Lephys

That's pretty great! I realize that there are only so many branches of specific background that they can feasibly include, but it's good when it's more than just a tiny handful of choices.

You know... I just find it interesting that that's something the big, regular retail releases don't do. Imagine how many more people would get the collector's edition of some upcoming EA title or something if they actually offered additional, barebones digital versions of the game with such a purchase. Just goes to show the difference in attitude. Kickstarted games: "Spread the love! The more people who play it, the more they can tell their friends about it, and it's just good business!" Big industry games: "Let's see how many ways we can charge you for portions of this game..."

^ Yeah, I would only be worried if you didn't have a dedicated card. It may not run on "Ultra" or whatever, but it should look pretty nice and run smoothly. But, if you ever DO feel the need to upgrade the card, you really don't have to spend the big bucks just to run games nicely, I've learned. You definitely don't want to skimp, because saving $30 isn't much if you have to replace it in a year instead of 2 or 3 (based on its ability to run the upcoming titles you want to play), but... just having a dedicated card with plenty of resources is way more important than having the absolute sparkliest model, And yeah, if you can help it, don't go with 8. It's just... so arbitrarily designed. Not something you want, if you can help it. 7 isn't bad at all, though, if you're mainly just gaming. I can't vouch for using a bunch of specialty software or anything, as I mainly use mine to game.

I don't know exactly how they're going to go about it, but they're trying to still keep the spoilers to a minimum, even for the beta experience. So, even if we're loaded into maps from the actual campaign (which, given the extensive nature of the creation of these environments, I'm sure we'll be in places from the actual game, and not just some beta-only areas or something), we probably won't simply be playing through a direct snippet of the actual game's story. They might throw some actual quests our way (the more minor/optional ones), and/or even make up some quests (or strip them of spoil-y content), etc. And they'll probably give us some kind of opportunity to battle a lot, to test the combat and, dare I say, balancing. Probably a much greater opportunity than will exist at any point, ever, in the actual game. Just my hypothesis.

I dunno, though. I remember reading somewhere (or watching a video?) in which Josh commented heavily on their current dialogue-writing tools, and how amazingly great they are, and how much dialogue it allows them to easily write and keep track of (especially all the branching/consequences stuff). I mean, looking at those few conversations in the recent demo, they all had more dialogue options per prompt than are commonly seen in a cRPG. I wouldn't assume the opposite, but I definitely wouldn't assume it would be infeasible for them to write low-Intellect dialogue for a major portion of the game.

This. Here's the thing: Is "because resources" a perfectly valid reason for why romance isn't going to be a part of this particular project? Sure. What it isn't, though, is a perfectly good reason for why it cannot ever be a part of any RPG, other than just some pro-mancer-only dating sim game. "A bunch of people don't prefer that" isn't really a valid reason for "no matter how much money a game budget gets, it should ALWAYS be spent on higher priority things." I guarantee you there's plenty of stuff in any game that doesn't need to be in the game, or that lots of people don't like. That doesn't mean there's never any reason not to put something in a game. All it means is, "the resources could be spent on something else" is not a good enough reason, by itself, not to put it into the game, because that's always true. I mean, to hell with story in PoE! Let's just put all those resources into combat! 8D Or, away with the in-depth reputation system. Let's just go back to simple morality, and put all those resources toward 7 more hours of campaign, more varied creatures and encounters, etc! Everything that requires resources comes at the cost of the potential for something else. Romance is not unique in this. Plenty of things in games are optional and not-loved by the entire populous of people who play the game. Heck, when you look back at statistics, you often see that something like 20% of people who played a game ever used a particular class, for example. Doesn't mean that class should've just been knocked from the list and was a waste of resources.

Wasn't aware winter was one month away from August. o_o Seems to me that getting something in September instead of December still qualifies as "early."

I've got Windows 8 on my laptop, and I don't really mind it after getting used to it. And by that I mean, "figuring out how to not ever have to use the 'THIS WAS ARBITRARILY DESIGNED ONLY TO EVER BE FUNCTIONAL/INTUITIVE ON A TOUCH-SCREEN DEVICE, 8D!!!!' portion of it. I pretty much just use the "desktop app," which is basically just Windows 7. If you ever do have to upgrade from XP, Windows 7 is really not bad at all. I built a new machine before 7 was out, though, and tried to overcome the 32-bit thing by going with XP 64-bit edition... that was a bit of a mistake, heh. It really still wasn't THAT bad. I got all my games and such to work with it. But, every time I tried to install something new on it, it took some finnagling with drivers and such to get things to cooperate. Really, though, 7 is pretty straight-forward, and will let you step into the 64-bit world. Also, just as another upgrading tip: You don't necessarily need the absolute awesomest model video card there is, as long as it's got as much video ram as you're willing to spend money on. My desktop's still running a Radeon 5870, 2GB, and it still runs plenty of games smoothly on nice graphical settings.

Phew...

I just think it's uniquely appealing from a roleplaying standpoint. You are given a character whose decisions you have pretty much full control over. I just think it's dumb to separate it completely out of the continuity of the narrative. I find romance not-for-its-own-sake appealing. A noble's manse is another potentially good manse, methinks.

That would be SO great! "We got word that this town is suffering a horrendous blight! How may we be of service?" "PLEASE, please! You've got to put an end to his dark sorcery! He keeps making all these crazy incantations, and they make me want to perform terrible acts! We are all bewitched we are! You must silence the dark wizard!" Dark Wizard Le Phys - "Hey, it looks like a party just came into town! Why wasn't I invited?" *Everyone in your party must roll a Willpower check* By the way, Brandon... for your own good... NEVER play King's Quest VI. Every possible death you can succumb to in that game presents you with its own, unique, "game over" pun. And that's not even counting an entire island that's essentially made out of puns.

They aren't necessarily godspawn. They're simply marked, allegedly by the gods, at birth. I mean, I guess SOMEone in the world in which Eora resides could be the actual child of a god. But, the godlike are infertile so that they don't just take over the planet, I would think. Who knows for what reasons the gods do what they do? 8P You would think, though, that if the gods wanted godlike to be plentiful, they'd've just given them the ability to reproduce, made a handful early on, then been done with it. The fact that they take it upon themselves to continue marking only specific people in the world makes me think they have a reason for not having a whole boatload of godlike in the world, even if it's just "Because I feel like it."

For some reason, I thought they could currently do it thrice per rest. Even if they start only being able to do it once per rest, that number will probably climb, I would think. Either that or their Spiritshift form becomes INSANELY powerful, if it's limited to "no, you can only ever do this for ONE combat." *shrug* I definitley prefer that it be more spread around. That's the main thing I hated about Magery in D&D: it was always "Oh, you get to handle MYSTICAL magical spells! So, obviously, you only get like 2, for now... per day. Everything else you just have to do like a normal person. But you're a totally different class, and you've dedicated your life to magic, and not quarterstaff skills. But, just go ahead and handle 99% of things with your stick, until you gain about 4 or 5 levels." If I'm to be magical, I want to use magic. I don't care if it's not volcano-summoning. I'd rather it be a bunch of small torch burns that I can use on a regular basis, than just one big fireball that embodies the essence of my class.

Wait... say what now? Josh just talked about how we'll even have full control over level-up-point-allocation for all party members. Why wouldn't we be able to manage their equipment? Did I miss something? I hope not...

Yeah, I know that could get pretty deep and complex, but I'd be happy with just anything functional, really. Even a really basic implementation, instead of just "if you have infravision, enemies are easy to see, on the screen, and if you don't, they're harder to see, but mousing-over them still lets you know everything anyway, and you can pause the game, etc..." I digress, though, as I think it's a bit late in PoE's development for something like this to go in. That, and it probably would've never made a high-enough priority rank with the given budget. Just something I'd like to see in a cRPG.

Maybe one of the dispositions can just be [FacePalmWorthy]. "Why does your Druid friend scowl so much?" "Oh, I think it's just in his... nature?" *Person rolls Resolve check to resist the urge to punch you* Also, I bet Brandon is secretly a superhero-by-night, who leaps across rooftops, scouring the city for literal humor. He has the precognitive ability to detect when someone's about to make a terrible pun, so he swoops in and uses his mental powers of confusion to prevent them from remembering how to even form a joke. The day is saved. His name... The Addler!

I miss the days when that was an acceptable price to pay for an expansion. They seem to be so statistically small, nowadays (usually). I'll happily pay 40 bucks for a whole 'nother campaign.

I'm genuinely hoping for a beta setup in such a way as to be almost indescribable in terms of percentage of an actual playthrough. I mean, I realize that abilities and mechanics and maybe even enemy info are going to be revealed if we play the beta build, but, it really needn't be the exact groupings/order/locations/etc. as in a narrative playthrough, I would think.

A vote just isn't really going to help at this point (nor will any amount of extra consideration on Obsidian's part), because it'd be a vote between an objectively bad decision -- trying to cram romance into the game in this home stretch -- and an objectively good decision. In an ideal world, I'd snap my fingers, and romance would be easily put into the game before it comes out. But, that's just not going to happen. And I think if you look back, you'll find more than enough pages about how well putting romance in for the sake of having romance in works. But hey, there's always the expansion. This thread is basically here to discuss the merits/pitfalls/what-have-yous of romance in a game like PoE, in the event that it's at all beneficial towards a future implementation, or just for design-brainstorming funsies. Take your pick.

So funny you should say that... When Diablo 2 came out, my brother LOVED it. He knows if he sat around trying to actually come up with a good character name, it'd take forever, so he just slaps in the first thing he thinks of. So he makes a Barbarian, named "TheRock" (I think you couldn't use spaces? Or, he just didn't, either one...). So, he beats the game, and we didn't know that you get "Sir" prefixed onto your name when that occurs. So, we all said, "Sir The Rock? That's awkward as crap!" So we just started pronouncing "The Rock" as one word, and calling him, phonetically, "Sir There-uhk." Haha. Annnnnnnnywho...

^ The quality of PoE be damned if you can't display a green K! In all seriousness, there's a thread for that, I believe. You have your little VIP badge there, so obviously you've completed pledge management (I would think). Big deal or not, if you'd like to check on getting it fixed, you can post in there, and I'm sure our splendtastic mod team can help you out,

@Hoku85, I think a lot of Wasteland 2 backers got a free copy of Wasteland 1, but that's the only connection to Wasteland 1 that I'm aware of. I don't think buying it gets you anything.

Knowledge tempers expectation. Without it, you're left with the brittle, raw ore of assumption.

I just thought about it: They tend to get purely animal forms, rather than broader earth-affinity forms.

Hmmmm... in a way, it'd be cool if you could actually fail to distinguish between friend or foe. BUT, that would kind of conflict with the whole "I'm an omniscient party-manager in the sky" mechanic that's going on. So... I would say for simplicity's sake, all PCs would always be identifiable to each other. I think gameplay convenience trumps simulation there. Also, I'm just talking about states here, to make sure that's clear. Not some dynamic gradient of visibility or anything. You'd have 3 states: -Undetected -Detected but not fully identifiable -Detected and identified. The middle state would result in the combat log displaying "??? hits Steve for 8 Piercing damage," etc. Or, you might have something like "Humanoid," or "animal", etc. I mean, you're going to know the difference between a wolf form and a person-form, if you can see it well-enough to know there's a creature there. Just because you don't know if it's a wolf, or a dog, or a small bear, etc, doesn't mean you can't tell it's not a human, etc. Anywho, that's just the basic idea. Might even be that you suffer penalties against a foe you can't see well. So, sneaky types. Maybe fire spells and the like could provide illumination. You could even have flare-type spells with tactical use, etc. I just think states of light/visibility are under-used in RPGs, 8P