kangaxxter

Sorry for the lack of context. The Race/Culture of the sailors to be hired at the King's Coffin don't seen to match the names or portraits. Or, that might actually be the ugliest human I've ever seen...

lol no. The last time a developer switched from 2D Isometric to 3D graphics, we got Neverwinter Nights. NWN was a good game, but it had none of the charm of Baldur's Gate, and I backed Project Eternity for that Baldur's Gate charm.

I thought that magical healing did exist in the game, but it's mostly heal-over-time, applying poultices and chewing on bark stuff that isn't really practical to use in combat?

I hate the bugs. There were giant bugs in the beta that are still in the game. I can't believe that Obsidian would totally ignore them for so long, but I guess those guys just really like Stone Beetles.

Could anyone explain on how does this working exactly? Thanks in advance. Where is the text in your quote from?

thanks for the responses.

I want to just start with a bunch of Adventurer's Hall Characters, but I don't know how to remove the default party members. Is there a way to do that?

It's been a staple of cRPGs since time immemorial and while the initial implementation was flawed, the way it's been done in the more recent BB version (I'm talking about the debuff if your pet goes down version, not the you die if your pet dies mechanic) is about as good as it's going to get. Even in the old IE games, Rangers were worse at all forms of combat than Fighters were, and in IWD2 when they actually had a clear advantage in dual-wielding, that perk diminished quickly overtime. Rangers are a class that has been traditionally hard to implement and balance, and in most IE games they got the short end. If they're weaker than other classes in most areas but have a few unique perks in Pillars, then I would be completely fine with that, because that's par for the course. lol But, on a serious note, the class concept for the Ranger is simply a warrior specialized at ranged fighting, which uses a pet to run distractions, which is a fun and interesting playstyle. Either way, the game is not worse for having more classes, even if some classes are esoteric.

The best Bard was the AD&D bard: the original prestige class.

Sure, why not?

I was playing v1.0 (i.e. unpatched) BG2 until 2009. I'm going to play PoE on release day bugs and all.

What did her belt even do in the second game?

I think there's a slider in the Video Options menu, but I'm not sure. EDIT: No it's only for the font.

I don't think this is a bug so much as the bag is a placeholder icon

I recently replayed BGEE/BG2EE (not the entire thing unfortunately) to get a feel back for the RTw/P Isometric RPG style made famous by the IE games before today to compare Pillars with it's Spiritual Predecessor. I rolled a Elven Cipher that used a Pike because I wanted to get a feel for the new class, plus the more familiar classes were already filled (I usually play a fighter or another frontliner in BG, and will probably do so when Pillars is full released). Instead of doing a great big write up, Josh Sawyer has a nice framework for the kind of feedback the team is looking for, and goddamn it he is going to get it. After a little over two hours of playing I have this to say about the game: Wow. I was not prepared at all for the class changes in Pillars. It looks the same, but it feels very different. The fighter feels much, much more involved then IE games, but on the other hand, Wizards and Priests were a lot more hands off. The Cipher, I feel like, worked best when I could get my Fighter by himself being supported at range by the Priest, and having the cipher get some distance from the fighter and target various AoE spells on the Fighter (Like the lvl 3 pushback spell and the electricity burst spell that doesn't do damage to the target). For the most part it seemed like this strategy worked, but I didn't manage to find any hard bosses (at least I don't think I did) in my current playtime. In both characters that I made (a fighter where the game CTD'd before I managed to save and my Cipher), I felt like I stacked might a lot. Knowing very little about the actual game mechanics besides what the tooltip says, I feel like Might is a very powerful stat. Perception on the other hand, seems very weak. I'm not sure how I'd build a character with very high perception that'd be combat effective, but also, I haven't thought too hard about it, either. I realize that interrupting enemies is very important in Pillars, because it seems like everything uses abilities in someway, but some times it seems like it's almost a better option to hit them with another ability (read: knockdown) then to try and interrupt with the basic attack. I couldn't find the weapons that I wanted to use. That was frustrating, the only greatsword I could find for my fighter was magical and super expensive. But overall, the greater weapons and equipment variety I like a lot (Estoc is cool). The thing is that I haven't played long enough for this to be an issue. Tomorrow (and tonight) I'll have more time to really dig into the game. There's a major departure in Pillars from IE games; Conversations describe what's happening, they occur in the third person, instead of just the line of dialogue like a script. This is a good thing. It's more like story telling, and sets the scene better than in the IE games which I think fits a bit better with Pillars. I remember a number of run-on dialogues in BG and BG2 that were written like they were meant to be read, not like something people would actually say. Combat definitely seems more modern compared to IE games. I was reminded of Dragon Age: Origins a little bit, with the way I had to manage my party. One of the things that caught me was that enemies patrol the map, as opposed to the relatively static enemies of BG/IWD, this had the effect of enemies attacking in waves. I'd catch part of the patrol, and just as I was finishing them up the other half would jump down upon me. I wiped once because of this (and then I started scouting everything before engaging). There was someone who mentioned that combat wound up going too fast, especially without auto-pause, and they might be right about that, but that also might be because we're dropped into the middle of the game, essentially, and I remember that it was around levels 5 and 6 when combat in IWD and BG began to pickup in pace (because of Fireball and level 3 spells), so it might not be as much of an issue as it seems. One of the things that I immediately got was the Endurance/Health differential. The two health bars definitely worked the way it should (I remember when my Dwarf fell in battle vs. lions and rose with practically no health left, I knew then that it was time to rest). And I like not having to carry all of someone's equipment back and rezing them. It seemed strange in the Character Creator that you culture bonus was applied before picking you culture but besides that it flowed very nicely. In the main hud, one of the things that took me a bit was stealth/scouting. Is it full party all the time? If it is, I find that strange. If it isn't and I'm just using it wrong, well, maybe it's not clear either way. My final thing about Pillars UI, and this is a big one, and it might just be that I've gotten so used to playing IE games on PCs that would've been considered impossibly powerful when the games were made, but I feel like the UI lacks the snappy-ness of the IE UI. A better way to put it is that there's a loading delay to bring up different menu screens, like between when I hit the "I" key and when the inventory loads, that makes it feel like the hotkey isn't working. This is not unacceptable, don't get me wrong, I understand that Pillars is not going to run on a 1ghz Pentium 3 processor with 512mb of RAM and GeForce 2 MX 200 (recommended specs for BG1), it's obviously a game made for a more modern PC, but I feel like this could definitely be improved on. Anyways, to sum up my first impressions in three main points: I like the combat changes, no longer "attack things and wait until they're dead, heal as necessary." I like the conversation system, telling me what's happening not just what's being said. I think the UI needs some work with the load times/snappy-ness.

2pm PDT. Well, naptime then, if I'm going to stay up all night playing

Im pretty excited. Ready to kill (or be killed by) some beetles.

^ only if you can't withstand the beetle invasion.

I loved the Fellwood in IWD2. It actually felt like adventuring trying to navigate the forest. You could use a Character with Wilderness Lore to show you which way was the right way, so it was a puzzle that actually gave some nod to those out-of-combat skills besides diplomacy, persuade and bluff.

I think a large problem in IWD/BG was that a plurality, if not majority depending on the game, of your gold came from selling items. Significantly reducing the amount of gold from selling items means that you'd value the actual quest rewards over quest loot. It'd encourage holding on to unique or powerful items as opposed to vendor trashing most of what you find to afford more specialized gear. The only items that should sell for large sums are "treasure items" like gems and jewelry. A second-hand sword, even if it's magical, shouldn't be in that much of a demand for the trading post of a small mining village, unless there are lots of adventurers coming through looking to equip themselves, and that should reflect in what the merchant would offer you for it.

BG multiplayer was finicky and fickle at best, unplayable (literally, unloadable) at worse. It was a fun thing to try, but I guarantee that 99% of all Baldur's Gate and Baldur's Gate 2 playthroughs that managed to get past the first dungeon (or first challenging fight) were done with a single player. I'd be fine with them never implementing a Co-op mode at all, at least for this game. A Pillars of Eternity 2 maybe, but having them shoe-in a multiplayer component for a game that wasn't designed for it has proven terrible time and time again.

The original infinity engine games didn't do anything with seeding (as far as my experience goes), because they were based on the D&D system and all the math already existed for the tabletop game, so really the only behind the scenes mechanic that was needed was just a RNG that could be weighted for different dice rolls, and all the math for all the combat and skill interactions was just directly copied (for BG1 at least) from the 2nd Edition rulebook. If seeding is only really used to "fix" the lockpicking mechanic, it seems like a lot of effort to implement a feature that is fun-to-have feature as opposed to a need-to-have feature. Correct me if I'm wrong.