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forgottenlor

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Everything posted by forgottenlor

  1. forgottenlor
    Tough battles in IE games were almost never winnable without pausing. The real time combat (if you can call it that) simply made getting through relatively simple encounters fast. I'd be surprised if P:E works differently. What is proposed with Modal Abilities offers more options in short term advantages in combat. That seems to me to make battles in general more interesting.
  2. forgottenlor
    I agree, but I imagine that's going to be tough to balance. I think Item attunement should be a major money sink. That might help make item attunement an interesting mechanic without making found equipment worthless.
  3. forgottenlor
    That only applies to Icewind Dale 2, not all Infinity Engine games. I'll have to replay it.
  4. forgottenlor
    The 8 pre-made companions will have personalities written by Obsidian. The 8 hired adventurers will be soulless automatons that players roll up in the Adventurers Hall. Make that soulless automatons with souls... I hope Obsidian does something with these guys like was done in WIzardry 8. For those of you who have not played that game, the pc created heroes not only had specific voices (like in Icewind Dale) but each voice was tied to a personality (labeled aggressive, laid back, friendly, brawny, loner, chaotic, eccentric etc.) and occasionally the character would comment on in game happenings based on their personality. While this isn't like a companion with his own quests, background, etc. It would add a little more personality to the characters than the Icewind Dale characters had.
  5. forgottenlor
    Separating combat and noncombat skills maybe logical in a pen and paper or multiplayer game, where a character taking such a skill and paying for it by being less effective in combat may feel disadvantaged over other characters (though I think personally this part of of roleplaying), I don't really think it is desirable in a single player party based game. I like the system in Might and Magic 6 or Avernum:the pit, the best, where any class can take lock picking, but has less points to invest in combat abilities. One is thus allowed to either created a single "skilled" character, leaving 3 strong combat characters, or divide the skills evenly among all characters. That (as far as I am informed) Project:Eternity and also the new Might and Magic X will divide noncombat and combat skills in order to ensure balance among the combat abilities of the pcs, may help starting players avoid bad builds, but it also seems to limit flexibility in party building. I would prefer the flexibility to make mistakes, but I understand the logic behind limiting it.
  6. forgottenlor
    All offensive spells in the Infinity Engine games are "telegraphed attacks". You see a spellcaster casting, true. But you don't know what he is casting and what the area of effect is. So while you can disrupt him, you cannot move out of range of his attack. (This is what I thought was meant and is often the case in action RPGS. Fable comes to mind with its boss fights).
  7. forgottenlor
    Hope this can be some help: http://old-republic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=538 or this: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/48748-kotor2-tsl-windows-vista-the-fix/page-2
  8. forgottenlor
    I just replayed Icewind Dale 1 and felt that it did a good job of a lot of this except the AI part, which seemed scripted (monsters were especially prone to be pulled into area effect spells), and telegraphing attacks, which to me seems more suited for an action game, and which I don't think I'd like in a tactical RPG.
  9. forgottenlor
    Well I'd like to add that they functioned as tutorials and gave different perspectives of the DA:O world, and you wouldn't have got the same impact from a cutscene. I agree that it might have been a waste of resources. In general I find it more desirable for different paths or exclusive content to appear later in the game, as it is rather anti-climatic to have the most exciting content in the beginning of a story. Its leads to a kind of a preprogrammed letdown. However, for whatever faults DA:O had, and that included the origins not being followed up on as well as they could have been, I still enjoyed them.
  10. forgottenlor
    I wouldn't say the romances felt like they were written so much by 14 year olds, as to say they didn't feel organic. The Witcher slipped my mind. I haven't played part 2. I actually thought that the Witcher part 1 romance was okay. It wasn't very personal , I felt, since I never felt that much like Geralt. Still I thought it did a somewhat funny take on male-female relationships.
  11. forgottenlor
    If I had to blame a game, it would be Diablo 2, where tremendous amounts of loot were dropped. It seems everyone picked up on this and copied it, often to the point of absurdity. edit:Though this sort of system may have a place in a hack & slay game. It certainly doesn't belong in a story based rpg.
  12. forgottenlor
    I'm playing Spiderweb's Avernum:Escape from the Pit. I'm also replaying Might and Magic 7. I picked up the original Deus X on GOG.com and am also playing it for the first time.
  13. forgottenlor
    Yeah, romance should be one of the very last things to be worked on. I'm OK with romance as long as it is meaningful story/motivation-wise. I am not very fond of the "choose your bed partner" approach in the latest Bioware games. On the other hand, I have fond memories on courting Bastila through the game with the implications that had. Annah's teasing in PS:T was cool as hell, too. I think KOTOR was the most recent game I played where a romance didn't feel contrived.
  14. forgottenlor
    The problem with the D&D system, or Diablo for example, is that your characters are so weak at level 1. If Characters were to start at 4th level for example, and go up to 13th, the difference would not seem so profound. What if a normal sword strike did 3 dice of damage instead of 1? Then the system would not seem quite as ridiculous. I liked the fallout system. I think your character ended up being maybe 4-5X as powerful not 20X
  15. forgottenlor
    +1 Reminds me of Might and Magic 3 and World of Xeen. It gives one a sense of growing power OUTSIDE of combat, which is really cool. Just further examples: Water Walking, Perception to find hidden objects, Survival skill to find new areas on the overland map, et.
  16. forgottenlor
    Agreed. I always thought it would have been cool in the old D&D rules if there was really a good Wizard build for using touch spells like Shocking Grasp and Vampiric Touch, which were totally suboptimal, because if your Wizard was in melee you were probably doing something wrong, and touch spells were inferior to missle or area effect spells of the same level. It would be really cool if P:E allowed good nontraditional builds, like the armored wizard who can wades into melee and zaps people. Perhaps the new stat system will allow for something like this.
  17. forgottenlor
    I agree. Also, on the subject of it costing time and money and at the risk of sounding rude and bad mannered, they did get 4 times their goal during the kick starter. If I am to class this game a success on the level of BG or other IE games it needs to have significant amounts of replayability, for me at least. NPCs are a big part of this and part of the thrill of replaying the game is working out who I want to take with me. If the pool is too small that become severely stunted after the first playthrough. I also agree with your point about the adventurers hall. Personally I would rather have more characters than extra levels of a mega dungeon if a choice has to be made. Edit: You know what, even if money is a problem, I'd happily throw a quid or two into a separate kickstarter to fund additional characters. I suspect that designing a new companion (especially at the detail of Planescape:Torment) requires a great deal more resources than a couple of dungeon levels do. For one all the resources to complete the dungeon levels probably already exist. The amount of extra conversation that has to be written (alone) probably costs a great deal more time.
  18. forgottenlor
    I agree. The problem I have found in some games is that you get good directions at the outset only to get a vague summary of these directions in your journal. I'd prefer it in this case if they just quote the initial conversation, rather than try to sum things out and make directions too vague.
  19. forgottenlor
    Just my 2 cents. I think 8 fleshed out companions + the ability to add your own to be pretty generous. How you choose to balance them is your own affair. For example I think I may try out 3-4 companions +1-2 of my own in the first playthrough. I for one would have liked this in Mask of the Betrayer, which suffers a little bit in the replayability department.
  20. forgottenlor
    This would be true if Obsidian was promising "less" than say Baldur's Gate. But they aren't. They are promising a huge world with better graphics, a ton of companions, in depth mechanics, story telling et. They are not stripping away a ton of features. In fact they seem to be creating a game with as many or more features. I don't see how getting away from D&D game mechanics is setting the "bar" low.
  21. forgottenlor
    D&D is a pen and paper game and I've played it now for years. It is in my opinion not ideal for computer games, simply because some stats become so unimportant. I can't ever remember anyone in my pen & paper games playing a 3 intelligence, 3 charisma fighter, because the DM would punish them. Icewind dale 1 & 2 certainly don't punish such a build in any significant way. For all the criticism of DIablo and Torchlight, they have stat systems built for a CRPG and don't include stats the game does not include in a significant way. Learning a game's character creation system is part of the fun, and creating characters based on it is part of the fun/puzzle solving experience. I think part of the reason people are pining for the old Dungeons and Dragon stats, is because its familiar, and they don't have to worry about learning something new. I have no problem with a new stats system, provided that the system has some logic to it. Just as a side note, I think something like "Charisma" or "Beauty" would be better represented as a character trait (or feat chosen at lvl 1) than as an ability score.
  22. forgottenlor
    This is a great update with a lot of substance. I loved it. I also am a big fan of your playthrough, though I know its a big time investment. The blog is a good idea, though not necessary. I've played through Arcanum twice. The first time I was using a charisma character. Just so you know, you don't get Sog Mead with a bad charisma, so your character choice is already paying off . Just one question when you say one can hire 8 adventurers, how do those differ from the premade characters and the ones you can make in the adventurer's guild? (or are those the ones in the adventurer's guild?)
  23. forgottenlor
    Its the question of comfort vs. an organic game feeling. For me the old Ultima series for example was too much of the former. You gathered a whole bunch of items and had to figure out when to use them at certain points by massive trial and error, but other people really loved it, because the world seemed organic. World of Warcraft is the other extreme, where massive number of colored markers are just hanging everywhere. It adds a lot of comfort, but detracts from feeling part of the world.
  24. forgottenlor
    I think the strength and what was really memorable about Dragon Age:Origins was were its multiple start stories. In fact, when most people talk about the game in a positive way, this is what they talk about. The multiple start stories of course then blend into the same rather generic game. I like branching exclusive content. It doesn't have to be at the beginning of the game. In lots of games you join some faction at some point and get a quest branch exclusive to what you choose (Gothic series, Might and Magic 7, Neverwinter Nights 2 OC). I do like the idea of culture and background being recognized throughout the game. I also think it would be an interesting experiment to have personality based dialogue. Of course, let's face it the more exclusive content in a game, the more work a developer has.
  25. forgottenlor
    The same with me. Its not so much as a desire not to use potions, but that I really don't even think about them, unless I win some distance from the game. Battle Frenzy is a good way to put it.
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