Mangonel

No doubt because a horsemans horse is like a K9 officer's dog. Its a working pet. My point is you don't suddenly become crippled in grief in the middle of combat. Not frequently enough to warrant it being a class mechanic. I'm not saying it never happens (lots of weird **** and case studies happen over time) I'm saying its exceedingly rare because combat conditions don't lend themselves to immediately expressing grief. (unless you wanna get yourself and your allies killed). Officers don't typically cease all policework in the middle of it if their K9 is injured, soldiers don't immediately drop their weapons and start balling if their best buddy get his head blown off in front of them. They finish combat, then grieve, because thats what they're trained for. If you still wanna insist a soldier on horseback who gets dismounted due to spear through his horse's breast just curls up in a ball and waits to die instead of fighting then you're gonna have to start providing some sauce for me to go any further with you.

No doubt because a horsemans horse is like a K9 officer's dog. Its a working pet. My point is you don't suddenly become crippled in grief in the middle of combat.

I agree with Luckmann the 'gimmick' as it were needs to be reworked to be more core than just a fighter with a critter. Make the critter more durable and make it more rewarding to control it and have it and the ranger work in tandem than it currently is (stacking passive bonuses). You give up the good extra abilities of the other fighter classes for the pet and it just doesn't seem worth it to me atm. Also, as a pet owner, I find it odd that the ranger immediately starts grieving in combat if the pet dies. You'd think that would be an enraging event rather than having you start uncontrollably sobbing in the middle of combat.

I don't mind reading, but yea. Some of the text walls in this game are needlessly verbose.

I'm guessing that the devs wanted to ground he weaponry in our reality, and apparently axes like the one in your avatar were never a thing in combat. Double-bitted axe were either ceremonial (in Greece) or forestry tools. I think in real life the equivalent of the fantasy warhammer (the one with a huge head, one-handed or two-handed) was just a very big mace. Well there wasn't really an equivalent to the classic fantasy 2h mace. The irl counterpart would be a crows beak which is just a warhammer on a longer shaft. That said, I'm all for rule of cool overriding things. Gimme a massive flaming sledgehammer to whack people with.

I think we're good on number of classes. I would prefer more specialization. All classes have specific things unique to them, carnage/constant recovery/etc. it would be cool to have talents that modify these in interesting ways. Like constant recovery takes an hp/s hit to become a small aura or carnage only hits 1 additional target with accuracy/damage bonuses. Perhaps some unintuitive stuff like -1 spell uses for wizard in exchange for various bonuses.

Agree. Also don't understand Estocs and Pikes. Bye Phant Whats not to understand? It would be nice to have the classic 2h sledges and double-headed axes, just because. Outside of polearm variants though I dunno how practical either are/were irl which is probably why we have poleaxes instead. Maybe in the expansion?

Dunno, I can't see the option although I already have the expansion as an addon since kickstarter. Go to eternity.obsidian.net look at your name in the top right, manage pledges then the big green button 'buy addon's' and see if the option is there.

Given what this game is, having fast mode is a quality of life option because stealthing/scouting in IE games is tedious as hell. Personally, when I'm actually scouting a dungeon I don't use fast mode because my scout is still moving so fast they run into the traps they detect. I also send my scout out independent of the group since I don't want a custom formation with my scout in front. (otherwise my party lead does the good ol' disarm-trap-with-foot) That said, I do agree mechanics should be operating even when you're not in 'stealth' mode. Doesn't really make sense that you suddenly don't see things you normally would because you're not being sneaky. In lieu of scout mode being an on/off for mechanics I think making scout mode give mechanics a range bonus would be adequate. This would help with scouting as a party since if your mechanics guy is in the back he would still be able to detect the traps before the party leader runs over it.

Well, hard mode is for experienced people. I kind of assumed it was tuned with the idea that you'd use hired party members at least until you find companions to flesh out your party. One of the first things I did was to hire some party members. That said, I do find it kind of easy. I can win most fights with some basic prep (IE positioning and weapon selection) and I rarely find myself having to make use of the full breadth of aids the game has. Food/pots/scrolls/etc. Priests are so over the top with the buffs they provide I wonder if the consumables are more to cater for a priest-less party rather than for having with one.

I could imagine a professional archer having more than one bow type. After all professional soldiers typically bring more than just a long sword to a battlefield/fight. No doubt such mobile short range archery has its use in small skirmish combat. Although in any situation that would resemble planned warfare with lines I can't see this parkour-bow-fu being very useful as you either want mass target saturation or precision high poundage bows. (since in theory your lines would prevent your archers from needing to run away from charging opponents) I find it pretty amazing that he catches arrows and shoots down incoming arrows. It makes me wonder what poundage bows they were using and how many attempts were made. It seems that such a feat would rely on timing movements to the release of the arrow rather than visually tracking and catching the arrow itself.

Compared to the old system it certainly does have more depth. Back in Oblivion you could just raise all your skills to 100 and receive the full benefit of said skill. Now you actually have to decide how you spend your limited perks. With Skyrim two characters with the same level and the same skills raised could skill be radically different characters based on how perks were spent. With Oblivion's skill system everyone turns out the same (Skill wise). Not so with Skyrim. So yeah, the skill system is definitely more in-depth with Skyrim. If you completely ignore the major/minor skills and the soft cap on character levels major skills impose and the fact all combat skills have damage modifiers based on their respective governing attribute, sure. In Oblivion attributes are part and parcel with the skill system so you can't just ignore that and say Skyrim has more depth. Saying two different archetypal chars in Oblivion with 100 in a skill without considering attributes is like saying two different archetypal chars in Skyrim with 100 in a skill are the same without considering perk selection. Perk selection was added to try and fill the customization gap they made when they gutted the attribute system. Two characters of the same level with the same skills can be just as different, if not moreso, in Oblivion as they can be in Skyrim. Skyrim does to an extent let you make poor choices just as its predecessors, you can be a warrior who puts all his points in magicka and skills 2hers, just as you can decide to ignore you're +5's to strength and level up +1's to int/willpower/personality in Oblivion. If you only look at viable level up selections, which is what matters, Skyrim and Oblivion are similar. The major difference being that in Oblivion and Morrowind what you actually do on a level by level basis matters in how you level up your attributes whereas having been dumbed down to health/stamina/magicka in Skyrim they do not, its a choice of 10/10/10 no matter what you do. The level-by-level differences in Oblivion/Morrowind add both depth and flavor. What you do, and when you do it, in game has a direct impact on what your character eventually becomes. This also inherently increases the differences between two archetypal chars of the same char and skill lvl as neither two would have done the same things in the same order to reach the same outcome even when the end skill and character level totals are the same. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#Raising_Attributes Example 1 illustrates my point. What 3 attributes the player decides to pick make each character different on a level by level basis even if they're going for the same archetype. The differences between optimal and sub-optimal-but-viable skill ups and attribute selections make the effective difference between characters even more pronounced at higher levels. Even if you decide to lock attributes and health/stamina/magicka selections, such that both chars make the same selections in order to focus more on skill differences. Such as always pick Str/End/Spd and always level H/S/M at a 2/2/1 ratio, the fact that the order in which you gain your skill ups in Oblivion matters makes for greater differences in characters. So no, Skyrim does not have more depth in its skill system than Oblivion. My point is that things aren't dumbing down. You just insist they are without a basis. I get it; the attribute system was simplified. As you have already recognized Skyrim's skill system was enhanced to compensate for the simplified attribute system. So guess what? IT WASN'T DUMBED DOWN. It was a shift in focus. Depth was moved away from attributes and placed into skills. That's not dumbing down. I would readily admit that the attribute system in Oblivion has more depth than Skyrim; too bad you can't just admit that the skill system in Skyrim has more depth than Oblivion. Yes, I'm aware that skills in Oblivion affect your level ups. Once again though; this has been compensated for by the perk system. I should also note that perks can make your character more different than the attribute system does. In fact the only attribute choice that even really matters is whether or not you choose to raise Endurance early on. In Morrowind it had barely any depth. You almost have to try to not be level 300-something with 100 in all attributes within ten hours of playing the game since the game offers master trainers for every skill which are easy to find since there is one for every skill. That is; unless you are willing to exploit the game and use good ol' drain skill if you are too lazy for finding and paying the master trainers. As for flavor; I guess that's subjective, but I'd venture to say that Skyrims offer of knocking people down with my shield and slowing down time for enemy's power attacks is a bit more flavorful than a minor attribute modifier for an attribute that will be 100 soon anyways. Is there a way to respond to someone so they'll get a notification I replied without quoting them? I insist things are becoming dumbed down because they are. You say I have no basis, yet while I'm providing examples to illustrate my point, you just keep repeating "Skyrim has more depth". Unfortunately that doesn't make it true. I kept my point narrow since you were trying to make a point about skills from Oblivion to Skyrim specifically. If we broaden the topic to character advancement systems as a whole the Skyrim enchanting system immediately comes to mind. If you look at Morrowind's enchanting, Skyrim's is a joke. You go from actual spell creation to an easter egg hunt where all you do is scale the relative power of the effect. The system would be right at home in WoW. My problem with 'admitting' skills have more depth in Skyrim is that in Oblivion they're part and parcel with the attribute system. The skills in Skyrim just took the perks you'd get from leveling said skill and abstracted them into a tree you put points into. I don't see how putting a coat of paint on an existing system adds depth. It may add a more meaningful sense of achievement to some, being able to slot that skill-lvl-75 perk rather than getting it passively. The vast majority of the nodes in Skyrim's perk tree provide no meaningful impact on how you play, they're mostly damage modifiers. But boy-o-boy you get you put a point into something so that must be depth right? What are you talking about level 300-something in Morrowind? The soft cap for character level is 78. Did you even play the game? Yes, Skyrim had combat advancements. Oblivion also introduced RadiantAI which was great. Neither of which where based on having character advancement as a whole being dumbed down and were likely features designed to be added independently of what attribute/skill system was decided on. And for Stun my definition of depth is the amount of meaningful choices a game provides. Specifically in regards to character advancement for this discussion. We selected our major/minor skills, whose progress was dependent on what we did in the world. The order and degree of progress determined attribute progression which in turn governed the effectiveness of skills. We now have Skills and base-stats where the progress of the base stats are completely independent of skill progression and have no effect on skills whatsoever. Regardless of what Namutree thinks, two characters of the same char and skill level in Skyrim will not be radically different unless you're intentionally making contradictory choices at level up. IE two warrior archetypes but one allocates everything into magicka, just because they can. Mind you, Morrowind and Skyrim both let you be that kind of next-level-bad if you really wanted to as well.

Compared to the old system it certainly does have more depth. Back in Oblivion you could just raise all your skills to 100 and receive the full benefit of said skill. Now you actually have to decide how you spend your limited perks. With Skyrim two characters with the same level and the same skills raised could skill be radically different characters based on how perks were spent. With Oblivion's skill system everyone turns out the same (Skill wise). Not so with Skyrim. So yeah, the skill system is definitely more in-depth with Skyrim. If you completely ignore the major/minor skills and the soft cap on character levels major skills impose and the fact all combat skills have damage modifiers based on their respective governing attribute, sure. In Oblivion attributes are part and parcel with the skill system so you can't just ignore that and say Skyrim has more depth. Saying two different archetypal chars in Oblivion with 100 in a skill without considering attributes is like saying two different archetypal chars in Skyrim with 100 in a skill are the same without considering perk selection. Perk selection was added to try and fill the customization gap they made when they gutted the attribute system. Two characters of the same level with the same skills can be just as different, if not moreso, in Oblivion as they can be in Skyrim. Skyrim does to an extent let you make poor choices just as its predecessors, you can be a warrior who puts all his points in magicka and skills 2hers, just as you can decide to ignore you're +5's to strength and level up +1's to int/willpower/personality in Oblivion. If you only look at viable level up selections, which is what matters, Skyrim and Oblivion are similar. The major difference being that in Oblivion and Morrowind what you actually do on a level by level basis matters in how you level up your attributes whereas having been dumbed down to health/stamina/magicka in Skyrim they do not, its a choice of 10/10/10 no matter what you do. The level-by-level differences in Oblivion/Morrowind add both depth and flavor. What you do, and when you do it, in game has a direct impact on what your character eventually becomes. This also inherently increases the differences between two archetypal chars of the same char and skill lvl as neither two would have done the same things in the same order to reach the same outcome even when the end skill and character level totals are the same. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#Raising_Attributes Example 1 illustrates my point. What 3 attributes the player decides to pick make each character different on a level by level basis even if they're going for the same archetype. The differences between optimal and sub-optimal-but-viable skill ups and attribute selections make the effective difference between characters even more pronounced at higher levels. Even if you decide to lock attributes and health/stamina/magicka selections, such that both chars make the same selections in order to focus more on skill differences. Such as always pick Str/End/Spd and always level H/S/M at a 2/2/1 ratio, the fact that the order in which you gain your skill ups in Oblivion matters makes for greater differences in characters. So no, Skyrim does not have more depth in its skill system than Oblivion.

Or they could get rid of the perks and racial abilities. Really Skyrim's skill system has more depth than Oblivion's. If you consider making the skills a talent tree instead of a linear progression to 100 and consolidating them from 21 to 18 depth, sure. The skill perks are mostly the same as they had been with the exception of new ones to highlight Skyrim's new combat features. That said, I was mostly referring to the continued devolution of attributes and how precisely you can control your characters growth. In Morrowind you go from system with 8 primary attributes and 4 secondary attributes that receive bonuses dependent on what governed skills you increased that level to health-stamina-magicka in Skyrim. The skill system they just abstracted out into a talent tree because they had to replace the gutted attribute system with something. A flashy UI sequence and allocating a point to unlock a 'perk' you likely would have gotten from simply using the associated skill in a prior iteration of the game doesn't create depth. Remember, that in Morrowind you had Axe/Blunt/LongBlade/ShortBlade/Spear skills, in Oblivion you had Blade/Blunt and in Skyrim you have 1h/2h. This is without even talking about how enchanting is a joke in Skyrim. All it is is generic stat boosts now. Reminds me of enchanting in an MMO. Since I'm probably coming off jaded, I have all 3 titles and all of their content expansions (no horse armor) and probably 200hrs+ in each title. The direction they're going with the game bothers me because I care about the franchise. I don't want to be too much a downer, but... ...I don't believe for a second that Bethesda is going to go take TES back in the direction of Morrowind. In all likelihood, they will continue down the road of removing anything that looks like an RPG mechanic of favour of straight-up action gameplay. Like it or not, Skyrim was a hugely successful game and Bethesda doesn't really have any motivation to bring back the depth of complexity of earlier games. No doubt, which is why I said in my original post I'm not sure of what else they could mainstream out of the game. Enchanting is MMO lvl, if they take out skill perks the only customization left would be health-stamina-magicka. The core gameplay and attraction is the open world and relative freedom to do whatever in it. Radiant AI introduced in Oblivion was a great step forward as far as NPC tech goes. Its just sad with the mainstreaming of the underlying mechanics playing the game is more akin to being a tourist than being in the game.

Or they could get rid of the perks and racial abilities. Really Skyrim's skill system has more depth than Oblivion's. If you consider making the skills a talent tree instead of a linear progression to 100 and consolidating them from 21 to 18 depth, sure. The skill perks are mostly the same as they had been with the exception of new ones to highlight Skyrim's new combat features. That said, I was mostly referring to the continued devolution of attributes and how precisely you can control your characters growth. In Morrowind you go from system with 8 primary attributes and 4 secondary attributes that receive bonuses dependent on what governed skills you increased that level to health-stamina-magicka in Skyrim. The skill system they just abstracted out into a talent tree because they had to replace the gutted attribute system with something. A flashy UI sequence and allocating a point to unlock a 'perk' you likely would have gotten from simply using the associated skill in a prior iteration of the game doesn't create depth. Remember, that in Morrowind you had Axe/Blunt/LongBlade/ShortBlade/Spear skills, in Oblivion you had Blade/Blunt and in Skyrim you have 1h/2h. This is without even talking about how enchanting is a joke in Skyrim. All it is is generic stat boosts now. Reminds me of enchanting in an MMO. Since I'm probably coming off jaded, I have all 3 titles and all of their content expansions (no horse armor) and probably 200hrs+ in each title. The direction they're going with the game bothers me because I care about the franchise.

For those who came into TES at Oblivion the Oblivion -> Skyrim jump wasn't as big. But if you compare the mechanics and freedom you had in Morrowind to Skyrim it becomes pretty obvious they've been mainstreaming the franchise. I'm not really sure there is any depth left in Skyrim they could possibly remove for the next iteration. Unless they start trying to do things like combine stamina and magicka.

I agree with you TMZuk in that most good romances are written in as part of the story. The problem is with these types of games that are based around player choice its hard to do that. If the romance is integral you have to have completely different plot write ups for each possible romance. If you try to make the love interests interchangeable to the plot, you end up either watering down the plot so that they're not doing things contradictory to their character or you water down the LI making the romance plot completely forgettable. As for Morrigan she offers to perform the 'ritual' with you regardless of whether or not you're romancing her. Which goes back to what I was saying about watering down the plot. In that instance the choice that matters isn't whether or not you went after Morrigan as your LI but whether or not you want to survive using her ritual.

This. I get people think the character models look bad when zoomed into an inventory screen, but remember you'll be spending 90% of your time looking at them top-down when they're like ~1.5 inches tall. Beyond that the backgrounds look great with the animated effects on them. Overall, I feel Obsidian has done a very good job at maintaining the IE aesthetic while updating the look for todays higher resolution monitors. That said, I'm not sure what they could do besides upping the polys of the model to make the inventory screen close-ups look better. Admittedly they are the 'worst' looking aspect of the game so far. Also, why the pissing contest over which dev got more money?

Given the story-heavy nature of the game, I would say its going to be the first few hours? My assumption is on their end they'll be looking to have beta players flesh out bugs and maybe use some of the data they generate to do some mechanics/numbers tuning.

Hmmm, makes me think it would be interesting to have a romantic tragedy in a game. Not so much in a Shakespearean sense, but more in a ****-gets-real sense towards the climax. If done well, it would certainly provide player motivation to defeat the big bad, or as motivation into an expansion/sequel.

If we're going the tonlet route, we gotta have codpieces.

Pathfinding in games is an inherent requirement, its like the graphics engine. It can influence gameplay (typically only if its really bad) but its not strictly speaking a 'core' gameplay mechanic. IE you don't design your gameplay around your pathfinding implementation. 'Fixing' or redesigning their existing pathfinding will have no influence on core gameplay. That is the wounding/death mechanics, the types of abilities/items/weapons each class has access to, nor the effects of stats and stat modifiers on said abilities/items/weapons will be effected. No major changes to 'gameplay' does not mean no major changes to the games back-end.

Came for orcs and goblins, got dissertations on the history of racial stereotypes in literature. Vaguely on topic? Anyway, I'm not too troubled with PoE's lack of some fantasy staples. Its fine to use genre staples, but its equally good not to rely too heavily on them when world-building lest your work end up a generic fantasy rehash.

No you will not. That will only be beta and if you will base your final opinion on beta version you are a fool. You will know once full release is out. By the time a game gets to beta its core gameplay is pretty well locked in. Gameplay stays in flux during alpha and beta is for polish and number tuning. I've been through a lot of alpha/betas in my gaming career and its exceedingly rare for significant gameplay changes to occur at that stage.

I think the whole 'female' armor is a bit of a pointless topic. If we're being realistic most armor is unisex. Unless the woman is rockin' boobs as big as her head a sarashi or sports-bra equivalent would be about all thats needed to equip 'male' armor. For plate at least, as a male I can only cringe at how much more painful taking a blow to the chest in a chain mail hauberk would be for a women. That said, having boobs in no way diminishes the effectiveness of the armor at preventing lethal blows. Most armors, even mails are worn with enough padding that reasonably endowed women would be able to wear them without having to redesign the armor. For a game it really just comes down to how important is it for the player to be able to distinguish character sex? While less practical for actual combat, I've always been a fan of the formal dress-styled armors. Radiant Historia offers two great examples on a male and female.