anameforobsidian

Yes you have to be next to them. There were plans to make polearms have increased engagement range, it didn't pan out (wish it had). There are no rounds in PE, so hence, no per round limitations. I believe there's a time limit on them. And most moves give you a bonus to defenses against engagement attacks (paladin & chanter effects). Very few of abilities actively break them. Barbarians can rush through them and rogues have a couple.

The game actually starts at the highest difficulty and it declines from there, especially once you get a full party. I would recommend starting at hard though. I've found that the harder modes are much more interesting.

Magical ammo - sure. Companion fixes - whatever. Doesn't Pallegina get nice bonuses for being an Avian godlike? Remove disengagement - No. If anything, I want them to create disengagement zones rather than the status effect they use. (They didn't change it, did they?) Also properly implement polearms so they create huge disengagement zones. I like the focus on positioning in PE. Immunities - only when it adds to verisimilitude or characterization. Fire Blights should not be hurt by fire. I prefer hefty DR bonuses in most cases. A lot of explanations get super tedious. Combat only spells - needs to be carefully considered. BGII prebuff litanies were annoying. Mage duels - Hell no! While SCS added some interesting strategies (teleport field + melf's minute meteors was novel the first time you see it), mage fights got increasingly tedious as the levels went up. Battles took longer. There were actually less tactics as mages took an outsized importance. Dispel vs. contigency until a warrior inevitable drops the enemy in one hit was not terribly fun. Furthermore, there's something to be said for letting PE to continue developing its own niche and ideas. If you want another Baldur's Gate game, Beamdog will keep you supplied for decades to come.

To be fair, I'm almost entirely sure an Obsidian-made TB game will still be better than D:OS in everything but combat, because quite frankly, everything but the combat sucked in D:OS. D:OS had crap art, crap writing, but the fantastic combat & environmental manipulation made it a great title. The thing is, D:OS combat is fantastic in a very particular way. It has no sense of balance, it is far, far too easy, and there is not a lot of variability or replayability in character building. All of that becomes kind of irrelevant because they've managed to make screwing around with the environment & elements, etc. so fun. It's a game where there is no challenge but it still has fun in spades. Hence, whether an Obsidian turn-based POE or some other company's TB game, there's plenty of room for more traditional kinds of experiences. And really, more TB RPGs? Who's complaining? Bring them on. I like TB just fine, but I would like more RTwP experiences. Something besides Pillars and Serpent in the Staglands. Something I really liked about PE's combat was how unique it felt. Obsidian was willing to try different things, sometimes they worked, sometimes they were poorly implemented, and sometimes it didn't work. It feels like turn based RPGs are waaay more popular now because they're much easier to port.

I thought Caed Nua was traditionally the home of an Erl?

I would like to add: Try some unusual parties. I loved the party fights. Fighting an all rogue party or all mage party could be pretty interesting. No all cyphers please. Also, the fight with the Xaurip cultists in front of the altar was memorable as ****.

I'm not down with the whole ****ting on MCA thing. Even without PST or Kotor II, he did solid writing in New Vegas, and he's still one of the best writers in the field. Yeah, it sounds increasingly like the split was a slightly acrimonious, but I'm not going to deny his talent even if I disagree with some of his points.

Criticisms of this argument: 1. You describe a series of actions that are intrinsically active (stealth and positioning) as rote. 2. Optimal setup combined with perfect play almost always leads to rote combat. Doesn't matter if it's a real time or turn-based game. The only way game designers break up rote combat is by using limited resources, breaking the rules of their own system, or making it multiplayer. Otherwise optimal strategy will always win the game once it's discovered and executed. 3. Your optimal positioning is far from the only option. Many fights are best resolved by sneaking your melee dps ahead of the front lines so that they can stun or kill enemy controllers. Sometimes door tanking is better. Sometimes running away is better. Sometimes the important thing is to get the hell away from the exploding elemental. 4. Of course ranged characters stay back. That's why they're ranged characters. Complaining that characters do what their designed to do is counter to the purpose of rpgs. 5. Many classes specifically allow you to break engagement and encourage that type of gameplay. Rogues and barbs are especially adept at zipping in and out of the scrum. 6. If each fight has a makeup that requires custom positioning, then that undermines the idea of rote combat, since scouting and positioning is part of the combat. 7. There are encounters that break up a "sequence" and require you to change tactics. How does this help your argument? 8. PotD throws several hordes of enemies large enough that the fight never really stabilizes. 9. This argument does not prove that the state of affairs you describe comes from systems design. It only mentions systems design at the end, and does not describe how system design contributes to the state of affairs you describe. Even if the rest of the argument was accurate, AI or encounter design could be at fault. 10. It fails to recognize player agency in both builds and gameplay options. The way you optimally execute encounters plays far differently based on builds. A party of 6 rogues plays very differently from a party of 6 rangers. 11. You fail to outline alternatives to a self-selected problem. A system where everyone excels at melee and ranged attacks? An RNG heavy system that is based more on reacting to randomness than careful gameplay? A series of onion peeling spell defenses and counterspells while everyone else flails around aimlessly? A kite and spank game? Criticizing without suggesting alternatives is fairly useless, especially when the criticisms are generalized enough to apply to most systems. 12. It's nothing new. You didn't even bother writing a fresh post. Copying and pasting an old argument without the criticisms of that argument in the place it came from is pretty much spam. And also indicative of a history of histrionics.

I'm waiting for both expansions to come out to do my full party PotD run.

What I didn't like about Kana was how quickly his plot resolves. Because it's only in the Endless Paths, once you set to doing the Endless Paths you get there pretty quick. I wanted to like him, as I thought the character, motivation, and concept was neat. He just didn't do it for me. I used him quite a bit because I had two gun users. Moreover, the tension over animancy as a theme doesn't carry through for the entire game, and isn't nearly adequately explored. The characters whose motivations involved the Gods seemed to tie into the plot better, because they dovetail with the end of the game. Pallegina's interaction with Hylea was not part of her quests, but it was much better than her quests. The characters whose motivations involve animancy tend to fall flat by the third act. Kana has already made his decision. Aloth is a big ole mess. Grieving Mother is interesting, but you don't meet anyone or go anywhere affected by her actions. It may be that some of the characters were planned to match content that didn't appear, and thus more harmed by the thematic disunity between the second and third acts. A larger second act may have helped some of this. My completely unsubstantiated belief is that the backer NPCs took significantly more time than they realized, and took up some of the air from the normal NPCs.

I've been reading Terry Pratchett all weekend, and its a joy to see a "realistic" fantasy setting that is actually hopeful about humanity. Yes, many people in the Middle Ages were horrible to each other, but there was a forward progression of human rights even then.

Here's my critique of characters. Bear in mind I enjoyed them all and thought they were, with one exception, heads and shoulders above your average rpg npc. Durance had the best plot by far. Getting his individual dialogue nodes out was clumsy. He was thoroughly unlikable as a character but was supposed to be that way. He's probably my number one or two. Eder was likable and just a pretty good character. He had believable struggles, and wealth of development and potential outcomes. I personally thought he was better crafted than Durance because your average interactions were on average more unique and enjoyable. The pet dialogues were very clever. Hirviras was well made in general, but his plot was a little Bioware-y. Press x to renegade Galawain. Pallegina's design and characterization were cool, but her plot could have used some work. Sagani had a neat design and plot, but she had few noticeable personality traits. What adjectives would you use to describe her as a person? Aloth, Kana, and Grieving mother just didn't work as well. Either their plot was too clumsy or they lacked adequate characterization. Aloth was by far the worst, because he had two different plots that didn't connect or reference each other. Nah, not different people. Individual personas have express this attitude on this forum. They pick what PoE is and isn't to suit their argument, never mind what was implied in the KS. That's a fair enough argument, and I'm guilty of a bit of hypocrisy. I didn't like the gating and would have preferred a game less traditional in that respect. However, I recognize it for what it was and can live with it. I think he's being a bit crass considering how gated the games he's worked on have been. My objections to Avellone ignoring the practical side of game development still stand. And my, how its funny to see the infinity engine literalists rush to support any criticism at all.

I think that Avellone is generally wrong here for a couple reasons: 1. The pitch was very clearly supposed to follow the Infinity Engine games. All of them (except IWDII, which I haven't played) were heavily gated. The least gated game was probably BGII, but it still had plenty of gates. IWD was incredibly linear. Torment had so many goddamn gates, worst of all the Xaosect house. BGI had a full quarter of its areas behind gates, and a whole city wasn't available until you had finished most of the plot. 2. Besides PST, the player has little impact in the plot of IE games. You go to the same places, for relatively the same reasons. 3. It's also about what PE is supposed to be strategically to Obsidian. PE is supposed to be a platform for future games. You need to walk before you can run. The original Shadowrun campaign made Dragonfall possible, etc. Avellone has a history of pushing for reactivity over stability. While that can lead to a great individual game, it doesn't lead to a great platform for future games. Hence no Obsidian driven Kotor III and no AP II. The fact that two new games are being made in the engine right now points to Sawyer being right on this one. 4. Obsidian clearly didn't have the money to make as much reactivity or exploration as all that. Bug-testing a new engine is hard enough without elaborate plot-chains that break at several points due to a combination of intricacy and player reactivity. They had to outsource several of the wilderness areas already. 5. They needed more content in pretty much all the areas they had. The game was full of concepts that needed more exploration. More empty exploration would not have helped that. Again, this comes down to money. And again Avellone seems perfectly willing to forget about practical constraints.

The designers at Obsidian are up for contingencies, they just require a ton of work to put in the game. It's no accident they didn't make it in the BG series until BG II.

Not to bright pun aimed ad personam. There are clear standards to decide objectively if the game was successful. Taking budget in to consideration 500.000 units sold is not a success for PoE. How do you know that? I don't have much stake in the *argument.* Of course, I *want* PoE to have done well in terms of sales and sustainability, but the argument of whether it has or not isn't particularly important to me. I figure if it has, we'll know by what Obsidian *does.* However, from the point of view of folks saying 500k is a success or a failure in light of budgeting, how do people know? We can't tell if Poe was a success, but we can compare it to the competition.And we know that Wasteland 2 managed similar numbers despite lower KS budget, smaller names and worse reception. Wasteland 2's kickstarter budget was not even the most significant source of money for the development of the game. It made more from early access sales. Those count as sales / owned copies / income, but not as profit. Link. http://www.pcgamer.com/wasteland-2-early-access-sales-helped-double-the-games-kickstarter-budget/

All of this comes down to your definition of success. For a company there can really only be three definitions of success: it makes as much money as possible; it makes enough money to keep making stuff; it didn't make that much money but it built the capital or reputation to allow you to make money in the future. By any standards, it succeeded at two and three. An 89 in metacritic points to reputation success, and the fact that Torment is using it points to technical success. Also, unless Obsidian made incredibly bad business deals, it made more than enough to make another game. An individual's personal idea of success may vary, but I'd point out that chasing the highest profit possible is what killed this genre and led to ideologically barren AAA games in the first place.

Wasteland is also in Unity, but besides that, they're unrelated. Torment Tides of Numenera is the one that's using the PE engine.

I actually researched a climate map of mexico, because your post made me wonder if Mexico actually does have Savannas. The answer is that it has a ton of dry grassy areas with a serious risk of fire, but it seems like few of them are flat. ftp://ftp.epa.gov/wed/ecoregions/cec_na/NA_LEVEL_I.pdf

I ignored everything after 3 I ignored this post.

I like the weapons group model. Why not just add individual proficiencies on top of it to further specialize a character? That fits with the increased level range (that we're presuming will happen). My suggestions (wow that ended up being a lot): 1. More trap spells, especially spells that affect movement. PE's strength is positioning, so let characters position. 2. Grimoire switching should be made more useful so it's a real choice. 3. Allow rangers to stow their pets for a permanent accuracy boost. 4. Ditch one of the armor types at the upper end, like Brigandine. 5. Engagement that varies with the range of the weapons. Suddenly three fighters wielding halberds could become a murderwall. 6. Xaurip as a player race, because obviously. 7. Let druids shapeshift into animals at upper levels. 8. Blood druids like the ones we saw in Twin Elms. 9. Regeneration for barbarians at higher levels. 10. The ability to lower the speed of a chant in exchange for a lowered effect. Essentially, fast chanters become more focused on building up summons at the expense of their buffs. 11. Additional active chanter abilities in general (if chosen). The class is kinda boring, but that may be what they were designed for (six people with active abilities is a lot. 12. More barks and city noises. 13. More dialogue all around. The city needed more NPCs and sub-areas. 14. More levels that transform like the Wailing Banshee. That was really neat to see. 15. Rarer enchanting formulas. If the supplies are easy to find and the formulas are hard to get to, it makes enchanting valuable loot (which it should be). 16. Druid, Mage, and Priest spells that you can only discover in the world. 17. Great focus on one theme. PE had too many great themes, and as a consequence spent too little on each one. 18. An npc that used to be a Wicht. 19. Mage spells that slow time in an area. 20. I've always wanted to see the equivalent of a blue mage / beast master from Final Fantasy in a western game. The idea of eating enemies to gain their form is pretty cool (probably impossible to approach a semblance of balance.) 21. More ending slides and interaction with sentient monsters, I wish I knew what happened to the Vithrack. 22. Occasional fights with a horde of low level enemies just to show your party as murder machines. 23. A way to run away from combat. 24. An underwater area where you fight bell jar to bell jar. 25. Addictions. 26. DAO style injuries. That was one mechanic that doesn't get the praise it deserves.

Again, I beat the dragon (hard or normal, don't remember which), without using scrolls or paralyze. It's a tough fight, but I gave everyone beast-slaying weapons, had a max party, consistently tanked it so that my party was attacking the side, saved Pallegina's rez spell for Durance alone, dominated the adds so the dragon killed them first, ate a lot of food, and used a lot of healing potions. I can't say anything about potd, but besides the opening breath salvo (watching your party wipe sucks), he can just be straightup ground to death in a slugfest. I didn't even get scalebreaker (because I wasn't using metaknowledge). Yeah, sure. You can kite the hell out of him but it seems like such a massive chore. Most players will just go for the scrolls. It's not kiting, it's literally moving the fighter up first and so that he turns 90 degrees. Then you just watch your fighters health, drink your potions, buff accuracy and grind away.

Rendering sex is a waste of resources. There are plenty of waifu games without Obsidian making one.

Risen 2 was just plain fun. It was gleefully designed for all kinds of mischief that I enjoyed. It was janky as heck and the geography of in-game terrain has suffered ever since they stopped making clay models. But all in all it was quite diverting.

Again, I beat the dragon (hard or normal, don't remember which), without using scrolls or paralyze. It's a tough fight, but I gave everyone beast-slaying weapons, had a max party, consistently tanked it so that my party was attacking the side, saved Pallegina's rez spell for Durance alone, dominated the adds so the dragon killed them first, ate a lot of food, and used a lot of healing potions. I can't say anything about potd, but besides the opening breath salvo (watching your party wipe sucks), he can just be straightup ground to death in a slugfest. I didn't even get scalebreaker (because I wasn't using metaknowledge).