MrBrown

Wasn't that one of the big complaints about D3? That, because re-speccing was so easy, your character didn't really feel yours.

I don't think most players care about it that much anymore, it seems to me that most people who are interested in stuff like Diablo play lots of online games anyway. I can relate to the old crowd here not liking it though.

One of the reasons D1/2 might have seemed darker etc is also just worse graphics. More details makes stuff less scary, but you can't really make an AAA game with bad graphics.

Reading that article and some others, it seems like that's exactly what they're doing.

While other publishers are busy building up their own services, the first one to get off Steam is apparently coming back... https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/29/20937055/ea-games-steam-access-subscription-service-pc-storefront-jedi-fallen-order-sales

Blizzard made a remake of SC1 and WC3, D2 is just a question of time. And, well, quality.

PDXcon going on, so lots of announcement for their games. See https://twitter.com/PdxInteractive, not gonna list everything. One morsel: Crusader Kings II is free-to-play from now on (base game, not DLCs), III coming out next year. EDIT: Actually, a summary here: https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/comments/dk0s4a/pdx_con_is_now_live_on_twitch/

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/blizzard/23185888/regarding-last-weekend-s-hearthstone-grandmasters-tournament

So now they're dropping the number from the official English title, and using a direct translation of the Japanese name of the series as a subtitle just for this game? This is never going to confuse anyone at all.

I only have the cat, but to use it, you have to equip it on your belt, and then activate it from your abilities.

I kinda agree with cokane, in the sense that I always build parties, not individual characters in these types of games, and tend to separate them to more passive auto-attack guys who do nothing else, and active ability-using characters who do that more than attacks. And I usually fill my parties with the passive types, with as little active types as possible. I don't see a problem with games like PoE2 though, since you can pretty much let the AI do most of the talent usage, or just pick mostly passive talents. So I think these games cater easily to this type of playing, provided you're willing to learn and configure the AI.

As long as you don't multiclass very stupidly, or distribute your ability scores badly for your class, yeah, I guess. And you can always lower the difficulty.

It's very unfinished and buggy.

I seem to have about 400 hours played, I'm sure about 200 of that is character creation.

There's a subquest with Tenebrous Depths about killing some boss monsters in there, and there's some writing on items you can find there. But that's all there is, AFAIK. This is from playing it during the main campaign, completed 2nd tier. It's different if you just play it rogue-like, but I haven't tried.

I think it's genuinely just bad. BTW, a word of warning, when you get to chapter 2, don't put mercs as advisors. This can lead to a common game-ending bug in the current version.

The word is that it's a bit annoying, because it doesn't tell you that you can still fail by waiting on the main quests too much. But it doesn't make your kingdom fail in other ways.

On my 2nd playthrough, hit a game ending bug, my last safe save is about 10 hours away. Very motivating.

Sure, but they will probably eventually start putting in code to prevent that, or sue them for something or other.

Somehow, I don't think the other companies will allow you to subvert their launchers so easily...

Partially. There's number of spells/day, which you can use on any you prepared. Classes differ on how they know and prepare their spells.

I kinda agree with leveling being too slow, or rather, that D&D has this sweet spot of about levels 3-8 where the game is at it's best, and earlier levels are just random. For itemization, I liked the amount of items BG1 one had, but I wish they'd more interesting rather than just +1 or +2.

5th ED is already less spell slotty than previous editions; all casters have a number of spells/day/spell level, and can use those to cast any of the spells they've prepared. The difference between caster types is in how they know their spells, and how many they can prepare. IIRC.

I started wondering how they'll do itemization. Past D&D games (and most CRPG) have been really heavy into lots of and lots of gear, but 5th ED uses a bit of a different rule. For any magic item that's even a bit powerful or complex, you have to "attune" to it, and any character can only attune to 3 items at a time. Works well in PnP, so you don't have to do math to figure out what stacks and what doesn't and all that stuff, but can be quite limiting for a CRPG.