sibakruom

Obsidian has stated that PoE would be combat-focused. As such, I expect most non-important combat to be impossible to avoid. So let's take the example we've been talking about: a few unavoidable trash mob encounters leading to a final confrontation that can be solved in many ways. - kill-XP + objective-XP: each trash mobs encounter give some XP, solving the final confrontation gives some XP (always the same amount, no matter how it's done). - objective-XP only: only solving the final confrontation gives XP (equivalent to the sum of kill-XP + objective-XP of the previous case). Would you really feel better about having to fight those forced trash mob encounters if they gave a bit of XP? Personally, no. Trash mob encounters will always be filler. And if an objective-XP system leads to the removal of most of those, that would be the biggest point in its favour.

It's been stated that we won't be able to do a non-combat walkthrough (or at least, the game won't be designed with it in mind). Combat is supposed to be an important part of PoE.

It's hard to find reliable figures, but what's floating on the net points toward: - BG and BG2 sold 2-3 million units each (may include some double counting when sold together). - DA:O sold 3.5-4 million units, but with Steam/Origin not accounted for (it was the most sold Bioware game, but maybe ME3 has overtook it, or even ME2 after the PS3 release). - DA2 sold < 2 million, but with Steam/Origin not accounted for once again. Of course, BGs were released at a time the video game market was smaller, but they had multiple re-releases along the years, while DAs (and MEs) are recent games released on three different platforms. Which means direct comparison numbers are pretty much meaningless. Unless Bioware overspent with DA:I and need 3 million sales to break even (like Kingdoms of Amalur), I'm not worried for them financially. But the 10 million sales Bioware game is not coming anytime soon.

Cooldowns, aggro mechanics, and locked-in tank/damager/support combat roles for classes, to name three things. Admittedly I'm assuming they're in and central to the gameplay only because they were in before. Maybe they've completely overhauled the combat and gotten rid of them. I never saw those as MMO mechanics since they've bled so much in other games, but thinking on it, they did become popular there. To be fair, the reason I don't see MMO influence in DA:I's combat is probably because I have no clue what MMO's combat is actually like.

Yeah, I edited my post. I meant MMOish. It's always hard to tell with trailers, but I don't really see it. What makes it more MMOish than, let's say, gameplay footage of NWN2? For that matter, how would a BG's combat trailer look like if it was in a full 3D engine with free-moving camera? Bioware did say some time ago they wanted to move back to something more tactical, closer to DA:O than DA2 (no surprise here, since it was the most successful of the two). But Bioware say many things...

It's my personal belief that's it's possible to make a good Role-Playing Game with almost any kind of gameplay, as long as it allows actual role-playing. Yes, that includes standard Call of Duty FPS combat. The genres aren't intrinsically incompatible, and I don't hold it against Bioware for trying something else (whether they've been successful or not is another matter). On the other hand, it's also my belief that while the market for more "classic" tactical combat - like party-based real time with pause - may be smaller than for others, it's big enough to sustain itself (unless it becomes saturated, but that would be a surprise). If a game is good and has adequate exposure, people will want to play it, even if it's not a genre they're usually interested in.

That's what I meant. Still, regarding the general design of this particular area: while multiple paths and solutions in a dungeon are always welcome, it felt a bit blunt in its execution. I'd like something more subtle than "if you want to fight, choose path A; if you want to sneak, choose path B; if you want to try something else, choose path C." Concerning the mega-dungeon, I think it's only partially optional. The critical path will require to visit some of it. That being said, Obsidian should really give incentives to clear one or two levels at a time, in-between doing something else. And it should be incentives in both directions: incentives to leave (maybe it's locked and you'll find a way to unlock it later in the storyline), and incentives to come back (maybe you've been given a new and important sidequest that requires going further in the dungeon).

To add insult to injury, you could also choose the combat path, talk your way out of actual combat (at least some of it), and be rewarded with less experience than if you chose to fight. Honestly, that particular area felt like a textbook example of what not to do. One problem, four different approaches: fight, diplomacy, sneaking, clever use of skills (which could be tackled in different ways as well). None of these solutions is presented as being better in-universe than the others. Yet the rewards are heavily stacked in favor of one particular solution, which happened to be killing people.

Bioware was releasing close to one game every 6 months between DA:O and ME3. The cost difference between good and bad writing may be a drop compared to the rest of their game's budgets, but good writing - and good anything, in fact - takes time. Those games were pretty much doomed to failure. If there's one reason to be (cautiously) optimistic about DA:I, it's that Bioware is actually taking the time they need to make this game. And inversely, if it turns out like the previous ones, there'd be no more excuses: it'd mean Bioware really can't do better anymore.

If I remember correctly, this is all explained in the books (and if Bioware are smart, there'll be a recap in DA:I). Basically, after the events of DA2 the Mages decided the situation was unacceptable and voted to secede from the Chantry. The Divine agreed with them (at least partially) and wanted to support them. However, the head of the Templars considered that a breach of the terms that linked the Templars and the Chantry. So he decided to secede from the Chantry as well in order to bring the Mages back under control. So it's a war between the Mages and the Templars gone rogue, with the Divine unoffically supporting the Mages.

This example is opposite of Obsidian's stated goal with objective-based XP: no method is more efficient than the others. This isn't about giving incentives for non-fighting methods, it's about not penalising them. However, as arlready pointed out, that still leaves the fact that fighting will have inherently better rewards with the loot drops of defeated enemies, and I'm not sure how Obsidian will get around that one. One solution would be to reward the player with the interesting loot regardless of how the objective is achieved, and what they'll miss will just be regular equipment, or consummables that they may have used during the fight. That being said, I'm not really clear on what defines an "objective." Will XP be granted for exploration? Or, as in your example, accessing a guarded chest (with no quest associated)? Personally, I think it would be a mistake to limit XP gain to explicit quests.

Not only stealth, but also other non-violent methods, like diplomacy, or finding a clever solution to a given problem. In my book, this is a question important enough to warrant an equally important change.

And that works in reverse as well, BG would be a better multiplayer game if it didn't have the focus on singleplayer. At the end of the day, singleplayer and multiplayer experiences have different requirements, and having both of them in the same game will hurt one or the other, depending on design choices. The Diablo series is a good illustration of this: Diablo 2's MP suffers for the sake of its SP (mainly enabling easy cheating), while Diablo 3's SP suffers for the sake of its MP (mainly the "always online" part). Or you can go Mass Effect 3's route and completely split SP and MP, at which point you effectively have two games released as one.

There's always been a significant market for CRPGs, and since there's barely any competition, any decent one is garanteed to make a profit. And if the game is actually good, it will inevitably attracts players that aren't necessarily fans of the genre but will still want to try it out. It's actually a bit surprising CRPGs simply stopped being made. The more CRPG-y games of the last 5-10 years were commercial successes (Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age). There hasn't been a huge profile game bombing miserably to point at and say "see, this genre is dead!" either. Why no other big studio ever tried to get in the market?

There was a Baldur's Gate 3 actually planned, called The Black Hound. It had nothing to do with the Bhaalspawn saga, and the hook of the storyline was reminiscent of what we've heard about PoE: main character is a random person who is at the wrong place at the wrong time, and witness to a supernatural event. If I remember correctly, it was as rjshae said: the only reason it was named "Baldur's Gate" was because they already had the rights to make games with this name. And according to its wikipedia article, there was some continuity planned with Icewind Dale 2, but not BG.

This does not change my point.

No. A good story is a story that knows when and how to end. It's like The Dark Knight quote, you either die a good story or you live long enough to see yourself become a bad one. Nothing good would come out of prolonging the Bhaalspawn saga. And if BG3 is completely unrelated, then it's just cashing on the name.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Legend of Grimrock use an engine developed in-house by Almost Human, so they are free to release whatever they want. PoE use the Unity engine, which does have a free version, but no open version, as far as I know. Obsidian can't simply release the tools that were provided to them by Unity when they purchased the pro license. And if I am not mistaken, they already said they plan to release their own file formats, or at least make them easy to edit with common tools. It's just that we won't get the tools they are using to create and edit those files.

Is this because of a need for the premium features? Unity itself is free to download. Technically it should be possible to open a game to users with either custom made tools by the developers or by allowing them to use Unity itself (always the better option, IMO) as long as they don't release Unity source code it shouldn't be a problem. But I think they may be using UnityPro which would require them to develop the tools since I doubt modders are going to pay for it. This is essentially what I've gathered as well. In order to mod Unity easily, either you own the same version of Unity that the one used to make the game, or the developer release modding tools they build themselves. Unity's ease of use may have played against Obsidian in this case. I suspect that most of the tools they used when interacting with Unity are directly provided by Unity, or are modified version of tools provided by Unity, meaning they can't release any of them. This also means that they would need to build from scratch a worse version of what they already have in order to provide modding tools. These tools wouldn't be close in design to those used to actually make the game, so you could expect all kinds of problem.

I don't know any specific details, but releasing or not modding tools may not have been Obsidian's decision to make. They are using Unity, an engine they don't own, and what they are allowed to release may depend on the license under which Unity is provided to them.

I remember that exact mention of "4 spells/level," but I can't remember exactly what it was referring to, and I cannot for the life of me find the quote anywhere. I think it may have been one from Josh, quoted on these forums from its original location at SomethingAwful. *shrug*. Because I can't find it in Josh's post-search. The only thing I can find on Something Awful is this: http://archives.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=487#post420249340 Sawyer: "Yes. Wizard grimoires are a sort of magical capacitor that are constructed and partitioned in *~ special ~* ways. A single grimoire can only hold four spells of any given level. For any given spell level, wizards have potential access to more spells than any other caster class, but their access at any particular moment is always limited by their current grimoire. You can switch grimoires, but if you do it in combat, you will lose access to all of your spells for a small* amount of time. * Long enough to make it risky, short enough to be a viable tactic in certain circumstances." This can be read either as exactly four spells per level, or as up to four spells per level. Also, it dates back to October of last year, so things might have changed since then.

I'm not sure that's how spells work. Putting spells in your grimoire only tells you which spells you can cast, not how many times you can cast them. Let's take an example: imagine your mage can cast level 3 spells 4 times per rest, and has a grimoire that contains 2 slots for level 3. If you put two different spells in the grimoire, let's say Fireball and Haste, the mage will be able to cast 4 level 3 spells per rest, in any combination possible: 4 Fireball/0 Haste, 3 Fireball/1 Haste, 2 Fireball/2 Haste, etc. But if you put two Fireball in the grimoire, the mage will still be limited to 4 level 3 spells per rest, all Fireball this time. You won't get more Fireball casts per rest this way.

Class specific content (quests, routes, factions, etc.) always felt like multiple-choice situations where the game removed options depending on the class of my character. Sure, it's possible to justify in-universe (like BG2 did with the strongholds), but I prefer role-playing (and by extension, reputation) to tell me which branch of the storyline is open to me or which optional faction I can join. As for more options in interactions (conversations, puzzles, etc.), keep in mind that we are playing with a six-character party. If they can all participate in those interactions, there will be a lot of overlap between playthroughs, no matter the player character class. And making them unable to participate doesn't make much sense.

Could you elaborate a bit on what differences you're looking for outside combat? As you said previously, combat will be the main focus, which means non-combat gameplay will be limited. Either interactions with environment, where attributes and skills (mainly class independant) matter. Or interactions with NPCs, where the previous apply, but adds role-playing and reputation in the mix. Aside from adding class specific choices in those interactions, I am not sure what can be done to differentiate classes outside combat.

It is, but it's a bit of a waste when I could fight monsters and get XP for doing so. You'll never get XP for killing monsters, only for for completing objectives. Granted, more often than not I expect it will imply killing monsters on the way. But for the times where you will have a choice, resolving a quest with diplomacy will still be interesting.