Ineth

Did you even try it yet, or are you just imagining the worst? To clarify, the mini-stories are lore-appropriate, i.e. they reflect (usually mundane) situations that took place in the game world. It's just that they don't impact the game's plot or sidequests. Also, there is a good in-game reason for why you can read those stories. The NPCs don't exactly "tell" them to you. Can't say more without spoilers... They're really not a bad feature per se; my main complaints are that they don't impact the plot/quests, and that there are so many of them of various levels of interestingness (rather than keeping them few but interesting). In any case, the IE Mod has an option for disabling those stories from coming up - i.e. it turns those backer NPCs into classic mute filler NPCs. So install that if they bother you so much.

Partially wrong. It's true that there are "backer NPCs" with golden nametags strewn around the game world, and that they are completely useless - the "stories" you can read from them don't relate to the game's plot or quests at all. But they are not silly or fourth-wall breaking, since Obsidian's writers wrote the stories. The backers only chose the race/class/look and some rough backround info for those NPCs, and Obsidian fleshed them out. They do get boring thought after the first few, since there are so many of them and their stories so random and disconnected from the rest of the game. Most players just end up ignoring them, which is easy due to the golden nametags. What is fourth-wall breaking though, are the inscriptions on all the graveyards and crypts in the game. Because they are filled with random notes from backers, and many just wrote down their real-world names etc. So, don't read them.

The problem is not the concept of having explicit loads per se, it is that the implementation they chose - the Unity Engine - is slow and bloated when it comes to data storage and loading/saving. And I dare say that they did not choose to use this implementation because of its efficiency or technological magnificence, but rather because doing so was much cheaper than implementing a superior custom-tailored solution. (And they preferred to spend their budget on content rather than tech.) Then let's qualify it by comparison: On the same PC where Pillars has load times of around 20 seconds, Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition (another classic, hand drawn, isometric RPG with explicit map loads) has load times of around 0 seconds. You click and it's there. They didn't even implement load screens, because there would be no time to look at them.

Obsidian, please add these outfits but make them wearable only by male characters.

The PoE item system just feels too "systematic". There's a relatively small matrix of possible bonuses, all neatly standardised and systematized, and each "epic" item is basically just defined by which entries of the matrix it ticks off. This regularity and streamlinedness may be a game designer's/balancer's dream, but in the end it makes the items feel mundane and forgettable. A good RPG item system like the one in BG2, successfully obscures the underlying system of "possible property and enchantment combinations" from the player (or at least doesn't require them to think about it), and instead makes each epic item feel fundamentally unique and fascinating.

Isn't that officially Sawyer's game design philosophy though? Maybe I misremember, but I think there was some old backer update or press interview where he said that he shuns balancing in small steps, and uses the rule of thumb "If it feels too powerful, half it; if it feels too weak, double it." Then if it turns out you overstepped, at least you have an upper and lower bound to take into account for the next balancing pass...

I wonder how BAdler knows this...

Lay on Hands, Flames of Devotion, Reinforcing Exhortation are all active abilities, not passive ones.

Ahem. The game warns you that jumping into the pit is a point-of-no-return. Points-of-no-return are a staple of the RPG genre, and not ridiculous at all IMO. Deleting old manual savegames makes sense. But why would you delete the special pre-endgame autosave that Boeroer mentioned? I think you have only your own negligence to blame here...

According to this list, the SwitchPOTD cheat code should work even without the IE mod installed. Of course, using cheats without the IE mod installed, disables Steam achievements.

On Hard difficulty, I had some good success against fampyrs by combining choke points stationary AoE damage spells (like Wall of Flame) Slicken Not sure if it would work on PotD though. --- PS: Of course if there's too many of them, some will break through and attack your weaker party members, which is another reason why those party members should pick spells and talents for defending themselves in melee when necessary:

Nah, I don't think anyone is trying to do that... When I said that the extracted camera angle and geometry data is useful for "modding purposes", I was thinking about these 4 use cases: Adding a custom-made pre-rendered object to an existing PoE map --> You need to know what camera angle you need to render the object at, so that it will fit the perspective of its surroundings and the characters. Creating a whole new custom-made map for PoE --> Ditto. Porting an existing map from another game to PoE --> You need to know if the camera angles are similar enough to allow an unmodified port, or otherwise by what factor the background needs to be stretched to attempt to "fix" the perspective. Porting an existing map from PoE to another game --> Ditto. No.3 and 4 are actually what interests me the most at this point. Of course, stretching an image is generally a poor substitute for a proper perspective change. But for backgrounds consisting mostly of free-form terrain, we can get away with it. For example, here's a screenshot from PoE's Russetwood, (original here) vertically stretched to the correct ratio for Infinity Engine games, and some Icewind Dale characters & spell effects placed on top of it: It sort of works, doesn't it? Sure, the high grass and rocks look like they're slightly sloped away from us because we don't see as much of their top and back sides as we should. Some photoshopping could fix that. But even as it is, this could be used as part of an Icewind Dale map...

It's only as exact as one can measure the corner coordinates of a horizontal square. Going even half a pixel off with those measurements, will change the calculated camera angle, and it gets worse the smaller the square in question is. For best results, I need a screenshot of a part of the game world where there's a horizontal square with these properties: represents a perfect square (not rectangle) as large as possible has perfectly straight borders has its borders marked by thin lines Large rooms with tiled floors seem to work pretty well, for example: If you help me get suitable screenshots like this from the Infinity Engine games, I can make more measurements.

Alright, I used Doppelschwert's proposed method for calculating the vertical camera angle in Fallout, and got a result of 25.7°. Here are the details of the procedure, in case someone wants to double-check:

It's important for modding purposes. Oh and also of course: I'm just casually investigating this stuff for now. Haven't committed to actually creating a mod yet... A low angle lets you see more landscape/scenery at once in an open map. It also lets you get a better look at the front faces of vertical structures, such as cliffs or buildings. A high angle lets you get a better overview of a closed room, without having the front walls obscure too much of the room's floor. Also, as Sensuki pointed out, a high angle lets you get a more tactical overview during battles, regardless of the terrain. But of course there are other things which have a bigger influence on this (such as the obtrusiveness & opacity of spell effects), so it's debatable how important the camera angle really is for this, all things considered. Thanks! I'll try this later today. I'm pretty sure that it's quadratic, because the grey curbstones along the red outline have exactly 10 segments in each direction.

It's important for modding purposes. Also, as the first page of this thread demonstrates, it's a perfectly good issue to fight a holy war over...

It's definitely a low angle. However, the camera is also panned horizontally (compared to a true isometric view), so that square structures do not end up aligned with the screen axes: I'm afraid I haven't figured out (yet?) how to do the math in this case. Help is welcome! Of course if there was a screenshot showing a large horizontal circle, I could use that because circles don't care about horizontal rotation...

It is common knowledge by now that the pre-rendered backgrounds in Pillars of Eternity were made at two different camera angles (one for indoor maps, one for outdoor maps), and that these camera angles are lower than the 45° one used in the Infinity Engine games. But what are their actual values, and what is the value of the factor by which the vertical screen dimension is compressed compared to the horizontal one? I tried to reconstruct these values from a few measurements on screenshots. The result: The measurements weren't super precise, but the results shouldn't be too far off, hopefully. Of course if someone knows the exact camera angles that Obsidian used, please tell! --- Btw, here's how I measured and calculated the values: UPDATE: Improved diagram (show cubes instead of squares; more accurate measurements for PoE; add Fallout)

This is your problem right here. Expert mode hides information that would help you get a better understanding and mastery of the combat mechanics.

That sounds pretty neat. It will add an in-game incentive for avoiding knockouts, but at the same time not make the penalty for failing to do so so harsh that one would simply reload.

So... democracy gave Iraq a sepia tone effect?

This is a very worthwhile read on the recent student protests at Yale, Missouri, etc.: A Little-Understood Engine of Campus Unrest: Racial Admissions Preferences It makes quite a convincing case I think.

The usual politically correct finger-wagging against Thanksgiving (in the media and elsewhere) was unusually restrained this year. Probably because of this...

Yes, a President Sanders would be an insurance against more evil of the "Freedom Act and TPP" kind. This is one of the two things in his favor. The second is the fact that his presidency might sever the historic entanglement of the Democratic Party with Wall Street. This unholy relationship has already been outwardly downplayed ever since the Occupy protests, but a Sanders presidency might end if for real.

Happy Thanksgiving!