archangel979

It's been a long time since I played BG, but that's my memory too. I liked PoE, and I'm looking forward to the 2nd half of the expansion as well as a sequel, but I'm not sure I'd compare PoE to either BG or BG2. But the real reason I responded is to call not just for Vancian magic, but for original AD&D MATERIAL COMPONENTS. I want to see wizards grinding up gems, burning hair and tracing arcane patterns with exotic materials on the ground. I want incense and candles and powdered motherf***ing NEWT. You kids have your "mana" and your "cool-downs." I will be here in the corner with an odd look in my eye, rolling a ball of bat guano and sulfur just before I make boom-fire. I remember thinking about this when I was originally playing IE games, but even then concluded most people would hate it And it is too complicated to implement only as an optional mechanic.

Impersonal is the word for the stronghold indeed. I agree with all of these in general, especially the last. It would be even better to tie the stronghold to the main story more like in NWN2. Considering this topic is about simple solutions to make the Stronghold better, trying it with main story is opposite of that. In ideal world/game, yea it should be.

And in 1998 it was cool. If you entered at night NPCs would sleep in beds and you could steal unnoticed. PoE does not even have that basic stuff.

Agreed, it doesn't have half a million copy pasted interiors with nothing in them. Defiance bay is way more interesting than Baldur's Gate. I have postponed my playtrough of BG because of reaching that damn city... Better that than only being able to enter 1/10 of shown houses. Also you lie, most of enterable houses in BG have something inside, only if little of it. Beregost is the one that has many empty houses.

Defiance Bay is not even Baldur's Gate.

I don't know if SCL reflects anything, since it was evidently a trashy B-grade game trying to cash in on other games. But in any case, cooldowns are probably the worst option out there: unlike per-rest/per-encs, cooldowns just encourage a mindless spammy 'tactic' where you just fire everything that is ready, and then you run around waiting for the cooldown on the next thing. If abilities tend to have short cooldown cycles you just play like a stimulus-response monkey, pressing the hotkeys when you see the cooldown timer fill; if abilities have longer (e.g. 180 seconds) cycles, they are basically per-encs anyway, with the added silliness of waiting around in-between fights for cooldown resets, using them basically as per-encs, etc. I think POE trying to combine per-enc and per-rest is nice, as it conserves some longer-term resource management aspect, but the balance between the various abilities needs a lot of tricky rethinking. I didn't say it was a good mechanic, I was joking about Wizards not liking their old magic system. Anyway, I personally think Pillars manages pretty well the limited spellcasting system, making spellcasters usefull all the time and tying it with the limited rest, thus making it more meaningful and immesrive. I used to hate resting in olader DnD games (although I loved the idea 'cause it was more adventury!) because it was mandatory to do after each combat if you wanted to use your spellcaster effectively in every combat situation, so I always prefered mana-based systems. Pillars did it well Older games never made resting too often have a penalty. NWN were especially bad at this. This is why I love how new Torment is going to be doing it. Time does not pass during the game (except in scripted events) but only once you go and rest (which you cannot do anywhere) and when time does pass things change, quests change, NPCs change and you get a different experience. It is not punishing or penalty (but it can be if after rest there are more enemies waiting for you in next battle), but gives you a different game experience in a logical way (things change with passage of time, who would guess that.. :D).

Google Civcraft, new RPG/RTS currently in Early Access. Or use this link: http://www.civcraftgame.com/

They already said for PoE 2 they plan to make it more like BG2.

This is not enough. The gameworld needs to react to you being a Lord of a Castle on a trade crossroad so close to Defiance Bay. They need to add some more words into different conversations with key individuals like Lady Webb and others that will recognize your position IF you are managing the Stronghold well. That means that if you talk to these NPCs when you have your Stronghold Trade value (or trade + security combined) above certain amount they will comment upon your position and if not they will not. No changes to story need to be done, no requirement to have Stronghold developed. Just add comments about it to every important player in Defiance Bay (3 factions, Valirians, Lord of the city, Lady Webb, leaders of Mob organizations). Even adding a title before your name when they talk to you would be better than nothing. Also if would be cool if some of the more military NPC could even comment if you are not managing it well - like when having your trade value above your security value - they could comment about hearing how it is vulnerable to attack. Also if your Stronghold is developed past certain point, Lord of Defiance Bay should send a permanent emissary there. And if your Stronghold is not part of Defiance Bay area, other powers should send their emissaries as well.

I leave you guys to have fun between yourselves as you seem to be. Just use protection, we don't want accidents.

Just because we're discussing art likes and dislikes doesn't mean people can't point out inconsistencies and inaccuracies in your argument and compare them to reality. I'm sorry, but if you don't want to read criticism of your opinions, you should not put them out there to be criticized. Edit: Or at least be careful about what you post - if you go on Pillars of Eternity subboards on Obsidian boards and start talking about how system conceived in Pillars by Obsidian is low-effort without having any actual data to back the statement up, what kind of reaction do you expect? But I did. I said it is low effort compared to IE games. I even gave spell examples and explained differences and why I think IE games did it better.

We don't, I'm neither trolling nor attacking your personality - you just can't get away with "It's just my opinion" on every turn, it's an argumentative fallacy. Kind of relevant (links to youtube) Actually you are trolling because we are discussing art and likes/dislikes here not scientific data and I think you know that but CHOOSE to ignore it to further the argument.

I do understand what he's referring to, but it's just not correct. In 3 years or so, Obsidian designed, built and balanced a brand new RPG system. While the system itself is heavily based on Dungeons and Dragons, it's not Dungeons and Dragons and draws inspiration from a lot of other sources as well and doing all of those things is actually a pretty huge deal of work. The system itself realistically only exists 3 years, and has been released to the 'wild' about a year ago. That's a lot less than 17 years. I'm not particularly happy about archangel979 downplaying Obsidian's work. You what precedes development? Thinking! That part that is in small supply in this topic. And they had 14 years for that. So if they could not use 14 years of collected thought and experience + 3 years of development to make at least as interesting system, that is not downplaying Obsidian work, that is stating facts. EDIT: OK, it is not a fact but I am more than allowed to state such an opinion.

It's not a binary choice. I'm willing to trade off a certain amount of elegance for a certain amount of interesting, and vice versa. I suspect you are too, although the specifics of our respective equations may vary. As it is, IMO Pillars is considerably more interesting than BG1, considerably less interesting than BG2, and more elegant than either of them. I much prefer Pillars base mechanics to AD&D base mechanics (which is something like saying I prefer a cheeseburger to being punched repeatedly in the face), and believe that Pillars has the potential to become very interesting indeed, given sufficient time and effort. They had 17 years to find a perfect formula, unlike you I am not very optimistic about it. BG1EE with SCS mod beats anything in PoE except some story parts. PoE does have some more mature quests and more C&C in quests. NPCs have more content but when most of them are so uninteresting I rather have Bg1 NPCs with funny shouts and no quests.

That argument has more merit. AD&D is unquestionably more interesting than PoE. How could it not be, it represents nearly 20 years of stuff piled on by a huge number of people? What I at least object to is the contention that design elegance and interestingness or richness are opposed goals. Things can be elegantly designed yet complex, expressive, and rich. Classical Arabic for example -- it has a beautifully simple and logical grammar and way of deriving meanings from roots, yet is as rich, expressive, and, yes, interesting as any language you might care to name. I agree that they can. But PoE is not such an example. Also I talked in absolutes in my posts as people before me also just mentioned one thing. I said that between interesting and elegant I would rather choose interesting.

I am only guilty for calling mods Nazi which was a extreme emotional reaction to unfair situation. Everything else is a construct of your brain.

I won't feed the troll anymore so I will just correct what you mistakenly or intentionally presented as false. 1. I didn't call this forum North Korea but the one that other poster mentioned where people are banned and topics closed for daring to say negative things about a game. My guess would be those are Bethesda or Bioware forums. 2. My post that was deleted was no more or less "terrible" than what you wrote and I answered. You didn't even see it so I go no clue why are you even commenting it. The reason I called mods nazi is exactly because that post was deleted while yours that was of similar quality was left standing. That says double standards on these forums. 3. You keep bringing personal insults into this which this last post of yours is full of. You keep derailing the topic from what we talked about before you appeared. That is why you are a troll that is for some reason left to do so without punishment. This is why I called you to Codex, there at least I can troll you back and you got no mod protection as mods don't interfere in such a way. EDIT: 4. As for my name, don't assume you know me. Or what I done in life. Or why I chose such a name.

Wash your mouth with soap....

That is not true. I did positive posts as well when the game deserved it. But most of the time I do analysis of the game systems as those interest me more than story. It is not my problem that people don't agree with me and see that only as negative. I am sure devs like to ready more detailed responses more than "I love the game." From what I remeber from the threads I participated, your posts are mostly about how the game sucks and how DnD and IE games are objectively superior and Pillars should better become one while talking angrily and many times offensively to people who disagree with you or Sensuki (like you're a knight sworn allegience to him). This is not contructive criticism, is childish hate-talk. Untill now, you should have accepted that Pillars is its own thing and will never be an IE exact copy that you desire. If you can't, it's your problem; this game is not for you, leave the forums to people who are interested in it and can make useful debates. If one doesen't like a game, they ignore it and play something they enjoy. You obviously don't like it - on the contrary, despise it. Just move on mate. After release I didn't do this. Personally I give the game 8.5 score, so it hardly sucks. I did criticise it a lot during beta but that was based on other people playing it. And that was all mostly theorycrafting. And I was more critical towards it than I was after release or now. What makes me mad is that after 17 years I still didn't get a worthy successor to BG games. I expected too much from PoE and that made me mad at the game. Objectively it is a good game and overall for me best Obsidian game so far (Kotor 2 had better NPCs, SoZ had better map exploration, MotB better story, NWN2 OC better stronghold but none of them as a whole package are better than PoE).

Well it is more or less using Vancian magic from D&D 5e That's not actually Vancian magic, though. It is close enough to feel pretty similar during the game.

That is not true. I did positive posts as well when the game deserved it. But most of the time I do analysis of the game systems as those interest me more than story. It is not my problem that people don't agree with me and see that only as negative. I am sure devs like to ready more detailed responses more than "I love the game."

Actually I argued that AD&D was interesting while PoE was elegant. I don't know where you read that AD&D was elegant. Think we are getting to caught up in word play that doesn't really mean anything. Right: plain English here I come. D&d was badly designed and a poor base to translate to video games. It was far from perfect and made little or no sense. There were a couple of power builds and most of everything else was sub par. Spellcasters were terrible for large chunks of the game, some for the whole game, while others became boring time stop, wail of the banshee spamming gods eventually. (Before you accuse me of hating d&d please read my previous post about it being a wonderful visionary system that was a product of its time.) While AD&D had its quirks and I prefer later incarnations of same system I still think it gave us a better basis for a cool cRPG than what PoE has. The abuse of spells is what made it fun and special. Personally I not married to the idea that spellcasters need to be better than fighters, if Obsidian wants to give fighters ultimate power equal to IE games mages let them, I just want that kind of fun game experience. In ToB you could make a sorcerer that would combine Time Stop with Improved Alaricity, and then proceed to fire off 10 spells before Time Stop ended. And still ToB was fun and challenging. Fighters has 10 attacks per round that all did max damage and other classes could be kited in combination of best gear in the game due to Use magic Item epic ability. Now that I said the above, I still would prefer if Magic is the cause of those Epic abilities because it is called Magic and makes more sense that it allows that instead of some epic martial prowess. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a cool movie, but I don't want that in my western RPGs. I am happy Fighters are tough as possible and hit like a truck many times per round while Magic gets to do the extra stuff. PoE in its current state lacks cool spells from lvl 1 to whatever base game had (have not played expansions yet, waiting for both parts to be released).

And I hate even more people that try to push their moral authority on me and try to limit my freedom of expression. Especially around superfluous stuff like talking about games.

Is this a North Korean forum?

Actually I argued that AD&D was interesting while PoE was elegant. I don't know where you read that AD&D was elegant.