Lephys

Yeah, I'm all for the ability to sometimes cheat a merchant, or even kill him, etc. But, a choice between "slay these tough guards and get it all for free" or "just pay for things" isn't really that significant of a choice. If it can't be done in a significant manner, I'd honestly rather just have unkillable merchants. Or, I wouldn't mind killable merchants who can't simply be looted for everything they sell (on their persons), who then get replaced with other merchants (not 1:1... just, you couldn't ever simply slay ALL the merchants and just be merchant-less, because new merchants would show up.). etc. If you're going to get free stuff from a merchant, I'd much rather it be a lot of effort in scamming him, and/or finding out where he keeps stuff and the combination to that chest, etc. Not "I'm so good at combat that I get everything for free, beetchezzzzz!"

To be clear, it's perfectly fine for things to be abandoned. It just needs to be pretty rare that it's after the one-and-only time you visit. It starts making everything feel very "the only purpose of this was to present you with appropriate-level quests and equipment, at the time. It's done its job... NEVER COME BACK HERE, for the rest of the 40 hours of your playthrough, u_u... No one here could ever have any relevance to anything else in the world, ever." And it's not that every single place SHOULD have you coming back multiple times. It's just that, every single place shouldn't only having you go there only once just because it isn't some huge quest-hub city.

I get that a lowly merchant has lowly goods, and a well-protected merchant has quality goods. However, you're also not slaughtering the lowly merchant for items that will allow you to take on a dragon. You're facing lesser threats, because that's where you are at the moment. I'm also quite aware that there are other reasons to not-do something. I'm not talking about any reason whatsoever. I'm specifically talking about risk versus reward. Maybe you're roleplaying a character who hates merchants because they killed his family and sold him into slavery, so he kills all merchants everywhere. But, I'm saying, from a game-design standpoint, how prudent is it, really, to go through all the trouble of letting you kill the merchants, but letting them be appropriately guarded? It's not a completely optional entity, like some super-hard-to-kill-but-drops-really-good-loot thing off in a cave somewhere. If you don't kill that, then fine, you don't get that sword. But, if you choose not to kill a merchant, it's not as if you can just choose to also never acquire any new equipment, ever, either. Thus, killing a merchant is an alternative to simply spending your money on that merchant's wares. So, what I'm saying is, how do you make sure that, at any given point, the effort you put into overcoming whatever's guarding the merchant's wares doesn't just cancel out your "need" for that upgraded equipment in the first place? If it's too easy to kill the merchant, then anyone not hindered by "alignment" issues in their roleplay will just kill him, because free stuff is always better than paid-for-stuff. And if it's pretty friggin' difficult, then isn't it a bit silly that you're after equipment from that merchant in order to take on something else that's difficult, but you have the option of difficultly taking on the merchant's protection in order to acquire that stuff for free? Know what I mean? It's almost like "Man, if I could just kill this boss and take his weapon, THEN fight him again, he'd be a lot easier." Except that you don't have the alternative of simply buying that particular weapon (assuming it's a unique weapon in this example). Essentially, it often amounts to a whole lot of work for very little actual design benefit. You CAN kill the merchants, every single time you want new stuff but don't want to pay for it, but then, it's really tough to do. Just like that bit of the game you're trying to re-equip for is. 8P That, and the money thing. If you kill all the merchants and get everything for free, what do you spend your money on? What good is the money at that point?

I uselessly can't recall for certain, but I seem to remember Josh answering a question about this, saying that it's possible, but they have to be close enough to one another? Also, since I don't know if it does or not right now, I'm going to go ahead and say that it should cost an action in-combat. If it takes time to sheathe your sword and draw your dagger, or change grimoires, then it shouldn't be any different for one character getting an item from another character.

Such info! So data! Much knowledge! Thanks quite muchly, as always, for these informative responses, Josh! ^_^

Well, they've already got all those subtle animations in the environment with flora and such blowing in the wind, etc. Water rippling... It might be possible they're already doing this. I mean, they did show off all that fancy dynamic lighting on a 2D image early on, in sort of a "huzzah!" fashion. It'd be a shame if all the scene-baked lightsources in the land were "static" (even if they change in intensity and/or over time, if they didn't "flicker" and such in an animated fashion at all.)

I'm not really sure why being a Wizard is a "cop out," but cool.

*reads all the legal documentation*... Whoa, *adjusts glasses*, according to this, it appears that Osvir, is in fact, and I quote, "not the boss of Volourn." I wasn't aware.

The only problem is, I don't keep that in my pocket. I keep it tucked safely away in YOUR NIGHTMARES!

@robbiebp: I definitely think an actually distinct, quality MMO that doesn't just follow the current popular formula would be great. I'll believe it when I see it, though. Wishful thinking.

Now now... I'm pretty sure Dragon Age 2's kind of thinking was simply "less level design." I certainly didn't notice any "more writing." More voice-acting, maybe. See, I just hate what humans do to the gaming community. It's not a piece of code's fault.

Ahh, sorry. My mistake. I was, indeed, talking about UI "windows"/elements using subtle animation/dynamic lighting, etc. When you're reading a note, candle flicker on parchment. Blown-in-the-wind tree shadows on a stone frame, or on portrait frames, etc. But, yes, I would also like to see actual in-game windows (structure windows) use spiffy effects, as well,

"The whole world is in danger! But nothing's really affected those first several villages you've come to since, what... months ago?" Yeah, you could always just consider even a small village to just be a tiny quest hub. Instead of "Okay, I'm here, what all problems exist? Okay, cleared those up... MOVING ALONG! *dusts off hands*", you could just have a small village be a small hub for various quests/situations arising over time. After all, why would all of a given village's problems conveniently all be present at the exact same time you happen through that place for the first time? They probably wouldn't. Doesn't mean the main questline has to send you back to every small bit of civilization you've ever stumbled across, every chapter. But, there should at least, ideally, be some reason to visit places more than just once (places of a population greater than like... 3).

The only thing is... what's the trade-off for the effort and resources spent on being able to kill them? If it's one of the hardest things you can do (difficulty proportionate to the quality/usefulness of their wares), then why would you even need any of their inventory any longer if you had the means to take down basically the toughest encounter in the game? And if it wasn't too hard to do, then when wouldn't it be prudent to just kill them? And/or, what's the tradeoff for killing them? You get all this great stuff, but then the whole town either kills you on-sight or drives you out and bans you. And with the reputation system, I'm sure word spreads, or you get a bounty on your head, etc. Stealing an item or two without getting caught, that might can occur. That requires resources you wouldn't necessary spend (to, say, just become better at taking on overcoming combat encounters, which is a large portion of the required gameplay, so improvements in that regard are always useful), so that you can specifically bypass certain obstacles and not get caught. And your reward isn't an entire trade route worth of top-tier equipment. It's just a five-finger discount on one or two things. Maybe you can only take what you can conceal at the time, and, once the merchant notices stuff missing, they tighten security further so it basically becomes impossible to steal anything else, *shrug*. Basically, I don't want them to put in a "you can murder this merchant and just take a stronghold's worth of supplies and equipment" if it's just going to be a matter of effort, because then the choices are between buying all that (which probably takes a while), or putting forth the effort to murder him and get THAT much free stuff. Not only that, but, how beneficial is it to save THAT much money? Now you go to the next town and immediately buy all new stuff, 'cause you're so rich? Or just buy all your stronghold upgrades at once? Surely you just eventually wind up with a plethora of coin by the end of the game. At which point... why didn't you just buy the stuff you needed in the first place? Probably would've been oodles easier than overcoming whatever security measures were in place via combat. *shrug*

I'm aware. My apologies. Didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I was simply commenting on the technicality of what it is you're actually paying for. The price you pay isn't really the "cost" of the rewards, since the entire purpose of your pledge money (and the basis for the structuring of the pledge tiers) is to raise money. It's just a technicality of the representation of the payment, is all.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/niche?s=t "niche [nich] 3. a distinct segment of a market." Define "misuse,"

I don't think character creation was literally "absent" from that E3 build of the game; if I recall, most of the articles reference Obsidian skipping through it. If I had to guess, I'd say whoever was doing the talking in the presentation briefly described the character creation process, but, for time, said "and now we're just gonna start this up with a pre-made character." Then, as they went through, they probably told people what stats did and whatnot. I suppose the journalists could've given a play-by-play description of "And since Calisca had like 3 more points of Dexterity than the other characters, she was hitting much more often. Because, you see, in this game, Dexterity grants you Accuracy, which, in conjunction with your opponent's defense, determines Attack Resolution," but they did not do that for whatever reason. See, if I were a journalist, I would've done so; chocked my article full of as many details as possible. But then, who ever wants to read all the paragraphs I generally type? Annnd there you have it. It's probably more popular to give a much more generalized rundown of the features and style of the game demo shown. Especially when the stuff's not finished and tweaked; there's not much point on reporting a bunch of temporary specifics which you know are most likely going to change before release. They usually do a more generalized preview of games, while saving the more in-depth stuff for actual reviews. Or, at least much-closer-to-launch hands-on previews, etc.

BG3? That's PREPOSTEROUS! Now... BG5? Keep talking, I'm listening...

Honestly, in a way, that feels like a much better pace for things. Well, it could be, at least. Like Tali's romance in Mass Effect. All other things aside, you couldn't romance her until like halfway through the second game. You already had history together (of just knowing each other and such), and you had much more important crap going on before that, etc. Instead of the whole "we just completed a couple of quests together... So.... wanna settle down and make babies after declaring our undying love for one another?" found a lot, recently. If they didn't feel they have the time or resources to work in anything beyond just optional, isolated romance arcs/options, then I'm glad they're not putting them in. In an ideal world, everything wouldn't take any specific amount of time or resources, and it'd all be in the game, in perfect form. But, alas... we live in reality. 8P Oh, but, specifically to the OP (and anyone sharing his worries), I highly encourage you not to associate something like "no romances" with "oh dear, the devs aren't concerned with staying the course with the essence of the IE games, and it's all just going to be combat like in IWD!" It's not that the aspect of romance is insignificant, but it really isn't part of the heartbeat (no pun intended) of the IE games. Take out relationships, and yeah, you've got a problem. But just a single subset of them? It's not even impossible that people simply won't feasibly have time to really worry with long-term things throughout the story of PoE, since we don't know what's going on in that story, specifically. It's entirely possible that you'll be able to facilitate romantic excursions with the very same characters in the second game, or an expansion, when the characters from this game's story get some time for R&R.

That would actually be pretty awesome: subtle environmental effects on the UI. 8D!

Well, you're not really paying for the goods you're receiving, as much as you are being enticed by goodies/incentives to pledge more money. It's kind of like getting a return on your investment, in the form of goods. "Let us borrow $100, and we'll pay out soundtrack and t-shirt dividends." I guess the base game is sort of like your initial investment, since that's what you're getting back in lieu of your initial money. So, that's kinda like paying for it (almost like a pre-order, but with more risk involved).

Mmmmm. Steak. Haha! That's one of my best typos yet. ^_^ But, yes, the length is a similar factor. I know everyone was talking about how The Darkness II was "only like 4 hours long." I picked it up anyway, and enjoyed it for a good 11-12 hours before beating it. I would honestly have to rush myself to complete it in 4 hours. And that's not anywhere close to speed-running times. I think the speedrun time was well under an hour. *shrug*... Anywho... I just hope the challenge presented and quantity (gameplay duration) of content are both up to par. I have faith, though.

Nonsense... Someone doesn't see enough reason to pledge $100 instead of $50. You offer material crap if they pledge $100. Person's preoccupation with said crap leads to their $100 pledge instead of $50. The game has just been improved in greater-than-zero ways, indirectly, via material crap.

I demand that hard copies of the patches be mailed to us, u_u... Physical goods advocates are people, too.

Seems like a rich old man, to me, if he's sitting on all your valuables.