Can I even handle a game like PE any longer? Well, I sure hope so!

[Metabot]

Well if there are going to be faction dynamics, every playthrough will not be the same hopefully.

[IndiraLightfoot]

In regards to my previous post I just wish to clarify that I would be totally against making every playthrough the same and ensuring that everybody recieves the same experience, that makes for dull consequenceless experiences in my opinion. Our actions, explorations and choices should have appropriate repercussions.

 

 

PE will be quite encounter heavy, as opposed T:TON, so if Obsidian play their cards right, they'll make those encounters varied and complex enough for each playthrough to be different on that account alone. Factions certainly help there. Then, it's story-heavy as well (Yum!), so they can make each playthrough become quite different. And add to that, those FF-book-like illustrations with texts, where the player gets to pick event-specific choices here and there, and we have a veritable feast of playthrough proliferation. T:TOn will have a harder time, I reckon.

[rjshae]

I think my expectation is that playing the game in Expert mode with a higher difficulty setting will take longer. Perhaps much longer. On the other hand, Casual mode should be easier to pick up and set down. But I really don't think the game should be streamlined too much to satisfy the time limitations of just a part of the market. For example, I can play the game when there are longer free intervals to focus on the action.

[Iucounu]

I like to think that most if not all situations people describe here as inherently tedious or frustrating are so because it wasn't made compelling enough for them. Of course if a game bores me to tears (like Dungeons Siege recently), my tolerance to backtrack for a questitem or sucking in combat is greatly reduced. However, you have to wonder why it is that I for example forgot a questitem? Maybe I was so bored of the whole quest that I simply wasn't paying enough attention from the start. And maybe I'm a poor sport then because the game generally doesn't offer interesting or funny consequences for my failings, if there are any consequences other than failing at the quest at all. 

[Yonjuro]

 

 

no pixel-hunting-heavy gameplay like the notorious mask fragment in Mask of the Betrayer (Some people needed to go back to the map when they missed the special quest item to get a satisfactory narrative end.  A similar thing happened to Bronze Sphere in PST).  Generally speaking, please don't let little mistakes haunt way-too-long in such long (narrative-focused) games, which would be similar to the reason why game-stopping bugs are hated in this genre (c.f. New Vegas on PS3).

 

 

As a huge fan of MotB, I think you have identified perhaps my biggest gripe with that NWN2 expansion right there (I actually thought the spirit meter was fitting somehow, but perhaps it was with you for too long). One of few new games that have really impressed me in the last year or two is Dishonored. My avatar certainly hints at me digging it.

 

However, Dishonored too had a similar annoyance, but this time it was what PrimeJunta called "lack of transparency". If you did a no-kills playthrough, you had no idea if you had haphazardly killed someone directly or indirectly. And some acts were like two hours of game play. It wasn't fun when you saw you had some inexplicable death on your consciousness at the end of it. I would so much appreciated if I at least could check if my hands are clean while playing the game. Things like this is so unnecessary and so easy to rectify. And it doesn't have to be in your face like in FNV, where if you somehow short circuit a quest by killing some NPC, you get a pop-up saying something like "quest failed" on the screen. It's well enough with some info screen that I can get to via some short key.

......

 

 

Great examples. The question is, when you make a mistake, when/how do you discover it and what are the costs to fix it? Two examples:

 

In PS:T, some minor quests can only be completed if your character has the right stats. Others can be solved by persistently revisiting and talking to the right NPC's. There isn't always a way to tell which is which. So, how do you know when you've made a mistake - err, you replay the whole game with different stats and get different results sometimes but not others??

 

So, when you know you've made a mistake (wait, wyverns are venomous??). What is the cost to fix it? (Welp, back to the Friendly Arm to resurrect one of my party members). Often the cost involves backtracking. If there's too much backtracking coupled with respawning enemies, it's easy to get into the situation I mentioned in my previous post where turning up the difficulty slider just makes the level seem tedious instead of more challenging. (A.k.a. the 'running a meat grinder down a hallway' situation.)

 

BTW, I enjoyed the Cloakwood maps in BG1 - I'm not using that as a bad example, but rather as something that easily could have gone bad.

 

 

TL;DR

-- It shouldn't be an undecidable (that is, RE-COMPLETE) problem to know if you can finish a quest at all. 

-- Mistakes need costs but mind numbing boredom for the player is not a good cost function. 

[Wombat]

On the subject of the Mask fragments and Bronze Sphere I certainly can see why people might be upset at missing out on this content, but I also recognise that this is a great example of choice, consequence and replayability. There are subtle and not so subtle clues lying around that these are both important relics, and their presence makes me search each area carefully, experiment and return to already played places. That said a simple way of making sure that such items are clearly flagged as important is to give them an open quest entry, that does not flag up a vulgar "THIS IS IMPORTANT!" sign, but makes the player aware that there is more to it.

 

I found a bronze sphere in the depths of the Weeping Stones catacombs, it repulses me and yet an old incarnation set Pharod's entire gang into searching for it, and I do feel that there is something...

 

In my tattered haunted dreams I see Akachi and he wears a strange mask, it seems important to him. Perhaps the church of Kelemvor or the spirits in Shadow Mulsantir know more?

There is a reason behind my using words such as pixel-hunting/back-tracking rather than exploring.  IIRC, I didn't use much of my brains to fetch Bronze Sphere and keep it in my inventory or find the mask fragment, which was not high-lighted even upon pushing alt key on the map, though.  Then again, these things can screw things up quite easily and, personally, I think it's not a good idea to punish the players too severely just overlooking a single object in a long game.

 

As for replayability, recent works by Obsidian tend to give the players tough choices which lead to mutually exclusive outcomes, accompanied by the disposition/reputation system.  Combined with the party composition and the PC-builds, I think there should be enough reasons to play the game more than once rather than making sure you picked up the same objects from the same places for each playthrough, IMO.

[Metabot]

I like that some things can only be completed with the right stats, but with a party it's more likely that one of your party members will have the right stats.

[Nonek]

 

On the subject of the Mask fragments and Bronze Sphere I certainly can see why people might be upset at missing out on this content, but I also recognise that this is a great example of choice, consequence and replayability. There are subtle and not so subtle clues lying around that these are both important relics, and their presence makes me search each area carefully, experiment and return to already played places. That said a simple way of making sure that such items are clearly flagged as important is to give them an open quest entry, that does not flag up a vulgar "THIS IS IMPORTANT!" sign, but makes the player aware that there is more to it.

 

I found a bronze sphere in the depths of the Weeping Stones catacombs, it repulses me and yet an old incarnation set Pharod's entire gang into searching for it, and I do feel that there is something...

 

In my tattered haunted dreams I see Akachi and he wears a strange mask, it seems important to him. Perhaps the church of Kelemvor or the spirits in Shadow Mulsantir know more?

There is a reason behind my using words such as pixel-hunting/back-tracking rather than exploring.  IIRC, I didn't use much of my brains to fetch Bronze Sphere and keep it in my inventory or find the mask fragment, which was not high-lighted even upon pushing alt key on the map, though.  Then again, these things can screw things up quite easily and, personally, I think it's not a good idea to punish the players too severely just overlooking a single object in a long game.

 

As for replayability, recent works by Obsidian tend to give the players tough choices which lead to mutually exclusive outcomes, accompanied by the disposition/reputation system.  Combined with the party composition and the PC-builds, I think there should be enough reasons to play the game more than once rather than making sure you picked up the same objects from the same places for each playthrough, IMO.

 

 

Yes I agree, and I enjoyed the branching narrative and different end world states of both New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3, they really affirmed our efforts and highlighted our failings. I agree that the mask was extremely well hidden and hard to find in Betrayer, though I think the Sphere was as you say obviously important and we are given ample warning to take what we need to the Fortress, and this sticks out as an unanswered question still seeking resolution. Though in truth I did also carry the pavement stone from the Signpost Zombie as well. If I had not taken the Sphere then personally I would have looked upon it as my own mistake for ignoring such an obvious clue, rather than making it worthless by there being a workaround, but these are the choices and consequences that I enjoy.

 

It sounds a little masochistic but i've always thought that the best games are not afraid to punish the player, rather than handwave away the story in an effort to make sure the player is not challenged in any manner, or his progression remains unchecked. For instance in Dragon Age I should have ideally been able to refuse the Grey Warden fellow and died in the Deep Roads or with that painfully emotional family. When I was slain by Azar Javed in the first Witcher game for instance, because i'd been lazy and rushed my investigations, I was extremely pleased as that was a consequence born of my choices.

 

I totally agree that a playthrough without the Mask and Sphere are still totally viable and pleasingly different however, and enjoy the different resolutions that this necessitates, and wouldn't want them to be plot central but simply pleasing additions.

[Yonjuro]

I like that some things can only be completed with the right stats, but with a party it's more likely that one of your party members will have the right stats.

 

 Sure, I'm fine w/that too.

 

 To clear up my earlier point, what I'm less fine with is not having any indication if you can complete a quest or not. PS:T had some examples where that was hard to tell. E.g., the 'puzzled skeleton' wasn't the only one who was puzzled during that encounter. Hmm, maybe if I talk to zombie 4173 I'll be able to solve this. Nope, how about zombie 4174? Nope ....

 

 BG2 had an encounter where if your WIS was high enough you could talk your way out of a fight (the beholder in the City of Caverns). Some of the high WIS NPCs will chime in during that encounter if your PC doesn't have a high enough WIS. During one (solo) play through, I had a low WIS character and found out that it doesn't always end that way.  

 

 But, it does always end - one way or the other.

[morrow1nd]

Please dont bash Gfted1, i like that guy's straightforwardness and honesty. I also believe he cares for this game so its natural for him to explain his thoughts so far.

 

Also i do like where the game mechanics going and these changes might be the thing which IE games needed most.

 

And i would like to apologize from Mr Josh for being hasty when i heard Cyphers are soulknifes since Mr Josh explained that they have designed Priests more like Sorcerers ( i admit i didnt expect this surprise. Tis gonna be great for both game-mechanic wise and role-play wise )

 

TL:DR  Keep up the good faith! These guys were the designers of epic stories and games so they deserve more trust. And dont be hasty like me ! 

Edited January 11, 2014 by morrow1nd

[TRoar]

 

Shockingly, you miss the point and create some silly example that cant possibly exist. If, somehow, only one party member takes damage during battles then yes, you can venture on. Meanwhile in reality, every party member is going to take damage every single battle and no, I don't think its a case of simply being "unlucky" that will quickly put the whole of your party in the above mentioned state. As always, a tl;dr response is appreciated.

 

I personally don't think this is much of an argument. In BG, BG2 and IWD2, having replayed all three recently, I can say that if I replay the same fight, the outcome for my party is VERY OFTEN different. Sometimes my party doesn't get a scratch (even in a hard fight), sometimes it gets slaughtered, and there's every possibility in between. There are some fights which aren't challenging, and there are, rightly so, epic struggles which are difficult every time. And that, IMO, is exactly how it should be.

 

Like many in this thread, I also don't have as much time for gaming as I once did, but I think the only sensible approach to creating PoE, as a spiritual successor, is to improve upon the games that it is succeeding. IMO, BG, BG2 and IWD2 were all unbalanced in some aspect of the game. Striking a finer balance between story/dialogue and combat (for me, a little more time spent on story and dialogue than engaged in combat...), and getting a nice spread of content density throughout the game world. I think it's all about how everything is delivered to the player. Variety in content delivered at varying paces I think would make the game better.

 

To neuter this game in any way will be to affect its ability to spread seeds of inspiration into the minds of a new generation of RPG fans. I say, onwards and upwards.

[Walsingham]

It's been touched on by some already, but I really think it comes down to your in-game quest macguffin. Your heroic personal assistant, telling you what you were supposed to be doing.

 

Because this is the main thing which my friends with family say: they got confused about where they were in the story, AND what their motivations were. The character campaign plan goes out the window, and with no coherent concept to motivate them, they had no rhyme or reason in forming a new one.

 

Like I say, I'm rarely more than four feet away from a notebook and pen, so that's how I keep track. But most people probably need a helper. 

 

My only concern is that you don't deliver something bone obvious, with glowing arrows over everything. Because that's the lesser component. You also need to give people a way to track WHY the hell they were doing something.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Walsingham

[Wombat]

That’s not what is planned for PoE, based on info so far.  There will be no pointing arrows but direct expression version of quest logs.  Personally, I’d like to see good combination of quest logs and something like codex to fresh up my memory rather than direct expressions, though.  The team seem to have already got a good dialogue editor combined with quest charts, so, I think it would be nice for us the players to be benefitted by well-sorted quest logs/codex entries.

 

I don’t have much understanding on why some people need to feel superior than others for playing games.   Sticking to what I can understand, additional factors which reward the players in their own favorite way is one of the GMs tasks to keep them entertained.  If someone likes exploration and, reads between lines carefully, rewarding him/her with additional loot/lore/mystery or background info would be appropriate, hopefully without diminishing the core experience for other people.  For example, I think one of the reasons why item descriptions are popular for some people is that it rewards both types of the players who enjoy loot/tactical or strategic usage of the items and who enjoy additional story to immerse themselves with the world through writing.  Profiling each player type and reward them according to the analysis is what GMs would do unconsciously or consciously while they are planning a campaign with a new group.

 

Basically, if Obsidian can entertain more people, they will have more people to support them.  If they don’t want to rely on middle men, they need to make games which naturally entertain many people.  If such thing can be done efficiently with well-planned devices such as quest  log integrity and/or implementing additional game modes such as Trial of Iron and Expert mode to entertain various players, why not put additional effort to sell their strengths?  It’s a single player game, where nobody will complain of how you play the game.  At least, some of the designers seem to be experienced GMs and I have been wondering why CRPG designers were trying to copy it’s PnP counterparts without analyzing how GMs entertain players, how these things would be translated into CRPG format and implement them in CRPGs.

[TRoar]

Damn, Wombat, that's a great post, and I largely agree with it, but for some reason I had alarm bells go off. Does this type of game (overall) fit into a niche, or is it a game for a [slightly/moderately/largely] broader market?

 

I honestly have no idea. Games like this offer so much, in my mind... I hope it appeals to a broader market and is a big success.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Who needs ordinary news channels? News at all? I mean, we have this great thread to read instead!

 

 

 

So, when you know you've made a mistake (wait, wyverns are venomous??). What is the cost to fix it? (Welp, back to the Friendly Arm to resurrect one of my party members). Often the cost involves backtracking. If there's too much backtracking coupled with respawning enemies, it's easy to get into the situation I mentioned in my previous post where turning up the difficulty slider just makes the level seem tedious instead of more challenging. (A.k.a. the 'running a meat grinder down a hallway' situation.)

 

Yonyuro: You certainly put your finger on one of the major issues - backtracking! Plenty of the classic CRPGs had this, but when is it bad and when is it at least tolerable? And can it ever be good? Once again, as an example of bad backtracking. If you did the bugbear quest in NWN2 OC with Khelgar in tow and then end it with his notorious "Here goes!", you had to back track all of the bugbear cave and then the serpentine winding path leading up to it. It alone took quite a while. It felt like a quarter of an hour, and you didn't get to play the game a single second, you just had to watch your party pathfinding. And tolerable then? Well, if we stick with NWN2 OC, most quests within Neverwinter had much less distances to backtrack when you have done your deed. Also, Obsidian had scripted a few encounters on the way, sometimes with cutscenes and all, so the backtracking could all be part of the adventure. Finally, a city environment isn't as dead as some desolate canyon. Already, we are starting to see the contours of what good backtracking would be: More story-related interruptions during the backtracking, and not just an endless stream of random encounters on identical placeholder maps that don't make sense (Dragon Lance-CRPG-series of youre, I'm looking at you). I mean, the solution is not to make a back door in each dungeon that leads back to the entrance just for bizarre convenience, like in Skyrim. That was just lame. And I don't like too much map teleporting either.

 

 

 

As for replayability, recent works by Obsidian tend to give the players tough choices which lead to mutually exclusive outcomes, accompanied by the disposition/reputation system.  Combined with the party composition and the PC-builds, I think there should be enough reasons to play the game more than once rather than making sure you picked up the same objects from the same places for each playthrough, IMO.

I totally share this philosophy, as this would encourage multiple playthroughs more. In some ways, NWN2 did a good job in making this a reality. Yet again, Skyrim failed miserably, letting you be the master of all factions all at once and completing all quests and strands in one playthrough. It was disappointing to say the least. Just because I'm more pressed for time nowadays, does not mean I want a game that is meant for one playthrough only. I want a game that will last for years to come, like the IE games and the NWN-games.

 

 

 

 

It sounds a little masochistic but i've always thought that the best games are not afraid to punish the player, rather than handwave away the story in an effort to make sure the player is not challenged in any manner, or his progression remains unchecked. For instance in Dragon Age I should have ideally been able to refuse the Grey Warden fellow and died in the Deep Roads or with that painfully emotional family. When I was slain by Azar Javed in the first Witcher game for instance, because i'd been lazy and rushed my investigations, I was extremely pleased as that was a consequence born of my choices.

 

Agreed. I would have loved for the possibility to refuse that Grey Warden and then suffer through some tormented anti-quest while the world is crumbling around you.

 

 

Like many in this thread, I also don't have as much time for gaming as I once did, but I think the only sensible approach to creating PoE, as a spiritual successor, is to improve upon the games that it is succeeding. IMO, BG, BG2 and IWD2 were all unbalanced in some aspect of the game. Striking a finer balance between story/dialogue and combat (for me, a little more time spent on story and dialogue than engaged in combat...), and getting a nice spread of content density throughout the game world. I think it's all about how everything is delivered to the player. Variety in content delivered at varying paces I think would make the game better.

 

To neuter this game in any way will be to affect its ability to spread seeds of inspiration into the minds of a new generation of RPG fans. I say, onwards and upwards.

 

TRoar, great post with points that can't be underlined enough!

 

I really think it comes down to your in-game quest macguffin. Your heroic personal assistant, telling you what you were supposed to be doing.

 

And I love your way with words, Wals! :D

[LadyCrimson]

Would you (everyone) say that the issues are a) overall game scope b) game difficulty or c) something else?

If by overall game scope you mean length, breadth, content etc ... it's probably mostly that for me. Not in the sense that I want total length to be short - more a matter that the bigger the learning curve/more stuff I have to keep track of, the more I have to time-obsess in long sessions in order to stay motivated/immersed. Especially if there's a potentially emotion-engaging story arc involved. It's like novels. Some people are fine reading a book a chapter at a time over weeks, but I typically am driven to marathon read novels in one or three days.

 

Now that I have less energy for marathoning anything, more complex games (for me) are more difficult to finish, because a lot of the time such games don't "play" well in short time-chunks. eg, where 1-2 hour sessions gives me, personally, little sense of progress and I lose motivation over time. Whereas games like Diablo you can fire up and randomly play for a couple hours very easily even if you haven't played it in months.

 

Anyway, I still want complex and involving games/rpgs...it's not a fault of the games, just the way I am now. Makes me a sad kittah...

[JFSOCC]

 

It sounds a little masochistic but i've always thought that the best games are not afraid to punish the player, rather than handwave away the story in an effort to make sure the player is not challenged in any manner, or his progression remains unchecked. For instance in Dragon Age I should have ideally been able to refuse the Grey Warden fellow and died in the Deep Roads or with that painfully emotional family. When I was slain by Azar Javed in the first Witcher game for instance, because i'd been lazy and rushed my investigations, I was extremely pleased as that was a consequence born of my choices.

Agreed. I would have loved for the possibility to refuse that Grey Warden and then suffer through some tormented anti-quest while the world is crumbling around you.

 

thirded.

 

 

About backtracking, sometimes it is an issue, though some quests sending you all over the place can be quite good (especially introducing you to various locations in town) But the risk of avoiding backtracking entirely is a linear game. I don't mind it if I can go back for help, or after a quest is finished go back to the big big city (hub) or even back to the quest giver to claim my reward. I do mind it if the quest itself sends me back and forth a long corridor to move levers to unlock doors at the other side, then back the front, then back to him, now back to me. I'm on a horse...

 

wait what was I saying?

[Nonek]

Strange to mention the venom of the Wyvern as a negative factor, by that point in the game Slow Poison had become one of my most used spells and the recent addition of a Bhaalspawn power aping it was very welcome. Not because I knew of the Wyverns, but because of Hobgoblin arrows being such a lethal problem, thus when entering the Cloakwood I was unwittingly forearmed with both spells and potions.

 

Though in truth when entering a forest I will usually memorise appropriate spells, such as Charm Animal, just like one always prepares for Graveyards and Tombs with Undead specific spells. I don't judge this as anything but sensible preparation, though it helps when there's an appropriate and logical hint given as to what you will encounter.

[Metabot]

You know bethesda misses a great opportunity with their guilds. Instead of making them a simple questline,to rise to the top, there should be some strategic element to it and they should be mutually exclusive.

[Yonjuro]

Strange to mention the venom of the Wyvern as a negative factor, by that point in the game Slow Poison had become one of my most used spells and the recent addition of a Bhaalspawn power aping it was very welcome. Not because I knew of the Wyverns, but because of Hobgoblin arrows being such a lethal problem, thus when entering the Cloakwood I was unwittingly forearmed with both spells and potions.

 

 

 

  Just to be clear, I was using that as as an example of a mistake that I made as a new player that required backtracking to fix, not a negative about the map. I think that was a well done group of maps - difficult but not frustrating.

 

 Also, the wyvern cave encounter was optional so if it had turned out to be too hard, I could have skipped it and/or come back when the party was higher level.

 

 

Though in truth when entering a forest I will usually memorise appropriate spells, such as Charm Animal, just like one always prepares for Graveyards and Tombs with Undead specific spells. I don't judge this as anything but sensible preparation, though it helps when there's an appropriate and logical hint given as to what you will encounter.

 

Sure, that encounter got much easier once I knew what I was doing. And, there was certainly a hint (a movie of a wyvern flying off with a cow).

 

In subsequent games, I was also more subtle about how I lured them out the cave (you know, fireballing them tends to lure all five of them out at once).

[Yonjuro]

Who needs ordinary news channels? News at all? I mean, we have this great thread to read instead!

 

 

 

So, when you know you've made a mistake (wait, wyverns are venomous??). What is the cost to fix it? (Welp, back to the Friendly Arm to resurrect one of my party members). Often the cost involves backtracking. If there's too much backtracking coupled with respawning enemies, it's easy to get into the situation I mentioned in my previous post where turning up the difficulty slider just makes the level seem tedious instead of more challenging. (A.k.a. the 'running a meat grinder down a hallway' situation.)

 

Yonyuro: You certainly put your finger on one of the major issues - backtracking! Plenty of the classic CRPGs had this, but when is it bad and when is it at least tolerable? And can it ever be good? ....

 

 I'm afraid my cultural illiteracy will show through here because I don't know any of the examples you mentioned. 

 

 As Iucounu pointed out a few pages ago, the story has a lot to do with it. So, In Cloakwood, you are grinding your way through spiders and wyverns etc. but you really want to get to the guy at the end (and IT'S PERSONAL  ). Contrast that to IWD where you go to the vale of shadows because you (an inbred northern adventurer ) have been ordered there by some neofascist archdruid that you met yesterday. When you do finish the vale of shadows, the only thing you learn is that you did it all for nothing.

 

 But, back to backtracking (err, yes).  

 

... It alone took quite a while. It felt like a quarter of an hour, and you didn't get to play the game a single second, you just had to watch your party pathfinding.

 

 Yeah, that doesn't sound fun at all. Adding a hoard of sword spiders that you grind through while backtracking wouldn't make it fun - it would just make it take longer. Adding a hoard of mindflayers or beholders wouldn't make it more fun than adding sword spiders.

 

 It would compound the problem if you were backtracking in order to recover from injuries. To continue with this hypothetical, if you are limping away with an empty spellbook and having used most of your healing potions, that is a case where making the level more difficult would necessarily make it more tedious. One step forward seven steps back.

 

 There were some examples in IWD where, oddly enough, you find places to purchase healing/potions and safe places to rest in the dungeons. It's a bit strange, but it makes tactical retreating take less time.

 

 Hmm, maybe putting stores and youth hostels in a dungeon may be a sign that the dungeon is too big/linear? I'll have to think about that.

[Jarmo]

  Hmm, maybe putting stores and youth hostels in a dungeon may be a sign that the dungeon is too big/linear? I'll have to think about that.

 

I think you're making a strong point here.

Not only it is a sign a dungeon is too long,  it's a sign the devs realized the dungeon is too long.

 

I make an exception to the dungeon length where the length is meaningful, like in the Endless.. paths.. deeps?

Or whatever, where you've stumbled into something humongous, like the underdark. Lot's of fighting in a strange place,

and then you stumble into a refuge, a village of some silly gnomes or something. Works for me.

 

But it doesn't work if every second mages tower is big as hell and has some shopkeeper that decided it's

an awesome idea to set up a store right next to a lair of some hellspawn beasts.

[Nonek]

 

 There were some examples in IWD where, oddly enough, you find places to purchase healing/potions and safe places to rest in the dungeons. It's a bit strange, but it makes tactical retreating take less time.

 

 Hmm, maybe putting stores and youth hostels in a dungeon may be a sign that the dungeon is too big/linear? I'll have to think about that.

 

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with finding somewhere to rest in an old disused and massive dungeon, similar to how the Fellowship rested on their travels through Moria, though I would take precautions such as casting illusions, locking doors, setting up traps and alarms etcetera. Or try and find some secret area thick with the dust of centuries of disuse, and close the doors behind you, making sure that any patrols are not aware of your presence. Obviously this won't work in the typical modern dungeon which is just a straight corridor to the exit, filled with monsters waiting for you to slaughter them, but from what we've seen Poe's dungeons will be a little more labyrinthine.

 

As for loot i can see three ways out, one being an extraplanar merchant such as you have in Jade Empire, but that seems far more of a Torment-ish solution and oddly dissonant with what we've so far heard of Poe. The second being the unlimited stash that was spoken of early on in the campaign, which is not usable until you've unpacked your packs and dug it back up. The third is to simply make the player choose what he takes and have to leave the rest to disappear as we all did in BG 1&2.

 

Edit: Nym and his backstory were one of the most interesting elements of IWD, great stuff.

Edited January 12, 2014 by Nonek

[Yonjuro]

 

  Hmm, maybe putting stores and youth hostels in a dungeon may be a sign that the dungeon is too big/linear? I'll have to think about that.

 

I think you're making a strong point here.

Not only it is a sign a dungeon is too long,  it's a sign the devs realized the dungeon is too long.

 

I make an exception to the dungeon length where the length is meaningful, like in the Endless.. paths.. deeps?

Or whatever, where you've stumbled into something humongous, like the underdark. Lot's of fighting in a strange place,

and then you stumble into a refuge, a village of some silly gnomes or something. Works for me.

 

 

 Yes, the BG2 Underdark was well done. You find the gnomes and there are only a few of them at home because of the demon. It was easy to suspend disbelief.  On the other hand:

 

 

But it doesn't work if every second mages tower is big as hell and has some shopkeeper that decided it's

an awesome idea to set up a store right next to a lair of some hellspawn beasts.

 

 Yes, at that point, they might as well add a Starbuck's coffee shop. Those hellspawn love a good mocha latte.

[Yonjuro]

 

 

 There were some examples in IWD where, oddly enough, you find places to purchase healing/potions and safe places to rest in the dungeons. It's a bit strange, but it makes tactical retreating take less time.

 

 Hmm, maybe putting stores and youth hostels in a dungeon may be a sign that the dungeon is too big/linear? I'll have to think about that.

 

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with finding somewhere to rest in an old disused and massive dungeon, similar to how the Fellowship rested on their travels through Moria, though I would take precautions such as casting illusions, locking doors, setting up traps and alarms etcetera. Or try and find some secret area thick with the dust of centuries of disuse, and close the doors behind you, making sure that any patrols are not aware of your presence. 

 

 Sure, that makes perfect sense to me. I was thinking more of getting to level three of the dungeon and finding an enclave of clerics living there who will watch over you while you sleep (until you open the wrong door - then they try to kill you, but the people behind the door will then watch over you while you sleep).