Kjaamor

Thirded on BGII. Somewhat off topic, I still find it somewhat bizarre that Lephys, as one of the most vocal people on a forum for an IE-successor, has not played Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, or Planescape: Torment. While I'm here, shared experience broke IWD by making things significantly easier with four than six. I was not aware that BG was similar (it would certainly be less obviously similar due to the exp variation) but can believe that fairly readily. If a skilled and/or strategic player can complete a party-based game with one character, that's great. But if you have six character slots it should, in my opinion, become progressively more difficult with each slot you don't fill.

I must admit, I wasn't aware that Grimrock had sold that many copies, and that must surely be encouraging for Obsidian.

I'm loathe to start guessing as to sales, but I think the idea of sales in the region of 1 million is rather optimistic. FTL was an enormous success but has appealed to gamers who wouldnt typically play that type of game, in part due to its excellent design but also in part due to the casual nature of the game. PoE is, regardless of whether it is good, bad or outright fantastic, an incredibly niche game. It is an rpg. It is a relatively hardcore rpg by modern standard. It is nothing close to casual. It uses a graphical interface that even its advocates would describe as "retro". I doubt PoE's ability to sell well outside of its niche market. Most of them are trolls, but these forums are awash with new posters who ask questions that suggest they are not remotely aware of what the game will be. There are an astonishing number of people who are expecting this game to be the new Fallout or Skyrim, and they are unlikely to buy into it when they discover what it is like. People will wheel out the BGII example of over two million sales, but that was a mainstream game at the front of design. PoE is a retro-fest, and shall sell accordingly. Those 2 million BGII owners are by no means likely to each buy a copy of PoE.

Don't you people sleep?

Absolutely loads of crap, please. I hope PoE consists of an absolutely patience-mashing collection of terrible quests, awful npcs, woeful combat mechanics and an overarching plot you would chew through your own wrists to get away from. What I certainly don't want, and I assume that this is true for everyone, is a quality game of reasonable length. If it has to be a twelve second long Nirvana, then so be it, as long as it's completely all or none.

Primarily, I shall pick NPCs based upon personality and how they fit with my group. That said, the NPCs are one element where I have substantial concerns for my PoE experience. From the interviews and comments here it seems fairly obvious that Josh's preferences for characters and story are at the other end of the spectrum to my own; myself sitting so far to the popular as to have a foot in camp JRPG and Josh resolutely standing in fort P:T. Ultimately, I'll run with the NPCs up to the point where they start spoiling my experience and then switch to Adventurers' Hall. That being the case, I should imagine I end up not creating a party but slowly replacing members as they drop from my ranks. They won't be like for like swaps, but will probably have similar roles (Dropping a Fighter for a Barbarian for example). In terms of the IE games, my general preference was to have a mix of classes using a front 3 (melee) back three (ranged) formation, including 2-3 magic classes in the back, and having my (utility) thief in the back row. My current BGII playthrough is quadratic heaven, using Me (Sorcerer), Viconia, Aerie, Edwin, Nalia, Jan (later Imoen), and my next playthrough (Multiplayer) shall be the weaponmaster run of Paladin (Shield), Paladin (2h), Fighter (dual), Ranger/Cleric (dual), Kensai->Mage (2h) and Cleric/Thief (Shield). For some reason I find myself really excited about that playthrough.

The tangent this topic has gone on is indicative of exactly the sort of major debating issue the community has right now that no-one will care even slightly about when playing the game.

Has something happened to FF? I was really excited about that, although their updates were always sporadic at best. Has it failed?

Worth it for Cubiq's post.

Long ago, there was a thread where I expressed my concerns that PoE would set up camp in the world of gritty, low fantasy, pseudo-realism. I expressed my distaste for this. It's not news to me, but I am immediately troubled by any suggestion that PoE is more George than John, because frankly I find gritty, low fantasy pseudo-realism to be extremely unsatisfying at best, and outright depressing at worst. Obviously that's just my personal point of view, but if PoE is a card-carrying member of the gritty society, then I think I'll probably pass on it and play something that's actually going to bring me some happiness instead. Your milage, as ever, may vary.

There you go Sheikh gritty and real, just like I said it. ...urgh.

I sometimes forget that the people bringing us all these excellent pieces are actually forum-goers. Cheers, guys. Edit: Also, (accidentally double posts due to quoting confusion)

I always favoured the single animated skeleton vs Drizzt off the screen trick.

Just generally.

You are mistaken, but by all means go and do the research. As I say, I initially argued that there wasn't scaling in BGII but then I was confronted with the evidence that there was. I did the unseeing eye earlier this week (replaying BGII again) and while there are some locked enemies within the lair, there are certainly scaled enemies in the Rift area. Obviously going there at the start doesn't stop it from being a beholder lair, and even gauths are pretty tough without preparation, but it changes the number and scale of those enemies.

What? Where? You must have confused something. The games scales the XP gained from fights, but the enemies are always the same. It's all over the place, oddly enough, it's just very subtle with it. In the Unseeing Eye quest, if you're low level you'll fight a few gaunths and if you're higher level you'll find full blown beholders flung in. During the temple ruins quest you can actually encounter Liches if you arrive there late enough. The beauty of BGII is that, unlike Oblivion and Dragon Age, it doesn't scale ALL the fights, so you will still plow through those dungeons faster at a higher level, it's just that there'll be two or three fights within where you'll need to don your tactical hat. Oh, and, that adds two case in points for my original post - the first case in point being myself when this was pointed out to me.

I'll leave it to someone else to find the last comment from Josh on the matter, however in the interim I will say this. A lot of people associate level scaling with games like Oblivion and Dragon Age, and hate it as a result. A lot of those people don't realise that Baldur's Gate II used level scaling.

"If memory serves" using the console to summon Drizzt it takes two summoning to defeat Saverok, Although the difference, of course, is that you can run from Saverok.

Fully random is bad. Fully fixed is good. Almost exclusively fixed with a few high-level randoms is best.

Oh, gawd, I hadn't even contemplated this! Mind you, if it has a Linux version, that's just another good reason to make that move.

Seems contrary to everything they have said about the UI so far, which leads me to think this is not what the game shall use. However, if it did, I wouldn't cry a river.

It doesn't hold a candle to the IE games in the RPG stakes, but one of many nice things that Might and Magic VII did was to have random "artifacts" and "relics"; extremely powerful weapons, armour and items of which only a randomly selected few appeared in each game from a table of them. It added to the decision-making process which is essential to the gameplay of cRPGs. Your knight specialises in swords, but you've just picked up this awesome axe. Do you switch to that, or utilise your mastery of swords. Unfortunately, MMVII loves shooting itself in the foot, and in this instance the drops were save scummable until you got the item you wanted, which was a poor mechanic. For overall balance, generally placed items are better. However a few random things into the mix keeps things interesting, and also helps to avoid a blight of RPG games, which is the idea of picking 'The wrong weapon specialisation'. 'Oh, you specialised in clubs? Yeah... we've actually not put any magic clubs in the game so those points are completely wasted. Sorry!'

I think the wording of a "period of calm" is perhaps misleading, but certainly a degree of advantage based upon the level of surprise would be nice, provided it doesn't reach the cheesing levels of the IE games.