Endrosz

GameCrate's video player didn't work for me in FireFox or Chrome, only in Internet Explorer. I'll file it under 'April's Fool joke'.

I have fond memories of the original AoW, so I followed the news. But 40 euros is a steep price for me -- I just got Elven Legacy + all DLCs for 5 euros yesterday. Waiting for a discount, the gameplay videos were really convincing.

This is just a wild guess, but I think the numbers in Eternity that define characters' combat capabilities will not increase in such a dramatic fashion as they do in DnD editions, or Might and Magics, or Diablos, or... One of Interplay's '80s classic RPG games, Dragon Wars, was built on an engine similar to the former Bard's Tale games, but with completely reworked systems. The Health of characters was based on Constitution, and they had Stamina = 2x Health. On level-up, neither would increase automatically. What increased was Armor Class from better gear, Defense from better combat skills, both from buff spells which you got later, and Health and Stamina only increased by raising Constitution. On level-up, you got Character points which could be used to raise anything, including attributes like Constitution. Stamina regenerated after winning a fight, but Health didn't, and neither did Spell Points (the source of healing spells) and there was no resting in the game -- so damage and healing worked similar to Eternity, with Health being a strategic resource. At the start of the game, you had around 16 Health, at the end of the game, around 20. This is an example of a system where the numbers don't increase in such a radical fashion as in most RPGs, yet there is still a distinct power curve. And if you have such a system, then low-level spells don't become useless by the endgame. Sure, their relative power diminishes, but not to the point that it's a waste of time to cast them. If you're used to a stronger power curve -- which means almost all RPGs, both PnP and digital -- then this is weird, but it can work just as well as other power curves. Again, this is pure speculation, I don't know how the numbers will work in Eternity.

I almost wrote a post when I saw the screenies, but didn't want to start a discussion in a Pictures topic. Now that someone else commented, I feel more... enabled. Short version: For me, Aarklash Legacy was Game of the Year 2013. It's been a looooooong time since I tasted RtwP combat so juicy, so intelligent, challenging, varied. Too bad it was basically over by the end of Chapter 2 with your characters maxed out, it was just more of the same after that.

The price-slashing competition on Steam just got even more insane! 160% off, YOU get paid for getting the game!

You need to play more German-style boardgames, MC. Compared to the overcomplicated and usually wildly unbalanced American-style boardgames (you roll a dice to roll a dice to roll a dice to actually get some result), they are very streamlined, easy to learn, fast-playing and balanced while still having amazing depth of gameplay (American-style games usually have more flavor and atmosphere, to be fair). You know, like ancient Go, which has the simplest of rules, but the complexity of Chess (I've even heard some in-the-know people say that its complexity actually surpasses Chess). What I know about game design, I mostly learned it from Citadels, Galaxy Trucker, Tigris and Euphrates, Seven Wonders, and more. (The above picture was taken at a Go tournament about 2200 years ago, when a feud between two Chinese warlords was resolved by playing Go instead of the usual massacre.) Sawyer is absolutely right: most people loved those old IE games despite their crappy gameplay systems, not because of them. But others, those who replayed them many times, having lived with the badness for so long, it is now ingrained in their brains, and they crave more, just like codependent people can't stop wanting to have hate in their personal lives. What he says in that interview is actually a very mild-mannered, polite version of the truth. "God bless them", yeah.

The worst is yet to come, my friend. Sawyer is actually a highly trained ninja zombie pirate cyborg legionnaire viking assassin, and every grognard who pisses on the game in this forum or elsewhere will be executed in the most brutal way imaginable. Right before that, they will be subjected to Sawyer's vision of a modern cRPG, which is the most hellish torment itself, obviously. That man is the Avatar of Cruelty, I tell you. Your second statement is also correct, but not enough correct. This game might be worse than: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwDcZQunYiM

IMO that's one of the best player-supplied ideas I read on these forums. I always felt that with DnD3 metamagic, the 'true' cost is the extra spell slot levels, and requiring a feat is just diminishing the available fun options. If I were to GM a PnP campaign starting now, I'd be willing to give my caster players all of the metamagic feats for free. Both of the resources (stamina, casting time) you mention are in short supply, since healing is rather limited and interruption is a standard mechanic calculated with every attack that hits. I reckon it would be possible to balance metamagic with those costs. In the '90s I stopped playing DnD altogether (got fed up with endless Complete Handbook cheese), and switched to Earthdawn instead. In ED, spellcasting is a more complex affair where you need to weave threads before making the final spellcasting check, each thread costing an action. In the Magic sourcebook, they added the option to "compress" threadweaving at the cost of 3 hit points per thread (HP values are comparable with DnD characters), reducing the number of actions necessary to cast the spell. This sounds like a low cost, but a spell might require multiple threads, and it's just for one spell. Those 3 HPs add up actually pretty fast for those low-HP casters, so it was an option best used sparingly. But the option was there, which made spellcasting more interesting. Having said all that, the "caster" classes already eat up more design and production man-hours than the others. I doubt that any sort of metamagic will make it into this first iteration of the Eternity engine -- but I do hope that something like this is on 'the list' for the expansion.

Okay, IIRC, your skills in BG and BG2 are the following: the thief skills and lore. Discounting lore, which wasn't a very interesting skill there anyway, only thieves, bards, and rangers had any skills. Rangers had only the 2 stealth skills. Are you saying you played the game for those classes/skills alone? Fighters, clerics and wizards were padding in your party to somehow get through combat? It's completely valid if you say yes, you play however you want to play, I'm just asking because it sounds rather odd to me.

...which reminds me of an old but very effective joke about the endless RPG sequels, featured in the computer version of Neuromancer. I googled for a screenie, and it turns out that Brian Frago tweeted it just 2 weeks ago -- surprise, surprise, I'm not the only one who remembers that joke from 26 years ago! This was conceived when: The Wizardry series was at nr. 5. The Ultima series was at nr. 5. The Bard's Tale series was at nr. 3. (the final one, as it turned out) The Might and Magic series was at nr. 2. Keeping the above in mind, my own blasphemous opinion on CRPGs of the future: Bard's Tale 714 > Dragon Age 581

Gratz, no matter the gear or difficulty, venturing alone into unknown territory in HC takes huge balls!

Your humorless defensiveness about this subject makes me wonder -- are you invested with a large sum in Obsidian and/or my.com? (It was a JOKE. Just like this post.)

The concern with balance is not that there must be some picture-perfect equal distribution of power amongst attributes, classes, builds, any kind of choice. The concern is that now matter how you build your party, it'll be viable to play until the very end of the game: 1. If you choose an aumaua chanter with a high Resolve and Stamina, that is a fine choice. Strong in some situations, weak in others. If you play to the build's strengths, and try to make up for the weaknesses (with gear choices, consumables, support from other party members), you should be able to complete the game without being stuck on "unwinnable" battles. 2. If you choose an elf fighter with a high Intellect and Dexterity, that is a fine choice, too. Strong in some situations, weak in others. If you play to the build's strengths, and try to make up for the weaknesses (with gear choices, consumables, support from other party members), you should be able to complete the game without being stuck on "unwinnable" battles. Because it wasn't so in oh-so-many games, not just DnD ones. I have my own memories of realizing "this isn't gonna work", and starting over with a fresh party. In Might and Magics, in Bard's Tales, in Wizardries, and so on.** Some choices would end up sucking ass endgame-wise. And that's punishing the player for no good reason, because you can't really expect people to know all there is to know about the game system and the particular challenges at the beginning of the game, when they make those choices. Some of us "play the system", we find out the best builds, party compositions etc. pretty fast, we are willing to restart the game, reload a battle already won to try something else, and so on. I am one of those people. But many people who play RPGs do not "play the system", they just play the game as it comes. They should be able to boot up the game, make those initial choices, and play the game to the very end without worrying about "did I make the right choices at the start?". This is the reason for caring about balance. So Josh&Co. doesn't care if powergamers, min-maxers find out that, for example, orlan cyphers are 8% better than any other class. More power to them! (pun intended ) What they care about is "sucks ass" choices being too far behind the others. Because that hurts the player experience for many. ** My first character in NWN2 was a Dex-based rogue 16/fighter 4, with Weapon Finesse. Everything was fine until the end dungeon where every single mob was an undead (and thus immune to Sneak attack dmg), and in the hardest battle, against the 3 Shadow Reavers, my character was just too weak to win the battle. I always play on the hardest difficulty available, which means Hardcore difficulty with 200% damage from opponents. In that battle, you're down one party member who has to recite the True Names of the Reavers, another is a healer, that leaves 2 DPS characters. And that first choice of mine just wasn't able to put out enough DPS, even with scrolls and such from Use Magic Device to kill the Reavers faster than they killed my party. On my second playthrough, a Str-based fighter 16/rogue 4 rolled over the Reavers rather easily.

It's more like a sports documentary, showcasing some of the iconic players, complete with family backgrounds, mixed with footage from the 2011 Dota 1 million dollar championshin. It's quite good, I watched it yesterday. The editing is perfect.

Your concern has been voiced several times on this forum before, and Sawyer gave roughly the same answer every time, which goes something like this: Fighters are still mostly passive lineholders and still mostly engage other brawler-type opponents. They just have some active skills to accomplish that same task in a more varied and tactical fashion.

He used the term "melee-oriented wizard character", which is not the same thing as a fighter/wizard. It's a wizard/fighter, so to speak. F/W relies mostly on weapon damage, augmented by spells. A melee wizard is prepared to stay in close range of opponents, but relies mostly on spells: close range spells (which are always stronger when compared to long range spells of the same level), aura-type spells and personal buffs, augmented by melee weapon bashing when there's nothing better to do. (BTW I love to play melee wizards, played them through NWNs, IWDs, PS:T etc.) It's a higher risk/higher reward playstyle for wizards, and I'm very glad that it's supported. For example, Fire Shield in DnD is a staple spell for a melee wizard, but it's an occasional spell for other wizards, when they need the elemental resistance or expect to get hit a lot in melee. --- Diminishing pre-buffing doesn't mean that there are no useful buffs, instead it means that buffs are used in a different fashion, more "on the spot". It has a lot do with the fact that Eternity's spell effects do not depend on character level directly. A simple change like that can cut back on the necessary pre-buffing that was inevitable in DnD games, without any active measure to somehow prohibit pre-buffing. Example: When you get Haste in DnD as a wizard on 5th level, it lasts for 5 rounds. Now imagine that it always lasts 5 rounds, even when your wizard is in the epic levels. Is Haste still useful? Yes, undoubtedly. Is it an overpowered like hell buff that you can safely pre-cast several rounds before combat? Not anymore. You have to find the right opportunity to cast it, which will probably happen mid-combat, meaning that: a. The activation time is now a cost function, which it wasn't with DnD-style pre-buffing on higher levels. b. It is interruptible, which brings into play a whole slew of gameplay mechanics, including 2 attributes (For those who don't follow the updates closely: interruption in Eternity only stops the casting, but the ability use is not lost. You can try again immediately.) The key to understanding Eternity buffs is that they try to avoid any "automatic" casts. Or if it's an "automatic" cast, it's most likely turned into a passive/modal ability.

Oh come on, did you watch that trailer with your eyes and ears closed? You know: if it looks like a cat, walks like a cat, meows like a cat, ****s like a cat... Also, in the 95% me-too MMO industry, it's only news when a game is NOT a clone.** If Armored Warfare had ANYTHING that sets it apart from the "family", they would be busy touting that feature as "innovative!", even in the first trailer. I've seen MMOs come and go for about 2 decades, trust me on this. (** Like Atlantica Online having a party for control instead of a single character, I talked about it in the Monte's MMO Adventure thread. I didn't talk about crafting or enchanting or whatever, because it's industry standard in AO, so to speak.)

Yes, they're a studio that makes money by making games. I know that. Then again, a game of this type doesn't sound like a good bet to me. There are already a few WoT copycats out there trying to get a bigger and bigger slice of that admittedly huge pie (WoT is among most profitable MMOs), so you need to put out something clearly better than what's already on the market. Can they do that? They don't have any experience with multiplayer shooters, nor military warfare games, nothing of this sort. Also, they never built an MMO before, which by all accounts is the most complex game type, carrying the highest risks in the entire industry. There are more examples of failures than of successes. Putting the two together, I'm having a "we're making a WoW-killer!" flashback moment. We all know how those attempts turned out... Why this?

Absolutely true about the potential. I didn't play it myself, but heard a lot of good things about Spec Ops: The Line, that it had a James Jones-style narrative. But I just can't imagine that kind of story/characters focus in a shooter MMO...

A me-too World of Tanks game? Srsly??!?!? Why do they need Obz's narrative skills for that? At least Skyforge is an MMO with a main storyline and quest galore, I can see why they would reach out for Obz. But this? Oh well, I hope they get paid a lot for completely forgettable, cliché war stories. Rob them blind, Feargie!

From my personal combat log: Video update: +3 Excitement Great portraits: +2 Excitement Fantastic inn interior: +4 Excitement Cool utility spells for wizard: +4 Excitement Cool de/buffs for druid: +3 Excitement >> Endrosz has passed out: Excitement > 15 I really like Thrust of Tattered Veils, Dimensional Shift, Beetle Shell and Garden of Life. The former class updates didn't show much of the tactical possibilities, but with this update, I'm finally convinced that we'll have plenty of tactical goodness as promised.)

^ What he said. A contract is a contract is a contract. Business is business is business. 84 is less than 85. And what came out of it? Feargus saying in a South Park interview that nowadays Obz doesn't sign development contracts where payment depends on Metacritic scores. It's called "learning the hard way". The other shenanigans with the deadlines and QA are nasty tho, but sadly, not unique to Bethesda. Kotor 2 was created under similarly unfavorable conditions.

MC, as an avid MMO gamer who goes back to the time of text-only MUDs and such, I thought long and hard about an MMO worth your time. And then I remembered one game which is very unique among MMOs and in many ways reminiscent of classic party-based RPG: Atlantica Online. It's FTP with microtransactions, but it's not that obnoxious that it's unplayable without spending real money. I have a friend who is a hardcore player on the highest level, and never spent a dime on it. In Atlantica Online, although you create a character at the start, you control a party of increasing size. First it's 3, then it goes up by 1 every 10 levels, up to 9 at lvl 60, IIRC. The additional party members are called mercenaries, and there is a "storage" for them so you can experiment with different party combinations. The party members are set up using a 3x3 grid, and it matters where you put certain characters, both from an offensive and defensive perspective. There are 30 (!!!) different classes, each has 3 skills on average. A special flavor of the class system is the "attack pattern" which some classes have as their own unique advantage (others have high base stats or buffs/debuffs or more than 3 skills). The Artilleryman, for example, attacks in a cross-shaped pattern, 5 enemy grid positions at the same time. The enemies are also party-based, they use the same 3x3 grid for setup opposite your party's grid. The battles in the game can get even bigger, since you can team up with 2 more players to form a Long Distance Party of 3. It's called Long Distance because you don't need to be close to each other to reap some benefits (XP bonus, loot bonus). But if you are, the battles grow accordingly, and you can participate in mind-blowing 20+ vs. 20+ battles. When you're done with the mobs on the grid before you, you can move on to attack the enemy grid next to your own, and the fellow party members can help you in the same way. Here's a screenie: There are also boss battles designed for 3 players. Quite spectacular and frantic with all those abilities from the 20+ mercenaries flying around really fast. The game features standardized fair PvP (a rare feaure in MMOs), which means that your gear doesn't matter, only the class and level of the characters. This is in addition to regular, bring-your-gear PvP. The game world is a magical version of our own, it's something like Ars Magica, or the Secret World, etc. with the ages mixed up. So you get the ancient version of China, the railroad/Western age of the US, the late renaissance age of Europe tc. Most of the globe is available on the map, including my quaint little East European country of Hungary plus Transsylvania! It is also a Korean, and as such, even more grindier than Western MMOs. But I think it's fun for a while. I advise joining a guild ASAP, as guilds help you immensely with understanding and playing the game. There is an in-game advertising board where you can find a nice casual guild without powergameragers yelling at you.

Rockstar Games sale this weekend. Of course you can get the GTAs and May Paynes etc. cheaper. But for me, the highlight was Bully: Scholarship Edition for only 3.3 euros. It is a kind of role-playing game (it has factions and quests), and great fun.

As I'm reading this, your post count is 2001. Congratulations on completing Forum Odyssey: 2001!