anameforobsidian

Have you ever tried the Avernum series? Certainly not AAA titles, but I find them good story based cRPGs. Avernum is an excellent game, really excited for the second remake. So far Geneforge has the more interesting conflict.

Does this game need horses? I say neigh.

There's room for both. Bethesda can make gradually technical improvements to their creaky engine, and in the next game Obsidian can carry the story forward in an interesting way. Honestly, the perpetual debate is probably good for the brand because it keeps it under discussion.

There actually is a version of ECL in the game. That's how they do the different difficulty levels.

That's actually a pretty common practice for demos. Why make a separate build and have separate bugs if you can avoid it? Jeff Vogel's demos can actually be activated to the full game if you decide to buy it.

What about the Devil of Carrock? Was that just a devs pc?

Slings are not the same thing as sling shots.

It's not official, but the scs Sarevok fight is clearly designed for kiting (lots of room, removed traps, invincible boss). It's also probably not incidental that most of the big setpiece bosses in BG II are in big circular rooms.

If the problem with the Linux build is resource loading, and the new version of Unity will fix that, that doesn't sound entirely trivial. But, I'm not a professional and they are.

Thank goodness! Please tell me they've had the good sense to bring back Cadegund! When did they get rid of Cadegund?

Underail keeps sounding better and better. Also, combat xp is unrealistic after a certain point. Do you really get better at wolf slaying when you go from 9999 wolves killed to 10000?

That strikes me as no different at all from the infinity engine games. Especially BG1. Throw down one web, let alone three, and you can seriously wreck some **** up. It was one of the few ways to beat the SCS bandit camps in combat at low levels, especially once every single bandit aggroed. Seriously, web was one of the most powerful spells in the game, eventually I stopped using it.

I wholeheartedly disagree. That assumes that every game made is the best it can be for everyone that plays it. Absolutely. It also assumes that developers have infinite time to perfect things the way they want it. Sometimes devs don't have the money to spend five days to make one sword texture. Sometimes the devs might really want to add certain features, and just not have the time. Some features are just really hard and take a ****load of work to put in. Sometimes difficulty is cut for popular appeal. Mods made by the devs themselves like JE Sawyers mod for FNV or Gaider's Ascension for BGII:ToB put the lie to that attitude.

If you want to build a ranger as an archer or medieval woodsman the pet is somewhat unrealistic. And if you want to make a purely ranged bowman, the shared health means that the pet can be a major liability by putting your health in melee range. Wish they would have tried something more unique than just a pet. Hopefully they do something else to make it more interesting. I do agree with the others who said it was disappointing that the ranger is pigeon holed as a class. As far as I remember they did try to not have pets but there was a cacophony of complaints from the forums.

I think the quality of the game depends on a lot of things. Lots of people are unhappy about the lack of combat xp, its been talked over and over and over. Obsidian settled on a bestiary system, where you learn about beasts as you fight them and get experience from that. The mercenaries are one of the relatively few changes that have been almost universally approved of. Sure you couldn't do it in Baldur's Gate, but you could do it in Icewind Dale. Many people even played BGII as a singleplayer in multiplayer mode so they could load their own characters for the party. Finally, if you don't like it, this is one of the relatively few changes that is easy to ignore. While you're having unpleasant revelations, you probably won't be happy to find out: mages can't do everything in PE, there's incredibly little buffing before fights, there's an engagement system (which means the enemy gets a free hit if you run away), there are grazes instead of misses, and more depending on your preferences.

Paladins, Rangers, Clerics, and Fighters were limited to level 8 and below in BG1, and that's with Tales of the Sword Coast. http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Experience_tables

I think its a bit much to add right now, but I think fighting stances as a major mechanic could be cool in an IE style game.

Well you are a silver supporter, you are not the one we are talking about. I would love to hear from more people that supported the game at lowest levels about their motivations for that amount. I had to sell blood plasma to afford the bronze level. Many people paid more money, but paid less dearly.

BG1 kites plenty. Try having a hasted character go crazy / lose morale. If they're strong enough, it takes forever to take em down with bows.

They should market it with bloodspray everywhere and Marilyn Manson.

"I have been meaning to do an official topic on it for some time" You're not a mod and you're not a dev (at least to my knowledge). There's nothing official about this, just self-aggrandizing. "This pledge, combined with the serious problems under the hood makes me really concerned about the amount development time and resources that will be spent on *trying* to fix a mechanic isn't a core mechanic of the game and isn't essential to invoking a modern Infinity Engine experience." Two things. One is that as an outsider you're in a precarious danger of presumption trying to define what the "core" mechanics of the game. The other is replacing it has a similar opportunity cost. It will take money and resources to change the game either way. Removing engagement would significantly alter the tactical utility of weapons with reach, and that entire system / art would have to be reexamined. "Obsidian has stated that they think the problem with Melee Engagement is visual feedback, well as these videos demonstrate, there are far more serious problems than that. Here are some of the components of either the Melee Engagement system or the game itself that make these abuses possible." The attack resolution system, disproportionate two-handed weapon damage, save-scumming, and pathfinding are not components of the engagement system at all, whatsoever. If these are problems then they need to be approached separately, and will likely have to be fixed regardless of any change to the engagement system. It's not constructive to lump every problem the game has on one system. Furthermore, if Obsidian was dedicated to making the truest recreation of the Infinity Engine, then they would need to put in save-scumming and exploitable AI, and pathfinding. Where would we be without the games that encouraged reloading on stat-rolls, had demon knights murdering hordes of rabbits, and introduced Drizzt Do'urden to his greatest enemy: a lake. Yes, that would make it less bad, but it would not fix the abuse. I would still be able to get an initial round of disengagement attacks off on groups of enemies and it would still be the absolute best tactic to use at the start of combat. It's a non-problem if the game encourages you to start combat by tricking the enemy into an ambush. That is in and of itself encouraging more tactical thinking than send the fighter in, have everyone hit him, and run away when he's low on health. "This is one of the problems with the Melee Engagement system – it promotes simple AI targeting because of the fact that the “first enemy engaged by” targeting clause that is part of the Melee Engagement system would override most ‘smart’ AI targeting clauses for melee units in the first place and melee enemies always re-evaluating for the closest enemy would open up kiting abuse and also disliked by many of the players." Making the optimal solution of a problem more difficult to achieve should if anything, encourage smarter AI targeting because it more readily exposes weaknesses. An engagement system forcs devs and users to consider the cost of movement and enemy positions, so theoretically the perfect solution found with an engagement system is better than one without it. "Another conclusion you might have come to is that enemies might need to be able to path around Engagement circles or be able to determine when to cross engagement circles of player units. This raises a bunch of concerns such as how that would interact in different environments such as open spaces, and corridors ? How would it interact with dynamic environments (such as the player moving a unit left and right over and over again) ? How would it interact with engagement circle overlapping ? How would it interact with general pathfinding with multiple units ? It seems like a solution that would need very thorough research that is best undertaken during pre-production and with three to four months left on the project, this is not a solution that is even remotely viable to look into." And here I completely disagree with you. You raise a potential powerful solution (one that was my immediate go to), and then discard it as impractical without giving it serious thought. Interacting in dynamic environments means that the game is more reactive to your tactics, and thus a better game. Engagement circles could be represented as a cost rather than impassibility, so circle overlapping would naturally encourage mobs to avoid ambushes, producing smarter behavior. And since each unit would be doing its own pathfinding, they should interact in an emergent fashion.

That's terrible logic. It supposes that completely removing what is obviously a core design mechanic has no opportunity cost of its own. You could turn it on its head and say, every second spent making a new rough mechanic to appease a verbose but limited set of backers could be better spent fine-tuning the existing one. And in reality, radical changes midway through a game development project almost never signal an uptick in quality. And I doubt the engagement mechanic is the single thing holding back the game like you imply. Christ, they just added limited VO that's been planned the entire time. The Linux build isn't even working at all yet.

At a basic level, if you don't like a development decision a game made, don't buy it. Piracy is a statement, it's a statement that you're too spineless to stick up for your beliefs if it means the slightest bit of self harm (or too poor to afford your consumption, which is something else entirely). ME3's Prothean day one DLC was one thing that I thought could potentially severely damage the quality of the game. So I didn't buy it. That said, I don't generally like exclusive content or DLC, and would be fine without kickstarter exclusive content. The thing is that Interplay/Bioware allowed those merchants and items to be modded in, so they ultimately were available to everyone. If Obsidian is willing to do that too, I'm more okay with it. Yeah, but I distinctly remember that they sent threatening emails to someone who posted the codes for them on gamefaqs, so that kind of modding is of grey legality even if the items are pure awesome.

Sleep, Ciphers have more of the charm powers, and he also just chose a really boring selection of spells. It would be just like if he inscribed armor, magic missile, and burning hands as a level one mage.

The wizard class isn't the only one with magic. Most of the other classes have magic.