sibakruom

The developers have stated repeatedly that the game was combat focused. This is supposed to be more the "spirtiual successor" of the Baldur's Gate series than Planescape:Torment. I expect that most quests will be possible to solve with combat. And about the trial in NWN2, they also admitted that forcing the duel no matter the outcome was a mistake, so I'm not too worried they'll do the same again.

With the levels 61 to 80 only available after restarting the game on hard difficulty and levels 81 to 100 on very hard (but it will still take several playthroughs to reach). More seriously, a level progression like Path of Exile's skill tree could actually work in a BG style game. And as long as it is possible to reach the level cap in a single playthrough, I would like to see someone try it. The end of PoE isn't supposed to be the end of the character's journey. The relatively low level cap is done to leave some room for the expansion, and maybe even the sequel. And if I understood correctly, there won't be any "empty" levels, regardless of class, where the only progresses are HP and attack bonus. Each level will bring new abilities, so a level 12 will probably feel more powerful than it was in BG or NWN.

Finally found it. It wasn't an interview but Sawyer posting on Something Awful: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=403#post414859830 Sawyer: "There are only two games I've worked on in my career that did not have some sort of multiplayer planned: Fallout: New Vegas and Project Eternity. I am so, so glad to work on a single-player only game again. It immediately eliminates dozens, if not hundreds of problems in a game of this sort."

It may be the first thing people want to mod in, but it certainly won't be the first thing actually modded in. As far as my limited knowledge go, in the few cases where modders added multiplayer to a game that officially did not support it, it took months, if not years, to do it. Which is the reason I am glad Obsidian isn't doing it themselves. This is a significant drain on ressources that are better spent on other parts of the game. There was an interview with one of PoE developer (I don't find a link right now), where he stated that for each of the few single-player only games he worked on (including PoE), not having a multiplayer component to care about cut a lot of problems right of the bat.

Q1: To be honest, 6 seems already a bit high for a system that wants to avoid dump stats. The only thing I hope is that attributes don't feel just tacked on, and most aspects of gameplay could be handled by derived stats or skills. Q2: Having hard-to-hit tanks with poor accuracy does not seem very appealing to me. If anything, I prefer systems where accuracy is mostly irrelevant, and damage mitigation is done via damage absorption. I never liked the concept of damage avoidance tanks, even if it offers more build options. Q3: No idea. Q4: Attributes should give a reasonable bonus and that's it, like in D&D 3E. I don't like attributes being the major governing force behind any single value. Q5: Same answer to Q4. Q6: No idea. I must admit I am a baffled by this. Am I the only one remembering that DA:O had 6 stats? Sure, each class had a few dump stats (and sometimes, all except one depending on the build), but this is true for most systems.