Sacred_Path

You don't get the point, obviously. P:E (and yes also BG) isn't a single character game (unless you choose to play it that way and go against the developer's intentions). It's party based. Yet you are more attached to one character (because you create it). That means it's a hybrid type of game, there's no denying that. In BG, this was done badly, and we don't know about P:E yet but it could have the same flaw. Despite you depending on a party the game is simply over should your character die. No proper ingame or meta-game reasoning is given for this, ever. If you don't care about such glaring holes in the mechanics you aren't a good critic. Bitch please, get rid of the completely wrong hyperbole of comparing this game to chess. If I go into an encounter with an enemy group comprised of strong melee enemies that charge you right away, of sniping archers that may concentrate their fire on one character or maybe spread their attacks between your mages to interrupt casters, and stealthy assassins that may sneak up to you to backstab you or unstealth to go into melee, and casters who can cast all types of debuffs or damage spells at your party or single characters, this situation ísn't rightly labelled rock-paper-scissors. That should be obvious to you. I see that this is all you need in your mind (my PC is the chosen one, awsum!), but don't go and think that this is good reasoning or a good argument. The only difference in mechanics is of course the very fact that this character is the only one that's vital to the story, and that's the entire problem I have with it. I haven't played Far Cry 3, but in Far Cry (as in so many other games that have nothing to do with this argument FOR THAT VERY REASON) you only control one character. Is the difference obvious to you? I'll try to steer this into a more productive direction, hang on: The story premise as far as we know right now is that your character experiences an extraordinary event and then tries to come to terms with what he has witnessed/ resolve its mystery. There's nothing here so far that would force your character to be irreplaceable. Quite the contrary IMO. As soon as you have picked up companions, you can relate to them what has happened, and therefore they could continue the quest without you. Maybe some of them even experienced the same thing you did. This would be much superior to BG's premise that the entire game only revolves around you. Why they should be concerned with keeping you alive if you're the "chosen one"? Because you have tremendous importance to the game world, obviously. The only thing that could counter this is if every companion is a chosen one in their own right, so their quests can be deemed equally as important as yours. You should see why that would be crappy. OTOH it's just as crappy if you have supreme importance but noone notices it (oh hello BG!). So there are two options: a) The PC is a character like many others in the game world, set apart only by the fact that he has witnessed/ experienced something extraordinary. He functions like other characters of his class and race would do. If he dies you can choose to carry on with the other characters, because they were all on this quest together. Mechanics wise you can also use this character like any other to his fullest effect, because death is an acceptable outcome (as long as you are skillful and use your ressources well). b) The entire game revolves around the PC and builds on the notion that you are yet another tired version of the "chosen one". You only pick up companions to help you fight your way through the story. They are either completely oblivious of your importance and never refer to it (although they follow your every command!) or the entire dialogue revolves about you and your well-being and success. Mechanics-wise you buff this character all the time in any way you can and never put him into harm's way, it's a much better choice to always keep him two screens behind everyone else. Which is superior and why? Goddamn retarded internet arguments stealing my precious lifetime.

Except that a game like P:E (or in fact BG) doesn't fit into any one category for the exact reason that, while you have one main character, the game is also balanced around a party of characters. Well, scratch that for BG, balance wasn't a strong point of those games. This is one reason where I hope P:E will be different, I hope the game is well balanced on all difficulty levels, but punishes you harshly on higher difficulties if you make sub-optimal choices. That includes sort-of-frequent character deaths. I hope it has become clear to you by now that there's a slight logical problem with a character whose death ends the whole game. You're not exactly a discerning customer, are you? ô.O good to see you ignored my point (or maybe bad to see you didn't get it). - making a monster dangerous by giving it exactly one way to be dangerous (insta-death-ray) and exactly one way to prevent that = rock paper scissors. A system that is vastly more complex than that doesn't deserve this labeling, obviously. Except that mechanics-wise, your character isn't any different at all from other characters of the same class and race (as far as we know now). Even if you are special in any way I suspect it will be along the lines of those special abilities you had in BG (IOW p. useless). So don't even try to compare it to chess (and hell, I'm not even bringing up the point that for this comparison to be viable, the whole combat system needs to be built around the fact that your character is at the center of it all. Seriously!). Also I'm not sure you understand the implications of this as it would affect the entire game. If that is the premise, every companion's dialogue must be centered around what they can do to keep the "glorious leader" alive. It's just flippin hilarious to imagine that the premise should be that this one character must survive at all costs why everyone else is pretty much throwaway material.

You think that keeping exactly that arbitrary one of your 6 characters alive is the whole point of Ironman? Excuse me when I say lol what. There are many reasons to play Ironman. Living with the consequences of your choices: Thinking two to three steps ahead at all times. Carefully organizing your characters, your inventories, the gold you spend, the items you use (up). Thinking about if you really need to rest/ travel somewhere if you might be attacked. Thinking about exactly what you want to say to an NPC. Considering if an attempt to pick someone's pocket is worth the trouble it can get you into. Trying to carry on when one or more of your characters died (!!!). Trying to get your characters into favorable formations/ positions. Always scouting ahead because you want all the information you can get on enemies. As far as we know now the game is designed in such a way that characters can be relatively easily replaced. You'd have to come up with a very good explanation why exactly one character out of all characters in the game world is an exception to this. "He IS the story, stupid!" falls flat both in ingame terms (isn't there actually a quest that the party is on as a whole?) as well as meta-game (meh, I should have kept that one character twenty feet behind everyone else. Silly me). Seems like I have to repeat myself, but here goes: 1.) Having a strictly rock-paper-scissors system (attacks and defenses) doesn't challenge my skills at all tactics-wise. I've been through the game once, I know that "protection from death magic" will make that beholder a whole damn bit less challenging. 2.) If there are no fail-proof ways to keep characters safe, then it becomes entirely a game of chance in many cases. I've already mentioned death magic and high-damage spells. But it could be anything really, like maybe smart (gasp) archers concentrating their fire on one character in a way you couldn't prevent (let's say you did not send this character up first). You might have to pull one tank back and that ogre tramples right over your mage. All of that is cool, adds to the challenge. I hope it will happen in the game, death is ok, perma-death is ok. What sucks is a restriction that says "it just cannot happen to that one character!".

Which part didn't you understand? There's nothing challenging at all about keeping exactly one of 6 characters alive in a game that is designed/ balanced in a way that death may strike any party member at any time. The only thing it leads to is hiding that one character away (in Trial of Iron) or have all the necessary "anti-buffs" on this character at all times (anti-petrification, anti-death magic etc.). Are you so bored that you would actually call this interesting gameplay, or do you pride yourself on doing things that would be obvious to a trained monkey? Then of course there could be no anti-buffs at all in the game, still monsters randomly cast 1-3 insta-death spells at your party. Again, skills wouldn't save you here, but dumb luck. You could employ perfectly proper tactics and not lose a single character or even health in the game due to skillful playing, but one monster casts one insta-death/ very high damage spell at the one character that can't die and you're ****ed. I'm not even citing reasons here why skill should be more important than dumb luck (it's too obvious and has been done numerous times, also by devs). What I'm NOT saying is that I have a solution to the problem on the narrative side. I would have supported this game whole-heartedly if there was no "main character" at all but only a party of 6 (random) people. As it is now they're going a route of compromise, there are companions but you can also create characters, there's a main character but the companions probably have some effect on the story too.

I doubt that for people who are/ were in the age range I referred to (at least teens when Baldur's Gate came out) and read gaming print mags or followed review sites. You'd have to have been blind in this case to never even seeing it mentioned somewhere.

As a player I want the game to challenge my skills and force me to become better at it. However, that wasn't achieved by this particular mechanic in the BG games in any way. In BG1 the easiest way was making a fighter and simply not putting him up front (bows being the superior weapon in BG1 made that a no-brainer anyway). In BG2 a mage with self-buffs on all the time was probably the easiest way. In either case, nothing was achieved by making that one character more crucial to protect than any other. In BG1, a few arrows and/ or spells snuffed out the light of the main character v. easily. In BG2 you had instant-death abilities and petrification traps that did the same. None of that made you think more or apply superior tactics rather than stupid drudge work (never make your main character a scout, for instance). The only reasonable defense of it mechanics-wise would be cases where everyone in the party died except the player character as a result of you using the other party members as meat shields (which usually forced a reload in BG1 anyway). I get the point story-wise, but I'm not sure that justifies the negative effect it has on mechanics.

There's no question that the initial protagonist being alive until the big resolution is a good thing. Getting there in a CRPG is another thing though. Should your character die (and there's not a small chance of that) there are two options: - force a reload - force a restart (in Trial of Iron) obviously both are p. anti-climactic. The first is simply a nuisance. The latter punishes you quite harshly for something that might even have been proper tactics (like moving your character into harm's way). In this case you'll be mostly concerned with keeping your character away from danger at all times.

things that simply force a reload are bad, mmkay? If you're playing Ironman mode the most common route would probably be playing a wizard and staying out of the fray.

J.E. Sawyer confirmed on twitter that Chanters will not only cast spells, but have their own spells to boot!

Didn't Scientology propagate 'mercy killings' for patients in closed wards? Or have they changed their policy recently (I wouldn't know) ?

To elaborate: I think stupid/ bad decisions should be possible entirely on the player's side, not in things the devs control. That is, no useless skills, no useless attributes, no useless types of equipment. OTOH, if you decide to make all of your characters physically weak, or make everyone spend their points on the exact same skills, or adopt a playstyle that's not suitable in a given situation, you should be punished accordingly. A stupid decision is sending your fighter into the midst of a big group of enemies, or letting your mage tank. I get that this is not exactly what you want (you want an ill-fitted adventurer who's trying to do his best), but I think allowing for i.e. "bad" dump stats (or stat ranges) for certain classes ****s up the balance too much.

I hope that the powers of balance will rule out "stupid" and overpowered decisions. Allow a fighter to specialize in clubs (usual sub-optimal choice)? Ok, but make it viable.

Merry Christmas guys and gals, but since these are the darkest times of the year (literally speaking) and copious servings of mulled wine tend to stir things up inside the more moody ones among us, I think it's time to embark on some self-exploration. Let me begin then by posing some deeply profound questions, namely, "who are we and if yes, how many?" and "where the **** am I?". Thanks, and good night.

This. The first thing that came to my mind was a self-enforced Ironman mode. Maybe if you're really serious about it, there could be a little timer every time you initiate pause. No mechanic that restricts any player, simply something that gives you an indication of how dependant you are on pausing. If you feel you need to challenge yourself more, aim for a shorter pause.

I think it's pretty clear that without all the nostalgia-inducing name-dropping they'd never gotten close to $4m. It's very much this appeal that the entire project rests on. There's a reason why the pitch went "remember classic games like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment?" and not "we'll do an isometric game with tactical combat and lots of text JUST FOR U GIZE". This is interesting because as more info emerges it becomes clear they want to innovate and improve on quite a few things, they just didn't advertise it. Because doing a kickstarter means you don't want to put out a competitive product? The kickstarter was a p. good thing to do, even though it became an ever better idea the more backers it attracted and the more publicity it got in turn. Quite the snowball effect there. The question is now where they want to go from there and if some venues may seem attractive now that maybe didn't seem feasible before. That's not what I was saying, obviously. I just wouldn't be surprised if it happened.

Game? I don't need no stinkin' game. I just need all the information pertinent to building my case why they've failed to deliver something that lives up to my expectations.

I never contested that it's a niche product, I'm saying that it's a niche that they can live with comfortably. A product like P:E might do better on physical media rather than download. A lot of people will take a *cough* look at this product, if they then go and buy it is another question. I think P:E has potential for garnering massive consumer support due to the success of its Kickstarter campaign and the nature and frequency of developer-consumer interaction (and no press report fails to mention this). I think boxsets with high quality assets could successfully swim on this (euphoria?) - again, a shame the map won't be in there.

It makes as much sense as the (1E?) ranger's bonus against giants - which isn't much. It's an arbitrary bonus to make a class stand out/ be more viable as a choice/ a tad more useful. Giving a bonus against undead/ for creating undead to certain cults is something I could warm to, not because it's a great idea or the game world calls for it but because I like having priests of different faiths playing a bit different from each other.

I want to dislike this post. Except for the 'leave it to the expansion' part. If they decide to **** things up in an expansion, that's fine by me.

I'll disagree. Maybe you are underestimating what a huge pull the name Baldur's Gate has. For a generation of players a bit younger than me, it's a defining game of their childhood/ youth. When I was in highschool a lot of my friends who had never played RPGs before and weren't interested in fantasy usually bought and played Baldur's Gate simply for the hype it got and the significance it had as a game that stood pretty much unchallenged (by contemporary titles) in its niche. Now we're not debating how much of the BG's was Black Isle's doing, or how many of those people are doing what now for P:E - because the gaming press doesn't do so either. The hype of BG seems to carry over almost seamlessly to this possible spiritual successor, and people are excited by it. Of course there's the question of how well conceived and received the final product will be. As it seems now they're not making amends as to the depth of gameplay (maybe with the exception of not being turn based), so that keeps the target group somewhat small. OTOH BG was the first RPG for many people and they had to acquaint themselves with THAC0, saving throws, racial abilities and spell functions too. I expect that P:E will play fluidly and allow some on-the-spot learning. Technically BG wasn't brilliant, but it had "pretty" art and wasn't out of the technical loop, and I expect the same will apply to P:E. Like with many aspects of P:E, I expect some people will love the isometric view (also out of nostalgia) while some will dismiss/ scold the game for it. In the end, I think with a mix of its own merits and nostalgia P:E can do well enough to justify selling it at retail. It certainly wouldn't hurt if it came with goods that aren't so common nowadays - unfortunately the $140 package that includes the cloth map is out of the question. But the $65 tier could be a realistic offer (if the price doesn't climb significantly).

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Speaking of which, it's becoming a bit of a hassle to keep track of all the bits of information that are being spread out across several platforms/ fora. The Known Information thread is a commendable effort to remedy this but it depends entirely on posters active at different places.

Gize, just MO but it would be pretty terrible if there were only humans in the game. Like human characters, human NPCs, and only human enemies to fight. I think there should be different... races... like some of them shorter than humans and some could be taller. Also there could be a non-human race that is brutal and violent and acts as antagonists most of the time. They could be made distinct from humans by having green skin or something. I just thought the devs should be made aware of this! DREAM THE IMPOSIBLE DRAEM

I guess that what it would come down to. Some (innately) magical player that took an interest in the potential of the developing humanoid races. Maybe a god, maybe other inhabitants of the same realm, who maybe developed at a time when the world looked different. Of course that's implying the standard convention that magic is bound to a modicum of intelligence.

We established that extinction of megafauna wasn't singularly due to human hunting though. And I'm not convinced that the average density of extremely hostile and dangerous monsters in a fantasy world can be anywhere compared to real carnivore populations, not even mentioning that animals aren't stupidly violent in the way most fantasy monsters are. And then there are the intelligent, off-shoot races like orcs, gnolls, hobgoblins etc. that do their very best to drive everyone else to extinction. The only thing that comes to mind that humanoids have going for them is magic.