BlackyNoir

The game, specifically the main menu and the load/save screens seriously slow downs when the number of save games increases. I'm at 82 saves now, and when the game load there's a "loading" icon on Load/Continue for several seconds. And that's only 82 saves, at (what I hope is) the beginning of the game. What will it be down the road (I remember finishing Witcher 1 on save #730 something). To people who will suggest to simply not save so much, just don't. Go read the astonishing number of bugs, people stuck on map loading screens and such. Yes, saving a lot is a necessety. And it's not like reading a directory with a few hundreds files is this huge technical feat, a 486 can do it.

Wasn't this game in beta for months and months? I mean, it's a pretty big bug (or bugs), and extremely easy to find out given the number of people stuck. Yup, I'm stuck too. - sneaked (somewhat) into the castle - got the priest mission - clear the dungeons below - got the first black screens bugs, but I manage to find another exits out of the dungeons that did not bug - kill Raedrick - got the custscene - now I can't find *any* exit that will work, all get my a black screen and return to desktop

Not on the forum no, there's private data in the dxdiag and such. Sent it to Paradox, it'll probably get lost along the way but… Thanks.

To what Obsidian's email do I send a crash report I just got?

Yes it is. Steam is a software to manage digital restriction per se. Some games are less linked to it, yes, that doesn't mean no DRM that means less DRM.

Seems to be the case for me. Cage Cursor not working is really, really, really annoying. Edit: OK so I load the game (Win7 64bits, mixed resolution dual screen, display through latest stable AMD Omega drivers)), click Continue, Appear at my last save (in the street, doing nothing) and Cage Cursor does not work. I have to go into options, disable it and re-enable it to make it work a little while. I Alt tab to write this message and Cage Cursor still works, for now.

Wasn't up to date on my page, it took several refreshes to show it. Damn cache. Thanks a lot. As a sidebar, if you feel so inclined, maybe you could investigate the passive vs active builds around. For people who want to play über micromanagement, and for people who want the opposite maybe having the main character micromanaged and the rest of the party built around passive abilities or something.

I disagree with your assessment that playing that way equal being hardcore gamer. Obsidian while far from the worst (*cough* Troika *cough* inXile) doesn't have a stellar bug free track record (but again, who does in this day and age?), and these types of complex crpg are the worst type of game from a bug point of view. What can be a very small typo somewhere could lead to a complex fubar game state dozens of play hours later (yup I played Fallout when it was release, I'm still scarred). So yes your proposition is interesting. But forget about detailed bug report, and a dev mistake can screw your game more than you could do it yourself. If Pillars of Eternity was a couple of years old and I just discovered it, I would probably try it your way. But not right now.

For the next showcase, could you explore the Rogue?

Definitely on GoG: - no DRM of course, contrary to Steam - very fast downloads (when Wasteland 2 was released, I got it faster on GoG than people through Steam) - better customer service Of course the Steam preload and auto patch are very nice features, and hopefully GoG will propose those in the near future. But right now, it's still GoG.

Exactly., I wouldn't have said it better. Edit, missed that. Yet again it's quite right. Power is about favoring your allies and punishing your enemies. It has tremendously little to do with numbers. I know that some of you don't see that yet, but you need to get your head out of the usual crpg paradigm. Way of doing things if you prefer. Being powerful isn't at all a necessity of role-playing gaming, a lot of time it's just an hindrance. And even if you're character is powerful, that absolutely doesn't need him to be a antique demi-god punching everything that moves. If you want, real power doesn't mean stomping dragons bare handed. Real power is not to have to fight in the first place for example.

Most people expect a good computer game to be a clone of Halo or The Sims. If one go with “their perception of most people this and that“ road, one shouldn't say their making a good crpg. “Most people” as you say won't play a crpg, doesn't know what a rpg is, and doesn't care.

Nope. Look at real life. Or pretty much any novel not licensed from a leveled rpg. A soldier, veteran of 20 years, can still meet a lot of challenges.

Not having levels at all would certainly help.

Yes, good audio design and great ambient sounds are an absolute necessity. Audio is as important as graphics.

Saying this again and again doesn't make it true. I don't have a good hear, and certainly not a good audio equipment. But lot of people do, and lot of people can distinguished MP3 from FLAC for example. And as was said, providing lossless sound has no downsize. It should definitely be at the very least an option, or even the norm. Audio is as important as graphics.

In a game where text is important, special attention should be given to said text. Typography and font choices are very critical. I expect at the very least to have a great font, incredibly readable, with the option of scaling, anti-aliased, that handle ligatures, smart kerning, and so on.

Classes are inherently bad design, why add more?

The poll lack the option: I don't care.

I will certainly play it at the regular difficulty for me. Meaning in most game, the Normal one. Some game are smarter, saying for example “Difficult” is the intended difficulty, and “Normal” is for casual gamers (in that case I'll play difficult). In any cases, I won't play in an artificial high difficulty system, those are almost always badly designed. I'll play at what the dev & creative team had in mind. If I don't enjoy the game because it's too easy in the end, that'll be on the dev & creative team. They have to make a good design and balance, then maybe dumb it down for casual players. Not the other way around.

Seems quite nice. Just two little things: 1. I hope we do not get telepaticaly advised something is going on at the stronghold. Well, unless there's a good backstory to it. But having an upgrade for messengers, pigeons (that won't magically find you, people still need to look for you in the end) and whatnot to keep us aprised (with coherent delays and such) could be nice. 2. Quite a nice thing for these parallels adventures for stay behind companion would be to play them! It could work like this: your main PC leave the stronghold, go do his business, and comes back, let's say 3 weeks after. Just before he entrers back his stronghold the game gives us the option to freeze, and get back in time when our stay-behind companions leaves for their own adventure (which obvioulsy will try to avoid being in the same time, space or interact in any way with our main PC for continuity reasons). And we get to plays thoses companions, in their adventure. The goal would be to explore these left-overs companions, which could be left behind on a regular basis, get to know them. And as a player, experiment with new characters, new mechanis and class we overlooked at first, and so on. Another small thing. Don't focus that much on bonuses. Yeah they may be somewhat important, but the emotional link to building something, watch it grow, watch it tremble and maybe go under before we get it back up, is amazing. I mean, people still talk about their Morrowind mansions 11 years after they played, and those didn't offer anything, were a pain to use, and so on. And still people took pride and pleasure and fun at getting them, improving them.