nipsen

"Mass Duty Effect of Halo Knights Fall: Peter Dinklage Stars In It"?

..pretty sure you can still "buy" addons to your original pledge.

Arguably, each of the characters in Planescape: Torment are actually on their own personal journey through hell for the entirety of the game. Indeed, the game ends when the protagonist decides on his final punishment (or, if you're so inclined, redemption). Well, the thing is that your question really is founded on the presumption of the existence of an objective moral standard that applies to everyone. So the question is not whether or not hell exists. But in truth whether or not there is such a thing as a judging, all-knowing omnipresence. Or alternatively whether people actually only go to hell if they feel themselves that they deserve it. Putting aside the crisis of faith for a moment, though -- lawful evil characters that are not cartoon villains can certainly make sense even if they believe in a hell with eternal fire and damnation. In two ways, actually. Either the characters eventually realize themselves that their actions are deserving of retribution. In which case lawful evil makes complete sense. They now not only justify themselves in the afterlife but also in the life they have come to live. Because there is a logical consequence to their behaviour: When I do evil things, I will pay for this in the afterlife. And this justifies the deeds the character will do to, for example, survive or live well in this life. The other way is that the character justifies evil acts as part of the natural order of things, for example. They don't see the suffering of other people as something to avoid. They would perhaps live by the idea that the strong rule over the weak. And that there's no reason to complain if someone fights and kills you. That they then learn to revel in torturing others. Or destroying entire communities that might become a threat one day, or let some live to make sure that they will have a chance to take revenge and wage war on you in the future. Etc. That won't make the character committed to a neutral morality, but a very strict moral compass that ultimately justifies even the most heinous act. In either case, the character actually believes in evil in certain ways. They know what suffering and hate is. But they justify and commit to the existence of it anyway. Aside from that, all the D&D universes have various misguided sects and gods that lead on their followers to commit an array of acts, with a very thorough moral justification, that would mark them as dedicated and lawful evil. For all kinds of solid local justifications ranging from uncelestial godly rewards, to tortured guilt creating the framework for the servants unwillingly committing to evil as a concept, etc. That's the new testament. Which hardly works without a subjective interpretation of what evil is. Where very likely people would only go to hell if they themselves believe they are deserving of it. Obviously the form of punishment would be subjectively decided as well. Essentially, the concept of "lawful evil" has been very predictably interpreted into d&d to mean that the character acts with evil intent as a rule. That they seek to be traitorous, to stab people in the back at every possible opportunity, that they have no moral conscience, etc. But that's not the case. What happens is that all the gods in the fantasy universe might intervene while the characters are still alive, and the alignments actually reflect you as a person. A paladin can commit "objectively" atrocious acts, but believe it's done in the service of good. And as such be a lawfully good person who genuinely tries to commit to good as a concept. And so won't actually fall from grace until they believe themselves that they have irreversibly tainted their soul in their blind zeal. At which point the gods and powers that be actually will instantly answer to the fact that the paladin now believe themselves to be evil.

:D ..Blood Omen (and Blood Omen 2) does start with almost exactly that scene. But this is from Defiance. He's late every time. ..man, they really should get Simon Templeman and Michael Bell to voice-act for a spinoff animation series or something like that. Amy Hennig could do the screenplay and get the entire "game going to the silver screen" thing out of their system Sarafan snack nr. 3: "Surrender, Fiend! And we will promise you an easy death!" Kain: "..I could promise you the same, but it would be a lie".

It's period; and that's the current period. Mm. But some of the most enjoyable writing comes along when Christof tries to adapt to modern English. ..Where cans't our band procure weapons and armor in this village, good.. er.. sir. Basically, plus ca change..

^*ding* Winner! Also, lds-travel through the rings of Jupiter, before capsule-jumping to an unknown lagrange point via alien transponder beacon in Independence War. Had never felt like I was afraid of ever coming home to Earth before.

^Oh, look, it says "kamehaaaaa!!" on one of the upgrade slots. Don't ask, don't tell. "Kain was always too late to see the sunset".

1. Well.. say you're wearing a scale armor, and have minimal bonuses. You should be having a damage threshold at about 13, maybe. Cast the veil, and you suddenly can't be hit by anything other than a critical hit or a very strong/extremely high might build. Which is usually a build that can be interrupted or slowed, unless it completely breaks the point distribution. So if it comes to that, a basically free cast and a mirror image will make you a difficult target for 20 seconds at least. Normally giving you time to cast a few spells, or retreat. (Not against the beetles, though ) But the biggest advantage of playing any caster class in PoE is that you can "engage" and block incoming mobs with the fighters, or a strongly buffed druid or priest, and so on. The ai generally obliges too, that it wants to avoid taking extra damage in the short term to avoid a massive and targeted critical strike later. So as long as you have a fighter in the front with reasonably high perception, the AI normally won't disengage from that threat. So this actually does work. It's sketchy with some mobs and the "teleport" thing, though. But hopefully there's going to be something like a phase-shift or a blink spell.. perhaps short cast time. And a teleport spell for other people with a long cast time. And ai that uses this once in a while against you. 2. I think this is going to be more obvious when we really figure out the damage resistances, damage thresholds, and exactly how reflex and so on interferes with attacks of opportunity, dodge, and ability damage.. and when it's easier to read out the combat rolls. But adding a debuff to intelligence and perception, for example, will reduce the enemy's chance to interrupt you, and it makes critical hits and abilities less powerful. Just the knockdown can go from lasting 9 seconds to 5 seconds on something like 8 intelligence points. So just these "daze" instant abilities, or very low level wizard spells can actually be extremely powerful. And the status knockout effects have debuffs associated with them that are even worse. I'm hoping for something on top of this, though. Like "distracted" reducing dodge bonus and perception (so reducing critical range and lowering interrupt). And bloodrush reducing intelligence and dexterity but increasing might (reducing critical damage output, but increasing base damage). And things of that sort. But I suspect it's difficult to add these without suddenly making one particular spell a complete wipe. But it's an attempt at making a narrative consistency between the rules and the gameworld. Most game-designers probably wouldn't bother, settling for just giving you something plausible that looks ok at a glance. 3. I think indirect spells generally are part friendly. Forced soul power channeling to create objects isn't. I sort of got the impression as well that priest prayers were more of an improved "turn" ability as well. That they're actually affecting everyone, but only allies get positive effects (unless they're completely at odds with the priest's faith and morality, and the priest isn't skilled enough to lessen that effect). Practically none of the typical wizard spell are indirect, so they can target everyone. In the same way, the cipher and chanter seems to have multiple spells that only target enemies for channeling soul force projections. Effects drawn from their own soul are more discriminate. Not sure if this was the intention, though. 4. I'm pretty sure any action gains an extra standby/bar drain pause after an active ability. So any attack counts down, basically. And all actions, including the insta-casts, can be interrupted, so you could risk that your priest has the active ability canceled, and they go on to continue attacking with the normal attack. But since it's an active ability, it's not getting "lost". And it happens so fast it seems like nothing happened. Could also be this is bugged at the moment. That the action is interrupted if an attack triggers and it draws the priest into an action, or something like that. Perhaps against characters that have very fast attacks. But difficult to test this when you don't have debug, and so on. 5. Yes, was wondering about that as well. Anyone know? I could have sworn I actually used that auto-pause in that way before turning it off again. But when I went back to check, it didn't seem to work after all.

At least it's considerably better. You know that auto-pause function from CRPGs of yore - "Pause at end of turn"? It would get its comeback with everything in sync. If you would use a similar function as the system is now, you would get 6+pets and summons, spread out unevenly, plus enemies on different cycles too. Which is easiest on the player, do you think? Like I've been harping on... I don't know everyone else thinks. What I do know is that I pause the action less in PoE than I would in BG, NWN and IWD2. ..The weird thing is that I pause less than I did in Kotor and ME1 as well.. And I think it's because I only pause when I think I should counter something unexpected, or when I want to place things strategically. So I pause at the start of a battle, assign an action to each character. And then I only change or add extra actions if I think I need to. There's no "hmm, what should I do this turn". I just set up a formation, put the characters where I want them to be. Add some spells and change the lineup to counter something the enemy did, which monster charged what player. And that's that. So what happens in PoE is I see some action or other take place, and I respond to that. I'm frozen and webbed - so I need to up the defense, perhaps. Or choose to take the initiative. These guys are weak against fire, so fire it is. Ooh, here's an opportunity. Three pauses. Instead of constantly fighting to cram in another ability or action every turn. I don't know. To me, it seems that to people who have to constantly feed another action in at the instant the previous one times out -- you would have rounds in BG and IWD that would last yonks anyway. For even just a two-member party, it'd take forever at level 10. So I really don't understand the argument you're making. For example, on how a structured turn of 2-3 seconds could be easier to deal with. Since from my perspective, what you're proposing is another type of micromanagement - that punishes reactivity by setting you back 2-3 seconds, if you don't pre-empt the enemy every turn. I guess.. with overwhelming force and overkill spelldamage.

*sigh* ...so with an artificial turn of, say, 2s - instead of pausing only when you really need to, you would pause, at least, every 2s. Success?

"Inns are a design flaw". "Massacring the city is too difficult". ...what?

..honestly prefer that over the "our characters are over-sexualized or constantly upskirted for a really good plot-reason"- balderdash. Besides, I will simply have to argue that: breasts.

Mm, good point. Only problem I have with it as well - as if you're either running into an encounter with very weak mobs, or else it seems you're sort of meant to use the per-encounter abilities every time, in addition to a good portion of the other abilities, and barely escape alive, etc. But maybe things will end up being more chess-like once we figure out exactly how the damage types work. And when (all) the enemies have damage thresholds that are possible to beat.. (Outside of that.. I'm a bit fond of the idea that combat is something you try to avoid, unless you're well prepared, and are going to put some effort into it. That there's some risk involved, is what I mean. And that you can't just drink a potion and jump up to full strength again, no matter how much damage you've taken or how long you've been trekking. Or, that you have to turn back halfway through the trek because you need to rest - unless you really want to risk losing people. Never had to deal with that in BG. Or that you're forced to consider not fighting when the boss turns up, because you're low on health and abilities. But scraping through, barely hanging together. That makes winning an achievement instead of the end of a chore to me at least. And since there's no reason to push for clearing every room and killing every monster. You try to reach new areas every time instead - if you can manage to get by the next obstacle. I mean, normally, I'd never spend an hour getting from one end of a dungeon to the next in a game like this. It'd just be trying to skip it. But not in this game - at least while there was a plot-reason to continue exploring. I guess that puts some demand on the way quests are written, the way the mobs are tweaked, and how the dungeons are designed. But from what we've seen so far, Obsidian is doing well with most of that at least )

A duck! ..no, wait. A character with relatively high perception stats. Fighters and barbarians also have the "awesomedefence" thing, so they can engage more than the normal limit of enemies at the same time. But the beetles are really difficult to kill because of their damage resistance, sheer amount of damage on each hit, and insane speed..

I guess that's the nature of things with people who are a bit too dedicated fans of Obsidian games. We know there's something that works, somewhere, down there. And we're not going to be distracted by mere.. broken UI, horrible presentation, graphical glitches, actual bugs, logical code problems, implementation laziness, hangs, etc., to get to it. But seriously, though. Yeah, obviously they should have a look at the way combat data is presented. I think there's two things happening here, though. We are going to be presented to each and every single detail, one at a time, in the campaign. We're going to have one character, or two characters at a time. There's not going to be many distractions, it's going to be tested and balanced initially in a way that you can spot weaknesses and things like that very quickly. Narratively, you're going to see how stamina reduction from injuries is going to make it likely your character will die, not just get knocked unconscious earlier, and so on. Weaknesses they get will be explained, or at least made obvious enough. So the initial barrier isn't going to be as high as it is in the backer beta. Second, it's a mess. It's a complete freaking horrifying mess. Like I said in the other thread, there are so many things that barely hang together, that it's hard to see how they're going to be able to improve it significantly without working a team to the bone for months. Just from a glance, that's the impression I'm left with. May not be the case, but that's my impression. But at the moment, it's difficult to read out what's actually going on if you don't know what to look for on beforehand. So what I'm wondering is that if the combat feedback was tweaked a little bit - red for incoming abilities starting and counting down, blue for outgoing trigger-effects, yellow for completed trigger and ability effects, white for combat rolls, things of that sort - if the game would suddenly be very easy to read? Even if the actual combat actions on the screen are out of sync? It would at least bring it to the level of your average nwn-round. So would that make it acceptable..? Past that, I really would have liked them to add more animation to distinguish preparation and movement more clearly. There are beginnings to this in the game already.. wizards have a three-stage cast, for example. And the last "hurl" can last really long depending on what sort of spell you're casting. Can these be made more obvious? Should they be? Will it make sense if you're eased into it with fewer characters in the part early on, etc..? *shrug*

Still.. what is actually difficult to see? Specifically. I absolutely agree that a million applied effects sprouting out of characters with critically borked normal mapping, slowing the game down, and killing the framerate, etc., is a mess. That the feedback scroll is generally a step ahead of the combat swings, while usually behind the trigger effects, is also a problem. But imagine something like this: 1. Wizzard prepares a fireball. You can now see the signs hovering over the grimoire, and there's an auto-pause option for it as well. 2. You pause, activate burst of speed, and charge the wizard with your barbarian. 3. You're not completely sure if he'll make it, so you add a quick first-level wizard spell against that wizard on the opposite side, who inexplicably wears no clothes for some curious non-game world related explanation. 4. Unpause. Your wizard goes first and slams the other wizard with a projectile, and the spell is interrupted. You can see this as you the spell hits in the log, and you pause. 5. The barbarian charges a second target. 6. Your priest puts the wizard to sleep with a word of command, because - again, for some inexplicable non-game world reason, the wizard has no willpower of any kind. Against this: 1. Enemy redies fireball. You only see this in the combat scroll window. You pause, direct several people to attack the wizard, including the archer, four priests, three skeletons, a wizard and their pets, and unpause. 2. The one single enemy you're fighting triggers an attack of opportunity against each of your moving characters up to 15 pop. 3. The fireball goes off, because you didn't do the first attack this round against the new target and had to wait for the next one. 4. Archer, priest, and fifteen pets fight over which one will be able to interrupt the wizard the next turn. It's dumb. It's broken. I hope it is never revived again.

There's a similar one for long spell-names (Chanter's songs, for example) in the character creation part. By the way -- the entire order of the savegames being messed up thing, and the "continue" and "load" buttons picking the wrong save, from other characters, various variants... known, or no longer existing problem?

You're welcome. For.. giving us crack. When we're asking for it no, yeah, I didn't see it in the showroom floor presentations.

Honestly, the "turn" concept in nwn and the IE games has always been a complete pain in the neck. Whether it was the way the online part never was designed well to fit with the turns, whether it was trying to make heartbeat scripts go off in modules, whether it was vainly trying to actually interrupt techniques, hopelessly using the spell "counter" mechanic (seriously.. million hours in nwn - never figured it out). Moving around during combat, forcing every fight and ability to be dependent on dps, fully and completely free of overall strategic input. If the entire "turn" thing can be done away with, the sooner the better. And from what I've seen in the PoE beta, just having a no-turn time-movement and cool-down on the abilities works perfectly. Priests actually can use "words" and "commands" semi-instantly before damage applies, etc., like they're supposed to. Wizards will be able to cast simple spells really fast, actually making difficult spells vs. lower level spells a tactical choice on a level other than "Will I cast a weak spell this turn, or a monster spell this turn? HMMMM!!!!". Furthermore, combat suddenly actually makes sense. A heavy fighter with massive swings will always be able to hit really hard - but he won't be able to pull off the heavy attacks without being interrupted. A massively armored fighter moves slower and has longer ability cooldowns, increased knockdown, etc. And now that it isn't dependent on a division of "turn" units, you can actually balance the damn thing to make sense. Truth is that it's dumb as **** to keep the pen and paper abstractions in the game when you have a computer that can do the calculations. You could argue that having the abstractions there gives you better strategic and tactical overview. But like explained, in NWN the abstractions were only kept for certain parts of the design, and never really worked in the game from a mechanical point of view. They really had a completely new and very complicated system underneath with new abstractions in order to keep the familiar high-level abstractions somewhat present. But if that's a goal in itself, then why use a computer? Or, why not have simpler abstractions with turn-based movement that obey the familiar rules more accurately (see Paper Sorcerer, for example). What you're really asking for here is a worse and really patchy design on top that has to be tied together on the mechanical level with string, tape and rubber-bands. Trust me, you don't want that, even if it would give you more familiar top-level abstractions. ..probably something to do with the defenses. Could be that you can whack someone and reduce their resistance against a specific damage type.

Haha. So they're supposed to get a bargeload of attacks of opportunity against them, never really picking soft or hard targets, possibly attacking friendlies. I think, like everything else in this game, that it's not a brilliant strategy all of the time. (Except for firewall. Firewall is always brilliant.)

Could be. Just that I got something no character was using, that I had pushed to the stash. Both with the mirror-image and the pile on the floor. But I know those mirror-weapons had been in the character's inventory first.

Mm. Maybe just selling it to a merchant is causing it. ..think it could be what happens if you add any number of objects to a character inventory above the ..8 slots? You'd fill the inventory, have some referenceless object switched out, add another object. And now the inventory tries to shuffle a none-existing object somewhere else? Which.. then causes wacky things on reload? :D lol Was a really strange thing. It is not something I can reproduce in just a few steps.

[Description of the issue] Deep wounds, hobble, etc., ended up being set permanently "active", like the modal abilities. Can't be activated or clicked inactive. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] Honestly, I've no idea. In the attached save, it happened to deep wounds in the Skaen follower's lair. Then some time later to the other abilities. I think maybe it happens after reload only. [Expected behaviour] [Other remarks / Comments] Best guess - order of modal/selected abilities change during load, before being sorted, and the ability is set from row-order? ...You guys really love scripts and direct references, don't you? [Files] http://www.upload.ee/files/4252130/b878ecebb2d046809435baad475dd3c5_LleaRhemen_7721194.zip.html [special]

[Description of the issue] Amassing arms and weapons, and dropping it to stash, selling it, etc., seems to be what's causing items to get stuck on the ground at some specific point at every level load. At some point after that started to happen, the characters are followed around by shield and weapon sprites that fit with what the character had equipped earlier, but dropped into stash. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] Not completely sure. But it seems to have happened in two separate games after emptying the inventory to stash, and after using stash as a target when looting corpses. Could be it only happens with resources that have placeholder miniature graphics. [Expected behaviour] [Other remarks / Comments] Best guess - running through items list based on text, missing strings are assumed skipped in script, actual resource is loaded? [Files] http://www.upload.ee/files/4252130/b878ecebb2d046809435baad475dd3c5_LleaRhemen_7721194.zip.html [special]

I have the same thing on 1920x1080 / 16:9.