RedSocialKnight

I can't be bothered to trudge through the latest flamefest thread, so I don't know if anyone has posted this quote from Feargus Urquhart yet. Of course feel free to respond, but I'm not interested in arguing with you. I just thought this had a place on the forum.

It isn't. Although pre-buffing does make games tedious, the reason for that is that it removes tactical choices from the heat of combat. That is the issue. That actually sounds like exactly how a magical book might work. Pages appear blank until the hour of need, when your enemy's name appears in letters of fire....

Yes. These are both great ideas.

That is a really unusual request for a player to make.

I actually think the existing Nature godlikes might be the Eothasian ones -- are they ever explicitly tied to Galawain in the game? Eothas is the god of new light, yes, but also of growth, spring, and farmers. Except for the horns (and all godlike have horns or spikes of one kind or another) all the nature-y features of the godlikes are based on green plants -- and there's nothing in the lore I'm aware of that connects Galawain to that side of nature. He is all about animal predation, so I would expect his godlikes to be beastmen of some kind. Like someone else said, I would guess that Death godlikes are associated with Berath, not Rymrgand, since Rymrgand's icongraphy is mostly ice and cold rather than darkness. And I feel like Skaen's godlikes would just look like regular people -- like their master, they would hide their true nature and their hate. Which would mean ... maybe we're all Skaen godlikes.

In a previous thread I had picked Grieving Mother -- since I found her dialogue style jarring and overdone when I first met her. But by the end of her storyline I'd gotten the rhythm of it, and I found the conclusion genuinely touching. So, I'm here to UN-vote for the GM as my bottom pick. Eder and Durance remain the strongest, but I don't think there really is a last-placed among the runners up. None of the characters are badly written, but only a few are as fully developed as I would have liked.

It's hard for me to judge as someone who has loved these games for 20 years, but I think if you're not used to the isometric style, the more modern interface of PoE would make an easier introduction. And, rose-colored glasses aside, the 2nd-edition D&D ruleset of the BG games is in many ways nonsensical and impenetrable (and I say that as someone who played and loved 2nd ed tabletop when the books were new). But, if you have a taste for whimsy, the goofy charm of the BG characters is something that's never been quite replicated in any later games, even those that have stronger character writing overall.

One legitimate criticism of the combat in this game is that you often can't tell what the **** is going on. A few ideas that might help clear things up a bit: Turn spell effects off on pause I spend a lot of time with the screen on pause squinting through the haze of a spell effect trying to see who is standing where -- clicking on circles to see whose portrait flashes, etc. Do spell effects and assorted sparklies function as a single visual layer that could be set to toggle off when combat is paused? That would help a lot. Still more helpful would be a function that toggled between the effects and AoE markers -- the same as you see when targetting a spell. Clearer markers for status effects Another nice upgrade would be visual effects signalling combat states, especially status effects. Time and time again I've wondered why it's been five seconds and my guy hasn't cast a spell yet, only to check and see the tiny icon -- in a column of other tiny icons, so many of them that some are pushed out of sight at the bottom of the column -- showing that he's stunned. It would be great to have a character's whole model clearly show status effects with a color change -- a stunned character could be blue from head to toe. This could be something that toggles on and off with pause as well. Separating buff and debuff icons My characters have buffs up all the time. Pallegina always has her accuracy modal going, and then there's Kana and Durance -- so I always have a string of icons running most of the way down the right side of the portraits. This means I don't really notice the debuff icons when they appear -- again, I have to pause and squint (and often click the little arrow to expand the list when there are too many icons to fit on the portrait). A really simple solution: put positive status effect icons on one side of the portrait, and negative status icons on the other. That way the icons could be bigger, and it would be immediately obvious when something pops up in the "bad" column. Greater zoom range I'm not sure why the limit on the zoom range is so narrow. The environments are beautiful, and having the ability to get in close would sometimes help to clarify the tangle of combat. I know this would be very easy to change: someone on Steam already posted a way to increase the range with console commands, and it's a really nice quality of life boost. These are just ideas that popped into my head as a way to make combat easier to navigate -- other solutions would be fine, but I think it is a problem in search of solutions.

Is anyone else listening to the developer commentary? I just got to Elms' Reach, and the commentary from Jorge Salgado is talking about a cut area called -- I didn't catch what he called it exactly -- "The Wheel of Light", maybe? It was going to be a mystic forest cemetery where Glenfathan ancestors are laid to rest, and you would have communed with their by means of a dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms. [er, I can post about things in the no-spoiler section that are not in game, right?] Anyway, with the dev team apparently leaping straight into the expansion, what are the chances that we'll see this cut material show up later? Or will the expansion be too much of a different storyline to incorporate areas and quests that were originally planned for the main game?

Sure. But at the beginning of Act 3, not one person has noticed I'm Vailian yet, either -- including the Vailian ambassador and the patriotic Pallegina.

I think Obsidian went in the right direction here, and I think it's just nostalgia to look for a focus on damage types in rpg combat. Damage types (fire for the ice creature, lightning for the water creature, etc) were a way to add false complexity to otherwise simplistic turn-based battle systems, where there were few truly meaningful choices to make in combat. I find them dull because there's only one right choice to make in any situation -- the fire spell and the lightning spell are usually identical except in which enemy they're intended to target. In a more genuinely tactical system like this one, where positioning and battlefield management are where it's at, you have more reactive, flexible choices to make, choices where the "right" answer isn't obvious and can vary. Of course, more variety is always great -- I'm not saying don't add more spells. But I don't want to see an old-fashioned rock-paper-scissors framework overlaid on a system that already has more interesting things going on.

I think you nailed it. The same reason why they can't rewrite all dialogs for low int characters. But my point was it needn't be. Most NPCs aren't voiced. Adding a brief additional text string at the beginning of dialogs referencing the player's race/nation/class needn't be any more complicated than switching [he] for [she] based on gender. It shouldn't actually be that hard to find ways to reference player background without having to change the main body or in-game function of a dialog.

lol, thanks for taking the time to read through my 151 previous posts I guess. ETA: except, I just looked at my own post history (they're all so witty and perceptive, completely worth a second reading) and I don't think that's actually true?

It's a good idea to make the game more accessible to teenagers by adding higher levels of swearing, inappropriate sexual behavior, and drug use. But I don't think that goes far enough. What about the things that are most central to the lives of teenagers -- like sulking? To make the game really appeal to a teenage market, the PC needs to have the option to react to any situation by exclaiming "Ugh! God, this is so boring! I wish we were all dead!" and then slinking off to Brighthollow to **** resentfully for the next four hours. Also, I await the Epic Eyeroll Mod, although that might throw off the game balance by being too OP.

It's hard to write reactivity that when it would change the tone and direction of an interaction. If a PC is running into a racist or godlike-phobic character, it would be a pain to write two completely separate versions of dialog -- one hostile and one neutral. And if an NPC is necessary to a quest -- or just a vendor that needs to be available to the player, then it doesn't make any sense to the game to have them be unfriendly to certain player types. An on-the-nose "racism is wong" storyline would have a hard time not coming across as boring and preachy. But I think this would be very easy to get around. You could create a sense of social tensions without over-emphasis or having to write and code five separate versions of each interaction by having NPCs refer to prejudice without being actively hostile themselves, or else practice "benign" racism. For example: Innkeeper [to a human PC]: What can I get you? PC: I'd like a room for the night. Innkeeper [to a godlike PC]: Holy ****, a godlike! Well ... you're okay by me, just don't expect to be treated any different from anyone else. What can I get you? PC: I'd like a room for the night. Innkeeper [to a orlan PC]: Hey little guy, don't bite me! Haha, just kidding, no need to be sensitive -- What can I get you? PC: I'd like a room for the night. A very different experience for three different players, but all that's needed is a brief tag added to an otherwise identical exchange, and the function of the conversation as it might affect a quest etc isn't changed at all.

Yeah, most of the tensions are between two different multiracial cultures -- Aedyr is human/elven, Glanfath elven/orlan, and there's in-game lore for how tensions between orlans and humans in Dyrwood has eased over the past century. So specifically racial hostility is present but low-level. I do find it a little weird how easily the Glanfathan Hiravias steps into your group, but then he is supposed to be kind of an outsider type in his own culture, so it's not too bad. One thing I do think there should be more of: the in-game lore emphasizes that godlikes are often considered either freaks or blessed, but neither strong reaction comes up often for a godlike PC. We hear about Pallegina's troubles in childhood, but that's about it.

You. It's you. You are starting this ****. In every thread. You are not addressing your phantom enemies somewhere off on Twitter. You are ****ing with other fans of this game. You are drawing in ideological concerns where none belong. You are a pain in my ****ing ass.

Although the conversations are only partly voiced, I'm pretty sure this is a bug: the audio file for the dialog below abruptly cut off after the words "circle of"

Yes, I would really like to see one clearly marked dedicated thread with active modding elsewhere. Because I really never want to read about this **** again. Also, it's not a limerick.

It's not a limerick.

I haven't tried this out yet, but I've been really wanting it: Steps to adjust the zoom range, from a post on the Steam forums.

I would prefer to see all dungeons be no-rest zones. By the same token, you should be able to fast-travel back to a safe resting spot from a cleared dungeon level.

I really like Health/Endurance -- but I don't like "You can carry two hundred suits of armor, but only two bundles of firewood" I would like to see resting just be impossible in dungeons, unrestricted in wilderness areas, and cash-only in cities. Dungeons should be balanced as grueling endurance tests -- how deep can you go without running back out to camp? (To make this a fun, challenging gauntlet to run without just being inconvenient, any set of stairs should take you straight to the surface if you wish.)

I do. He's middle-of-the-pack, but the middle of the pack is pretty strong when the overall level of writing is this good.