marelooke
-
Posts
1508 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by marelooke
-
-
Kirill's piano concert now in HD on youtube! Enjoy one of the best composers/pianists in the video game industry!
Loved how he just shook that piano version of the Update Song out of his sleeve. E-P-I-C. I'm gonna keep an eye on the guy now, since he lives in Belgium he's GOT to give concerts around here sometimes... (and if not, I'm sure I can find out where he lives, so I can go play creepy fanboy in his front yard
I keed I keed, well, mostly 
)EDIT: Off topic, this thread isn't about the Codex.
A free bump is a free bump
-
1
-
-
If we're going to judge them on fight capability, I'll take a honey badger. Those bastards are crazy!
Then how about a human? That's one hell of a nasty species...
-
I was attempting to try out Age of Conan, but I somehow ended up with an US account and it does seem like customer service doesn't work on weekends.
EDIT: managed to create a new EU account linked to my other one, already about to dump the game though, 3 crashes so far and I'm not even in the game world yet. Talking about a bad start.
-
2
-
-
(there are mechanics in EVE that have been known to be broken for over 7 years[!]).
Interesting. Like what?
I don't really want to turn this into an EVE discussion, especially since listing everything that needs work would give a pretty bad picture of what is actually a really good game (if you're into that sort of game, that is), but for example SOV (sovereignty) mechanics have been broken for a really long time.
-
They have been working on it but I seem to remember rumours about it not going smoothly and then there was that whole outcry from EVE fans about CCP not giving them enough attention, so they either took staff off of WOD or halted it completely for a while.
More likely because they needed to focus on Dust 514 imo. Also the outcry wasn't about "not getting enough attention" but about "spending time and money on non-gameplay essential stuff (clothing etc) to then sell that stuff overpriced in an ingame store" while letting core gameplay stuff that needed fixing stay broken (there are mechanics in EVE that have been known to be broken for over 7 years[!]).
The entire thing is known as "monoclegate" (or the Jita riots) nowadays, see here if you care for more details. The playerbase has only very recently recovered from that debacle btw.
Some of the systems they were talking about sounded novel though; A single player in each city can be elected prince and one of the perks of the job includes issuing "blood hunts" on other players which opens them up to perma-death, but if you don't manage to keep enough players happy then they can revolt and you will be overthrown. It sounds a bit like roleplaying President Aladeen from The Dictator.
Knowing CCP the entire economic system is also likely to be very well developed. If anyone can breathe some new life in the beyond stale MMO industry then I consider CCP to be a very good candidate.
-
I think the move to turn-based is turning some away, too. Not me personally, but just saying. I've seen a lot of comments to that effect in other forums, even from people who've played the previous games.
Sad but true. The quality of the Divinity series is really high but it was always more the underdog compared to the much better known D&D classics.Divinity series is simply too obscure and never left that big a mark to attract the same amount of cash as Wasteland and Torment.
Judging from what I've seen from the gameplay so far I think that's mostly due to prejudice stemming from unfamiliarity than anything else. Alas, no way to convince them otherwise without getting them to play the game I guess...
-
Hello everyone! Just noticed this thread here on the Obsidian forums and I wanted to say THANK YOU for taking an interest in Divinity: Original Sin!
I'm the writer over at Larian Studios and I first came here because of the Project Eternity Kickstarter campaign. I've always enjoyed Obsidian RPGs very much and I hope our team too will create a game to be remembered.
So thanks very much for your support, you guys and gals are great! I've already seen some familiar names on the Larian forums. That's just awesome and you are all very welcome!
Go weresheep!
Yess, a riddle: if you manage to translate my name (it's a slightly messed up translation of my real nick I use when it's not available) you'll know who I am on the Larian forums. As a hint: the correct translation would have been "morelooke".
Sad but true. The quality of the Divinity series is really high but it was always more the underdog compared to the much better known D&D classics.Divinity series is simply too obscure and never left that big a mark to attract the same amount of cash as Wasteland and Torment.
The trouble they've had in the past didn't help any: LMK got shelved, Divine Divinity was released before it was ready (I know I didn't pick it up way back then because of all the bugs I heard about). After that I personally kinda lost track of them until I noticed Dragon Knight Saga during some steam sales.
I really do hope D:OS is gonna break them into the "big" cRPG audience.
-
They should've kept the chainmail bikini.
Naah, they should've done away with it entirely ;-)
Kidding aside, I'm flabbergasted that they haven't got more support... I've been bugging every channel I know RPG players hang out to little success so far it would seem
It saddens me that this massively awesome project hasn't garnered more funding. I mean, it's a successful Kickstarter, for sure, but, dang it, it should be much more successful. Many people, myself included, are spreading the word on various forums, and that helps, but what this really needs is some coverage from a mega giant site like IGN. I'll send them an email with a link to the hour long gameplay in hopes of coaxing them to do an article.
That would really improve my (rather low) opinion on IGN for sure!
-
1
-
-
Trying to cram lan support into P:E is again trying to turn it into something it isn't which flies straight in the face of the entire intent of making this game in the first place. There's other games out there designed for this kind of gameplay, check those out instead of trying to get every good feature into one game, because down that path lies madness.
-
Hmm, I might be miscommunicating, let me try to clarify more:I agree Lephys, i'd prefer that there be no loot glitter or reveal all button so that exploration is encouraged and rewarded, personally I wouldn't even want a ladder highlighting as I fail to see how anyone could misconstrue its use. However Marelooke raises a good point in his Catacomb under Aleroth example, though it's one I think that the developers could make sure never happens to a studious explorer through good design. Perhaps a toggle-able reveal all button or one linked to difficulty?
I don't want stuff to be pre-highlighted (not opposed if it's an option if it's off by default, as long as I can have my shortcut
), that's just annoying and ruins the environments (and as a result: immersion).The way it was done in BG2 was nice imo, it showed you the stuff that would be obvious for you if you were actually in the party's place. No more, no less. The things that were highlighted were (iirc): non-hidden doors, chests and loot and that was imho sufficient for that game (switches and the likes usually stood out due to being attached to weird machinery).
This option shouldn't become a crutch though, when you are running around pressing that button all the time there's something terribly wrong with the level/game design (or with the gamer, heh).
EDIT: seems Lephys beat me by a few minutes, basically: what he said
-
There is such a thing as an official Torment: ToN forum?The official Torment 2 boards? I know Wasteland ones were a bit too scary for me.
-
For secret loot and hidden stuff I agree you need skills to be able to see them, but regular things (slain enemies, normal doors and chests) imo you should be able to highlight by pressing a button. Once you've found secrets I wouldn't mind if they'd be added to the regular highlight, but I'm not too bothered about that. Witcher 2 had that medallion with a cooldown for highlighting things, it was annoying.Possibly make it a part of the thiefs search mode? Reduced movement rate, but the rogues trained eye picks up traps, secret doors and loot etcetera.
-
2
-
-
I'm only talking about making it a shortcut, glittering chests and big arrows pointing you where you gotta go really ruin immersion and I'll take searching hours for pentagrams and missing out on loot because I can't @#$#@$%#@ find it over that anytime (I think...). Then again spending hours looking for something I'm standing on top of isn't exactly fun either.Though i'm no fan of pixel hunting (they ruined many enjoyable point and clickers,) do we need the loot glitter for such obvious devices as doors, chests, boxes, bags and such. Seems a little Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where they expect us to not know that you can use a ladder to ascend or descend in a level, touch too much handholding there. Also if we're going to have a loot glitter or something implemented could we have some in-game reasoning for it, the spectacles of a miserly Scrooge-like banker for instance, which haunted by his soul still look for every coin they can steal. The Madoff Monocle?
-
1
-
-
I never played any Startcrafts (please don't hit me!BG2's and IWD2's UIs are far from perfect, most what I can say about them that UIs were ok in time when they were released, but there is many ways to make them better. Especially in how UI used to show player textual infromation, like character records and item descriptions. How keyboard short cuts worked was far from optimal.
Visually they were good looking, but they had quite lot things that did cause usability problems.
Usability problems, like? And what would you consider a game with a good UI then, and why?
Starcraft and Starcraft 2 both have quite good UIs, but I can found some nit picking even them. But they are good because their UI don't usually cause you make wrong command or hide information from you. And it has very good keyboard shortcuts. Morrowind also has good UI, as you can arrange hud element as you want and decide what hud elements you want to see on the screen. And it also has quite good shortcuts. Angry Birds has excelent gameplay UI as it gives you all information what you need and ability to zoom to see whole level and back to slingshot, although its menus are annoying. There is probly games even better ui, but I don't remember them as they weren't as good games and they don't even have UI problems that would irritate me so much that they would make me remember the game.
) nor Morrowind so yeah, damn You bring up several good points though.
Arguably resolutions above 1024x768 were unsupported in BG2 so the UI didn't handle them well, the general idea of the UI I liked though and I'm sure it can be adjusted to work with bigger resultions. Moving the bars to a corner and having them only take up as much space as needed and having the character screen etc scale instead of being a fixed size would already go a long way to solving that problem.One biggest problem is how UI uses lot of space in higher resolutions, without using space in something that could be conidered useful, but same time item descriptions, character infromation has little space and player need often scroll these texts back and for to find all infromation what s/he needs.
Tbh, this never bothered me (wizard dude hereSpell memorization is quite painful when you have lots of spells and slots, player often realize that his or her character have spells that are there because s/he forgot change them.
), unless you are talking about the mechanic of spell memorization but that's more a limitation of the game system than the UI imo.
The inventory is a difficult problem imo and I really don't have any immediate suggestions in that respect, I could give quite a few examples with an inventory much worse than the IE games thoughInventory managment for whole team is very fustraiting some times.
I guess skyUI (UI mod for Skyrim) isn't too bad, but it of course focused on having only one character.
-
Cool, I hadn't seen that, thanks! Never considered it an "important feature of the IE games" as it was only added in Throne of Bhaal as far as I'm aware.
-
Now on to something that might be sort of controversial: what's your opinion on a shortcut (or some other way) to highlight interactible objects in the world (the way it was introduced for BG2 with Throne of Bhaal is imo a good example). I'm going to assume at least some people would be against it as they argue it would make things too obvious, an argument I can't say is without merit.
So aside from the obvious convenience factor allow me to illustrate where I'm coming from:
What do you see in the room I'm in? I'll tell you what I see: a pedestal with a book, three candles, a (friendly) zombie and floating blue orbs. After reading that book I went all over that dungeon floor multiple times looking for the pentagrams mentioned in the book (note that this screenshot was taken after I solved the puzzle, there's no blue orbs there beforehand).
I spent *hours* on that "riddle" until I gave up and went to my good friend Google for help. My good friend Google told me them blasted pentagrams were right in the room with the book. Well, fml. Yes, I'm one of them in case you're wondering wtf is wrong with my eyes. There's quite a few of us too (~10% of male population does count as "quite a few", right?).
Now the example is sort of badly chosen as it's not something you could make stand out in the way I proposed earlier without ruining the puzzle, it would require a different design entirely. But it serves to illustrate the general issue, I hope.
But I have the same problem in The Witcher 2 with finding loot in grass for example a problem I commonly have in a load of other games as well (Skyrim is one that comes to mind) to varying degrees depending on the environment. And often companies are nice enough to make life difficult for us seemingly on purpose (a boss in SWTOR requires matching of blue/purple and red/orange two nicely problematic combinations, Sartharion in World of Warcraft used to spawn red void zones on a reddish/brown background etc etc, well at least Blizzard was nice enough to eventually fix the boss).
I'm sure there's other, maybe better, ways to deal with this, personally I like this feature as it just makes life easier and gets rid of something that can be a really big pain in the neck in one fell swoop. It also doesn't discriminate, it will work for someone with perfect colour vision, no colour vision as well as limited colour vision (in varying degrees) equally well.
Anyway, discuss I guess. I just wanted to bring it up now
-
1
-
-
BG2's and IWD2's UIs are far from perfect, most what I can say about them that UIs were ok in time when they were released, but there is many ways to make them better. Especially in how UI used to show player textual infromation, like character records and item descriptions. How keyboard short cuts worked was far from optimal.
Visually they were good looking, but they had quite lot things that did cause usability problems.
Usability problems, like? And what would you consider a game with a good UI then, and why?
-
Hmm. BG2 does look pretty good...
Can anyone who's played both BG2 and ID2 tell me which has better combat? Also, will I need/want to play BG in order to get the full experience from BG2? I don't have the money for four games, and, while I might be able to squeeze in three games, I'd much prefer to only get two, at least right now.
They're pretty cheap on GOG. It's perfectly possible to play BG2 before BG1 (I did so), you'll miss some stuff (references to the first game) obviously, but most everything you really need to know you'll find out in BG2 (this will obviously spoil some of the BG1 story) and most returning companions will tell you enough about BG1 to get you up to speed about their background as well.
Personally I massively prefer BG2 over BG1, better storytelling, better combat (due to higher level and early combat being mostly "get hit by fire arrow" -> die -> reload -> "fire arrow misses" -> "yay" -> repeat in BG1) and much better party interaction.
I also never really got into IWD, due to various reasons I guess, lack of party interaction and focus on powergaming mostly. Combat is definitely harder though as it seems to be tuned towards people powergaming their party rather than taking a random bunch of rabble on a tour. I should however note that I never finished IWD (neither 1 or 2) though I started on them multiple times.
-
Oh dear, why did I click this thread I was not gonna spend anymore on KS campaigns for at least a while. DAMN YOU!
-
1
-
-
Planet Explorers made funding today, with 5 more days to add a little gravy on top. I am pleased. Now just have to wait for the next alpha version.
Looks like a fun game, thanks for making me aware of it! (and I'm sure *they* will thank you for making me aware of it as well, hehe
) -
Marelooke: You are right. Wonder why the link was bad?
Well, here is the correct link: http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=DMF20130411_00536968&word=divinity
Just vote "aanraden" if you'd like...
Bedankt, done
Hope the pace of pledges picks up near the end, needs to reach 800k! Alas, not looking like it's gonna happen right now, I'd be glad to be proven wrong though
-
They should just let you select the key + mouse bindings.
Well, yes, they should, but I'd prefer not to have to redo everything because the default setup is ugly.
Besides, bindings != layout and UI.
I was just addressing op regarding the mouse buttons, but i hear ya about the layout and UI.
If you ask me a good UI should be intuitive and the old IE games UI were anything but, so I hope we see some improvements.
I thought the BG UI was very intuitive and extremely easy to use, everything was accessible with rather easy to remember shortcuts too and there were no fancy UI tricks like that horrible radial menu in NWN. Shortcuts generally did what you expected of them and you were able to jump between different screens without having to first close the previous one (which gets really annoying fast if you have to do it often, which you usually do in RPGs). Once you'd played for a little bit you could do just about anything except moving around and selecting targets without using your mouse (anything in the actual game world, that is, guess a shortcut for "loot all" would've been nice).
The fact that screens were full screen also made finding information easy as everything is in exactly the same spot each time (granted, this is most likely harder to pull off given that today's screen resolutions are a *lot* more diverse than they were back then, but hey, one can dream). Being fullscreen also allows to pretty much display everything you want on that screen in one go as tabs and scrollbars are, imho, to be avoided as much as possible (it's pretty much impossible to do without them, but less is definitely more here)
-
I think we can all agree that, aside from properly fitting the armor to the person in question, there would be few, if any, differences between male and female plate armor. Keep in mind, plate exists not to absorb blows, but to deflect them. Sufficiently high-quality plate armor is shaped such that it can deflect practically any blow from practically any angle, with the only real weakness being the eye-slits and possibly the breathing holes, which really aren't much of a weakness at all. Modifying the armor's shape (such as adding boobs to it) would only compromise this goal.
So in short, a female breastplate should look basically identical to a male one, albeit fitted to a female character, from a realism perspective. And from the perspective of telling party members apart, the tabard/armor paint/other decoration idea brought up by Diagoras fills this role perfectly well, and makes sense in-universe.
I think that basically covers everything this topic was originally made to determine. If I'm wrong on any points, or if anyone has any legitimate objections to these proposals, please tell me.
I'm sort of amazed nobody brought this game up (or pretty much any "real" game armors):
Would you guys consider this a good middle ground between realism and a fantasy feel? Personally I've always liked the plate armours in DA:O I felt that to the layman's eye (like...mine) they had a pretty realistic feel.
-
2
-
-
Seems the expansion is live, how is it? More of the same or is there some actual improvement?
I keed I keed, well, mostly 
)
I want a dog.
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted · Edited by LadyCrimson