Flayeriv

Though seriously, when the modding community picks up I cannot wait to see what expansions are made to the Stronghold.

I would like to see 'torture' affect your reputation. Either doing it making you seen as cruel and not doing it changing nothing, however not doing it repeatedly maybe giving you a boost to popularity.

For those of us not in the Beta, any chance for links so I can observe more on what you guys have discussed?

Oh wow. Oh wow I'm impressed.

It's actually available on the wiki. Check near the bottom. http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Character_creation

Clearly you never used to combine Magic Missile, Alacrity and Time Stop in BG2.

I didn't learn about this until after the backing was over, and when the next round of backing came I was overseas.

Wish one could still become a backer. Or otherwise enter the beta, but more importantly, backer.

Sidenote: Cheers for asking these questions, it's nice to see someone else asking them so I can read the results in one place.

Speaking as one of those newcomers: 1. We don't always know where to look. 2. Newcomers very often like to know the community first and seek interraction 3. Peer education is THE dominant form of education in the Western world at the moment, so asking people for answers and/or where to look for answers is the major way we have learned how to learn. 4. Some of us are daunted by so much jargon we need it explained to us. 5. Some of us have huge workloads and/or things we need to be doing. 6. Some of us are just generally nervous, particularly as we feel we don't have the knowledge to 'add' to the discussion, and putting out that initial post or question on whatever is on our mind at the moment is a way of gaining confidence to actually join the conversation. Combine any number of those together and you get a variety of reasons aside from 'can't be bothered' for why newcomers would rather post and ask a question rather than sit down and trawl through an endless slog of other posts for hours. In fact this is the precise reason why 'pinned' posts are so important to us.

Before this devolves/evolves into an entirely different argument. Dear Obsidian. Thank you for making this game, you guys are awesome. Sincerely, one of many happy gamers.

As a non-beta guy it will be interesting to see how magic gets balanced out against other aspects of combat, such as melee, ranged, how it tables against armour, etc. Is there any chance for a pseudo war-wizard though? One thing I greatly enjoy doing in games (even if it's sub-optimal) is casting buffs and things like 'tenser's transformation' on my wizard then send him wading into melee combat. Yeah, I could make a pure fighter, but a wizard who does this just feels more interesting.

Someone else mentioned it also but I'd say the thing about reputation is you don't actually have control over it. If you're a member of the clergy, and your background is that you were a little sadistic and performed multiple sins under the guise of being a clergyman, you'd still gain a +5 to reputation. Why? Because people trust the clergy in general and having made that generalisation they've failed to pick up on the specific cues that should make them think otherwise. Unironically, this is how a lot of con artists work. (Now excuse me while I integrate that into my future character design). My point exactly, except said considerably more entertainingly. It also, however, represents the huge risk they're taking with including backgrounds at all.

As far as I'm aware they ambient features are just ambient features. Things to increase the look and feel of the game but not necessarily plot relevant. With the possible exception of night time. I believe I saw something about how night time would actualy affect things mechanically but I'm not sure enough on the details.

I'm glad you asked the question about modding because I myself woul like to be involved in the modding process. In fact that brings me to the question about Modding Communities. Will Obsidian be offering any direct or indirect support for modding communities (forums, etc.)?

My main question comes in regards to maintenance. Once we biuld it are we going to have to regularly pay fees to keep it in repair? Or monitor staff? Or feed soldiers? If so, how much player input will be needed or is it more or less automatically deducted from player resources?

Someone should probably save this poll when it finishes to use as statistical information for future gamer surveys. Not even joking, this is probably quite valuable information.

Lephys: Did you play the special edition TIE Fighter at all? It had a plot and intrigue and everything.

Quantics: Awesome. Well at least that's one more thing I can enjoy in the years or replaying to come. Bryy: Ha ha. Thanks. It'll be here all week. Actually, a quick question for you all. If one wanted to get in on the inevitible future modding community, where would one recommend one go to start developing a skillset. Current experience in modding is limitted to messing around with Rome Total War and a bit of play on the NWN toolset.

So I was just wondering, is Pillars of Eternity going to be compatible with operating systems like Mac and Linux? Just wondering because sometimes when I get annoyed at Windows I shift over to Ubuntu and it'd be nice to still be able to play my favourite games without messing around with WINE.

While I see your point about windmills, smoke, etc., the difference is between a feeling of ambience and a feeling of physics. I'd prefer to get a hint of physics and some ambience to none at all, because ambience does a lot to set the mood (as per your example between peaceful and windy). That said, I'm the sort of person who is likely to play this game many times and if the 'ambience' bugs me it's going to keep bugging me and reduce my desire for repeated gameplay, so while I'd rather no ambient movement over bad ambient movement, decent ambient movement is good enough and smoke/windmills etc. are not necessary unless you intend to convey a fully working world independent to the story.

I just get concerned when I see graphics cards that are more powerful than my entire laptop. Which just goes to show how sh*t my laptop is.

26. Not that old. I'd probably say I really started being a gamer somewhere between Baldur's Gate and the original X-Wing flight simulator game. Man those games were fun.

Heh, makes three of us. I learned about this a while ago and was so disappointed I missed the kickstart.

In regards to the fighter/rogue debate. If the fighter picks up a crossbow, I'd like him to be the best at using it untrained. That is to say, if a mage or rogue with no skill in crossbow pick it up, I'd like the fighter to be better. Furthermore, if the fighter specializes I'd like him to be 'the best' at that particular weapon. Sure, he probably won't get nifty things like 'sneak attack' or the ability to 'self-buff', which may even make him subpar, but so long as he is 'the best' at both that untrained and that 'fully trained' level, I'm happy. It basically comes down to the fact that specialists should outdo the fighter, but non-specialists (or areas where the specialist is untrained) never should. And I'm going to throw in my support for there being more than 6 classes when you have 6 characters in play. Customization is one of the things that adds to replay time, especially if I decide I want to go crazy and do a party that is entirely wizards but each one specializing in something different so that each wizard has a clearly defined yet different role, or entirely fighters who scoff at rogues, each armed with different gear and who repeatedly die 9 times out of 10 from walking on traps because scoffing rogues is a bad plan.