Hormalakh

I don't necessarily think that either mechanic for crafting is the best method. There was a thread a while back about other possible mechanics, but I don't think it went anywhere at the end. In either case, I didn't completely like BG2's mechanic because it was a little unwieldy, having to wait for the dwarf (can't remember his name right now...Cromwell?) to go through your stuff one by one and clicking next next next. I haven't played NWN2 and so I can't make a judgement about that. I have played Arcanum and I liked the approach that they were starting to take.

I was under the impression that it's a burly Auamaua, not a fat little Orlan? Can someone clear this up? Semi is different than demi. Semi can mean "half of" whereas demi means .... "half of." :D Except demi usually is speaking about a quality and semi can be used to describe a physical attribute. Demihuman would mean half-human in quality. Semihuman could mean midget. :D The Aumaua/Orlan thread was where a lot of us tried to come up with good resource images for the artists to use as guides/inspiration for their characterizations of these two races. Just thought I'd let you guys know, in case you were wondering what the rest of the forum members had already written about.

I'm not a big advocate of making everything optional: some mechanics should not be optional and also worked so that players find it fun. I don't think that this issue is a matter of gamers having wildly divergent opinions. It's a matter of not having found the better solution where all gamers can agree.

I think the dual-bar system isn't so complicated as to make gaming unfun. I do appreciate the new approach to previously broken systems - and I do think the health bar/dialogue systems are broken (everyone has their own opinion) - and I find that it will definitely make players play differently. The thing that I appreciate the most is that Mr. Sawyer is actually approaching everything from a perspective of "Is this broken? Do we need to fix it?" as opposed to unthinkingly restoring every single prior game mechanic that the rest of us are used to. I have a feeling that many of us, the gamers, are hesitant for change when it comes to game mechanics because we are familiar with the old and the new can seem daunting at first. Few people like change.

@Hattmannen Josh Sawyer has spoken about this before: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62556-the-man-said-its-not-so-bad-to-have-some-fun/#entry1284917 I'm not advocating against humor; I'm advocating against the game becoming either too ridiculous to take seriously or too much of a meta-game of the forum. @Ieo I actually like the fact that there is no railing; the setting is supposed to be the high middle ages. I don't really think that the historical period is known for its dedication to "safety." It actually helps to show that the time period and universe aren't just "safety first!" and is a little bit more gritty.

Welcome to the boards. I'm not usually a buttface. It's just we've heard about Minsc a lot...

From Sawyer Edair is an ordinary guy, but Edair is not indicative of all characters. He isn't designed the way he is because I think "that's cool", but because it fits his character. He is an unassuming man who tries to keep a low profile. Other wilder/more exotic/unusual characters will be available (and you can make them on your own). We started modeling Edair first in part because he is a very straightforward character. The problems we are trying to solve in modeling are not related to how cool the character can look, but to how we have to build and export characters in Maya, then into Unity. For such purposes, often the more straightforward characters are better because they're "neutral". Chain mail and leather not make you hop out of bed and scream OWOOOOOGA! but they're things we're pretty likely to have to create and they pose actual challenges for us when it comes to building and rendering it. Someone compared the painted portrait of Sagani to the line art of Sagani. You can certainly compare them, but they're made for different purposes. Line art drawings like the ones Polina has done will probably never appear in the game. They're made as reference. Any coloring done after the fact is mostly just to give a sense of volume to the character and his/her gear. The painting of Sagani is a great portrait and we'd like all of our portraits to be that good and in a similar style -- but no one is going to build Sagani from the painting of her. She's in a cool pose with a determined expression, but you're mostly looking at her back and side. I understand that people want to see more art, better art, and more unusual art. We will make it. It has always been our intention to do so, but a lot of the problems we're trying to solve right now are logistical, not quality-related, and while paintings like the one of Sagani or even the wallpaper of the whole party are exciting and beautiful, they don't necessarily help us build the game right now. Thanks for all of your feedback. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=491414&page=167

Ohhh Ohh! Rob like my comment too! Edit: Awww

^ Yeah someone talked about that in another thread - basing the idea off XCOM's saved random number. It's one way to do it... Although, at this point after reading what Sawyer's said about High-level design, I don't think that either of these ideas can be said to be good to go or not. These are more low-level detail-oriented adjustments and will probably come in much later (during beta testing perhaps...)

I think I mixed up skill checks with stat checks in one of my previous posts, which PST definitely did have (and which definitely created unbalanced play by class type). Anyway, PE will have dialogue stat checks in the low end, but I don't remember if they said there will be any for the high end. Preferably, neither skill nor stat checks would overshadow the actual roleplay decision-making aspects of PE dialogue. Carry on... From the reddit AMA from a while ago. Avellone said: http://www.reddit.co...nd_josh_sawyer/ It might be worthwhile to go back and re-read this thing. It has a lot of helpful tidbits. Edit: I am going to stop multiposting.... I am sorry ahead of time to the forum members for doing so. It irks me so I know it probably irks a lot of you. Gotta learn to use the multi-quote....

Right and Sawyer has talked about that in other places. http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/11/the-queen-needs-no-advocate.html The point is though, that if you reached 2 hp when you did and I, playing by the same rules, reached the same point with 20, then there was a more tactically sound way of approaching the previous battles. In fact, now that I think about it, this even further limits players from quicksaving/reloading after each battle and actually having to deal with the consequences of their choices a little further down the line. If I played badly and am at 2 hp, then I haven't played well enough for the last 5 battles and now have to pay the consequence of hiking it back to town to rest up. If there is no consequence, the game feels "cheap" and quickly becomes boring.

I agree with this. I think there were aspects of BG2 that were too "problem-oriented" as opposed to "tactical oriented." There wasn't several solutions: only one and this was a problem. There should be more efficient solutions and less efficient ones and I think Sawyer has talked about this already. http://twofoldsilence.diogenes-lamp.info/2012/11/the-queen-needs-no-advocate.html The point is to go towards more of a chess approach and less of a Rock paper scissors approach.

@gumbercules Eh I dunno. I could be wrong. At it stands, the Aumaua are still pretty out there. You said yourself you thought they were ugly, so they were good on their promise for them to be "out there." It's not that I disagree with you, but I can't really make a judgement on a black and white sketch of a new race. The fact that they still haven't officially called them the Aumaua leads me to believe that even they aren't totally satisfied with their conecpt as it stands.

Orcs were the only race to ever be extremely different from humans until we had planetouched. Gnomes and halflings were also human-derived races. As were elves and dwarves, as you mentioned. I think that it's an interesting place they are trying to take the Aumaua. When you think of species that are different but all fall within the same category, oftentimes they look very similar but still distinctive. Look at the cat family in biology. Lions, tigers, lynxes, cats, jaguars, leopards etc all look similar, but they all are also different. Same with dogs: dogs, foxes, wolves, etc. Horses, mules, donkeys. I think that this is the direction they are trying to take with the Aumaua: they aren't orcs, but they fit in the human family of taxonomy. Orcs on the other hand were outrageously different than humans. From Tolkien's taxonomy, they weren't even human based, and were based on the elves (which weren't supposed to be human based either, even though they had very distinctive human-like features).

I, on the other hand, don't want flashy. It's a disagreement a lot of people will continue to have. I want a good tactical game with toned-down artistic direction that feels like a realistic, mature world would. I believe that by emphasizing exagerration in the world (big flashy armor, big flashy races, overly sexualized caricatures) this takes away from the feeling of maturity and playing the game for the ideas in it instead of the "pretty pictures." I also have issues with the Aumaua, but I do not want beastial creatures that do not look like they fit in this world. When you have a world aiming for historical "accuracy" in its weapons/armor designs, putting in wildly exagerrated, overly fantastical races, makes it a little difficult to accept. The whole game has to evoke the same feeling - one of historical fantasy thsat deals in mature themes, ideas, and stories.

Look, there are good tactics to use when fighting armies and terrible tactics to use when fighting armies. If you're wasting all your magic missles on the goblins and throwing your melee fighters with non-magical weapons at clay golems and then wondering why you're losing health, then you're not playing tactically. You aren't looking at the rules and making judgements based on them. You're just rolling the dice and hoping to win the crap shoot. There are absolutely "right" ways to win a fight and "wrong" ways to win a fight. It's not just armor/underwear. I mean ... come on. BG2 you knew that if you wanted to kill mages, oyu had to use breach first. If you didn't, you lost HP as the mages fireballed your dudes. If you played "tactically" you breached him, then sent in your melees for the kill. These are tactics. You could also sometimes win by waiting for their protection spells to run out, but during all that time, your party members are losing health. You aren't playing effectively. You haven't figured out the important bit (breach mages). It's fun because once you realize that you're doing it wrong the 100th time and realize your tactics need to be changed, you realize that you've been playing the game inefficiently. Then the mages and other dudes fall at your feet. And you feel like you've accomplished something. If they just make everything easy, then you're just playing for the story and the combat is there to distract from the cinema. If you aren't told where you're going wrong (by dying) then you just keep using the same bad tactics as before. The game should teach how how to play it, and then provide challenges to you to see whether you've learned from the basics or not. Hiking back to town to rest isn't fun. It's supposed to be there to say "dude, you did it wrong." Does that clear it up a little?

Don't judge it before you've seen it.

2e didn't have skills for dialogue. We're sticking to dialogue aren't we? I'm not saying we need to get rid of skills altogether. I'm saying use the right tool for the right job. If you only use a hammer, everything is a nail. Blah blah blah more vague metaphors. I think we should definitely have skills. But only where they're relevant and make the game interesting to play. We've seen in the past that skill checks don't always play very well with dialgoue. Edit: Yep checked the Player's Manual. The DM could add skills in if they wanted. But table 37 specifically has the skills that WotC implemented and you don't have dialogue based skills like intimidate, lie, etc. http://www.scribd.com/doc/54918032/Player-s-Handbook-2101 page 54, table 37, nonweapon proficiencies

When it comes to dialogue I don't think it's fun to play that way. Like I said, not every aspect of the game needs to employ a singular game mechanic like "skill checks." PnP had to do that because it's tough as a DM to make rules and laws on the spot and be consistent. A computer RPG can be different and move away from those mechanics and still be consistent and rule-based. Ultimately, I'd want to see how this plays out first before making such hasty decisions to say "this sucks, skill checks were better." Although, I'd have to say that I'm not sure that Sawyer is moving completely away from development based dialogue. It seems like primary attributes (intelligence/charisma) are going to still play a role. It's hard for me to really "see" what he's describing when I haven't played it. But I do agree that having skills on dialogue isn't ABSOLUTELY necessary. Edit: You know....skill checks aren't really classical RPG based either! They came out for 3.5e (not sure if 3e used them). Most of the IE games were 2e-based except for IWD2. Like Sawyer said, only IWD2 employed that mechanic. The only other isometric game that I can remember using skill-based checks was Fallout. It worked for that game; doesn't mean it'll work for every game.

But based on skill upgrades you can only make those "additions" to your three dialogue skills during level ups. You would still be at XYZ for mean/sweet/sly after your actions just like you were XYZ before your actions. If you used skill upgrades, you can only change them during level-ups or at the beginning of character creation.

You're making assumptions based on things Sawyer never said. I asked him specifically about whether PE would have ways of changing this ratio, and he didn't answer. I don't think he's ever implied that the ratio would stay static. Once again, look at my signature. As he says, the details can always be changed later if they don't play well.

How has Sawyer said anything different? You just don't like the fact that he's using a different mechanic in this game to provide limitations and consequences. You don't need numbers - in fact, I would say you CAN'T use numbers - to determine something as complex as dialogue or "personality". You can use other mechanics and still make it interesting to play.

So then basically, what you're saying is that all gaming consequences should boil down to two things: what your character starts out as (the beginning stats, etc) and what you invest in during level-ups? What about everything in between? What about consequences mattering in what sort of quests you choose and how you complete them? You're saying that it shouldn't matter what you choose as a dialogue option, you only want the skill checks for dialogue to let you "win" the dialogue problem at hand. Even idiot dialogue shouldn't just be a joke. If your idiot dialogue has actual consequences to what you choose to say, then it should matter in the long run. And as I've said before, if you've ever played P&P RPGs you'd realize that whenever you would arrive at a problem, you would first have to come up with your own dialogue and then you'd roll a skill check, it wasn't the other way around, where if you won a skill check, then you could say a certain thing. You could say whatever, but the actual win/loss depended on what you rolled.

Metalurgy is a skill. Blacksmithing is a skill. Riding a horse is a skill. Tactical strategy in the field of battle is a skill. Alchemy can be considered a skill. Setting up a camp is a skill. Being able to survive in the outdoors is a skill. There are a bunch of different skills in these sorts of games. There is no reason they should all employ the same mechanic and sometimes we don't even consider some of them in our games (crafting/alchemy/setting up camp/outdoorsman (fallout did this, but not much of the other games). In fact, certain skills lend themselves more to being binary, some lend themselves more to being graded, and some help to expand on your character's personality. We don't have to use the same skill check mechanic on everything. Different games are going to deal with different skills and base their mechanics on those skills differently. Unless you've played all the different mechanics, how can you be sure one way is better than another? I don't think this mechanic for dialogue has been ever fully explored yet. I agree with the game having limitations on characters, but playing a numbers game isn't the only way to limit dialogue mechanics. I've mentioned another one (basing some dialogue on the locations you've been and the quests you've accomplished) and other games have done this to great effect (Arcanum and apparently Darklands).

I'd rather this game confront complex social issues in the main plot line rather than focus on an immature, black-and-white scenario against an evil mastermind. Sure, if the latter is the case then all this is irrelevant, but do we want that? OK then, so this is a plot request. In that case, I can't say too much about it other than maybe the developers will read your post and if it's relevant include it as part of the story. I don't have any qualms with what you wrote otherwise.