Kjaamor

Might as well enjoy this before it goes tangential and subsequently turns into a ****storm that had nothing to do with the original post. Obviously speculation is rampant within, and I reserve the right to be wholly wrong on some or all of my assumptions. Pros: 1. It's isometric. Some people will doubtless scratch their heads at this, but it's an absolutely key thing for me. It seems to me that too many rpgs over the years have had good gameplay or ideas that were spoiled by having to battle the camera (NWN2 is the worst of many offenders). Isometric is awesome because it allows for clear control of your party and removes the unwanted fiddly bit that is designed to make things look better and yet practically makes things look worse. 2. It has a wide selection of classes, with a wide selection of sub-builds. 3. It has a statistic system seemingly without dump stats 4. No combat exp - if this is done well, it should reward clever play rather than just repetitive actions 5. It offers tactical combat within the rpg field, which feels like something that has been missing in my rpg games over the last decade. Cons: 1. I feel that a lot of the narrative focus so far is on the wider world, rather than the characters within. My personal preference is characters as primary, world secondary. Cultures, lore and even languages are being created, and yet the details of the individuals within seem comparitively scarce. That IWD and its sequel are being voiced positively for their story and characterisation troubles me greatly, because these for me were exercises in how not to use exposition and establish characters. 2. Similarly, the game feels like it is adopting a more moody G.R.R tone than the J.R.R. tone I would prefer. 3. The character attribute system is, whilst admirable in its function, somewhat more abstract in its appearance than my old friend SPECIAL Might appears independant of Strength, for example. It's by no means a deal breaker, but it would've been nice for a system that whilst allowing for distinction within classes also allowed for distinction between them. 4. None of the character classes truly stand out for me as my class. Perhaps it is for the better that I cannot take the old Kjaamor avatar, the dual-wielding fancy swordplay glass cannon who knows subtlety like a haddock knows dry-stone walling, but it seems unfortunate that none of the current classes accomodate this particularly well. 5. There has so far been no mention of horses. Not as mounted combat (which is best left to M&B), but as in the classic five party combo Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Horse/Wizard. Am disappoint.

That's fair to say. 4E talks at length about the notion of being "heroic"; not unreasonable in that if the central characters to your story are entirely passive then its not so much a quest as being constant victims of circumstance. It's by no means impossible to write a good fantasy story featuring such characters but I agree that in player-driven content a certain amount of conviction tends to make things a bit more involving - or at the very least you don't want to create warriors who deliberately avoid combat because it is most often beyond them.

Although the alignment system is obviously restrictive by its nine-point nature, people here seem to be finding two seperate and distinct moulds that fit in the true neutral space. The nihilistic or animalistic "Truly Neutral", and the more central point "No extreme of anything". Obviously, I'm talking rather more of that central space. My true neutral is defined almost entirely by what it isn't, rather than what it is. On one spectrum it is purely not selfless enough to qualify as good, whilst not selfish enough to qualify as evil. On the other, it is not law upholding enough to qualify as lawful, whilst not lawless enough to qualify as chaotic. In practical terms, most people in most situations are true neutral. A physically weak person sees someone attacking someone else, and does not get involved. The good person takes a stand. The evil person may join in or relish the action. The neutral, regardless of their given reasons, does not get involved because they are unwilling to risk themselves for another they have no significant bond to - even if they find the act repulsive and desperately wish that it wasn't occuring. Disappointing as it may be, this is the way most people act most of the time. Subsequently, people at the extremes who act in a different fashion fit into the extremes of good and evil. The same is similar on the lawful and chaotic spectrum, although as Amentep's example illustrates, chaotic neutral also possesses a similarly dual nature representing both inconsistency and also anarchic political/social ideas. Again, it is obvious that my definition of true neutral isn't of use in describing alien or animal systems of morality, but that is because it works on the relatively specific form of morality of the humanoid creatures of fantasy - what in Lord of the Rings terms would be "The Free Peoples". Creatures that are alien to these forms of morality get clobbed in vaguely around the periphery, based generally on whether they are felt to have the capacity to achieve better (Evil Goblins) or not (Neutral Bears).

Imho: True Neutral: I will act in my interests unless individuals are caused pain by my direct action. Lawful Neutral: I will act in my interests unless individuals are caused pain by my direct action, but I shall adhere to the laws and customs of my home. Chaotic Neutral: I will be wholly inconsistent and sometimes be devil, sometimes saviour. Of my reading of the morality compass (which admittedly stems mostly from the character creation in BG), the odd one out was very much Chaotic Neutral, since all the others were on sliding scales but CN can do anything. For example, a chaotic good or chaotic evil character is unlikely to choose a lawful option, but CN is as likely to choose a lawful option as a non-lawful action.

Personally, one of the things I always liked about RPGs of east and west from that generation, was that your optimum party based upon personality was rarely optimal in combat. Always liked having to make sacrifices or adjust tactics because I chose to take around such parties. Someone else here once requested that companions have a special "feel" to them in the way they work in combat, a la Torment, making them distinct from the PC's class(es). I'm more inclined to head towards that end of the spectrum than the OPs.

Isn't that one of the fan-made suggestions?

I agree, but I don't think there is any harm in once again reminding the developers of this. On a related note, can the flag for party members chime in be related to whether or not they are in the party? It sometimes appears on my current BG2 playthrough that they chime in based upon distance to the npc, which whilst in a sense realistic, can mean some fiddly pathfinding for what may or may not have any outcome.

Formations are a nice idea, but in my experience of the IE games (and ToEE) it basically comes down to one person on point, another covering the rear, and then a mess of people in between. That was, and is, absolutely fine though. For those true moments where formation is used in a fight, you're dealing with very subtle (and, crucially, flexible) custom formations. For everything else, there's point and cover. My biggest gripe with formations is that the party "talker" is often required to be at the head of the combat formation, despite seldom being the best candidate for that role. If we're using individual dialogue checks, can we please ensure that the person who takes the check is someone we select, rather than just being stood two feet in front of the next person?

This is a cheap shot, I know, but it does also guarantee the potential for a worse game. Practically, I agree that absolutes on the matter aren't particularly helpful but I do feel that one of the challenges for PoE and for kickstarted games generally is ensuring that they manage to create a good product whilst also balancing the books - part of which is ensuring you can run to a schedule. To be even more practical, for that reason I doubt that Josh and the folks at the helm are going to worry too much about the outcome of threads like this.

I would've thought that the fact that the story has fame because he used a staff is indicative of the general ineffectiveness of the weapon rather than the effectiveness. In other news, the older I get the more jaded I become with the idea of Shaolin-style combat weapons. The above video of the chap from the 90s wielding a bo just feels like it needs a seven-foot Viking-type to wade in and cut him in half with an axe. I'm no expert on the subject, but my understanding of Shaolin and "ninja" success was that the guerilla tactics made it work rather than the weapon skill. It's sad, but modern mixed martial arts seem to have all but settled the discussion that grace, poise and years of kata just aren't as effective as a reasonably trained big chap punching you in the face.

I think it might be something of a stretch to consider choosing one to two perks over the course of the game as "based on tactics". Tedious is the word here. Is it good gameplay design, regardless of stylistic theme, so make large sections of your gameplay tedious? Is there a sense of earning or achievement to be gained from repetitively engaging in a task so unskilled that you can become no better at it than when you first start playing? I'd argue that it isn't.

Oh, it was in keeping with the theme, all right. No debate there. I question, however, whether manually routing around through containers of crap was a good game mechanic, since it is based not on skill, tactics or any form of strategy but rather just on repetitive mundane actions. Naturally, in the mmo age, the plaudits piled up.

At least. Also they need to be named and have individual dialogue. I hate having to track down one person amongst 20 for a quest when clearly it should be 1 person amongst several hundred thousand. Also, cities and maps aren't big enough generally. It should take me several weeks in real life to cross from one side of the map to the other, otherwise it's just unrealistic. I'm sure the op wasn't suggesting that (or at least I hope not), but there seems to be a tendancy for people to forget that games represent things in a certain way and you have to expect certain things to be off-camera. In the npc and housing example, it helps to keep things low to avoid forcing the player to engage in dull and repetitive actions. One of the things BG did well, that in my opinion the 3D Fallouts did very poorly, was keep a sensible amount of houses in the city so that an explorer could check every single one of them and loot them for gold and quests - but the rewards for doing so were very small. Looting every house that you weren't sent to as part of a quest probably amount, at best, to a couple of hundred gold in BG. There was a reward but it didn't make the game substantially easier than if you just went to the inns and quest-driven properties. In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo. Bureaucratic gameplay is not a good thing - unless you're "Papers, Please."

Elves are supposed to be anorexic? Yes, that's what I said. Please ignore my actual post, which you quoted, that says nothing of the sort. I meant that elves are supposed to be anorexic. My actual post was simply a diversion I used to squeeze through my actual point that elves are supposed to be anorexic. I would've got away with it to, had you not been on hand to completely ignore what I wrote and leap towards what anyone else would've thought of as the wrong conclusion, but was right because of reasons. Well done. "Just because" generally stems from either gameplay balancing (A wizard gets cool spells which a fighter doesn't get, so the wizard has his melee efficiency compromised by, amongst other things, not being able to use two-handed weapons) or from attempts to preserve stylistic themes (Clerics use blunt weapons in keeping with the widely-held [though suspect] belief that historically men of the cloth used weapons that did not "spill blood"). Either the classless class sytem is an oxymoron or else the system in the IE games is already the system you suggest. When you talk about making it less limited and more "common sense", you're simply moving the bar in specific areas within the existing class setup to something you personally feel is more to your taste. It is just as much a class system. Lephys uses the rather more sensible 3.5E analogy; that no class limits should be hard, but skill focus should be rewarded. That point of view at least has some practical limits in the conversation of class vs classless. I still feel that I'd rather have their classically distinct and sacrificial 2E counterparts. At any rate, the class vs classless system will rage on, but my main point was that PoE is a game aping a handful of games that all (P:T excepted) had class systems that were integral to their gameplay.

(edit: guess good file working is beyond me ) Also, props to Lephys for a good pun.

It's fairly obvious, but that was a typo and should read: "There are many of us who enjoy the limits the class system imposes".

Some players hate it, Azmodiuz. There are many of us who enjoy the limits the classless system imposes. Indeed, classless systems seem so rampant in modern western crpgs that large numbers of players have started kickstarting retro-style games with class systems. As to Trashman's post, anyone who would drag PoE away from the IE games and towards Skyrim really can't complain when people call heresy.

Probably the most significant post in the history of the internet.

Once upon a time I argued that 8 was sub-optimal. A lengthy internet argument followed.

Ah, fair point.

In the spirit of the IE games, some of the stats are blindingly obvious. That was my take. Aside from anything else, Devil of Caroc just sounds so incredibly PC rather than companion, but again, my take.

Surely "The Devil of Caroc" refers to the PC? That was my assumption.

I did not notice this at the time but now you point it out the BG system is brilliant and so obvious! Retain that feature!

I, for one, will never trust Obsidian again after they ran over the schedule they promised earlier in the kickstarter. I feel betrayed as a fan.