Lephys

I think that, for a game like this, there's nothing wrong with achievements being outside-the-game, recorded tidbits of things you've accomplished and/or specific paths you've taken through situations. But, they don't ever need to be present INSIDE the game, except as literal achievements (accomplishments recognized by the reputation system, or other things within the actual game world). If I can open up Steam (or voluntarily look in some specific game menu) and see a list of achievements, meant for the player and not for the character/gameworld, that's fine by me. But, yeah, the game, in no way, needs to say "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU MADE IT TO THIS CITY!" Although, it would be slightly hilarious if there was a trickster-type deity, and his booming voice resounded from the sky for all your party to hear, whenever you accomplished something he enjoyed. (But really, I don't want that. It's only enjoyably funny in HypotheticalVille)

Well, I'm thinking maybe it's time for knockdown to be more "You're on your back and now have to deal with that change in your situation" than "you're rendered completely inert for 10 seconds, and this happens to be accompanied by a shnazzy animation." Maybe you get different attacks, or you get trip opportunities on every other opponent who runs through your now-smaller engagement radius. Maybe you get feats and such that affect this, so that if foes don't take care in how they approach you, you chest-kick them to know THEM down before pulling yourself back up to your feet, or you side-roll dodge a blade, then disarm the attacker before getting to your feet and re-engaging them.

For what it's worth, they might be exclusive in a very specific manner (sort of in name alone). What I mean is, other classes might, indeed, get some form of book as equipment, but they will probably not be called "grimoires" (to prevent confusion, since there's already an announced ability exclusive to Wizards called "Grimoire Slam," for example), and they will probably work a bit mechanically differently from Wizard's grimoires. I could totally see Priests wielding holy tomes, a la Warhammer (40K),

Granted, but I'd just like to see it actually be worth having in a game.

Hahaha. Well then, I take back that statement I made about marketing not being able to be used in more than one type of -- OH WAIT I didn't make one. 8P My bad. Dynamic: Changing; not remaining the same from the origin of existence into forever. Object: A thing which has boundaries and is discernable from other things outside its boundaries. A web page is 2D, and yet it can have animated GIFs within an otherwise static web page. And, when referring to the elements of the page, one could refer to that GIF as a separate "object" from the background or any other element of the webpage. If you want to whine about how you could've single-handedly done 17 times better than Obsidian and show absolutely no appreciation whatsoever for all their work, that's your prerogative. That's just rude, not wrong. So there's no need to top it off with some incorrect corrections about their word choice that is wrong. "Dynamic" and "object" can be used in more than one type of context. Also, I'm fairly certain that, since light isn't actually striking the objects in a virtual world and creating real-physics-based shadows, I'm pretty sure the right coding could have 2D objects casting dynamic shadows, if someone who knew what they were doing really tried hard. Plus, I'm not sure what discerning between the 2D objects and 3D objects accomplishes, since the semantic-attack you're making is regarding "dynamic objects," with absolutely no claims on how many dimensions they occupy. Also, a flame troll can't be a real species of troll. You see, Trolls possess extremely rapid regeneration, which is counter-acted by fire. If flame trolls existed, they would either burn up and die before they could breed, or they'd be immune to fire, and therefore unkillable, and would take over the world (which they obviously haven't, u_u). o_o

I'm pretty sure that's a coding/world-building term, and not a marketing term. "Call of Duty: Black Ops 3! Now with 50% more dynamic objects! 8D" doesn't have much of a ring to it.

Not to mention knockdown abilities. . "You're stopping us from getting past to your Wizard? HAH!" *Trample*

I just thought of this, but I heard they'll be implementing these areas, collectively called "combat," that will require the equipping of weapons as well as the use of abilities like "attack" and "move" to get through. That's gonna be annoying if you don't want to use weapons or silly abilities just to overcome hostile obstacles. I hope they don't do that. We shouldn't have to use provided capabilities in the game to deal with certain situations in the game. What are you thinking, Obsidian! I jest... I agree that it shouldn't ever be a binary "see nicely with a lightsource, or SEE NOTHING AT ALL." That would be like saying "Oh, you dropped your sword? You can't attack at all. You just have to stand there and die." You might be less effective without your weapon, but you can go and pick it up, or equip something else for the time-being, etc. You're not completely prevented from combat progress, just because you didn't have super-specific things equipped and use super-specific abilities. But, at the same time, going into the dark without a light source should be kind of like going into combat nekkid. You can do it... but it's probably a bad idea. And having an adequate light source should be about as easy as having equipment, so even "pitch-black without it!" areas shouldn't really be a problem, unless you just hate preparation and like to do everything the hardest way imaginable.

It's only low if you never have dynamic opportunity ranges. Which is why, if you can only fight something between level 7 and level 9 (just, all things considered, there is no possible way to have progressed to that point in the game and be lower than level 7, and there is no possible way to progress past level 9 before taking on a given encounter), then there's really not any point in it. But, when you can do something at level 5, or at level 11, it serves a purpose. As for gauging your power, the ability to gauge your power doesn't change. It's still there. Example: During the player's level range from 5-8, there are going to be some level 4 encounters, some level 5 encounters, some level 6 encounters, some level 7 encounters, some level 8 encounters, and some level 9 encounters, hell, maybe even some level 10 encounters, for good measure. Also keep in mind that they're only planning on scaling SOME of the core content, so there'll be plenty of things that don't ever scale, ever. Annnywho... you can only ever get up to level 8, so the level 10 stuff is still tough for you to fight. You can't even make it be easy to fight, simply because you're not allowed to level up beyond 8 before deciding whether or not to take it on. This is completely unaffected by level-scaling. And, as I said before, the level 4 thing being half your level when you take it on is pointless. There might as well be a "complete encounter" button to click, at that point. HALF your level? But, see, the encounter's level is not the encounter's purpose in the game. It's not there to say "Hey, you do me before I get ungodly easy." It's there to be able to be confronted without HAVING to level up to get to it, just like the level 10 stuff is there to say "Hey, you're not quite ready for me yet." The point is that, completely outside the range of level-scaling, there are already opportunities for things to be tougher, more moderate, or easier. And the other point is that, in programming the game so that there are a variety of situations to tackle, you have the side-effect of leveling up in the process. The entire point there is that the situations you can tackle are more dynamic and less of a linear path, which is completely defeated by an utter lack of any kind of adjustment. Basically, regardless of whether it's scaling or purely static levels that do it, the game gets to decide how easy or difficult something should be... not the player (with the exception of the difficulty setting, which makes a sweeping adjustment to the entire playthrough). So, scaling doesn't prevent enemies from being stomp-into-the-ground-able any more than static levels that are always set 2 levels above your party's maximum possible level do. So if everything was too tough, or everything was too easy, or you couldn't alter your power relative to some particular encounter enough to suit your liking, it's not scaling's fault. It's the game's design in the first place, or your pickiness's, fault. Your concerns are perfectly valid (they are things that aren't stupid to desire or make sure the game has), but the simple fact is that level-scaling and the gameplay you're looking for are not mutually exclusive things. It's just from the particular angle you're looking on that they seem to be.

Some amount of Kickstarter tier rewards might be purchasable once the backer site goes live. But, that may only be for people who already backed? *shrug* I'm sure we'll know more once the backer site's done, though. I wouldn't give up hope just yet.

They could just show that "Arms of The Angels" Sarah MacLachlan Animal Shelter advertisement. Then just have a "Clicking this button will make them stop looking at you like that" button, that donates $5 to Obsidian Entertainment.

I don't know that they need to be "required," per se. And actually... what if it was a bit abstracted? What if you could still see the terrain well enough to not have eye strain, and you could even see enemies, but you simply couldn't make out details without a light source or some form of night/low-light vision (in certain, deep deep dark dark deep dark deep dark areas, of course... not ANYWHERE you don't have a torch)? Maybe the enemies become just kind of shadowy, so you can maybe tell a goblin from a wolf, but you can't tell a goblin shaman from a little goblin pawn or something? Also, maybe (maybe) you can't see make out chests/containers? That way, a light source gives you a rather decent advantage so that it isn't just some pointless thing that the "crazy hardcore immersion" peeps can play pretend with, but, at the same time, it doesn't uberly piss off the people who are ultra-bothered by the necessity to use a lightsource just to see and navigate/play through, to ANY degree, certain areas. Meh? I mean, really, if you're just flat-out against having to use light in the darkness, then you might as well be against having to overcome armor, or having to reveal magically invisible/stealthy enemies, or having to have lockpicks to pick locks. Is it really so bad that a certain situation would require a certain item/thing to overcome? (Is what I ask anyone who is so hardcore against the idea of darkness and useful lightsources that they STILL moan about even my compromise suggestion)

Meh, I should've worded what I said better. Just for the record, what I meant was, Fallout 3 didn't achieve a net gain by going 1st-person/3D. It gained some things, but it also lost a lot that was Fallout 1 and 2 (and even Brotherhood of Steel... even though it was a bit lacking for other reasons). I don't hate Fallout 3 or anything. Although, I liked NV a LOT better. But, yeah, I just don't think taking an RPG story from isometric 2D to 1st-person 3D is a quantifiable improvement or anything. There is no new era of RPG design that makes the old-school STYLE of gameplay/perspective/interface obsolete (as can easily be seen by the glorious, glorious P:E demo posted last night).

Unless you're suggesting that death, in a game like Bioshock, despite the player's best efforts, should never occur and should be easily avoidable, I'm not comprehending what you're saying. Also, why bash the choice to bolster effects when something like death (again, in the context of Bioshock) occurs, then turn around and emphasize the importance of ability variety? If you think you can just try harder and never die, then awesome. Some people will find that they can't, and will have a nice option (if they find that particular article of clothing) to mitigate the negative effects of their death. It's not encouraging anyone to die more instead of less, as death it still a negative. It's just LESS of a negative when you revive with 100% health instead of 50. Hell, oodles of RPGs have had multi-tiered versions of resurrection magic. The first revive spell/item you get might just get your party member back on their feet, with 20% health or something, and later you might get one that fully revives them. Does THAT encourage you to kill your party members as often as possible? You could just as easily argue "Why give me an ability that benefits me when I do something I should be avoiding anyway (die)?" As for the rest of your point, I think it's a valiant point/hope, and I don't think you have anything to fear from Obsidian.

That would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The only thing I've hated about how this was done in the past is that the darkness around you acted like a mask over the entire image, so, you could literally only see anything within the radius-proper of the light source. This would be awesome if the light had a larger radius for more highly reflective surfaces, so you'd see things like eyes, armor, weapons, exoskeletons, slick rocks, etc., glinting/shining out in the darkness, even if you couldn't see all the details of the figures/terrain at that distance. Basically, I think that "Do it exactly like we've seen in old games" and "don't try to do it at all" are not the only two options here. It can be done in a non-super-ultra-annoying manner, and instead in a "Holy crap this is AMAZING!" manner. G1fted... I know you don't believe me, and I understand your annoyance with the idea of attempting such a thing (because of crappy iterations of it in past games, and all the annoying torch mechanics you reference... totally understandable). But I urge you to have an open mind here, . You don't have to be optimistic about it or anything. Just please don't think that it can only be done crappily. I'll... I'll give you a dollar. o_o

*Raises hand* I hereby offer to fully voice-act the entire game (or, at least, the remainder after they do all the good-quality, paid voice-acting they've already planned), for free. I can guarantee price, but not quality. Although, I CAN guarantee that Obsidian could do worse than me.

*Watches the part where the level is "rotated" in the Unity engine's playground editor* ... WHAT DEMONRY IS THIS?! O_O Scanning English language... ... ... ... ... ... Scan: Complete. No entries found matching the desired criteria, "Adequately describe what I've just bore witness to."

If they had posted it the next day, that wouldn't change the fact that you had already stayed up so late. I'm sure if they knew, 24 hours ago, that they were going to have trouble with it, they would've reacted accordingly. Just be thankful for what you have. You know, there are plenty of game fans in other forums who go simply go update-less until the game comes out, and then they have to guess as to how good it is, and cross-reference game-review magazines. u_u... NOW EAT YOUR PEAS! /jest

APOLOGY, UN-... ... ... ... ... -DOUBTEDLY ACCEPTED! The fact that you're having to put up with even more stuff, for longer than usual, just to get the video up, and you didn't just ragequit and go home for the night to keep your sanity is quite possibly one of the most appreciated gestures you can make. It is WE who apologize... for... the blood-itching NEED for new updates. Which... you guys inflicted upon us, by being awesome. So... yes, we've made a circle. Apology: accepted! ^_^

^ As always, Osvir, you have a knack for excellent, in-depth idea anlysis, I just fear that there are a small handful of things you couldn't really account for in a simple top-down mode of the current Bethesda engines without the game remaining changed a bit (for example, your inability to aim at various parts of the foes, without using vats, because your aiming has been reduced to 360-degree aiming on a single axis around you, parallel to the ground). As far as dreaming, personally I'd love it if they just went back to the entire game being isometric, rather than simply a mode. The mode just seems like a lot of work for what ultimately remains an imitation of the real thing (even though I get that it would technically allow for a hybrid of both styles, for all kinds of players). But, I really don't think the franchise gained much by going 1st-person. I don't think it needs to be EXACTLY like the old games. There's room for improvement without completely changing the style to 1st-person. These type of games just work better with an isometric view, methinks. You're witnessing the story, but you're not in your character's boots. You're like a ninja cameraman puppeteer who's allowed to follow the action, like those people who shoot documentaries on lion/elephant families and such, haha.

We need an Oompa Loompa AND a Golden Goose Egg, STAT!

Well, just to fill you in, personally, they have officially taken the stance that they will use minimal level-scaling on core-content, and that there will be plenty of things that don't scale at all. Also, I just want to point out to you that level-scaling is simply the determination of level ratings of combat encounters/enemies using the player character/party's level as a basis. Things don't have to be the same level as you for scaling to occur. This is the point that I've tried to make umpteen times, heh. Okay, take a fixed scenario. Your party is all level 5. Encounter A is level 3, and Encounter B is level 7. With fixed levels, if you progress up to level 7 before taking on either encounter, then A is going to be easy as pie, and B is going to be pretty "meh." There is no "challenging stuff" option, shy of changing the difficulty. And you don't really need Encounter A to be THAT easy. I mean, if you just need to walk within 10 feet of an enemy for it to disintegrate because of your sheer level difference, what's the point in even facing it? Combat devoid of any challenge, whatsoever, is pointless. Easy? Sure, that's fine. That's MINOR challenge, not challenge-less. So, okay, let's take the same exact scenario, but put in a little scaling, where useful. Encounter A is level 3, and Encounter B is level 7. So you progress up to level 7, then want to take on one of the two encounters. Well, you knew progressing would make higher-level stuff easier to take on, so it can be assumed that you didn't need Encounter B to be super difficult for you, in order to have a good time playing the game (or you'd probably put it on Hard), right? So, you're level 7, and Encounter B is level 7. But now, lo-and-behold, Encounter A is, I dunno... level 5. So, guess what... Encounter A = still easy, but not so ridiculously easy that it's not benefitting anyone to be so easy. And Encounter B = completely unaffected by scaling (you haven't surpassed it). Maybe if you get to level 8 before tackling it, it bumps up to level 8? Then, when you hit level 9 before tackling it, it only bumps up to 8. *shrug* That's the beauty of it. It's like spice/seasoning in cooking. Just because you want cinnamon in something doesn't mean you have to put 8 cups of cinnamon in it. You can put a tiny pinch, or a tablespoon, or 8 cups, and anywhere in between. Also, there's more than one reason (I want to affect how difficult challenges are!) for taking on encounters in a given order (like doing quests B and C and leveling up before tackling quest A). Just because you gained 2 levels in the process doesn't mean your intention was specifically to level up to mitigate the challenge of the high level of challenge quest A presented. So, what point is there in forcing that alteration? Thus is my case, u_u, for what it's worth. They're going to use it some in P:E, it would seem, so there's no sense shunning it and trying to burn it at the steak for being a heretic. It's really not so bad as people like to think at-a-glance.

He was a Dwarf. He can probably tote a whole cart on each shoulder, and STILL sprint for a few hundred yards without becoming winded. It's funny, 'cause I thought up one of those used-in-almost-every-type-of-game-you-can-imagine-at-one-point-or-another "push levels," involving horses and some kind of dire chase scene for your party (Stop the guy who's getting away with the important artifact, or escape the impending army, etc.), PURELY in a "Wouldn't THAT be both ridiculous and hilarious?" sense... But then... Logistically, I surprisingly think it could actually work. The key word being "could" (and not "should"). Each member of your party on a horse. Relative to your enemies, you can still move around and use abilities like in regular combat (because EVERYONE'S moving at like... what... 30MPH horse-running speed? So it's like normal combat, but on animated horses, and with the background moving, from a technical standpoint). I'm just saying... it could happen. o_o

That makes sense. Kinda like how they do the whole "THIS TITLE IS EXCLUSIVE TO THIS CONSOLE, AND WE WILL NEVER, EVER MAKE IT FOR ANY OTHER CONSOLE!" Then, 2 years down the road, "ANNOUNCING THAT ONCE-EXCLUSIVE GAME FOR THIS OTHER CONSOLE/PLATFORM! 8D!"

Level-scaling allergy. Finally a valid need to remove/toggle it. Who says they're always getting experience at the exact same time your party does? Oh, that's right... you are. Is your party capable of progressing in an hour as far as it takes bandits weeks to progress? Unless your party is 7,000% more productive than everyone else in the land, it doesn't make any sense that others wouldn't make SOME progress alongside your own, if only because time passes for both parties. The fact that level-scaling doesn't necessarily determine the initial level at which the player is exposed to a given encounter, and that it also doesn't prevent an encounter from ever becoming any easier, begs to differ. Some will still find xy encounter hard, others will still cut through it, and the third group will still find it a moderate challenge. You still seem to hold on to this facade that moderation in its use does not exist, and I do not know why.