kanisatha

Acceptable only if there's a third-person option.

Is this because you are unfamiliar with/new to D&D 3.5e?

I'll second what others have already said to this. Especially with the DLCs added in, the game is fantastic in most ways. Only the gameplay mechanics, especially wrt combat, can be confusing and opaque. For me, once I just accepted that I didn't really want to know how anything worked and would simply accept the results/outcomes at face value, i.e. when I stopped worrying about those pesky details, I had a blast playing it. Ditto for the second game, which has the added awesomeness of multi-classing.

This is what I'm saying. And I don't think this makes you a casual gamer at all. It is quite reasonable. And I say this as someone who loves that Sawyer did NOT just slap on the D20 system into PoE because I utterly dislike the D20 system. So kudos to Obsidian for creating a new, better system. But at the same time, it is very obtuse and difficult to figure out, confusing, and sometimes quite frustrating. So it can be a chore for many people, myself included. I think a lot of people bought and played PoE1 expecting a "D&D-like" game, a game that would at least have the D20 system. They found out this was not the case, and this frustrated them and turned them off to even trying the second game.

I also agree it cannot be the iso perspective or being party-based. Many other contemporary projects have shown the cRPG format still has plenty of draw. My personal theory on PoE2, which I have mentioned many times before and stand by, is that the very complex and opaque mechanics of PoE1&2 is what was a turn-off for many of today's gamers. For a cRPG to be popular today, its mechanics have to be either: (1) simple and easy to understand (i.e. the D:OS games), or (2) be based on the D20 system, because that's been around for 50 years and people are very familiar with it (i.e. the Pathfinder games).

Okay, very helpful feedback guys. Going further, I have accounts in both Steam and GOG, but all my games are in Steam and none in GOG. And I like having everything in one place. So, what are the odds of either of those games coming to Steam in the foreseable future? In fact, anyone know why they are not currently in Steam? It would be especially awesome if someone from Obsidian happens to see this and provides a response re. NwN2 and Steam.

Relatedly, NwN2 Complete and IwD2 are 50% off on GOG right now. For games that I own on CD and for which I already paid full price, I'm trying to decide whether 50% off is a reasonable price for buying them a second time, factoring in avoiding the hassle of trying to run these old games on modern machines. I would appreciate your thoughts, guys.

I needed a bit of time to reflect on what Sawyer says here before responding. Whatever way I try to slice it, I come away rather dispirited by what he says here about any possible future PoE game. Seems to me that he is pretty much closing the door to any new PoE game, at least in the foreseable future. Am I wrong? I certainly hope I am wrong, but that's what I get from his words here, even after re-reading them multiple times.

A new Arcanum game is also now possible.

Yes I saw that in the blurb about the episode when I was scrolling through the channels. But that info has been extensively (and better?) covered in multiple other UFO-related shows (including a very recent 8-episodes show on the Travel Network). Edit: I believe that show was titled UFO Witness.

Anything new?

Hey @Wormerine, you seem to be so radically opposed to romances in RPGs to where I have to ask: does that carry over into RL as well? 😀

I guess the many delays were justified if they helped bring about this result.

This is 100% the same with me. :)

This is a HUGE issue I have with BG3.

Interesting. It's entirely possible they used to pay attention to the forums right after release but perhaps not anymore now. People posting in the forum has now died down quite sharply, as is to be expected. But the main point I'm making is that Owlcat, way more so than any other game developer to my knowledge, has a record of being welcoming of and receptive to player feedback. They seem to take player feedback seriously, and give it sincere consideration even if not all feedback results in changes to the game. And in the case of WotR, just like with Km, I expect we will get a "Definitive Edition" release later this year that has meaningful changes and upgrades to the game. So player feedback continues to remain useful, imo.

Fair enough. I don't do Discord myself as a hearing impaired person. But I post somewhat frequently on their forum, and from what others there say about comments Owlcat devs have made in other settings such as social media, Discord, and Reddit, it would appear they have people assigned to reading and reporting on what's being discussed on the forum.

Huh. For some reason I thought there was such an option. It's been quite a while since I last played it. Sorry. May be a mod?

There's so much interesting discussion in this thread, not just about bugs and the like but about the game itself and its story and characters. I just wish you guys would consider posting this awesome feedback in the Owlcat forum or bringing it up on their Discord channel where the game devs will have some chance of being exposed to them and potentially reacting to them.

The stats affecting conditions is one thing that is best turned off in the difficulty settings. They're just an annoyance that has nothing to do with making things challenging.

Stealth-based designs don't allow for those graceful aeronautical shapes of the past. The F-15 is my all-time favorite fighter jet, but I have to admit that the original Su-27 in clean mode is the most beautiful fighter jet ever built.

I agree that the US has lost all credibility in the world these days. But I also 100% believe that the world will come to deeply regret this situation very soon. People often say "history repeats itself." I have always intellectually rejected this notion. But nowadays increasingly I find myself wondering if indeed there is something to the notion of history repeating itself. The world today feels very eerily similar to the early 1930s.

Sorry. I think they're trying to cover the range of different types of games here. The WotC guy even suggested they were open to strategy games based on D&D. And I think the classic iso RPG type is supposed to be covered by BG3. Personally, though I also prefer party-based isometric cRPGs, a game like what Hidden Path may be working on could be great if they're doing something similar to the Witcher games: third-person open world game where you're playing a specific character (like Geralt). I would LOVE to be able to play Elminster or Storm Silverhand or Erevis Cale, or my all-time favorite Forgotten Realms character: Khelben "The Blackstaff" Arunsen!!

My favorites were "Rivers of Babylon," "Brown Girl in the Ring," and "Malaikka" (sp?). Never did care for Rasputin myself. I just liked the songs that have a lot of Caribbean steel drums because I love that sound.

Well, my expectation is that war with China is inevitable one way or the other. The question is which country gains with the passage of time. Some analysts believe that China has peaked, and so the balance of power will become more favorable to us the longer we can delay that fight. I disagree, and believe we are better off fighting them sooner rather than later. There is also the issue of ever-increasing strategic coordination among China, Russia, and Iran these days. I think the Chinese would very much like to wait until the three revisionist allies can carry out a coordinated assault on the US international order: China invading Taiwan, Russia invading Ukraine, and Iran moving to take control of Iraq through its proxies. But Putin seems to be messing up China's plans by being overly aggressive and impatient right now vis-a-vis his plan to take Ukraine. I think Putin feels that at his age his time may be running out to go into Russia's history books as Vladimir the Great.