Pipyui

I can understand that, and in many situations I find this to be fine, but occasionally I find myself in a situation where I have to ask myself "Why the heck don't I have an option C?" either in regards to taking action or simply responding to people. Sometimes I find myself with only two, perhaps three, choices - be the next coming of Jesus, or be a malicious villian - when other branches should be obvious. @Lephys That's a very good point, and just once I'd like to see one of my companions not only oppose such a choice, but honestly question my competence as well. I was playing Mass Effect 2 again recently, and I found some of the paragon options odd. A mild example, but the very beginning of the game can go something like this, and it feels a little incongruous: Miranda: "Throughout the terminus systems several human colony worlds have been lost. In every case, the planet is scoured clean, without a single soul or trace of conflict, as if the entire colony vanished at once in the middle of eating dinner. The latest instance we're headed to now hasn't been touched by the Alliance yet, so we shall look for clues as to what happened and if it relates to the reaper threat." Shepard: "That's great Miranda. Our first priority is to look for survivors." Miranda: "Maybe you weren't listening. The entire planet in every case is made devoid of sentient life. What do you expect to find here? We must look for clues and ascertain this threat. We can handle survivors if we encounter any." Shepard: "Survivors, Miranda."

You know how it is: "I'm a selfless saint!" (I'm good!) "I want money!" (I'm (maybe a little) selfish!) "How bout I put my fist in your face?" (I'm bad!) <Neutral response> (I'm all business.) <Maybe a joke> (I'm a little disconnected.) Often this is enough, but just as often none of the responses quite seem to fit the character we're trying to project. What additional dialogue response flavors would you like to earnestly (or not) see to suit a typical (or atypical) character archetype? Dramatic/Excentric? -- "Follow me, and quickly!", "It was a pleasure and an honor.", "The possibilities are astounding!" Doesn't give a ****? -- "Waylaid by bandits? That's nice, I'll leave you to that.", "I don't know... that cave's kinda far..." Noble-raised? -- "Are you kidding? There's spiders in there.", "I don't suppose this backwater ghetto has a decent inn, hmm?" Crass? -- "Money's fine, but how bout a kiss instead?", "I'd love to chat away, really I would, but you know, I got a world to save." Efficient/Reserved? -- "Get it together you two; fight it out on the road.", "What needs to be done?", "I will accept your company, but trust and companionship will have to be earned."

Ohhhh. I didn't even know we were operating in this context. This first comment confused me at first. No, my previous comments shouldn't be read in terms of this context, but in terms of choice branches in general, and I still stand by these points. I don't have any particularly strong preference towards having multiple endings.

The Neverwinter Nights games did a good job of combat animation, in my opinion. They may have been generic, but the dodges and blocks looked clean and believable enough. If PoE can make combat look at least that good, I'm perfectly happy.

Sorry, that wasn't the impression I intended to give. I have no qualms with linear games, just qualms with games pretending to be nonlinear, giving me the finger, than throwing me down a single path. Edit: The Bioware response circle wasn't bad design, in my opinion. What with all of the VO, NPCs had few dialogue branches; it made more sense to limit PC conversation capacity accordingly than to give the player many response options to choose from, only for them to find that 50% of them didn't mean squat.

For the first time, I've managed to summon the will to combat the dreadful camera and play Neverwinter Nights 2 (the official campaign, for now). And from the very beginning, the most irksome aspect of the narrative is the terrible illusion of choice and roleplay. I'm trying to play a distant, couldn't-be-bothered type to switch things up from my usual ParadigmOfHumanity role, but every encounter I meet goes something like: Thug: "Now sir-and/or-madam, give us the gold/your life!" SirAndOrMadam: "Please! Somebody help me." PC: "Heyo. I see you guys are busy here, so I'll just be on my way." Thug: "This is none of your damned business, stranger! Best just walk away now!" PC: "Yup, that's literally what I just said I was going to do. Be seeing you." Thug: "How about lets kill SirAndOrMadam, and their new friend!" <Epic combat errupts, ends> SirAndOrMadam: "Thank you for saving me, kind stranger! I'm glad to see that there's still honor and nobility in the world! I owe you my life!" PC: sigh "Yes, sure. I'm going now - things to do, worlds to save, or something." SirAndOrMadam: "I love you! You're the best!" Why do I have the option to say "I don't want to be a part of this," only to, on virtually every occasion, be dragged into the mess anyway with the same blasted plot device? And in killing the antagonist(s) everybody treats me like a saint, despite the fact that I had shown every bit of disinterest in their folly, and wanted nothing more than to leave them to die and carry on my business. Sure, I "saved" them - I was forced to save them - and perhaps they could be thankful of the circumstance, but they prove all too pleased by my lack-luster assistance. It hurts me to see that the "choices" I make are absolutely null and moot in terms of narrative. I can only hope that player agency and NPC reactivity will be much improved in PoE. Don't feign choice if you're not prepared to back it up in the narrative - some illusion of choice is fine as suits the narrative, but don't fall back on terrible plot device so excessively to railroad my playing while telling me I have choices. And allow NPCs to respond to me in more ways than "You are best person," and "You are worst person," or just give me the blasted Mass Effect binary / (trinary) convo wheel so I don't feel like I'm talking to setpieces.

Morrowind and Oblivion were the most immersive RPGs I've ever played. I guess it's not blasphemous anymore, but I also find D&D mechanics in videogames stink - no player agency, and 80% of skills are useless. I hate turn-based combat absolutely. Minimalistic UI, all day, every day. I've never played P:T or BG1, and can't muster the will to play a game nowadays at such low resolution. That's okay *sigh* I'm used to it.

That was meant to be the other way around, wasn't it? Actually, I rather like the first way. "I'm a menace, damnit! I eviscerate a dude right in the middle of the damned street, throw gold at the nearest guard, and they just let me go?! They don't even clean up the corpse! Just let it stink there and stare at it as they pass! And then it's 'Hey stranger who just watched me pull arteries from that man as one would pull wire from drywall, how's it going?' and these people are just like 'Oh howdy, traveler! A fine day, `tis; a fine day.' What the hell?! I kill people! I don't even do it for a living - I make enough blasted money from cave-looting - I just do it for fun! And society just sits back and watches the show, so long as I can pay for it. Again and again - they enable my murder, damnit! It's a messed up world we live in, I tell you. I very messed up world."

America here. You're right, technically it starts Dec. 22 (regardless of state), but most people just consider Winter whenever it gets sufficiently cold or starts snowing - usually mid-December or so, sometimes a litte earlier.

I suppose this is relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=g5N_GKi1qpg

Not to be snarky, but ...

Pillars of Eternity ... ... The Unanswered Question ... A Dance with Death ... Walking Shadows ... The Cool Side of the Pillow ... Waltz with Me a While ... Just Five More Minutes ... Screams of Silence ... An End to All Things ... An End to Some Things ... An End to Some Things and A Beginning to Others ... An End to Some Things, a Beginning to Others, and No Meaningful Change to Things Between ... The Man Behind the Hedges ... The Truth Behind the Lies ... The Truth Behind the Lies Behind the Man Behind the Hedges ... The Last Court ... Entitled Seat of Bhaal ... The Game with Limited Rest Spots ... The Game with No Combat XP ... The Game with Limited Rest Spots, No Combat XP, and a Lot of Dissenting Opinions About Both ... The Game with a Lot of Dissenting Opinions about Everything ... There are No Dragons ... Your Epic L00tz are in Another Box ... Handle with Care, Contents are HOT ... "Did I Tip the Gnome?" and Other Questions of Profound Importance ... "Did I Tip the Gnome?" and Other Questions Not so Important ... Why is this List so Long? ... Death Can Wait ... Death Can Wait, but Doesn't Want To ... We Know Where You Live ... The World is a Joke and You're the Punchline ... An End to Really Long Things

If I recall correctly, I believe that you can spot hidden items from casually passing close to them, but without the search skill active you must pass very close (varying by your perception) and remain close for a second or two. You can only highlight a hidden object after it's been discovered. I suppose this works for me. A sufficiently perceptive and experienced character should be able to spot oddities even when not actively searching for them, given that they're standing still long enough to examine their surroundings. Turn on scout mode - actively searching for anomalies, so wider spot radius, and even if the spot delay is still in effect, you're walking slower anyway (combined with the bigger radius, it should be hard to just walk immediately past something hidden). Hope that helps! If I can find Sawyer's quote on this, I'll link it. Edit: Found Sawyer's qoutes, via Prometheus: Context

Prebuffing in tradtional IE games was anything but fun, so I'm gonna vote against having (a) a rediculous variety of buff spells, and (b) several simultaneous active buffs. Personally, I'd prefer spell buffs to be per-encounter affairs, and have potions for extended effect buffs. I really enjoyed the Witcher 2's pre-combat potion system - where you had to balance the beneficial and harmful effects of potions to match your combat approach and anticipated enemies. Increase attack at the cost of vitality, increase "mana" at the cost of attack, so on. You could only imbibe so many potions at any one time, and the more powerful ones were more intoxicating than the milder (limiting how many you could take). I liked it because you couldn't just OD a variety of potions to buff your character into oblivion, and buff decisions weren't purely binary. You didn't just pop fire resistance to walk into fire elementals without a thought - it would damper another stat, or at best simply limit what other potions you could also bring into combat, making it more tactical than a free stat boost. The latter element could be applied to buffs and spell slots (having to balance defense and offense), but the way it was handled in IE games wasn't fun-tactical (to me), it was misery-tactical-sadness. I'm not arguing that PoE should follow this example precisely, just that it should address pre-combat buffs in a similar manner, or at least a different one from my traditional IE experience.

I don't know about you, but I was planning on keeping all digital copies for myself. They'll let you share - they would be literally pointless otherwise.

Activated abilities in those games weren't a resource though as they will be in PoE. In DAO and MMOs you just spam your most useful abilities because it costs you nothing, zippo, nada - and you can't count the cooldown to recast as a cost. So your only useful skills were your most damaging, and then those you used to fill in the cooldown gaps, resulting in the ability spamming everyone so enjoys. As many of the neater abilities will likely be per-rest resources, and all others will be per-encounter, I don't think there is much to fear in terms of spamming. And it doesn't sound like PoE's classes will have so many abilites that you can entirely discount using some available to you once you've depleted (or are trying to ration) others (holy run-on sentence). You don't have to regularly use all abilities available to you, I'd just be disappointed if some proved to be effectively useless in most practical scenarios. I'm quite pleased with what I've seen thus far - enough abilities to provide variety in combat role and class build, but not so many as to produce ... "ability inflation" as it were.

I think I remember Sawyer mentioning about rogues sneaking into an enemy camp and laying traps before combat is initiated. If the rogue is able to sneak independantly of the rest of the party, I would think I could slip him/her behind the enemy, then approach with the others. An enemy party would make formation to meet your line, and your rogue could pop in to take out the wizards/rangers in back. I would also like to be able to consume buff potions before combat or something to give non-rogues something to prepare.

Almost. Far be it for me to speak for others, but when Obsidian starts a poll asking whether or not we would like more stretchgoals, I get the impression that they're asking "Would you like to put money towards more stretchgoals if we make them available?" They want to know what the public demand for them are, and whether it's worth their time to consider further goals. So I imagine that they're not just asking "Do you want to see more stretchgoals?" but "Would you be willing to pay towards more stretchgoals?" If Obsidian wants an impression of how many people are willing to pay more for stretchgoals, then I shouldn't answer positively to the poll. On the other hand, I don't want to answer negatively to the poll either. I'm not against there being more stretchgoals available, and hence likely a release date for PoE being pushed back. It doesn't sound altruistic, but if others want to make my game better on their own behalves, I'm all for it. I myself just can't justify putting forward (much) more money, stretchgoals or no. I just don't want to give Obsidian the impression that there is more demand (money-throwing demand) for strechgoals than there is.

Well there's no external force obligating me, certainly; but I have the impression that the poll exists to gauge public demand - and dispostion to pay - for more stretchgoals. And if such is the case, I cannot answer positively to this. I might just be foolish, but it would feel like skewing an earnest research poll with lies.

It does seem easy enough from a programmer's perspective, it seems fairly interesting, and I have no argument against it. I just fear that my life is empty without an xp bar. I must confess that I'm a little confused. I like to imagine that I'm fairly adept at extricating my own predispositions from an issue in order to understand it from multiple perspectives, even when I find myself attached to one side in particular. And yet despite understanding the appeal of completely hidden xp, I find I cannot fit myself into the mindset personally. There's something about it that rejects my mind, rather, there's a part of it that my mind rejects - like a rock rejects the pull of a stream, diverting thought around it subtly and almost unconsciously, trying to convince me it isn't there. But lo, if I look closely, I think I see what deflects my imagination: an RPG without experience, without a gauge by which to measure my PC's personal developement and success, remindes me sorta of ... of ...... real life, and my insecurities associated with it. Glad we got past that hurdle. I'm gonna need a drink. A stiff one.

EA hasn't exactly been my fave company for a long while, but they're not the devil. Google, on the other hand ... On a related tangent, I actually respect that Google has managed to remain fairly non-evil despite it's size and market value so far. On the other hand, I use DuckDuckGo for all my searching, and try (vainly) to avoid many Google services, so I don't trust them either. How can I not when EA is the progenerator of global warming, mortality, terrorism, child abuse, and the ever-present feeling of worthless self-significance and crippling solitude that haunts me day and night? Edit: Forgot terrorism, can't forget terrorism ...

I like neoxxxx's idea on page one absolutely, where missed xp opportunities are hidden from the player. The idea of hiding all experience feedback from the player I'm less keen to. I'm not against the idea of having an option for it, and I think I can understand the intentions behind it, but the thought of not having an xp bar frightens - and frankly, baffles - me. It feels like I'm throwing away the game for the RP.

I don't think it's fair to say that those who didn't vote over stretchgoals simply don't care. You don't need to follow the development of a game to prove that you care about it, and occasionally we even see forum memebers who pop back in after a haitus imposed to not spoil themselves of PoE. I'm not saying that it's wrong per se, just that it's unfair given that we are 100% ignorant of the circumstances of others. On my own account, I did not vote in the stretchgoals poll. (Hold on, put the stones down a moment) Not because I "didn't care," but because I was and am ambivalent on the matter. I am on a tight budget, and have given as much as I can reasonably justify to back PoE. So when the devs ask if I would be interested in relinquishing more towards stretchgoals, I can't just answer "yes, more stretchgoals!" without the will / cash to back the stance. And on the other hand, I don't want to give the message that I don't want more stretchgoals - if others want to back further developments on their own (and my ) behalves, I'm all for it; but I can't then tell the devs - looking for public demand - "yes, I want more stretchgoals" if I'm unwilling to put money towards them myself. (Alright, you may throw stones now)

Who needs soaps when you've got this thread? Now we just need a change of character. Lephys' child is dying, it's developed a condition where it's immune system rejects objective-based XP. For the sake of his child, Lephys must turn over a new leaf and fight for the cause of per-kill-XP, against his own moral standing. Can he forsake himself and his people so easily for the sake of his kid? Meanwhile, a rift is growing between Stun and Hiro - they cannot negotiate a means to distribute per-kill-XP through the party. Now they fight the same battle, but for different reasons. Are they as strong individually as they were together? Can they put aside their differences, or will this rift tear them apart forever? Is Pipyui just a bumbling sack of dirt, or a royal bumbling sack of dirt? TILL NEXT TIME.