kanisatha

I think the structure of the poll is somewhat unfair to both NwN2 and PoE because support for those games is getting split among their variants. I understand each is its own game, but still one-off games end up having an advantage in a poll like this. For me, for example, I actually like PoE1 and 2 roughly equally. PoE1 is better on story and characters. PoE2 is better on mechanics.

Indeed, and that's a big source of my unhappiness these days. Far too many games that claim to be RPGs are in reality tactical combat games with a bit of RPG mechanics thrown in.

I also agree the genre definitions have a lot of subjectivity to them. For me, cRPG means classic RPG rather than computer RPG, as in old-school RPG using iso perspective, story-centered, party-based, single-player focused. [Side note: Yes the "C" started out as meaning computer, but I don't see that relevance anymore.] The other side of the definition then being action RPG, aRPG. With respect to the DA games specifically, then, again for me, DA:O was on the border between cRPG and aRPG. The second and third games are solidly in the aRPG box.

From a profitability pov you have to factor in that Owlcat is operating in Russia and Obsidian in California.

Why would it be a cRPG? I only said party-based. The DA games are party-based and they are not cRPGs.

I'm sure it will be a Witcher game (just not TW4 clearly) as I expect they will now alternate their future releases between their two big franchises. I would love a party-based Witcher game.

Same. SInce I was living in a small Asian developing country, the only company that sold there was Matchbox, and I had almost all of their models. On the rare occasions when family members happened to travel to London, I got a few Airfix/Revell kits. But no paint. So when I came to the US for college, I bought all the main 4th gen jets in 1:48th scale and had them made up beautifully and fully painted such that they were the envy of everyone in my dorm (keeping in mind I was attending an aviation-specializing college as an aerospace engineering major).

Was this game good? I've read positive things, but would like to know what you all think.

One of their KS updates is about their new AI system for detecting and fixing bugs. Whether it works or not is a separate matter, but clearly they are very aware of the problem and dedicated to and invested in trying to address it.

Sadly the closest I've ever come to the old classic warbirds is through my big hobby as a kid making model airplanes. I've seen all US jets at pretty close quarters, including even the B-1 and the F-22. But not any of the props. Next time I'm in England visiting my brother I need to have him take me to one of the old airfields. I sooooo badly want to see a real spitfire up close, maybe even climb into the ****pit. I love the spitfire.

This is key, and the ultimate source of all my discontent. Everything in the game that I don't like ultimately seems to go back to MP. The game seems to me to be designed and built firstly for MP, where all major design decisions have been made with MP in mind first and foremost. Yes one can play the game SP, but MP is how one is *supposed* to play it. And that is a problem for me, maybe even a deal-breaker.

F-22 and Spitfire/F4U for air combat. A-10 and Mosquito for ground attack. Coolest is YF-12!!!

Maybe we should send him a "Hope you feel better soon" card.

Yeah, and there's plenty of other precedents for it. It's not something new in videogames. Strategy games (i.e Civilization and many wargames) that are TB typically operate exactly this way.

Yes exactly. And the main benefit is supposedly exactly for multiplayer. But for me as a strictly single player, it still works out so much better than traditional TB. As I've said in other contexts on various forums, this is exactly how my PnP group used to play D&D back in the day.

I also have been so looking forward to a new adventure in the Realms. But for me, what I've seen so far of BG3 is not good enough for me to give it a try. But I remain hopeful that as more information becomes available my impression will change enough for me to be willing to try it. However, there is one thing that I want to note about the TB combat system in BG3. It is not a traditional TB system, with individual initiative rolls and each character, party members and enemies alike, taking their turns in strict sequence. Rather, here it is party initiative, with just a single roll for the party and for the enemy side. Then, during the party's turn, the player can move and take actions for all their party members in any order they want including taking a partial action for one character, moving on to another character, then returning to complete the action for the previous character. So effectively it is simultaneous TB combat. In both the Larian and Beamdog forums (can't recall if I did it here), in response to questions about how a TB system might be changed to be more palatable to me, I offered exactly this idea as a way to make TB combat "better" for me. So I will say that this change is significant to me, and I hope Larian won't end up changing it back due to whining from TB/PnP D&D purists.

Criticized by whom? TB purists? It's entirely subjective. For me there are no games out there with a good TB combat system.

I'd be interested in your take. I always preferred RTwP but was not opposed to TB combat systems. And then I played D:OS1. The ONLY thing I got out of playing D:OS1 was an abiding hatred for TB combat. So it is precisely D:OS that killed TB combat for me.

Whereas I would MUCH rather have, and would happily play, a PoE game like Witcher 3 or even DA:I, while I would reject a PoE game that's anything like D:OS2.

This^. That encounter with the devourers was so mind-numbingly aggravating. TB fans keep saying in TB games you don't need the "filler" encounters. Well, I don't see any difference (proportionately speaking) in number of encounters between RTwP and TB games. At least if TB games did actually have fewer combat encounters that would be a plus, not because of fewer filler encounters but because it would represent less time spent on aggravating TB combat.

I also hope we get more single-player, party-based, Aora-based classic RPGs. For me, I would absolutely need it to be RTwP; otherwise I won't play it. I'm not wedded to the isometric perspective though, as long as it is not first-person. And I like the PoE mechanics and ruleset precisely because it is NOT D20/D&D mechanics. Thank God for people trying to create new mechanics and rulesets, especially specifically made for videogames rather than tabletop games.

I am looking forward to Dragon Age 4 but not BG3.

I was prepared to be disappointed with this game right from its first announcement, but this reveal really saddened me greatly that I will not get to play a game called BG3 even though that is something I've been hoping for for 20 years. I hate TB combat, but I was willing to give this game a chance if everything else about it was awesome and only the combat was something horrible. But what I see is a game that sucks across the board: cartoony horrible D:OS graphics, very limited character creation freedom, companions that are set and having very little that we can do to shape them, a dialog system that reads and sounds utterly ridiculous, party size reduced to 4 clearly to satisfy co-op play at the expense of single player, and overall a TT simulator experience rather than a videogame experience. Disappointing in every possible way. As a passionate fan of the original BG games and of the Forgotten Realms setting in which I desperately want to see more games, it crushes me that Larian has made a game here that effectively excludes me.

Haha. Yes I saw this (NATO and Article 5). My students and I discussed it in my International Security class this afternoon. And yes apparently a group of refugees stormed the Greek border.

This is so awesome! This is what I worked on in my NASA-funded master's thesis project way back in the early 90s: understanding how the transfer of liquid rocket fuel from one spacecraft to another would work.