Varana

Just got this load screen hint - is this one new? Nice.

Because the game is meant to be played with a party? Yes, you can solo - if you want to, and if you do, better know exactly what you're doing and play accordingly. By carefully choosing your race, class and so on, for instance. In terms of "roleplaying", the game assumes that there's a group of people doing that stuff, and not only one. Soloing is for the fun of mastering the game mechanics enough that you can skip the party. It's not the assumed style of play.

Well, there are two possibilities for Obsidian: - Weather the outrage over the joke. - Weather the outrage over removal of the joke. I'm kind of sad about which one they chose. And I still don't understand how this is even about transgender people and not, like, dragons. Both appear in the original text in equal numbers.

Maybe it's me, but a solo tactic that's reliant on one specific item costing a specific amount of gold might be, I don't know, not really a very good idea?

Of course I can summarise PoE's exposition in a very bland and detached way, and BG's plot setup as extremely gripping and personal. Or I could do it the other way around. But why should I?

Well, the "was not vetted" stuff is the usual PR bollocks (as every PR speak is); it would've required a very special mindset to understand the content in the way that it was understood, and while there may be some twisted minds working at Obsidian , they're usually not twisted in that way. So what.

Shows that Eothasians are boorish. I stumble over errors like these, too, but sadly, I'm not particularly upset about them; they've become too frequent, I fear. "Huh? Writer obviously didn't know what he was doing; let's move on." Except when it's intentional, but this is even rarer. Edit: Pallegina's Vailish is a recognisably different language. In this case, it's a set of very specific endings in a completely English poem. I doubt that that's on the same level. But the explanation with the old-fashioned Eothasians is nice (and probably true).

For Aumaua, Pacific islands including Maori names are a good start - take some actual islands as inspiration, or borrow names of people directly.

They are. One of my most lasting impressions in BG2 was opening a certain door in the bridge district and stumbling into one of the elemental liches' lair, kind of right after the start. It was basically a spectacular light show of high level spells killing the entire party in seconds - after which I decided to come back later. Getting clobbered by something too hard for your current level and returning after a few levels or with some back-up is one of the basic concepts of such a game, I thought. There's this notion of a "gateway battle": a fight vaguely representative of what to expect in the area behind it, to tell the player what to expect and when to tackle this area. In this case, a bear, several Xaurips and a team of bandits demonstrate quite nicely that it may be a good idea to stick to the road early on and plan your advances into the wilderness carefully. The guy says that his companion got killed by the bear. You can even take a look and confirm that without fighting if you sneak into the lair. I don't know where I should get the idea that my character would fare better, except from some metagame-y deliberation that this is a quest; the guy didn't do it himself because he's not the hero; it's there to be solved by the PC; therefore, let's do it.

On the other hand, nowhere in this thread did anyone talk about sanitising, censoring or anything like this. The OP found the language used to describe item properties confusing and lacking in information, and that's what it's about. And I would agree. (The "Of Will" is not their only example.) I would also agree, in part, with the argument that combat needs a bit more time. I never used about half of Durance's spells, and some of those I did use were only because the situation was not critical and I felt like trying them out; the reason being that you obviously start with those that are really useful, and afterwards, he's usually employed healing people, or the fight is over. In part, though, because I wouldn't like longer fights all around. It might be good idea to prolong some boss and middle-tier battles, but generally, it's good that the fight against your random ooze is over quite quickly.

PoE doesn't quite reach the level of BG2, in my opinion. But that's nothing to worry about. BTW, BG2 didn't have many free areas to explore. Every map was tied to a story much more than quite a few PoE nature maps like Black Meadows, Magran's Fork and the like. There you have BG1-like maps that pretty much only exist for you to uncover that black fog of non-exploredness, clean them out and later on have some place to put minor side quests in. PoE doesn't have them as much as BG1 (which is a good thing), but a bit more than BG2 - which was exactly what they said during development. Regarding companions, I don't think it's necessarily the writing. BG1 companions had very little dialogue at all. And after PS:T, BG2, and DA:Origins, I don't think that you can ever go back to BG1 companion dialogue and call that satisfactory for an IE-style game. I do think, however, that there's a lot of nostalgia involved. BG1's influence, esp. on people who write on PoE boards, probably can't be overstated, and many have played it multiple times. We do remember (most of) its companions (Eldoth, anyone?), but not for their stellar writing, but because they've been in a game that we've been playing to death for almost two decades. Edit: IWD - no. Both IWDs were good games - but mostly for atmosphere and tactical combat, which were great. But to be anything like IWD, PoE has way too much dialogue and description, way too much focus on story and world-building, and much too memorable companions.

There is no enchant skill. The levels listed as prerequisite are character levels. You can always replace and upgrade enchantments. For an item, there are several categories of enchantment, like "Quality 0/1", "Attribute 0/1" or what it's called (varies between weapons, armour, and other stuff). The "0/1" tells you how many enchantments in that category you already have (0) out of how many (1). I don't know whether there are items with more than 1 max enchantment slot per category. In that category, you can always switch between enchantments, provided you have all necessary materials and levels. You can enchant a plain sword to have +1 accuracy (for example). If you choose +1 damage, the accuracy enchantment gets swapped for the damage one. The quality enchantments (fine, superior...) usually combine several individual enchantments. So basically, different categories stack; within one category, you can swap one enchantment for the other and then back again, freely. This works on top of pre-made enchantments which can't be altered, learned or custom-created. Aloth's armour, for instance, has "Overseeing" as a pre-made enchantment. You can't put Overseeing on any equipment yourself, but you can enchant Aloth's armour with the usual armour enchantments of Fine, additonal DR, protection against certain damage types, etc.

brain Thing you switch on before saying something, to gauge how it will be understood and received, and whether what you're about to say needs to be said. --- Nothing personal, but this is the internet. There's enough people who at least want to give the impression that they're meaning what they're saying.

As TheisEjsing said, the way you present your argument matters. You stated several things as fact, esp. that "PoE is worse than BG", where many people have very legitimate reasons to disagree with. By "it is, period", instead of "I think it is", you don't leave any room for people thinking otherwise. Add to that that the internet generally is a nasty place, and you get your response. P.S. I got to Defiance Bay on hour 16. I'm currently at 35, and I haven't done any main quest stuff in DB. I still have the temple in Gilded Vale open, I'm currently mopping up what's left in Dyrford, and I'm only 3 levels into the Endless Paths. No sidequests???

A large part of PoE's charm to many people was the "just like the old days" vibe of following in the IE games' footsteps. Now, if you want to go full retro you'll have to include physical boxes with large cover art, cloth maps, at least three separate booklets, and possibly all the other stuff that nowadays comes with a "Collector's Edition" or similar special versions.

The tombstones are as unobtrusive as possible. Not only do you have to actively click them, they're quite rare and don't ruin anything even while tabbing. The backer NPCs... Way fewer godlikes would have been nice, and some guidance in the names. Running into Sturm Brightblade (that one's real) or Mike "the Squirrelslayer" Raskolnikov (invented but representative name :D) does feel strange a lot. OTOH, if that's the price for getting the game at all, then I can certainly live with that.

It may be the only weakness, but it's a major one. Combat pathfinding is horrible in general, and micromanaging the wizard's positioning on top of it becomes a major PITA. I sometimes go into fights considering whether I need to use certain wizard spells, or can win without them. And after the Fan of Flames experience, I usually refrain from taking cone spells altogether. Not that it would be too hard, it's just tedious to move the wizard around. Apart from the fact that just spamming three other spells in the same time often does the job, as well. Other than that, wizards are decent.

Die Vampire heißen im Englischen "fampyr". Fragt mich warum. Warum sollte man "kith" (humanoide Rasse) mit irgendwas übersetzen? Das ist im Englischen genauso fremd wie im Deutschen. Im Optionsmenü (Grafik): "Gibs; gib effects may be used when enemies are killed" - da hatte der Übersetzer ganz offensichtlich keinerlei Kontext und hat's mit "Führungen" übersetzt; gemeint ist, daß Feinde zerplatzen (was bei BG die Blut-Option war, die's in der deutschen Version nicht gab). Deutsche Namen für englische Orte: Nicht WoW, Tolkien. Und sinnvollerweise: Es ist Fantasy. Englisch steht ja nur für "Muttersprache des Spielers" - und die ist für deutsche Spieler nun mal Deutsch. Die Dyrwooder reden modernes Aedyrisch oder sowas, aber nicht Englisch. "Defiance Bay" ist also schon "Übersetzung".

Considering the fact that, in all the gods' names, THE GAME HAS BEEN RELEASED!, the celebratory mood in this thread seems oddly subdued. PAAARTYYYY!!! :dancing:

Even for Skyrim, where the Nexus is probably the most comprehensive mod hosting site, there are lots of mods only available at the Workshop. And there are other sites - for several reasons. Steam Workshop exclusivity would only work with a Steam exclusive game - because then, the restriction to the Workshop can be coded into the game. As soon as mods can be installed in other ways than the Workshop, mods will appear outside of it. And even if some developer would be d**kish enough to enforce using the Workshop, modders will find a way around. Tampering with the game is what they do. Using the Workshop exclusively would also be bad idea in general. While the Workshop itself is nice, at it makes modding accessible and provides exposure and longevity to the game, its one-click install philosophy severely restricts what mods can be uploaded there. Even for that to work, it needs dedicated support from the developer who has to code a mod organiser into their game. And mostly, that has lower priority than the actual game - rightly so. Even for Skyrim, the built-in mod manager is... somewhat deficient and quickly hits its limits when you go beyond a few basic mods. Third-party programs are often needed anyway, which the Workshop can't do.

Using the console is modding on-the-fly. Checking variables, scripts, testing areas and encounters and so on is much more important than AddGold(###) (and even that has its use). Thank you for keeping these in.

Yep, the piracy issue doesn't have anything to do with either option. As there are several posts claiming this, the wording of the announcement probably was a bit unclear, though I can't really tell where. OT: I really like Sanderson, but yeah... this multi-volume quintillionology thing constantly bugs me about Fantasy series. If you can't tell your story in three to five volumes, cut it down. Exceptions excluded, but they're rare. (ASoIaF isn't one of them.) There are really good books in one volume, something almost unheard of in the Fantasy genre.

But Bioware-style romances probably are thought to be.

D:OS is a strange choice in this regard - because this and PoE present themselves very similarly. D:OS works in 3D internally, as well, but the effect on screen often is very similar to the Infinity look. PoE basically tries to hide that it uses rendered graphics as source material, while D:OS tries its best to tell the player that it's not a 2D background, but they come from very similar starting points. Whether you prefer the painted look of PoE or the rendered look of D:OS, is a question of taste, and PoE was expressly created to cater to people in favour of the former.

"Realism" and "suspension of disbelief" also have an added layer in video games, compared to literary or movie fiction. In literary works, the question "does money have weight" never even crosses anyone's mind. It's not a question that is relevant to the genre, and even if it gets mentioned (because dragon treasure or crates full of Unobtainium), it can safely assume that it just works as everyone expects it to - "like in the real world". In video games, you have game mechanics and conventions on top of that. Often these steer away from pure world simulation but to which extent, may be different. There is a very popular mod for Skyrim introducing frost survival aspects into the game (run around insufficiently protected, and you'll freeze to death). While it certainly isn't everybody's cup of tea, it generally fits into the mood and gameplay of that game very well. Now a similar mod for the Icewind Dales would be much more strange and, I believe, much less popular. These games simply don't work on that level of simulation. They use different conventions about how to deviate from reality in the name of gameplay - and that's a good thing. So clamouring for "realism" often takes the conventions and compromises of one kind of game and applies them to others where they may not be applicable. "Gold weight" can be a thing to simulate - if you're having a very realistic inventory system in the first place, and managing that is part of the gameplay. If you don't, it's a level of simulation that doesn't fit. Or, in other words: "Realism is contextual." :D