forgottenlor

Reading Backer Beta complaints has given me an idea for tweaking resolve to make it not only more useful, but also allow more variation in the game. I'm not sure how workable my idea is, and I'm also not claiming its my idea per se, as attack speed was discussed as a possible ability modifier in the discussion of abilities before we knew what they did (by Sensuki, if I remember correctly, if by others as well- I don't claim to reas every thread in the forum-, I'm not trying to claim credit for your ideas, just push them). As recovery times are a bit long and armor recovery times also very long, what if each point of resolve reduced recovery times in general by 1% and armour recovery time penalty by an additional 1%. This would make characters with a high resolve faster in general, but would also make resolve attractive to any character wanting to wear heavier armour. The difference between resolve 3 and 18 in this system would be 15% attack speed and 15% armor speed penatly reduction, meaning a mage in heavy armour would recover from casting spells 30% faster. I'll grant the numbers might be off, but I think its an interesting idea, because it would make resolve more useful for everyone, but also make armour much more useful for characters going the high resolve route. I'm not sure about Perception. I like how penetration makes light weapons more useful. Maybe here the numbers only need to be tweaked, or perhaps as others have suggested increasing critical hits would also be useful.

I think "boring" classes are a problem in single character games. In party based games, especially in ones with 6 characters, its not really that important.

This was my experience as well. I ran 4th edition about a year before switching to Pathfinder. Noone complained about the combat mechanics. Rather it was people complaining that there was no more straightforward and simple class, like the fighter. There was no more super complex class like the mage. Everything was more or less the same. Skills and their use seemed more watered down. Balance is fine and good, but not at the cost of character and atmosphere. I DM a 4E campaign and ran three others. The point that there are no more super simple classes is true. The idea that all the classes are the same is completely and totally false. Even two of the basic healing classes, Shaman and Cleric, play dramatically differently. Clerics focus on straight up heals and some direct damage. They have some pretty significant bonuses to single target healing, especially in early game. Shamans have a spirit companion that's the bases of all their buffs; they teleport all over the battlefield, base all the buffs off proximity to the spirit companion, heal as areas of effect, and do significant buffs with a focus on teleportation. Let's see, then there's wild magic sorcerers; who have 80 million special additions to their spells based on the die roll, the stage of the moon, and whether you see the same color blue that I see. Even in the same class, illusionists play entirely differently from evoker types. Psionicists make a ton of temporary traps and automatic attackers over the board, oh and they have a power that lets them summon "any" non-magical item for a day with weight limits. My DMs never let me psionicists, because it was too easy to break the game. The constant, constant, constant bitching about 4E classes being the same normally comes down to the same garbage criticisms: People never tried the circuitous and relatively hidden, but surprisingly usable dual-classing rules. People want quadratic mages or ubermensch clerics back. Why even have classes then? PnP Skyrim would work just as well. People only played it for a little bit, or not at all. People want to look through 500 sourcebooks so they can make their own version of pun-pun. Yeah there's plenty of areas 4E falls down, but class variety isn't one of them. I was playing with a group mixing very experienced players with a bunch of newcomers. The newcomers found the classes a bit overwhelming in the beginning. No class in 4E compares with the simplicity of a 3.5E Fighter or Barbarian. The experienced players complained that they were limited on what they could do outside of combat. For example, however useless spells like animal messanger, major image, or augury might seem for a CRPG, they could be used very creatively outside of combat. Things like these disappearing were upsetting people. And sorry, no 4E class plays like the 3.5 E wizard who has a bevvy of spells in his spellbook and must decide what would be useful to learn in advance for a situation. We played for a year, so your attempts to put my group into one of your "people who" category just isn't correct.

This was my experience as well. I ran 4th edition about a year before switching to Pathfinder. Noone complained about the combat mechanics. Rather it was people complaining that there was no more straightforward and simple class, like the fighter. There was no more super complex class like the mage. Everything was more or less the same. Skills and their use seemed more watered down. Balance is fine and good, but not at the cost of character and atmosphere.

If Obsidian wants to make a good product, they will fix bugs and what not regardless of when the game is released. Releasing a game too full of design flaws and bugs just leads to bad reviews and less sales. It will also make future kickstarters more difficult. Take Realms of Arkana:Blades of Destiny. The developers patched the game continuously almost 8 months after release, admitted having been forced to release before they wanted to by the publisher. The result were terrible reviews and refunds on Steam. How did this serve them? I remember when Vampire:Bloodlines was released. It was considered a debacle. The reviews were utterly damning. Today it is considered a classic and one of the best RPGs of all time. Noone remembers now that the game was more or less released unfinished, Troika shortly afterwards went under, and that it was Troika's poorest selling game.

I can only say that the early access forums for Might and Magic X were much harsher and more negative than anything I've seen here. And yet when that game was released it got very good reviews (considering its very low budget) and the tone on the forums completely turned around. In my opinion it turned out very well. Many of the negative Early Access players were still vocal critics, but their voices were suddenly drown out by the vast number of players playing the finished product and enjoying it. The number of people who Beta test the game will be very small in comparison to those who play the finished game, and the finished game will determine its success or failure.

Assigning points might seem stupid if you are playing a balanced party. But let's say you want to go crazy and make a party of 6 paladins. Assigning points lets you have 6 paladins with different skills. It of course also lets you make a completely useless party skill wise. I'd personally rather have the freedom to screw up, but also make wacky parties.

Hmm... interesting. I didn't know this. So... 1 talent every 3 levels? That's it? So with an exp cap of 12th level, we'll only be able to choose 4 talents. Ok, unless these talents are super powerful, I don't quite see how a player can use them to make their characters much different from their base class roles. As for talents being handed out via quests... I'm ok with that, I suppose. Although it would be silly if such talents were feats of great human physical prowess. Like say...Whirlwind Attack or Weapon Finesse "hey, I just found and returned Bob's missing family heirloom. Now I can suddenly do a spinning move with my sword that hits 4 enemies at once! 3x a day! Sweet." I think Valorian is just stating that in D&D characters got feats once every 3 levels (unless they were a fighter or wizard) and since Josh is saying talents are like feats, it would mean 1 feat every 3 levels in the old system. He's hoping they change this in POE, as it would seem to not allow much character customization if it remained like the D&D system.

Well on another thread someone was claiming to have made it through both Baldur's Gate I & II with a single character with no metagame knowledge and that it was a "cakewalk." If this is so its all fine and good for them, as I said I don't think I could do it nor would I bother attempting to, nor did it have any effect on how I enjoyed the games. Mr. Sawyer has already claimed the difficulty of POE will rest around that of the infinity engine games, so I'm putting my faith in his words for now.

Unfortunately Sacred 3 is being made by a totally different developer and will be almost a totally different kind of game. The German magazine Gamestar previewed it in their June issue, and said things like "not even Gothic 4 was so different from its predecessor." and "Sacred 3 is the anti-thesis to Sacred" or "Advertisement should seduce you not rip you off. If someone is going to write Sacred 3 on a package, they should make an effort to include something similar to Sacred inside." or "It would have been more fair to have given this fun game a different name, but somewhere, someone at the publishers decided the game would earn more money with the name Sacred 3 on it, even if it raises false expectations." That's my free translation from German. The original Sacred developers are developing a game called Unbended, though. I'm personally most looking forward to Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, Age of Decadence, and Lords of Xulima.

I just read this thread for the first time and people's reactions puzzle me. There are plenty of things people do in video games that I will probably never be able and probably never want to do, like finishing Fallout 3 or Dark Souls in 20 minutes. I really enjoyed playing Baldur's Gate with 6 characters. I found it challenging. I played it through 3 times. I never once used less than 6 characters, because I enjoyed playing it with 6 characters. Why should it matter to me one way or another if someone solo it in 20 minutes? In fact I think almost everyone on this forum played through a least one infinity engine game and enjoyed it whether it was six characters or with only one. I played Fallout 2 through 3 times and never once started the game by trekking to Navarro. If someone wants to do this or can remember where every good and easily accessable magic item is in Baldur's Gate 2 (or bothers to write it down or read through a walkthrough before playing and planned out a playthrough) and beelines there on their 2nd or 3rd playthrough, why should it matter to me? Is it a design flaw because it can be done? I recently was stuck on Amnesia: The Dark Decent and needed advice on how to solve a puzzles and found 3 you tube videos on how to solve it. One was the designed solution and the other two involved jumping on to barely protruding pieces of scenery. I though MEH! Throwing rocks correctly looks to complicated, so I'll just jump up like the guy did on the video. I don't know how long that guy practiced jumping, but in the end I was happy to solve the puzzle by throwing rocks on my 3rd attempt. Just because someone spends the time to solo a game that isn't designed that way, doesn't mean completing the game according to design can't be fun.

Like what? Assuming that you did the 3 things I listed in my previous post, what battle challenged you? Here are some: The battle with the demi liche. The battle with the liche whose tomb is behind a secret door in an inn. Some of the battles in the underdark against the mind flayers. Those are probably not the only ones, but the ones that stick out in my mind. I did win all of those battles, but first I had to find a place to rest, memorize spells which could help my party specifically with those situations, drink helpful potions et.

I'd been playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons since I was 13 (in 1986) and had also played many of the D&D gold box games (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and others) as well as Wizardry and Bard's Tale games, and I certainly found that Baldur's Gate 2 had some very challenging battes, and I never played the game with less than a party of six.

It seems to me most classes can do a few things well. For example, the primary role of the wizard and druid is crowd control. This also seems to be the secondary role of the barbarian. The primary role of the barbarian is holding the front line, the secondary role of the wizard is doing damage to a single opponent, the secondary role of the druid is support. The wizard especially also has access to spells which fall outside both of his roles. I could slap armour and a shield on my barbarian and raise his stamina so he is a better line holder. Or I could give him high damage weapons and raise his stats to improve the area effect of his crowd control abilities. I could pick lots of stamina restoration spells for my druid, or I could focus on damage area effects. I imagine a melee wizard for example will fall back on the defensive spells a wizard has to offer, as well as short range/high damage output spells.

Well, it might help them in the long run. We don't know just how significant those defense bonuses actually are. The language in this update is vague. All we know is that they have the highest deflection scores of any class, they have a passive armor bonus ability, and inflicting critical damage on them will be 20% harder to do. This probably means they'll be taking less damage in melee than everyone else. And in those times when all of the above fails them, there's This: ^ this looks like the proverbial reset button. I like "second chance" stuff like this. Prevents the degenerate save scummer in me from reloading the game Well, it might help them in the long run. We don't know just how significant those defense bonuses actually are. The language in this update is vague. All we know is that they have the highest deflection scores of any class, they have a passive armor bonus ability, and inflicting critical damage on them will be 20% harder to do. This probably means they'll be taking less damage in melee than everyone else. And in those times when all of the above fails them, there's This: ^ this looks like the proverbial reset button. I like "second chance" stuff like this. Prevents the degenerate save scummer in me from reloading the game More stamina won't help you if you run out of health, that's what I meant with "in the long run" There are big advantages to not being hit much and as hard other than what one sees on the surface. For example if a priest restores a set amount of stamina or regenerates a set amount of stamina, a fighter who has taken less damage will be healed much more efficiently than a barbarian. Also a barbarian who falls in the middle of a fight will expose your weaker characters, whereas the fighter may continue to hold the gap. That could make the difference in winning a difficuIt encounter. I think these are good tradeoffs for the Barbarian's possible greater health in the long run,

Did you play any other infinity engine game without these classes? If so it doesn't sound like you'd have that much more of a problem than playing Baldur's Gate I or Icewind Dale with no fighters. I don't see why a mixture of other melee types like cyphers, paladins, rogues, and chanters couldn't be built into a front line. It would be more challenging than using a front line with a fighter, barbarian, or monk, but I imagine not as challenging as playing Baldur's Gate I with no fighters up front.

I just wanted to add late that my only experience with early access (for a finished game) is with Might and Magic X. I bought early access, was active on the forums, but did not play any of the three early access versions. The early access versions were in general poorly recieved. There was a lot of cursing, accusations of incompetence, and downright nastiness towards Limbic and Ubisoft. I was sure the game was going to be at best mediocre. The release version also had a number of problems, a few bugs, problems with the online saves and stability problems for some computers. I started the game about one month after release, and played most of it with the first post release patch (which meant I avoided most problems or they were already fixed) and quite honestly its one of my favorites from the last couple of years. Alot of the problems (such a movement speed) were improved directly do to people's complaints in early access. Of course since POE has an open beta, I'm not sure it needs early access, but I think early access can do a lot of positive things for a game,

:me raises hand: I'm pretty sure Sancho had more fun than Don Quixote. I've made "support" builds in various cRPG's and had fun with them, e.g. that skillmaster in SoZ I've mentioned several times. I also ran a PnP campaign where one of the players was a noble and high official and everyone else were his retainers or slaves. That worked out really well; the players really jumped into the roles, with the staff doing all kinds of underhanded stuff behind the boss's back, manipulating him, pulling him out of scrapes, and so on and so forth. I.e. I'm very much in favor of the support role for priests. If you want to play a more warlike godlike type, just pick a paladin. Also the D&D3 cleric broke the game. I played them too, a lot, simply because they were so awesomely powerful and versatile -- in fact, the D&D cleric is the closest D&D gets to a classless class as you can build a huge range of perfectly workable and diverse builds with it. Why is this bad? It's bad because it means that every time I built a cleric -- again -- it meant that I didn't build something else. All the effort that went into those other classes was wasted on me. Therefore, it is my strong preference that classes are (1) roughly equal in value, and (2) clearly differentiated. This way I'll get enjoyable gameplay from all of them, not just by finding out which one is best and then sticking with that. Having a clearly overpowered class like a D&D3 cleric is just as bad as having a clearly underpowered one. I agree and it seems that the priest is a much more focused "healer" (at least in terms of stamina) than either the druid or paladin, and he also has some good buffs and a few damage spells. In fact if I wasn't going to use a priest, I'd definately use both a druid and a paladin or chanter just to make sure I'd have enough of an ability to keep the rest of the party on their feet. That makes them in my opinion, definately a good choice in terms of mechanics.

I'm really glad someone beside the rogue got mechanics. It makes the chanter a much more desireable class.

Hmm. I payed with Paypal and got one.

Sorry but Dungeon Siege 3 alongside Kingdoms of Amalur really do have the best combat systems ever created. This is pretty obvious if you had bothered with either of them. But as I said I don't expect such level of action based skill combat here, just as long as it is better than Dragon Age Origins. First I'm going to take your quotes seriously, which may be a mistake. How can you compare two single player ARPGS with a party based tactical game? How can the gameplay be even remotely similar? If you want to play that kind of game, well there are lots of others of various quality on the market. They get published all the time and are exactly what this game is trying not to be, and that is why people funded this game on Kickstarter. They did not want another single player ARPG. Its also why you've had such negative responses. If you're looking for another modern RPG, like Dragon Age, you'll definately be dissapointed by Pillars of Eternity. Its not what people funded, nor what the developers have set out to make.

Let's not forget they have expanded from 4 to 11 classes, added a mega dungeon and a second city. If wages are their highest expense (paying around 20 people's salaries for 2 years.), then all those added features cost a lot more time. 7 classes need animations, character pixels, extra portraits, and playtesting for balance. The city requires a lot more dialogue, quests, and playtesting, all of which cost a lot of time. I suspect the mega dungeon is probably the least taxing, assuming (perhaps falsely) that it is mostly combat oriented and reusing tile sets. I also suspect that the game may actually cost more than 4 million to make, but that Obsidian will east part of the development cost, knowing that they get a huge portion of sales, and the prospect of being to make sequals with their own IP.

I think what is forgotten here, and what Josh has mentioned before is that skills in PoE will be MORE useful if held by multiple team members. The example given is the stealth party which can more easily ambush foes. This does offer up multiple interesting party strategies. Instead of worrying about individual character builds, you might have to worry more about party builds. For example a stealth party could only have a smattering of other skills, and other strategies of gaining resources or overcoming obstacles may be denied them. I would still love to see an update on skills, though.

No. Druids' forms are costly on their own. Making sex-specific variants would be an even larger investment of time. I think explanations like this are very good. There are some things which players might find nice to have, but when we see that the costs for something like sex specific shifted forms are extremely work or money intensive, then it is clear (to me at least) that funds (or time) are best dedicated elsewhere,

My reaction concerning the Druid was the complete opposite, so I find your comment interesting. The Druid seems to have two mechanical themes, which seem to me to be area of effect damage and area effect healing/buffing spells. I also thought it really cool that the Druid has some spells inspired by his D&D ancestor, but at the same time they seem much more useful. The D&D druid was hampered by being a second rate healer and a third rate damage dealer. This druid seems like a nice balance. In fact I can see going without a Wizard or a Priest and using a Druid instead, and that is exactly what I was hoping this class could do mechanically. I hated the Aumaua concept art, but the portrait has completey change my mind. My choice of playing a Godlike or a dwarf has become much less clear.