Sacred_Path

After the last Ice Age there were very few giant-y beasts left though. Also the density of monsters in your average CRPG world is pretty high. And human civilization wasn't a thing to speak of as long as there were land-based carnivores the size of dragons (in b4 dragons don't eat).

This. Hell, I'd even take static portraits (Ultima).

I'm curious about what makes you think so. You have to think about how to build your characters, yes. You have to think about what your fighters should be doing. You can't rely on longswords to carry you through the entire game. Nothing of that really flies in the face of IE games, it's simply adding depth that was sorely needed. I do hope some other areas get a complete overhaul as well (I'm looking at you "Hide in Shadows/ Move Silently"; "Pickpocket"; mage buffs; pre-combat buff insanity; rest spamming). I'm expecting some minor ****storms when more info is leaked that makes people realize it's not just a graphical overhaul of any IE game.

I don't like summoning limits per se. I'd prefer some more sensible limitations: - summoning only available on higher levels - summons only staying around for a very limited time or - casters have to concentrate on keeping their summoning spells going all the time (with the exception of movement)

it has potential though.

Only one. if there are huge rampaging monsters everywhere, why don't all dopey defenseless villagers have the consistency of mashed potatoes? Or more on topic: excess numbers of monsters means excess numbers of human casualties, which should result in excess numbers of carrion eaters living on the outskirts of human settlements. Then again it would dictate that humans have to retreat to natural hiding places/ never have emerged from those in the first place. Therefore all humanoid civilization is probably the result of monsters' leisure to let their prey prosper and mulitiply before the great feast.

U gize are just trying to be contrarian, but I tell y'all my hope is that first thing they force me to do two minutes into the game is spend all my gold on bootstrap crafting materials. It's a childhood dream.

only in America

^ I think it would be p. horrible if they went to such lengths to establish a bit of realism i.e. by making blunt weapons most effective against thick armor, and then go and allow you to dual-wield flails effectively.

so what kind of Nazi are you then? ô.ô I'm for a bit of realism, that is relatively short battles and no big masses of foes (except at a higher level where you spend relatively many buffs and one-use items). I think it's immsenly satisfying if you can severely hurt a foe by just hitting two times with the crossbow or gun. OTOH I'm not sure I want the same to happen to my characters often There's probably a reason why enemies in Darklands practically never carried heavy crossbows or guns.

One question about wizards, if they can spam an AoE attack with a wand, why would you ever want them to swing a sword?

This. It's ok if you have to spend a little time and thought building a mage character with stats and perks that make him more functional in combat rather than "I'll take three levels of fighter! Wee!".

Have you decided yet how many 'favored skills' every class will have? Will there be situations in the game where a maxed out skill + class bonus will be required?

Maybe because the car was a means of transport with a lot of signifance while pack animals are just... personification of storage space? Now if a carriage would speed up your overland travels and you could fight from atop it (ohai Ultima VII) I might be in favor of that

When I read about stash I was thinking of pack mules or carts. I don't need them to be represented on the screen though. Raises too many questions (do animals bolt from combat? Don't you block people in cities?). The biggest question to me right now is if the stash is accessible in locations where you're most likely to pick up lots of gear (say dungeons). In Daggerfall your cart had to stay outside of dungeons (can't remember about other buildings).

There's also credibility. With the power of magic at their command, would wizards/ dungeon builders rely on mathematics to ward off intruders? That seems more like vanity than a serious attempt to keep things clandestine. Also it clearly breaks the fourth wall, since most fantasy worlds don't exactly feature a public school system. The circus riddles I didn't approach algebraically but it was still easy to figure out, so that one's ok in my book.

Absolutely. I hope that varying degrees of skill leads to varying degrees of profits, rather than only one being viable. OTOH I want to see a difference if I have a natural at lockpicking (rogue) specializing in it. Just that last margin of success that wouldn't be possible otherwise. I'm still curious about how they will avoid the classical party setup being the most viable option. I personally hope the world/ content will not be adjusted towards your party setup, so that you'll badly miss a specialist in a certain skill at certain times. As long as this is true for all classes/ skills I don't see a problem there. I hope there will be points where you miss a specialist Rogue just as much as the Paladin's AoE attacks or the Chanter's songs. Good point about dialogue though. It is a bit separate in that it won't make use of character skills. I hope that all characters can chime in at some point if they have something useful to say/ do (like a stealth specialist, be it a rogue or a ranger).

Now the new information is that classes will have bonuses in certain skills favored by this class. The example given was lockpicking for rogues. Now that's basically what I was hoping for Let's say rogues gain bonuses in both lockpicking and disarming traps. I also hope that So if you're going for the best locksmith available, you won't have the points to also make him the best possible trap springer. This is important IMO since most 6 person parties could accomodate 1 rogue (since all classes are combat viable), but 2? And not even one of them has the points to be great at sneaking? Tough choices Although I'm not sure if skill points will really be so rare. Also this builds on the assumption that specializing in a skill pays good dividends.

If undead are a huge deal in P:E, why not. Make every character a vampire hunter in one way or another. But if they're just one type of creature in the world... They could have built the world around it as a theme. Like a cross of D&D Ravenloft and Baroque themes of the Thirty Years War. Undead working the fields as farmhands, undead regiments roaming the land as parts of armies, people getting killed off because they're more useful as disease-proof, untiring soldiers. But the world of P:E seems pretty colorful, so personally I hope undead aren't omnipresent.

This is a tired cliché that can be easily avoided. From what we've heard about religions in P:E so far they seem very ambitious and might be more interested in the living than the (un)dead. Therefore I'd like to see different views on undead among cults, from abhorrence because souls can be trapped in a rotten body to a budding interest in creating undead because it's seen as a way to make the wandering of souls useful to the living (by creating undead servants) to blissful ignorance of their existence because some see them as soulless, mindless containers of rotten flesh. None of which needs to be represented in any way in a priest character's skill set.

I hope that skills will be more or less useful on certain paths throughout the game. A law-abiding party may ultimately get less out of their lockpicking skill than a shady party whose main pastime is breaking and entering. In that case an imbalance is just fine IMO. Well I'll wait for more updates before I form an opinion on this. IMO the big three (parlay, combat, stealth) should all play out somewhat differently over the course of the game. Sneaking can be used to avoid enemies (if the game allows it), but it can also be used to get yourselves into a favorable position before combat. Diplomacy could sometimes lead to avoidance of combat, in other cases it might just reduce the number of opponents you face or bestow a morale penalty on enemies. Initiating combat on your own should give you a slight intiative bonus and of course it should be possible to kill and loot NPCs who weren't hostile to begin with. What I'm most concerned about is that in IE games (well most CRPGs) combat by far takes the most skills, thought and ingame preparing. Sneaking was ridiculously simplified, and finding the "right" diplomacy options wasn't difficult. I definitely hope they implement different mechanics for both to the point of becoming mini-games. I want to have to deftly move my rogues through the shadows, alternately running, walking and sneaking, and I want to pick from a lot of text in the case of diplomacy. If you're really bent on just killing everyone though... well I'm sure you'll have the option to build a party around that

Vancian magic (at least in the beginning) and learning spells from scrolls. I hoped to never see you again. But the part about abilities and skills sounds very promising. What is unknown yet is... since Rogues are the best at lock picking period, will I ever want to have someone other than a Rogue in my party to pick locks?

taking UI cues from ToEE? I hope that doesn't mean radial menus PLZ GOD NO

Well, if all classes have access to all skills, and all classes get the same amount of skill points, and all classes can raise all skills by the same amount per level, that would put a dent in the viability of a class system IMO. I'm just not sure about barbarians being great at lore and alchemy. I think it's obvious I'd like that but of course it depends on how much depth is gained by this. In Darklands playing your alchemist resulted in taking different routes gameplay-wise; you were actively questing (and spending time and money on) gathering new recipes. You had to buy raw materials. If alchemy (or any other skill) comes down to "something to click on while resting" then of course nothing is gained by having characters built around this.

I'd agree on saying that the question of how skill selection plays out is specific to the game design. Say you can raise any skill by an unlimited amount at every new level, and all draw on the same pool of points. You could spend all points on "sword skill", on alchemy or divide your points. That's one thing that won't happen in P:E. You'll never have a character who's great at alchemy but not at anything else (if you actually want that or not is entirely up to personal taste I guess). This is also implying that I'm a bit jaded about "combat skills"; I don't expect those to demand much skill/ thought to choose. If all points come from the same pool and i.e. alchemy is a costly skill, that would require it to be just as powerful (or even more powerful, depending on cost) as any combat skill as it would be in direct competition with those; something that is very rarely seen for non-combat options in CRPGs as you'll probably agree. It's a real case of c&c if you decide to have a master alchemist who's entirely crap at combat and brittle to boot; maybe less so in a 6 person party (rather than the 4 of Darklands) but it's still something you'd mull over. You can't do the same in P:E or every party will have a master alchemist (since it's just one choice of what to do with those non-combat points). The questions you'd ask in P:E are "would alchemy support my current party well?", and "who's best suited to be the alchemist?". That's still ok, and balance in all things isn't bad. It's just a different setup. What I'm hoping for in P:E is that a) skills are derived from stats. So maybe a high INT character would be best suited to be an alchemist, thereby reducing your choice for the best possible alchemist to a wizard or cipher. So alchemy wouldn't be something you'd rely heavily on if your party concept calls for a different class to fill that slot. b) non-combat skill points are few (thereby again enforcing choice) but this is also related to c) there will be enough viable choices in skills so that you can't have all bases covered with 6 characters. Well that's something I really hope won't happen (often). It's the infamous "you read book. Gain +2 tracking skill points!" thing I dread.