify the costs. To get people to buy the game for the multiplayer, they'd have to go fully in like Divinity: Original Sin, which has the coop mode built deep into all of the game's systems. That changes the nature of a game (I'm deeply sorry ), and I'm not sure that Obsidian and/or its customers want that.

No, it isn't.

Completely out of the blue, my disks arrived yesterday. If Paradox does something like that ever again, they seriously need to take a hard look at their process.

autotroll: A user who started a reasonably serious discussion and is derailing his own thread later on.

Or "what you really need to do is show an alternative way of dealing with the issue".

Patches are downloaded by Steam automatically once they're available. As for the expansion, you'll have to check whether it's out yet. There's a News section for each of your Steam games in your library, it'll appear in the DLC store for PoE, someone will drop a line about it somewhere on the internet...

How would Obsidian be in any position to be sued by someone for copyright infringements of a third party? Especially as this board wouldn't even host those theoretically infringing mods? Hosting sites that are acting responsibly usually have some procedure for reporting and removing infringement in place. That doesn't, of course, apply to scattered personal uploads on Dropbox or Mega. Providing mod authors and users with a place to discuss modding and to build some kind of community, results in choosing more responsible hosting methods and a certain amount of self-policing. And a place on the official boards is a useful place to have such a community. People who invest time, energy, and sometimes money into modding a game are fans of that game and (mostly ) its creators. They have a vested interest in not damaging either of them. Still assuming that that would even be a problem for Obsidian by creating a subforum, which I fail to see.

Anyone with me in requesting a Luckmann-Gromnir subforum? (Hopefully Cantousent won't paint things black there, as well.)

PoE is a party game. You can solo it, but tailoring the balance to it seems unnecessary to me. "Going solo with some classes in POTD, Ironman, Expert mode is hard" sounds... well, about right to me. Plus everyone and their dog seems to complain that PoE were too easy.

Sorry, but most of this is way exaggerated. If you have a somewhat central modding site (or a few of them, e.g. a forum here, and the Nexus for files), the community is usually quite good at policing itself. Even if there is a forum dedicated to mods, it won't suddenly explode in users, discussion, or content. Most of the issues mentioned above come with a large user base, and even in Bethesda's modding community, most of the real drama was a result of Skyrim having that ridiculously huge number of users. Neither BG modding, nor TES modding in its infancy (like Morrowind when it started) were cesspools infested with intrigue, drama, and monetary greed, you know. And let's be honest - compared to PoE, those communities had large numbers of participants. PoE is really unfriendly to modding, even more so than the IE games. Its modding scene will never be big, even if some miracle like WeiDU for the IE games were to happen. Discussions often will be over after two posts, like user A asking "can it be done?" and user B answering "in the foreseeable future, nope", EOD. Campaigns and maps? Not gonna happen, any way soon. Maybe if some genius finds a way to import user-made Unity 5 stuff back into PoE's version. As with all modding, they basically depend on someone with a programming background developing tools first.

Edit: to Because it isn't? No idea, I didn't follow that particular discussion (or almost any other of the beta discussions). That complaint triggering a wave of harassment (going by what you said) doesn't really affect the historical argument, though.

I have absolutely zero interest in debating KC:D's development, social media of any kind, and what Vávra said or did not say. I wrote about medieval history. Err... no to the last sentence. After you chose that setting, for whatever reasons (and if someone believes the reason was in order to not have black people, they should go F themselves), you can argue with "historical accuracy". The argument was not "we couldn't find a setting with black people". And I have serious problems with the notion that choosing a setting which makes it very unlikely or impossible to feature X is in some way a negative or inferior thing.

Art historians seem to disagree. Although, to be fair, that's from a different period than the one the game is set in, I think? Yes, although it's about an earlier period of time - but also about a slightly different region. The point, though, is that the article basically is about a very small group of black people at the court of a specific imperial dynasty (two emperors, to be more precise), and the reason that they had those people is their acquisition of Southern Italy and Sicily in the 1190s. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is set in Bohemia in 1403 (according to the website, I don't really follow that game). The Hohenstaufen emperors (the topic of the article) who were also kings of Sicily mostly lived in Italy, and if they came north of the Alps (which was not very often), they usually visited the Rhine area. In the 1250s, the dynasty was toppled, and the Holy Roman emperors lost control over Sicily. This means that the article isn't of much use for deciding that issue, and in the few conclusions where it might provide hints, it tends to support KC:D's stance. (Disclaimer: I don't have access to the complete article, I can only see preview and summary.) Providing examples of black people in art from the period as the blog post does, isn't really helpful, either. People always knew that there were black people in Africa (and neighbouring regions), and of course they could depict the queen of Sheba as a black woman. That doesn't mean that they had actually met one in their home region. I'm not sure if they include cities like Prague in KC:D. That they don't have black persons in rural Bohemia at that time is historically quite sound, though.

Which poll?

I don't know why it doesn't occur to any of those advocating for Greece to leave the Eurozone that in the past few days, there has been a (not helpful at all) paper by Schäuble exploring the possibility of a "Grexit", and the Greek government was strictly against that. And after the referendum, they didn't use that to negotiate leaving the Euro at all but fired their divisive finance minister and came back with new proposals. That looks awfully like increasingly desperate attempts to stay in the Euro. And it's also quite telling that basically everyone at the negotiations tries to find ways to keep Greece while getting their country back on track so that the problem doesn't come back in five years. You might disagree whether the measures would bring that change about, but that's their goal. Those arguing for a Grexit are armchair economists and American ones (or no economists at all) who sit at the sidelines and watch. European governments want to keep Greece in (including the Greek one), the European peoples want to keep Greece in (including the Greek one). If Greece leaves the Euro, their state probably defaults, people try to move money out of the country by all means available, the economy collapses, and all that for the distant hope that it might get better after a while (and even Greeks don't trust their state that much). That may not be a guaranteed outcome but it is probable enough that a "Grexit" comes down to a huge gamble with the lives and fortunes of millions of people which can easily go completely wrong. I don't think that gambling with your country is responsible politics. The issue is not so much Greek debt in itself. Most Greek debts are held by the IMF and European institutions - if it's nullified, those who pay are European taxpayers. Is that democracy? Countries like Germany could probably get over it relatively unscathed, but good luck explaining that to people in Slovakia (with less GDP/capita than Greece even now), Spain or Portugal (who are struggling themselves), or the Baltic states (who went through drastic austerity measures already). You might even be able to sell that - if the result would be that the Greek crisis would be over. But it wouldn't be. Greece runs a deficit all by itself even without any debt. And that's the problem. And while it may be debatable what would change that, at this point in time, basically no one trusts any Greek government to even implement the reforms everyone agrees on. Cutting military spending, tax reform, targeting tax evasion, cutting privileges e.g. of the Orthodox Church, reform of the bloated pensions system and civil sector - nothing has happened, neither under PASOK, nor ND, and not even Syriza. Negotiations don't break down because of which reforms exactly should be implemented. They break down because no one believes that Greece would implement any reforms at all. Their policy (not only Syriza's) over the past years has largely been trying to continue as they did with the kind of state that got them into the mess in the first place while suffering none of the consequences of that mismanagement. Sadly, you can't have the cake and eat it, too.

But there's no necessity to make them all human. Why they're in the game, I think: First, it's tradition. Different races including Elves and Dwarves are a staple of classical fantasy. People would complain if there weren't several races, regardless of how small their differences are. And second, it provides opportunities for some diversity in abilities. If they're more based on physical attributes (like Moon Godlike's healing powers), it's easier to explain them by being racial instead of cultural. The developers get more freedom with abilities that way.

But why would that race be different in behaviour and culture? Why would that race even have one culture (or a specific set of them), instead of intermingling with others? That may work if races have lived apart from one another for a long time, or if that racial ability would make them so markedly different that they wouldn't fit into another dominant culture (like aquatic and land-based races). For most racial abilities found in Fantasy, such a separation wouldn't be necessary. Members of a particular race might be dominant in certain positions or professions - within a larger multiracial culture. Of course, we can find reasons why certain races live isolated and all belong to the same culture(s) or have the same mind set or characteristics. Simply "they're a different race and can see in the dark" isn't a sufficient reason.

Edit: @NightRevan. I shouldn't be reading TVTropes while posting. Yes, that would have been another way to go. But for that, I think, the classical fantasy races aren't strange enough. Elves are mostly just long-lived humans with pointy ears and a penchant for archery (plus they're better, if you're Tolkien). There's not enough in this to require a different culture than humans. So basically, you can have Elves-as-we-know-them, and little justification for them behaving intrinsically different. Or you can create an Elven hive-mind society with shapeshifting abilities and therefore no concept of individuality - redefining the meaning of "Elves". (Sorry for the exaggeration.) Fantasy doesn't tend to do that a lot (it's often only one specific race, and often the evil enemy of all things good and free, that get this treatment). It's much more common in Science Fiction, although I'd love to see it more in Fantasy. Traditionally, the other races just expand on human appearance. In humans, you have skin shades from white-rosé to almost-black on a basically brownish scale, and you have hair colours in a very similar spectrum (plus bright blue and neon pink, if you're Japanese). Fantasy races add some variation in ear shape, beard fashion, body size, teeth, and possibly colouration. What PoE does is to acknowledge that and work with it - there are some differences, but they're not larger than could be expected with humans. Taking the other road and introducing very distinct and culture-defining racial traits, would be too much of an experiment, I suspect. This is, after all, a main-stream fantasy RPG that was specifically marketed as a revival of a series of games in the most traditional setting ever. For that, not following the classic treatment of races probably already counts as innovation, just in a different direction.

And I think that it's an interesting take on the subject that the focus is on cultures and not races. That for Kana, hailing from Rauatai is much more important than being Aumaua, is exactly the point. That strict identity of race and culture is a Fantasy trope that needs to be challenged more often. Culture is not inherent to race. There is absolutely nothing in Dyrwoodan culture that would exclude Dwarves, Elves, Orlans or Aumaua from living there. And yes, there is nothing in Sagani's culture, as far as we can see, that would apply only to Dwarves. And if there are differences between the races, cultures have developed traditions to deal with them, like the Aedyran marriage customs for Elven and Human nobility. That's not a flaw, that's a conscious decision, and a good one. I hope it stays that way. In respect to races, Fantasy too often relies on the "Planet of Hats" trope. "Dwarves are stubborn and drink beer" - maybe, if they're raised like that. If they're raised as horsemen with an ardent love for flowers, then they will behave like that. Still, having different races brings an additional layer into the world. They aren't as important as in many other instances, but that's not necessary. Fantasy gives us the possibility to add more depth by having more physical diversity than in an all-human world, and why not use that, without making it the main thing around which everything revolves? Where the game has serious shortcomings is with the Godlike. But even there - not because of any intrinsic trait of that "race" but because they tell us things about the cultural role of Godlikes, and then don't deliver.

For the secret rooms, you need the sabre "Resolution" which is dropped by some enemy on level 4. For the main staircase, you need to open it from below first. Go to the main staircase on level 3 and go upwards to level 1.

And while I love Wizardry 7 very much, the part I hated were the hours (for one party!) of sitting in front of the char generation screen and hitting the reroll button. Really, we don't need torches, ancient god-kings, oxcarts, and randomly rolled characters any more. We have electric light, democracy, tractors, and point-buy systems in the 21st century. That's for PCs. As for random variation in NPCs, that's not that big a deal. Games like Skyrim do this, and I'm sure many others - a slight variation of enemy stats (and/or looks), enemy group composition, or levels.

And that is a good thing. Well, it would be better if it was governed by character stats. I couldn't care less about fighting games. But in RPGs, I hate it when my ability to fast-click the mouse or smash at the keyboard becomes the most important thing. His waxing lyrical about positioning, blocking, special moves, dodging and all this crap is what ruins an RPG for me. AAA or not. [/OT] Also, how is the video relevant to the topic?

10 hours is strictly DLC territory. 50 hours +, now that's an expansion I can live with. 50+ hours is a game, not an expansion. I took 70 hours for my first run. Seriously, though, "hours" is a ridiculous measurement of game content.

For a tool set, you have to build your game from the ground up with that in mind. I do a little bit of on-off Elder Scrolls modding (Morrowind, Skyrim), and Bethesda actually does this: They provide an editor, they create all of their graphics assets, their games systems, their scripts, with the goal that you can easily snap stuff together, paint over the edges with some clutter and dirt, and create your own level. It's (fortunately) not online, so you have to create single player stories, but it's very enlightening to see what such an approach takes (and how complex it is to create a decent mod). NWN got a lot of flak for its rectangular graphics which were the result of just the same: building your game so that a user can snap blocks together and get a level. That has to be done right from the start. And not just level design - scripts and dialogue and "DM intervention" and editor and UI and networking capabilities and and and. You cannot just graft these things onto an existing game.

If you make the stronghold into only a money sink, though, people will just skip it. You have to offer something in exchange. If it's just bragging rights, people will not use it as a money sink. They will wait until they accumulated enough money elsewhere (as the stronghold is nowhere near the best source of income in the game) and just build it with the excess money. We see this already in its current state: There are a few select buildings that actually give you a tangible bonus - garden, a few security buildings, Brighthollow for parking NPCs, maybe the Curio shop. Everything else can safely be put off until you have 100k in the bank. That's not a money sink, that's meaningless. You don't get anything for having your 100k at the end of the game instead of just 50k, so you can safely blow them on random stoney things and even get a shiny Steam achievement if you're into that sort of thing. You need to have an incentive - bonuses that really mean something in the game - so that the player buys this stuff at a time when it's still a sacrifice. You have to find the balance, and a lot of people would actually invest in just fancy stuff (esp. because the game is not that hard to begin with, and you can safely postpone or skip buying the best gear), but you have to give the player a legitimate reason to sink money into it if you want to make it a money sink. --- No, the current situation in Europe does not lead into inevitable war. In fact, if we were in the 19th century now, there would have been serious talks about invading Greece a few years ago. Now, it didn't even cross anyone's mind that that would have been seen as an option in such a situation. That sentence about Russia is all sorts of wrong, but there's enough of that out there in the Way Off-topic section.