dorkboy

No, it's not about perception, KaineParker. It's about the willingness to believe an obvious lie.

Conclusion: docks look drab and forests look great (though for entirely different reasons).

Not a huge fan of the [excessive] coloured mood lighting (glowing purple and green crystals. Just because it's magical doesn't mean it has to be hot pink..). I wish they'd have scaled that back a bit. Purely a matter of taste, though.

They did? [citation needed] Only thing I remember reading was I think Adam saying that they either are planning on or are wanting to try to implement it in a patch or the expansion. Yep. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/70311-new-engine/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1566279

What about the inventory screen background image? How bad is it?

Would it be an idea to reduce the overall amount of grainy noise before the image is compressed? That jpeg compression is doing the mid-long distance foliage/grainy brick/roof tiles no favours.

It's not as if the IE games never had you going trading all over town. Some things you had to sell to the blacksmith, temple, tavern, etc. (Not too familiar with how it worked in BG 2, though.) But when there are only a few places to trade I think it makes more sense to give them infinite gold - unlike, say, the original Fallouts, where you could barter (shotgun shells and a gecko pelt for stimpacks and 15 gold) with pretty much everyone and their grandmother. Can't say I prefer one system over the other (I liked both) - but I definitely prefer either over TES Oblivion's half assed semi-limited-but-not-really vendor gold solution. In the end the result is, as far as I can see, invariably the same - sooner or later the PC ends up filthy rich without anything to spend it all on.

I guess that makes you kind of a "True Neutral" character, huh?

That's not a very falsifiable statement. Sounds to me like you're just making an excuse not to grapple with your own morality. And, hey, maybe RPG character creation isn't the place to be struggling with such concepts. --- Personally, I try to come up with some kind of quirky and unique character concepts regardless of sex. Typically anti-heroic and vaguely pathetic. Failing that I'll usually go with a generic tough chick character - if you're gonna be generic, then you might as well look good doing it...

Can I just say that I really liked the couple of pages in this thread where people were rationally discussing the issues rather than the personality of whoever they were disagreeing with? I can? Ok, consider it done, then. It's just so much easier to see what the actual problem is, as well as judging the merits of the arguments on both sides of the disagreement, when it doesn't get buried in a lot of "us vs them" mentality and petty insults. At least to me it is.

I too would like to apologize for IndiraLightfoot's behaviour. We all know it has at times been appalling, but he's promised to better himself - and that's really all that matters!

@Luckmann "I think a large amount of the problems stems from the fact that the developers aren't used to be personally questioned on their decisions, and being questioned without taking personal insult does take practice. It's not something people just suddenly do one day, most people aren't used to have to defend themselves, especially not professionally." I think you're wrong about that being one of the causes. --- Question about the stream video - do they play/discuss story and location details until the end of the video, or is there a point I can watch it from to avoid Spoilers of Eternity?

@Keyrock "As much as I enjoyed our little Bard's Tale comedy romp, Bard's Tale IV is a proper sequel of the trilogy." https://twitter.com/BrianFargo/status/559104052987179008

Are there [going to be] separate sliders for the music, ambient/environment, SFX and VO volume? Nice portraits. Please tell me that baby is a crafting component.

Ah, good to know. Thanks Leferd, Sheikh and Endrosz!

So the pentium 4 thingie is just a single core?

Hm, can someone tell me if a intel core 2 duo @2.4 ghz would be sufficient on the cpu side of things? Been trying to compare it to the stated pentium 4 @2.6 ghz requirement, without much gain in overall clarity on my end.

*Buys chocolate and roses. Lights living candles around elegantly prepared dinner. Compliments on appearance and gallantly pulls chair back.* "Oh, how realistic.."

Isn't it kind of a given that the more options that are added, the less balanced they are going to be? Saying more options should be added and that they should all be more relevant seems to me like a bit of a catch 22, or at least not particularily realistic.

No, not really. Stealth and archery gameplay was improved. The rest was largely dumbed down, streamlined out of the game, subject to broken character progression, turned into annoying minigames or lacking the same sense of exploration/freedom.

Awesome. Thanks, Sensuki!

Are there dumpstats? What are they, and how are they dumpstats? Are they just less important for some builds/underpowered, or does putting points into them actually amount to zero effect? Just curious, and haven't got BB access. Maybe there's a thread somewhere that already has answered this (in a way that makes sense for non-beta backers)?

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but: Don't hand out [potentially buggy] pre-release review versions to gaming sites.

@Zombra They could just call it a magical stash (aren't Bags of Holding supposed to be that?). Shouldn't be possible to store more than 1 ladder in there, though.. Can't really trump a human GM. On the other hand, just reducing the value of most items (except for a few precious pieces of treasure) to 0 would greatly reduce the incentive to hoard them, without necessarily sacrificing details/items that add to the setting/resource gameplay. I don't recall inventories full of Quarterstaffs, for instance.

@Zombra What, no love for backtracking? I've never really been bothered by that personally, though it certainly helps if the corpses are persistent. In a way it is like spells/resting - the further you press on the more "fatigued" your situation gets, forcing you to resort to more desperate/costly measures and progressively leaving behind more valuable loot. I guess I don't see the principal difference between constantly sorting and only sorting occasionally, though the sheer bulk of accumulated stuff is a good point.