JOG

The infinity engine games have many mods even without any support, ranging from mechanical changes all the way to mini-quests companions alnd large quests with new (recycled) areas. Making new, good-looking areas, especially large ones is the hardest bit in this kind of engine, but we've already seen in NWN2 as opposed to NWN1 and Oblivion, FO3, FO:NV and Skyrim as opposed to Morrowind, that when the 3D scenarios get more complex, the number of modded areas will drop as well. Of course voice acting is an issue as well, but even when there is voice-acting, new areas are quite rare. I couldn't paint anything better than a stick-man to save my life, but I'm rather good at copy-pasting images with tiny modifications to hide my meddling. So I think I'll be able to create new interiors out of a couple of original ones, but an all-new area or a very large one will be completely beyond my abilities. Of course smaller scale quests don't neccessarily need new areas, you can just as well place NPCs and quest items in existing places. As for nudity, I think (hope) there will be no manga-hooker mods in this game (beyond portraits, maybe), as the characters are simply too small to see any details.

Talent-trees and D&D feats often force you to invest in talents / feats you don't care about, just to be able to get to a rather exceptional one at the end of the branch. Sometimes the next feat in the "tree" makes the previous obsolete (e.g. Mobility=>Spring Attack) so why not simply make it a feat with 2 levels? Also, some dependencies are completely arbitrary and make no sense at all (most of Skyrim's skill/perk "trees") Finally, while the tree sure is a nice way to display dependencies, it also limits modding to exchanging existing talents/feats/perks rather than adding new ones. So all in all, I think I can live without talent trees. What I'd like to see in dependencies, is alternatives, though, so Whirlwind Attack, for example, could either be attained by the Combat Expertise path or by the Mobility path.

A combat-system beta would be nice, we could get familiar, give our feedback on stuff like the health/stamina scheme, and maybe even compete in a records lst. Otherwise, I'm not going to use the beta, I really want to play a finished Obsidan game this time

They solved it quite well in TOEE

It depends on how obvious a class is, and how people actually recognize someone as a member of a certain class. Assuming there is no silly "you are a rogue, thus you can't wear heavy armor" rule, what keeps a rogue from equipping plate mail in order to be treated like a fighter? And why should a thieves guild bar out a talented illusionist with a knack for thievery just because she is no certified rogue? IMO your actions and your talents / skill should determine who deals with you, not some class title. When every rogue is automatically a good cutpurse, and no other class can learn that talent, and when decades of training are required to wear heavy armor, then NPCs can be aware of your class at a glance and deal with you according to your class, rather than your actions. That said, of course there should be areas that give spotlight to a certain class, say a mage college an arena or a dungeon full of traps for the rogue, but there shouldn't be a doorman that checks whether you're the required class.

Good equipment that can be bought or commisioned, rather than looted. Looted items are in bad shape (You heavily dented that plate mail to kill the guy within, don't expect to just peel him out of it and wear or sell it in mint condition) No insane value increases for magical weapons when they can be looted in bulk. When an unenchanted sword is worth 20 bucks, one with an +1 enchantment may be worth 30 or 50, but not 1000 Merchants don't buy everything (A smith may buy an extraordinary blade but has no use for one that is below his own craftsmanship) Taxes (You may be able to persuade or intimidate a taxman to leave you alone, but they will be there at the entrance of cities and along well-guarded roads.)

With a classic identification system we are metagaming just as well, we know when stuff is magical, so we cast that identify spell, if the item isn't useful we reload and use the spell to ID another item, even better: when we *can* use unidentified items, we will reload to cast the spell on another item, even when the item we just identified is actually very useful. I didn't mean that every common twig scould possibly be an ancient druidic artifact of immense power, I meant that everyone should be able to determine the nature of an obviously magical item, simply by using it, but only an expert (or someone with an identify spell) should be able to find out the actual nature and background of the enchantment, as well as possible side effects that are not so obvious. Of course items like the ring above shouldn't suddenly insta-kill you, a real DM would sooner or later have a wandering sage cross your way, and thus start a quest to undo the damage the artifact already did (or embrace it willingly).

Let's see: 4.1 million minus 10% Kickstarter+Amazon = 3.7 million 3.7 million minus 30% taxes = 2.6 million net income 2.6 million divided by 1.5 years developing time = 1.73 millions per year. For 1.73 millions you can employ 23 people with 75k gross earnings. Of course there is still other stuff to pay like rents or power bills and costs for external contractors like voice-acting, download services or pressing the DVDs.

I'd like a system where you don't know whether you fully identified an item or not. A bit of curiosity and common sense should tell you what an item most obviously does, but there may be more to it. That masterfully crafted sword with the obvious enchantment that keeps it razor sharp might have a secret command word that makes it burn with an eerie fire, but you might never learn the sword's true nature. Or you could find a ring and can equip it; when you feel a warm tickle and that wound closes, you know that it's obviously a ring of regeneration. A loremaster may be able to tell you that it's actually the Ring of the Lichmaster that regenerates your health but draws its power directly from your soul, and that you will become an undead once your soul is completely destroyed, but well, who is going to pay some old sage to identify an item, when its enchantment is pretty obvious?

Even BG1 had regeneration: like any AD&D creature with 20+ CON, Kagain regenerates hitpoints. A dwarven PC can attain 20 CON in BG1, all others in BG2/TOB.

Since it's "endurance and health" and not "subdual points and hitpoints", I assume there is another element to it: endurance is likely used for combat maneuvers as well, either as energy (you need X endurance points to perform action Y), or to determine the effectiveness of the actions (at 50% endurance the effectiveness of your actions is reduced by 50%) This will be no D&D game, there actually are rulesets with more elaborate damage mechanics than D&D's hitpoints.

Well this thread is about semantics. It's about avoiding to call western monks "monks" because A.) the "monk" was a kung fu fighter with little to no religious background in all games that were released in the past decade, and B) monk is a general term for a cloistered religious person, which includes chivalric orders like the Templars or even cloistered member of an evil cult. And since clerics are always healer-knights as everyone knows, this thread looks for another name for a wandering cleric who is neither a parish pastor nor a Shaolin priest. Calling them "flagallants" is like calling barbarians "drunkards" and druids "tree-huggers", yes it's something they might do more often than the average person, and it's fine as an in-universe stereotype assigned to that class, but it's not a good class name.

A monk is someone who renounced certain aspects of life, first and foremost social contacts and choice of lodging, out of religious reasons. The classic eastern (kung-fu) monks seek enligthement by attaining perfection of body, the classic western monks seek enlightenment by humble work. A flagallant is someone who whips himself out of religious reasons (as penance for sins or as a way to fiind enlightenment) it was used among western monks very often as a means to suppress / pay penance for sexual thoughts, their eastern brethren are too exhausted to even think about such stuff, but this doesn't mean it's something every western monk does, or only (western) monks do. If you want a western monk in the fashion of Friar Tuck, "Friar" is the word to be used instead of "Monk", Friars are wandering monks that own no property and rely on charity for their livelihood, and offer blessings (or no beatings in case of Tuck) in exchange. Some may be flagallants, but that shouldn't be the defining main trait of a class.

Autohotkey is a good alternative when games don't allow you to define your favorite setting. Since I have one of those modern MF2 keyboards with cursor and number blocks, I prefer to use those for movement instead of WASD, most games are still designed for the IBM AT, though, and don't allow remapping of the numblock, this is where Autohotkey comes in. Rant aside, yes of course I'd prefer that a game allows me to completely remap all keys, but If it doesn't I won't even try to adapt and fumble with unfamiliar key setups.

@Frisk: We are just discussing the "logistic" problems Josh mentioned in the last update, nothing to worry about. He mentioned both, the programming-logstics to bring the vast area bitmaps to the screen and add animations and stuff, as well as the delivery-logistics to bring the game to our pcs. Several DVDs will be inconvenient and expensive for Obsidian, A blue ray will be inconvenient and expensive for those of us that still have a DVD drive, and huge digital downloads may cause their own problems.

And Beholders. Yep, the mischievous mountain spirit that ruined miners by tainting their copper and silver veins with the worthless unsmeltable kobold-ore (cobalt)

Similar weapons could differ by usablility and effectivess of combat styles. A "sword" originally was the weapon we call "shortsword" in RPGs - an arm-sized one-hand weapon supposed to be used alone or with a shield, rarely with an off-hand sword. A dagger actually is a brawling weapon, an artificial claw. You *could* use it to fence like it were a sword but it would be very ineffective because of its size, likewise a sword would be very ineffective in a brawl. The leg-sized longsword and katana were two handed weapons that could also be used one-handed aka bastard swords. They are much faster than a man-sized claymore or nodachi, but lack the usability against cavalry. Of course, even used in one-hand-style longswords aren't quite as maneuverable as a "short sword" which in turn wouldn't gain any advantage from being used two handed. The rapier and saber have a hand guard which forbid the two handed style, etc.

Since this is a background bitmap, not a texture, there is no need to keep the whole area in the graphic card memory, only the visible part needs to be copied to the screen, the rest can be stored in system memory. An issue are loading times, though, especially when the area-bitmaps are compressed. So we'll have either a huge installation, or loading times that are considerably longer than BG (on the same PC). As for transportation: It would be realistic to expect 5 DVDs or 1 Blue Ray, similar to BG (5 CDs or one DVDs) a 25 GB download also is quite a bit, many internet providers cap your bandwith after a certain number of GB per month, and it will also be a heavy load on the servers.

An here's a Dragonborn Comes cover from a true bard, taking artistic freedom with melody interpretation, adding new verses, needs no overdone reverb effects to make her voice interesting, and instead of showing up in person to promote her pretty face, takes the time to make an ingame video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpcXr5LtsYA&feature=related My point? There are many talented musicians out there, and the most famous aren't always the best. Sitll, I'm certain Obsidian has contacts to talented people that can actually compose new music.

Both, class dependend starting gear and then a shop where you can trade for other equipment. If I can choose only one, then the shop. Of course it can be used for metagaming purposes (i.e. buy that axe you know you'll need for a quest), but it also can be a pain to have a certain outfit or combat style in mind and then have to spend several hours to search for the proper equipment. I prefer my characters to have had a life before the game started.

Think outside the box: go to the nearby giant tribe and talk them into killing the dragon. A main problem of cRPGs is that injuries are irrelevant, 8 hours rest, one potion, one spell and you're as good as new, so most likely we would fight the dragon *and* the whole giant tribe. When wounds heal only slowly, and are more than just a bit inconvenient, the extra XP for actually valiantly fighting the dragon would be well deserved..

But for those services you need steam active, don't you? This thread is about getting the game via Steam and then being able to run it without Steam.

Most likely Obsidian just called the GoG version "DRM free", because they know there are people who consider Steam in any form to be DRM. Had they called it "Stream-free" version instead, we would have asked whether it has another kind of DRM. It's very likely that the Steam version will be as DRM free as a Steam version can be, otherwise it would be quite silly to have a DRM free GoG version as well. The rest of the discussion is moot, GoG is the equivalent of the postman who makes sure he hands out the physical copy to the right person, while Steam is the equivalent of a service guy that comes to your home to install the game on your PC. Sure, with some effort you can avoid calling that guy again when you need to reinstall, but if you want to do this, and are able to do so, you could just as well have used the simple delivery service. So why use Steam? Because of achievements or installation / game starting "convenience", if you don't care for either use the GoG version.

It's great that you have arrived. Now we just need to get you together with Xelios, Gatekeeper of the Obsidian Order. Um... and then Fluffle's big brother will appear?

First quest in PE: "Fetch a rat from the cellar" (for the innkeeper's most famous rodent stew)