PIP-Clownboy

Why? Making smart decisions and superior knowledge of the game and its mechanics should be essential for that.

All the IE games are beatable without throwing a fireball. That doesn't mean 'we' didn't and also doesn't mean those people didn't have fun or found them useful while throwing them. There are plenty of useless spells in the IE games and I think JS said somewhere that they are focusing on not having so many filler spells. Meanwhile, fighters were auto-attack/item spam bots until HLA, where they get no-brainer buttons where there was no real reason not to use them in just about any dangerous situation. Booooooooring. Although, using Bioshock and Dishonered in this argument is quite weird but I really doubt everyone played those games the exact same way you did. I'd also argue that if a game like PE required me to throw a fireball it would be dumb and horrible design. Then you would be pigeon-holed into rolling a class that can cast fireball (boring), taking the Wizard NPC (boring or he could be possibly dead because ironman) or you would be **** out of luck. More options > less options. And if given the choice of useless glitter vs easy, no thought-process required character build decisions then give me glitter every time. At least you would have the option to build your party non-conventionally. But really, I don't think this will be much of a problem in PE's case as it seems stat investment will be a big factor in how some of those active abilities will perform.

How is that an essential mechanic? I'd rather it be an actual challenge - which is what soloing/small parties should be in a party based RPG. Instead of being a challenge, solo/small parties, BG1/2 in particular, make 95% of the game easier which is illogical. Even worse is when NPCs join at your level so you could easily have a full party near level-capped in chapter 2. Sometimes you want to build an AOE focused group or something and smaller crew would make sense there for combat efficiency but you shouldn't be overcompensated for choosing to fight 10 dudes by yourself.

Glad to hear your MMX is behaving allright. My friend who bought the game has huge FPS drops, missing sounds and other ackward performance problems. This is a common problem as a quick look through the games forum on Steam can assure you of. Yeah, MMX is an optimized piece of garbage. I'm on a SSD, high-end processor/gpu with plenty of memory -- load times are playstation 1 levels and the game stutters like crazy in certain places like the forest. Despite all of that I put in like 8 hours and enjoyed it ok despite the awful, senseless skill balance. Going to wait for modders to fix/balance the game before picking it back up

I really hope not. If I want to use 6 party members or 1 in the first hour or two I should be able to. The IE games were easier with smaller parties but that had more to do with XP benefit and enabled obsessive munchinism.

Well, I hope they give the backers beta before early access. Backer beta can be more focused on bug finding/balance. Which will make the early access a bit more polished and more focused on tuning. Wasteland 2 for instance was not ready at all for early access. It was basically releasing an alpha build to the public.

Poor monk.

PE seems like it will have more replay-value than most games. Number of different class/races, adventures hall (so you can avoid story npcs etc) and ironman. I'll still have mods to look forward to after release.

Well at least you didn't use Drizzt.

Now you are just talking out of your ass, how do you know that those different type of enemies will come with better loot. You are just making stuff up now to support you theories. My BG gold hoard came from selling non generic items, I collected generic weapons and armors only in the beginning of the game. I was just following your lead since you were assuming every trash fight would be dropping just a "couple of gold". And if you're seeing more dangerous enemy types it's just logical conclusion that they would be equipped with better gear. e.q Wolf -> Winter Wolf . Gibberling --> Kobold fighter in plate .

There were never more enemies, they were just strong as ****. Path of the damned will replace ordinary enemies with a more dangerous type of enemies, I don't think that the numbers will increase. Yeah usually non npc enemies don't drop valuable items, also there are no trash mobs/fights in path of the damned (or at least there shouldn't be if they plan on it being a spiritual successor to HoF). There were never more enemies, they were just strong as ****. Path of the damned will replace ordinary enemies with a more dangerous type of enemies, I don't think that the numbers will increase. Yeah usually non npc enemies don't drop valuable items, also there are no trash mobs/fights in path of the damned (or at least there shouldn't be if they plan on it being a spiritual successor to HoF). There are definitely trash fights in HoF. But much of HoF was just HP bloating. Replacing different enemy types with more dangerous ones will have to come with better loot equipped, or have an increase in numbers (without kill xp, that would hardly break anything) as there is no level scaling. So there will still be income (incentive) to be had for fighting those, income that can be used to upgrade the party in question for tougher encounters, earlier. As far as BG is concerned, the main source of income were from trash fights that dropped armor and ammo.

My points apply to Path of the Damned; more enemies = more loot. It seems you're assuming that their breastplates/hides won't be worth anything though. You are talking about trash fights correct?

Day one mod: Restore Tim's True Vision.

Doubt the economy will be anything like the IE games considering the huge party stash and Stronghold. And probably plenty of other differences. You ca be richer in the violent scenario vs poorer and in better shape in the non-violent . The income gained from being violent could be used for a consumable or stronghold upgrade which could lead to easier gameplay in the future. Non-violent would give the benefit of the next immediate encounters being easier assuming you can't/don't rest. If anything I don't see much incentive for being non-violent unless you're playing ironman. But in that case, violent methods should generally be more dangerous/risky with the inherent risk being death.

If it let's you bypass 5 out of 10 mobs on your way to the boss then I don't think it's going to work. I don't know if you ever played in heart of fury mode, but even trash mobs make you **** your pants. Path of the damned is simply going to be unfair as far as I heard, it's not going to just be better stats on enemies, it's going to be whole new enemies. Nope, just saying that a couple of gold pieces and a ordinary swords+armors, aren't going to incentivize anyone on going the fighting route. Being able to sell their stuff is already incentive compared to the violence-free no loot option. Maybe if item degradation was a thing you'd have a point but the forum whined that feature away. Also calling the hardest difficulty in the game unfair is sort of the point of it being the toughest difficulty.

If path of the damned is anything like heart of fury (and I think it will be harder) then it would have to be really valuable loot. If it was really valuable loot then no one would even take the non-violent path. So your solution to the problem that you think exists is to reverse it?

Having to finish one of the best cRPGs of all time is such a burden! I'd be happy with a written lets play as I did feel sort of uncomfortable watching the video.

Problem with that is every Wizard would pump INT if it gets dmg on top of duration/aoe. With PE being designed around short-term buffs/effects that duration bonus seems like it will be very strong. Yeah, a mighy wizard will have higher damage but if INT wiz's haste lasts longer he could potentially be responsible for more total dmg by the end of the encounter.

Definitely easier for me. Going human opened you up to invaders... most likely an invader min-maxed perfectly to crush things at that level range. My anxiety levels are always a bit higher while in human form especially when you're making a corpse boss/run as you'll lose everything on that body if an invader kills you.

What classes are Aloth, Sagani and the Devil of Caroc?

I'm in love with her. e: Also, has INT = dmg been axed?

That's not true at all. (and hasn't someone already given us examples on this thread?). If you enter a old abandoned crypt, common sense, not meta-gaming, will see smart players buffing themselves up with anti-undead buffs. if you see a swarm of fire elementals in the distance, it's common sense, not reloading, that will make smart players ready their protection from fire/outsiders buff. Additionally, some buffs are just common-sense UNIVERSAL. if you know that you're going to be engaging in combat soon, then why not cast haste, or invisibility, or protection from evil, or bless, or all of the above. Good god, people. What kind of a garbage bore-snore would BG2 have been without the buffing element? You do realize they aren't taking buffs out of PE, right? BG2 pretty much became a bore-snore when a certain class can project image free immunity buffs to everything + imp haste while enemies twiddle their thumbs in the next room waiting to die. Only way I can play BG2 these days is with all the masochistic options of SCS turned on otherwise there is absolutely no challenge.

How many back designed items are we getting? I don't think lack of loot will be a issue but balancing those will be tricky.

2. This game is presumably for a niche market. Not necessarily for casual players. It sounds like you want this game to be partially mainstream so all can play even if new players don't have any prior knowledge of the rules system or setting. I don't understand why you want to go out your way to make the game mainstream when it's a niche game for mostly serious crpg players. If people want a mainstream game without having to do in depth research skills, spells, tactics, and just sit back and relax, then there's always arpg's like Diablo 3. I don't see why you can't have all those good things (research/tactics) without pre-buffing. Mass pre-buffing seriously sucked and I'm glad to see it gone. Removing a bad/tedious decades old mechanic doesn't necessarily correlate to being mainstream. In fact, pre-buffing had the opposite effect. Let me just make myself immune to everything so I can auto-attack for the win. Yeah, real tactical.

Dear god, I hope not. Leave the handholding to MMOs. The quest is too difficult if your party can't handle encounters. Firkaag was pretty much optional with some of the best items in game - I don't see the issue Prime Junta. You could clear the surrounding area, deliver the acorns for easy xp and advance the initial quest. Then the difficulty ramps up when you enter the dungeon proper. Also, the actual quest giver's entire motive was to lure you there under false pretenses... Hence the ludicrous reward he was offering which sounded like easy money at time when you were most likely dirt poor.