CaptainMace

An equivalent would be psychic for the overall idea, or at least that's how I see it. Though lorewise that doesn't really suffice to describe it.

Ok I see what you mean. I think there is kind of a hierarchy of importance when it comes to rpg features, and I feel PC customization is a bit more important than being able to develop a romantic relationship with a companion, so I kinda bugged when you compared these two. But yeah romances have a place in cRPGs. Some in Baldur's Gate 2 were not as cringeworthy as the recent ones EA likes to feature, but I don't think they brought anything to the character they concerned. I mean BG2 romances were nice because the concerned characters were well written, but it didn't add much to the character. I have yet to see romances that actually matter in a crpg. Choosing a race/background/class for the PC however matters more imo. Hence it's more important. But i don't have anything against romances, just to be clear about that. I just don't really care if there's none.

Love Angry Joe, he puts some of him in his videos and I respect that. But yeah no I won't take note of his opinion :D Although It'd be really really cool to emulate some sort of more popular interest for Pillars of Eternity. Then PoE will be a massive success, EA will buy Obsidian out and they'll release Mass Effect Alpha Protocol 2, which features new romances in which you can hug your teammates in a lot of awkward ways. Your reasoning is flawed. If there was only one race, people would be mad indeed. There are no romances and people aren't that mad at all. But you tell us that we should be, or pretend to be, for the sake of a flawed comparision...

I just wanted to believe.

What ? No inter-buddies fights ? Is this official ?

Missed that point. That still would not be fair. If my aoes manage to hit uncounscious foes and kill 'em, big deal. They were already dealt with anyway. If enemies manage to kill one of my folks this way, it'll make some setup extremely hard (see some path of the damned playthrough of the beta on YT where the guy dies a lot already) and again would not be fair since you don't get anything from doing it, yet you lose a lot when you suffer it.

Agree. Now it'as come to my understanding that what annoys people with this is more the fact that uncounscious characters/foes can't be furthermore targeted during the fight than the fact they can be knocked down 'til the end of the fight when they get back up. But then again, that's a matter of game balance. When you engage in a fight against 5 patibulaire dudes and manage to knock one of 'em down. If you're given the possibility to keep on hitting 'em to "actually kill 'em"... would you seriously do it ? No, obviously you'll focus on the others since there's no point in wasting time and energy on 'em. Considering this, it wouldn't be fair that enemies keep on hitting your fallen mates for the sake of killing em since that doesn't affect the fight for them in a good way, worst case scenario they lose time and energy for nothing, best case scenario they manage to actually kill your mate, but still lose the fight due to not giving a F about the rest of the crew. I like the system as it is.

Sometimes, hype is a b*tch...

Is this Napoleon the 3rd outfit ?

I don't get why people are upset about this. It's pretty much the same system, the only difference is that you can't abuse Reload/Healing/Rest for every fight, isn't it ? I mean yeah it's annoying to see the characters just stand back again after the fight ends like nothing happened, but I'll trade realism for gameplay any time of the day baby.

Indeed, and yet even this wasn't much of a big deal since it was exactly the same narrative architecture as Kotor and Mass Effect. At some point, gotta be like "duh, this *go in 4 places following the order of your choice, make a decision in each of em and go in the ending place to see their result* again". Got bored pretty quickly in DAO.

Although I'd prefer humanoids to drop what they use too, I would not mind if it wasn't the case. This kind of design choice seems easy to make but it actually concerns more than just the loot you get. It's a matter of game balance and character design. IE games gave me the sensation of a legit believable system because of this very feature, the fact any armor/weapon that any NPC uses is actually there, in his/her inventory, and dropped at death really reenforced immersion. Since IE games were D&D adaptations, every creature/NPC had its own character sheet and inventory, so such a system made sense and you just had to put these items in his/her inventory. Another game design could make it a painful feature to realize though.

A thesis that has been proved wrong by Demon's Souls and its sequels. Personally, I always liked games that require some investment, the kind of system you learn how to use by actually playing, not by reading the manual. DAI for example is a game that is pretty easy to master since there is no subtility to know beside everything that is said in the tutorial, a perfectly tasteless system imo.

You'd be surprised.

I don't think there has been any "AAA" game that we could actually flag as RPG in years now, beside Hack n Slashes. That's not surprising.

Man if it was about having a taste of the game, they'd call it a demo, but it's about testing its mechanics and system in order to finish it, so they called it a beta, which it is. It's not Obsidian's responsability if pretty much everybody these days release a finished game and call it a beta for hype purposes and open it for everybody. Dota 2 got released a few months ago if i'm not mistaken, I've no idea why it was considered a beta for so long but whatever. Not their fault, with all the well finished games released and flagged "beta" these last years.

Sure, but the problem with your arguments ... I wasn't making any arguments about combat XP, just telling you how to interpret the poll lol. I'm pretty much done arguing about XP for the most part, which is why I didn't make any arguments. Not really sure what you were responding to there, but it wasn't what I wrote. The problem with english is that it's kind of an imprecise language. What I meant with "your" was the arguments of the thread posters. Sorry for the misunderstanding. The only response to the quote was actually "sure" ahah

They made it pretty clear that their inspiration is PST, BG and ID, maybe you should check the Torment game from inXile. I think it'll fit your tastes. Though you probably already know of it ^^

Sure, but the problem with your arguments is that they're not related to what we know from the game, they seem to fit for pc rpg in general, but we're not discussing of a game project, we're discussing of a game which already has some features definitely stated, one of em' being an elaborate combat system. Then my question was more : why do so many people consider exploration worthy of experience rewards, when the only reward from exploration should be its result as I said, and why so many people don't find it OK to gain experience from fighting in a game that features so many combat situations ? Again, I don't deny the fact most people think that way, I just say they don't seem to understand the problem here... Same goes for bestiary xp, I mean what the hell is this to begin with ? Getting experience from fighting a wolf for the first time ? Why isn't the bestiary a reward itself then ? With a little log in for every new ennemy displaying a description in which you'd find info about weaknesses, strength, habitat (lore) etc... Do we really need XP from that ? I am not favorable for stacking rewards for such "deeds". There are different priorities to set in an experience system : the first question we should ask is, how are the deeds rewarded. Therefore, i'll have to say that if I ever have to fight a bunch of demonic unindentified evil flying monsters, I expect to get something else than their fresh vesicles from it.

In my opinion, level scaling is, in any case, a very bad system. Gameplay is a part of a game background, it's a part of the environment and, in a sense, of the story. Demon's Souls/Dark Souls shows that perfectly. Why does the universe of Skyrim seem so less brutal and dangerous than the Sword Coast of Baldur's Gate ? It's not just a matter of music, rythm or world design, it's a matter of gameplay. You can very quickly encounter a siren or a basilisk in the latter, which in the first levels ultimately means a horrible death for some if not all party members. Scaling the level of bosses is the most absurd thing ever. If you're underleveled for the area, you'll come across an important fight that happens to be actually way easier than the direwolves in the backyard. We need the same philosophy that lead to these ennemies north of the starting point of New Vegas, some places, some encounters that aren't just about saying "hey, go grind a little and come back" like everyone seems to think, but also here to say "dude, this world ain't all sunshines and rainbows, there are more things out there that want you laid on the ground in your own blood than hair in your dwarf friend's beard, have a nice trip :)".

Baldur's Gate combat system was indeed really elaborate. Nice, now let's try to find the point of making choices.

*Algernon bursts in tears, wiping them with his recently acquired cloak.

I don't quite understand why combat xp is so low while exploration xp is so high in this poll ?! I mean, I hope everybody agrees that exploration should be driven by the seek of adventure, greed and bloodlust. I get off the tracks (if there are any), I stumble upon a quest/a band of jerks who refuse to recognize my godliness or a pile of gold resting in a locked chest and I get my XP from that ! THAT'S HOW WINNING IS DONE ! Although I think xp rewards for any deed is important, and xp reward for combat should be even more important, especially considering how God Obsidian worked hard on it, and still does. So I don't like exploration xp rewards, I think the reward for exploration should be its result. I'm not sure though, how I would become a master swordsman by discovering new lands. "Hey, look at that fine little village I just arrived to... I feel that... that... THAT I CAN GIVE IT TO A BUNCH OF EVIL JONGLERS RIGHT NOW ! YEAH !" No.

Well, there is a point when you need to talk to the press man. It's even more difficult to make them talk about your game when you're not backed by a big publisher who are used to work with the journalists. The interesting part of the closed-door demo is that you know who can speak about your game and who won't.

The problem with the bandit quote is that you hear it, sometimes, 8 times in a row in 5 seconds... And yeah, in the french version for example, the only good thing about the voice acting was that it was hilarious (because actors didn't take it seriously at all). But yeah, it was really awful. Doesn't it cost an arm or something ? I thought actors were paid by line and paid well (depending on the studio they worked with) which, in my mind, always explained why Eidos crashed in 2005 (Legacy of Kain last release).