Mor

@Gfted1, This a party game its combat mechanics are about tactics (i.e. positioning and correct use of abilities and spells). The only design failing would be uber classes\technics without weakness\counters, this what makes the game interesting defending and attacking, not through gamy technics to abuse bots.. So far each of the class we learned about has its role and weaknesses, and we have the mechanics in place to avoid or deal with your wizard getting engaged, but if it does end up eating blows then as I said before you ****ed up or hopefully we have great AI, stop whining about mechanics.. As for soloing in a party based game, we shouldn't water down class roles so that you can solo. Solo player should be able to win mainly because they will get so much more xp for their boring choice, and overpower everyone.

Dat processes Russian might want to look at its own image, it might be as shocked as Dorian Gray was in the end. Funny how in Russia's world everyone are gone mad, while everyone else feel exactly the same only about Russia. I wonder if this comes in country size: Also here are many other Russian thinkers for you.. and while I know that Russian like to rage about Clinton comparing their action to Wiemar Germany, Russian thinkers has been doing it for a long time ( at least those abroad, since those who don't tend to get prosecuted )

That crossed my mind, but, the world they live in isn't new, and surely, nobles keep company with other nobles, and discussions like "did you hear what happened to Reginald after he was supposed to live forever?" are sure to be expected among them, right? Animancy is still in its infancy, its understandable how some Animancers might want to push the boundaries without though or regard of the consequences. Keep in mind that the concept of undead isn't new, there were lost souls long before the current breakthroughs in Animancy, and Egwithian 2000 years ago manged to build constructs that contains souls with some memories. Its very likely that details about the process aren't well known, issues dismissed as technical mishaps that can fixed, or through direct misinformation by interested parties for example Necromancers, nobles would want to keep it in house and or Animancers wouldn't want to draw attention of religious factions..

YOU racist bastard! next you'd be asking why those dwarfs are short or why the elves have pointy ears http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Aumaua

The key word there being "try." Pretty much. No one said you can't try to tactically retreat, but the wobbly wizard ain't likely to outrun a Barbarian( monk or anyone if he also stop to shot), and once he is pined down(engaged) he can try to turn away and run(disengage), but he is far more likely to get intimate with Barbarian sword.

^ I am not sure what is the default setting, but the Brief vs. Verbose toggle is in.

It is possible, but I wouldn't count on it. Mage should be vulnerable to melee, he might be able to postpone his fate with some ability, allowing the rest of party to interdict, but overall if he ends up eating blows is because the you ****ed up controlling the situation. The name of the game is tactics, your party composition/positioning(area control) and correct use of its abilities seems as important as BG mage spell prep work, IMO. An example from the top of my head, a rogue will be a great help against units that manged to evade your "front line" formation. A mage might be week melee, but he is enough to allow a flanking rouge to sneak attack the hell out of his attacker. --- on unrelated note, I wonder if there would be couple of "stealth" missions i.e. missions that could be completed with stealth only and thus might be beneficial to only bring one high stealth character.

I think that the OP is quick to jump to conclusions, but even if the game release was delayed, I'd no problem with that, no more than I had a problem with Obsidian partnership with Paradox. After all the reason why we are here is because of how traditional publishers limited creativity, and rushed out games on strict schedule. Which not the case here and I am not going to take the publishers stance to make it so. I waited so long I can wait little longer. With that said, if I wasn't invested in PE, I would be ranting about Early access (and Kickstarters) from the top of the world. From purely customer point of view, they are nothing but worst case of "pre-order" schemes, where people pay more to get less, running their first impression for the chance of working as beta testers.

How about we agree that its a great classical game, with a lot of tactical depth and dare I that haven't been matched yet. Because your definition casts way too wide net, there are hundreds of games with better RPG elements than JA2, many of them would be denounced at the codex as root of all evil of modern gaming -- to put it mildly. Anyway, I think that this list can be better understood through this thread. Looking at the golden years breakdown by ~decade before and after 1995, i can really agree with it, it is pretty much my favorite RPGs, games that distinguish themselves, has been an inspiration and deserve the title of classics. To bad they didn't actually made separate list by decade and continued to more recent titles, but then again the codex wouldn't be a good representative for it.

You are right, but that would make the skill much less distinctive, and will allow you to max every skill.. and since they unrolled couple of them in trios, I am hopeful for more. At the moment here is the current list of class\skill from the wiki: Rogue - Stealth Mechanic Ranger - Stealth Survival Chanter - Lore Mechanic Monk - Stealth Druid - Survival Athletics Wizard - Lore Mechanic Priest - Lore Athletics

Come on, nothing wrong with a little "check it out" demonstrations, especially ones that include our first sfx, otherwise people tend to start threads about what they want to see in updates But you are right, we want the effect to have distinctive style, on top of being impressive, informative and fit with overall art style. What do you think about this early stuff from the trailer: p.s. In the bottom left it looks like Wizard cast animation, is soul thingy released from the Grimoire he reads.

might be this post..

So far we learned of 5 skills, ~each has 3 associated class which gain inherent bonus in them, so I suppose that we might have up to 3 more skills. Each of the skill we have been told about, had some mechanic associated with them on top of being useful in scripted interactions. I wonder what it is for lore and athletics? I suppose that Lore skill might help identifying creatures, filling up our cyclopedia faster or help craft potions. But, Athletics... I doubt its involved with traveling bonus (having a party member with good athletics, shouldn't help our whole party move faster) and I doubt it will boost their combat speed, which is something that I'd expect to see with monk/fighter/barbarian. Any ideas?

While the IE fireball effect is a simple circle in comparison, it is not exactly plain. Its doesn't use a solid wave of fire, but has a pattern to it, which looks like spread out bars of flame shooting in every direction. I think that it is good design choice, because its lessen its "intensity" of the effect, making it less of a distraction. With that said, I don't necessarily agree with you on the PE effect. I don't care about its "practicality"(in fact I think its more its more practical) and I think its an interesting direction that we don't know how it turned out (assuming that effects go through the same final touches passes). If it is sort of fireball then its much more localized version of it. Also as much as I love Dota2 aesthetics, keep in mind that having some "flashy" effects is unavoidable. Because this is not a strategy game, and gaining some per rest high level "flashy" spells\abilities as you progress, would be satisfying. yep and you can do far worse or far far far worse: http://youtu.be/75alAzkFlWI?t=2m10s

As I understand once the enemy inner detection radius touch yours, they become aware of you and switch to alert state calling up for help. The 2 second rule is the "surprise" attack window, during which they unable to defend themselves effectively from your attacks. As I said it mean to simulate you sneaking up them unaware i.e. you need high enough Stealth skill (compared to enemy perception) so you can get close enough to the enemies (your\their detection radius is small enough) to make use of that window. After that I have no idea what (if any) application Stealth has in Combat.

In earlier kickstarter update#20 it was said that: We know that some thing went revision, like the timetable of the war. What about the rest? 1. Is Eothas presumed dead in the Eastern Reaches or all across the Aedyr Empire? 2. Is the prejudice toward Eothasians across Dyrwood erldooms, also manifest in laws against them? 3. Does that mean that Godhammer citadel where the war has ended is part of Norwaech, Dyrwood? which Readceras captured? the whole thing seems pretty straight forward to me... the more i read it the more i fail to see where you see inconsistencies what you fail to understand, is that in realms of WIP the dev's reside atop Mount Olympus and what I suspect is always << what they can confirm. Plus Josh sometime offer us additional interesting tidbits in his answers and i'd really love to hear more(especially about #3). For example, up until recently 'Free Palatinate of Dyrwood' borders were vaguely defined by the forested area on the map, with recent tidbits about Dyrwood erldoms offering a better picture. However, I don't suppose that you can elaborate on whether Godhammer citadel is currently part of Norwaech, Dyrwood, or changed hands during the war, regardless how much you spend gazing at those quotes

I really like this one, it can work (depending on how many unique armor sets they plan to have) still IMO at this size color pattern will be the most identifiable feature.

Please don't turn it this into gender roles discussion; how Women portrayed in games, that are marketed for teenage boys; and or more boob armor hyperbole's... There are other threads to go about this (maybe this: Female gamers having a hard time in gaming communites Here it is about the best way to add distinguishing details to this IE style game, with top down view and small characters. If you have another distinguishing feature or a better way to go about this one (as oppose to what our artist who studied and researched this before hand) please do tell. Also anyone who got distracted by the models in the open post or character artworks, here is a refernce to how our characters models actually look in-game, if you squeeze real hard then there are maybe two (three?) female characters there. Which is why most of us here see those detail as very subtle and tasteful thus welcome distinguishing feature, the more detail the better.

Bear in mind that list isn't exactly cRPG's only e.g. Jagged Alliance is great game classic but cRPG? I don't know what the guys at the codex has been taking, but even the weakest most hyped bioware Action-RPG is better Its nostalgia\POV googles, at the time it was amazing and if you had put the time\effort finishing it, then ranking it high among most "modern" games is easy. Especially, if at this time in your life you don't have a lot of time to fully explore game and prefer more causal games..

In earlier kickstarter update#20 it was said that: We know that some thing went revision, like the timetable of the war. What about the rest? 1. Is Eothas presumed dead in the Eastern Reaches or all across the Aedyr Empire? 2. Is the prejudice toward Eothasians across Dyrwood erldooms, also manifest in laws against them? 3. Does that mean that Godhammer citadel where the war has ended is part of Norwaech, Dyrwood? which Readceras captured?

Since we really don't know much on how such states represented in PE, I think it would be more productive to try to come with original idea of how they can be represented (then jumping to conclusion and speculation about other games like nwn2). Here is a rough list with a mix of conditions and afflictions that we know of: http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Status_Effects I think this is a good idea - each one would be distinct and easy to recognise at a glance. Having some lighting effect is ok - too much 'flash and glow' on the other hand gets out of hand. Indeed this and color coding is pretty common way to help distinguish effect heavy environments, atm we have know of some 100 abilities\spells\buffs\auras\chant\commands\etc... not sure how much there are more or if they finalized the lists.

*Sighs* The thing about bias, in many case its about perception, for example most people who are familiar with politics, will claim that during election time media coverage is crazy biased! because according to their POV it is giving too much or not enough focus to various issues inline with their POV. Which is why its important to be able to step back and look at thing in context (especially when propaganda and sensationalized reportage involved) This is not a new concept, just like the usual onslaught of teenage nationalism coming most strongly from countries with high censorship and low freedom of speech discovering the world POV is different. In this case you guys haven't been so excited in a while, i suspect that it has something todo with your previous unsubstantiated claims about western involvement by anything other than vague conspiracy theories. In any case another not new concept is that balance in reportage is about presenting arguments in proportion to the actual evidence for each side, not about equal screen time. Which is why Russian claims are taken with less and less skepticism due considering that all its initial reportage turned into crap, and was nothing but tool destabilize Ukraine toward its own goals.

The only thing we know to effect stealth detection radius's is our actions, which increase our visibility radius, enemy 2 state detection radius seem to be constant. I also wonder if ranger or any support unit at the back can use stealth to avoid getting to much attention during combat from various marauders. as for Rogues they don't need to run anywhere to get "stealthy"(see previous post) e.g. double decking any character is enough(if you can position your rogue behind an enemey unit which is already engaged, you get your sneak attack. I don't know if you can utilize stealth in combat in anyway, but you can still sneak up on unaware enemies at the beginning. Also there is no LOS(line of sight, light or whatever) only detection radius's, so no utilizing obstacles at least in game mechanics, but no one said you can't RP it in your head

I agree. But it was a buff, which is always centered on the character.. I also noticed this pattern. i'd love if invocation effect (chanter rare powerful spells) will involve a clear band with written pattern on them.

I agree, dota 2 does a marvelous job with its effect it is pretty, but also distinctive and clean looking even in the thick of the battle. In comparison some Diablo3 battles seemed to turn into a huge kaleidoscope (although i have only limited youtube experience with later) Still I think you was little too harsh with our buff effect :/ and das sound effect