Endrosz

You create one character, like in BG 1/2, and have the option of: - picking up companions - hiring (create) other party members at inns for money It's the best of both worlds, the amalgamation of the BG and the IWD approach.

It depends on the AI, will it be updated to handle this situation? If the AI doesn't care about the opportunity, and continues to attack its previous target, this change will definitely give an advantage to the player, who will take advantage of it as necessary. Engagement break should probably trigger an AI action evaluation.

^ Yes, and I like the the sound of it. It'll probably raise problems and bugs of its own, but interrupting is an "ability" that is available to everyone, including enemies. So after this change, Thrust of Tattered Veils (wizard) can be used as an engagement breaker as well, for example. It also makes both Per and Res less of a dump stat. I would still prefer no engagement, but that ship has sailed.

Games with spoils from a previous game give you a "standard loadout" if you don't import from the previous game. This a problem that has been solved many times before. So you get a standard Stronghold in the case of Eternity instead of a customized one.

Are you hoping for emergent romances?

Current status: Backers get a vanilla game key from a digital retailer of their choice. They get everything else from the backer portal, so there's no conflict between Kickstarter tiers and store editions.

Machinarium is taken.

If Justin reads this topic: Hey man, how does it feel that your score is played by an orchestra? Pretty rad, eh?

Can someone please test what the current ranges for Miss-Graze-Hit-Crit are? I'm really curious. Did they change the ranges, and if yes, how?

They could be unregistered lurkers. I was a lurker for half a year before registering. Anyway, I want to give the games away to people who want them, and they fulfill that criteria. Bard's Tale (2004) is gone.

More variety, especially in talent and ability effects. Way too many "+X to something" or "deals Y damage in some fashion" effects.

Yeah you are wrong. Miss 0-15 Graze 16-50 Hit 51-105 Crit: 106+ If I recall correctly, the new table comes from a Something Awful post by Sawyer, quoted here by you. I can't find that quote, though, I searched at least 5 minutes for it. I distinctly remember grazes being also reduced in that table, but it might be a plan that was discarded.

The resolution table has also changed, but all these changes are not in the current build yet. If Accuracy-Deflection = 0, then the 1d100 attack roll is: Old one: 01-05 Miss 06-50 Graze 51-95 Hit 96+ Crit New one: 01-05 Miss 06-30 Graze 31-105 Hit 106+ Crit Grazes reduced by 20% (to 25%), crits by 10% (to -5%), normal hits expanded as a result; I like both changes. To get a crit chance, you need an Accuracy at least 6 points higher than the target's Deflection. (I wrote this from memory, I might be wrong somewhere.)

I found these two Steam keys in the dark recesses of my personal dungeon: Machinarium -- Charming adventure game, with animation and pictograms fully replacing text. The Bard's Tale (2004) -- As a fan of the old Bard's Tale games, I have the right to say that this one is not bad, just different. It's one of the funniest games I ever played. PM for key.

You get 1000D20 geek points for knowing what a Markov chain is, and using it build a name generator. I'm impressed. Also, I got: Dragon Age: The Game -- Imagine a DA that is actually a game, instead of just a cutscene connector!

Man, Jordan Weisman (who talks in the Battletech video) is one of those lucky guys who doesn't seem to age. Another game dev vampire? Their studios must be like cabals of younger vampires.

It just occurred to me that I can tell more about this than simply defending the co-op experience as a valid way to play games, and as an added bonus, advertise a unique game that deserves more recognition. It's a kind of belated random video game news. Enter Artemis, the spaceship bridge simulator, designed to be a 3-to-6-player co-op experience from the start. There is no single-player or versus multi-player in Artemis, only co-op. Before I heard about Artemis, I played some tabletop co-op games that I enjoyed immensely. The best of the bunch was arguably Space Alert, where the setting is exactly the same as in Artemis, a spaceship and its crew. It was a real thrill to work together on survival, solving all the problems a CD track's voice sets upon the team. So when I read about Artemis somewhere, I immediately understood what it was all about. It's a Star Trek LARP. There are a number of ways to play Artemis, the scenario is customizable, but one thing is constant: the players need to work closely as a team to succeed. The game has a free demo, try it if you're interested. Co-op is fun. Co-op has its own color of fun.

You mean, you want to: - smell the sweat and blood - see guts spilling out - hear death cries And so on. If you want to feel like you're actually in combat, go join a historical fighting club. Warning: lots of bruises upcoming, it gives you that realness you crave. I never joined such a club, but a friend of mine did, and in our weekly game sessions he was often complaining about the sores he received, sometimes inflicted on himself. He hated nunchaku training, I remember that. In a computer game, the most immersive combat experience is in first-person view. Especially with VR technology like Oculus Rift. An isometric third-person view is never going to give you proper thrills. That said, I would welcome upgrades to combat animations, like what they did with the monk's different attack patterns (do you know about those?), but it's fine. It'll do for a first offering, and probably get better in the later games.

Other, Eric Fenstermaker. He deserves to be known by the public. Excellent work on Mask of the Betrayer and Fallout: NV, and important work on Pillars of Eternity as Lead Narrative Designer. Maybe when PoE is released he'll get more exposure, since the story won't be under wraps.

To my knowledge, in all IE games, and even including the NWN games, Insane/Hardcore difficulty increased the damage output of enemies by 100%, to 200% (I played Baldur's Gate 1 and IWD2 last year on Insane ). It did not affect anything else: HD/level, XP reward, saving throws, abilities, everything stayed the same. The way difficulty is handled in PoE, i.e. changing the enemy composition, is already a lot more effort than a simple multiplier to damage. Damage boosting produces very uneven results, since not all enemies rely on big damage to defeat you. This is my reward for playing on higher difficulty in PoE, a game that demands more attention. I like it.

Somewhat back on track -- about what's different with Kickstarter, as opposed to with a publisher? At the end of the recent interview with Josh, the interviewer asked about the website for Pillars of Eternity. Josh struggled a bit with remembering, and said he's unsure, but it's probably eternity dot obsidian dot net (that's right). This kind of "PR blunder" is unimaginable with a marketing team doing the talking. They're fully prepped to paint a picture, and what little they are allowed to tell, they parrot it perfectly. Otherwise, people can get fired for not doing their job, which is seemingly enthusiastic parroting. With Kickstarter, the devs can talk themselves and not worry about delivering the perfect message.

I played Icewind Dale 2 co-op with a friend, we each controlled 2 characters, was excellent. Where is the multiplayer in IWD2 that we were too weak for? I played countless hours in Diablo 2 with buddies, have lots of fond memories. I played Diablo 3 mostly alone, but when the game was revamped, I joined the Obsidian guild and played Hardcore with Indira. Because it is fun, especially HC, with is very stressful. I played countless hours in Borderlands 1 and 2, sadly mostly without buddies (they don't like FPSs), but it was always better when someone else was joining me. Co-op is about playing shoulder-to-shoulder with people you like playing with, your gaming buddies (although it can be played with strangers, it's a lot less fun that way). Discussing tactics and builds, cheering each other on, reviving each other (the trend started with Left 4 Dead, it's a Valve invention), sharing loot as needed, telling jokes, spreading gossip, and so on. Co-op is FUN.

Extra: Here's the panel video. The reason I'm linking it is because the event was hosted by Jennifer Hale, the voice of Queen Jennah (GW2), FemShep (Mass Effect), Leah (Diablo 3) and many, many other characters. This is the first time I've seen her in flesh.

ArenaNet announced the long-awaited expansion for Guild Wars 2 at PAX South. Entitled Heart of Thorns, it brings a lot of upgrades and new content: The new class, Revenant, surprised me, their publicized design philosophy was "we cover every playstyle with our 8 classes, adding new classes is a pain in the ass, lesson learned in GW1". Class specializations were another surprise. GW1 had multi-classing, everyone had a primary and a secondary. This was ditched early into GW2's design process, too many complications. Now they're bringing it back in a limited format, similar to the prestige class system of DnD3. Interesting. Yet another surprise is the addition of gliders and gliding. They were adamant about "no mounts", which meant no flying mounts either, now they're giving players the means of limited flight. You can't get higher than you can normally get by jumping and climbing, but after climbing high now you can soar above the maps, and enjoy looking at GW2's beautiful sights from a different angle. Cool. In keeping with one of their old design tenets, inherited from GW1, the expansion does not increase the level cap and does not bring in new item tiers or rarity, only new skins. It's one of the reasons why I'm such a diehard ArenaNet fan. To celebrate the announcement, they dropped the price of the game by 75% for two days. Guild Wars 2 is buy-to-play, no subs, its microtransactions are only cosmetic and convenience, and its dearth of content is well worth the $10 price they're asking now.

There is an interview up at RPS about SR: HK, part one of two, and in the first part, a lof of the talk is not about the new game, but the older ones. About the linearity of the original: Okay, I forgive you. The editor is important. About user-generated content: I think they are the only devs in the industry who care about user content this much! I was really surprised to read this, and promptly went to watch at least one of these Shadowlab videos.