User0015 posted:

What they should do is, instead of letting the player manipulate people by changing personality, let a companion manipulate the player. What a wonderfully evil companion to have, who tells you exactly what you want to hear, when you want to hear it, and it turns out they're a psychopath.

Lt. Danger posted:

Monopoly . . . it's not a bad game! It's the people who play it who are bad players!

Kurtofan posted:

I don't really remember, are the two backed big cities Defiance Bay and Twin Elms, while others like Spirento are much smaller settlements?

Drifter posted:

Well, so long as they're only like the black Italians that's okay, I guess.

hemale in pain posted:

How many black italians were there in the 14th-17th century.

hemale in pain posted:

How many black italians were there in the 14th-17th century.

hemale in pain posted:

Maybe I should read some Shakespeare

hemale in pain posted:

Maybe I should read some Shakespeare

SurrealityCheck posted:

Keeshhound posted:

Enough for Shakespeare to write a play about one.

FRINGE posted:

And this is how video games are destroying the future.

Keeshhound posted:

Enough for Shakespeare to write a play about one.

Fish Fry Andy posted:

Shakespeare probably wrote Othello because England had just entered into pretty close relationship with Morocco during his lifetime and London had been visited by a delegation from there which was pretty crazy for the time. He never visited Venice, and it was pretty much some kind of fantastic foreign utopia as far as he was concerned. It's like how he wrote a play about a Jew living in Venice despite the fact that nobody in England had ever met a Jew, but they must be in Venice.

Accordion Man posted:

I like how in Torment that you could make Vhailor realize that being a true D&D Paladin type is hypocritical and dumb and it makes him commit suicide because he realizes his life is a lie.

frajaq posted:

Speaking of the story... what is the trigger of it? What brings my PC to this land of adventure? Is there only one or can I choose from diverse origins?

quote:

Animancers studied folk legends about figures called Watchers who reportedly were able to see lost souls and perceive an individual's ancestral lives, but claimants to that title were typically charlatans at best or mentally unstable and violent at worst.

Accordion Man posted:

I like how in Torment that you could make Vhailor realize that being a true D&D Paladin type is hypocritical and dumb and it makes him commit suicide because he realizes his life is a lie.

hemale in pain posted:

How many black italians were there in the 14th-17th century.

frajaq posted:

Speaking of the story... what is the trigger of it? What brings my PC to this land of adventure? Is there only one or can I choose from diverse origins?

2house2fly posted:

I'm assuming it'll be like New Vegas, where your background isn't really explored. It's an RPG after all, we the players create the character we play as. Plus I don't want to imagine what a headache it would be to try to come up with something that would apply to every race and class.

Disco Infiva posted:

Ropekid, I have a question. I see that you guys are praising player feedback during development a lot, and I am curious. When you start working on Eternity expansion or Eternity 2 with your own money (let's face it, PoE will sell like hot poo poo to a dung beetle colony, that's how starved we are for good RPGs) will you also have regular updates like you have now, even though you won't be constrained by your promise for them during kickstarter?

Disco Infiva posted:

Ropekid, I have a question. I see that you guys are praising player feedback during development a lot, and I am curious. When you start working on Eternity expansion or Eternity 2 with your own money (let's face it, PoE will sell like hot poo poo to a dung beetle colony, that's how starved we are for good RPGs) will you also have regular updates like you have now, even though you won't be constrained by your promise for them during kickstarter?

Fuschia tude posted:

This seems kind of silly to me. They're "constrained by their promise for them" because they promised to write them in the kickstarter. Most Kickstarters don't make that promise, some don't promise any updates at all (admittedly these are usually the shorter ones like "record an album"); I think it's pretty clear Obsidian put that in there because they were willing and able and wanted to provide them.

Funso Banjo posted:

On topic, I've heard 100 hours mentioned in game length if you do everything. Gotta say I am pleased to hear it, I want something to get my teeth into.

Kurtofan posted:

I don't really remember, are the two backed big cities Defiance Bay and Twin Elms, while others like Spirento are much smaller settlements?

Disco Infiva posted:

Ropekid, I have a question. I see that you guys are praising player feedback during development a lot, and I am curious. When you start working on Eternity expansion or Eternity 2 with your own money (let's face it, PoE will sell like hot poo poo to a dung beetle colony, that's how starved we are for good RPGs) will you also have regular updates like you have now, even though you won't be constrained by your promise for them during kickstarter?

Jerusalem posted:

I never did it myself, but couldn't you convince Vhailor that The Transcendent One was the big criminal he'd been searching for, which pisses off Vhailor so much that he basically super-hacks himself into God Mode? I always thought that was a pretty hilarious dick move, even if it was technically true.

RentACop posted:

Sort of, you basically point out how unjust the entire Nameless/Transcendent situation is and he flips his poo poo and his strength, dexterity, and constitution go to 25 and he gets 2,000,000 experience points. It's amazing, I can't find the dialogue for it though

The Nameless One posted:

If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me.

Adam Brennecke posted:

We've started to plan the expansion, but no one is working on it. Brandon has put together a initial staffing/budget plan to be reviewed by Feargus, and we've had a design brainstorming meeting. The team is entirely focused on finishing the base game right now.

Brandon Adler posted:

The expansion pack's budget isn't based on Eternity sales. We have already decided (and promised) that we are doing it.

How it works is that Feargus gives us a rough budget/man month number for the expansion. I then play employee Tetris to find a combination of people, roles, and time that all make sense. Once I have a basic timeline and the overall budget, I show it to Adam and Josh so we can talk about any potential pitfalls that we may run into. I also show it to others that I trust to give it a good evaluation (like Matt Singh, for example).

Once we all feel good about it, I present the proposed schedule along with all comments and concerns we have to Feargus. An example of a concern might be something along the lines of having someone run as a lead of a department that has never been a lead in the past. Once we lay everything on the table, Feargus tells me what his thoughts are and we modify (or argue our positions). Ultimately, this gives us a rough plan as to when we are starting and who will likely be on it.

Like Adam has mentioned, we have started brainstorming. In the coming months the Project Director and Lead Narrative Designer will probably start talking more and more about what they want to do with the expansion. Once we get more concrete info, we will send it out to our backers. I wouldn't expect that for a long time, though.

JE Sawyer posted:

Paladins in PoE are not all religiously-affiliated as they are in A/D&D. The paladin companion, Pallegina, is associated with a secular political organization. There are "traditional" paladin orders in the world like the Shieldbearers of St. Elcga, Kind Wayfarers, and Fellows of St. Waidwen, but there are also mercenary paladins (Goldpact Knights), battlefield ravagers (Bleak Walkers) and all sorts of other groups. Without exception paladins are always zealously devoted to their chosen cause, but their chosen causes and codes of behavior are quite varied.

JE Sawyer posted:

There are not many, honestly. We'd rather have a small number of skills that get a good amount of use than include a bunch of skills that wind up neglected.

JE Sawyer posted:

Outside of thieves (rangers and bards a little) skills weren't a focus of the IE games until IWD2. Specifically, if you weren't playing those classes, you didn't even have skills. And in IWD2, a lot of them wound up feeling redundant or useless. If our options are to include a huge number of skills to make characters feel diverse (without making good use of them) or to have a small number of skills with heavier use and less per-character diversity, I think it's better to go with the latter.

JE Sawyer posted:

Yes. We have previously given details about our skill system, including how Stealth works. As a recap, all characters can invest in the Stealth skill, though certain classes (like rogues) have a head start in that department. You can have characters sneak individually or as a group and the gameplay consists of navigating the Stealth-based radii of your party members around the detection radii of potential enemies. Enemies have two stages to discovering a sneaking character. The first causes them to investigate. Once they get close enough (IF they get close enough), they will fully realize the threat and typically start combat (sometimes dialogue). In both of our class pair updates (rogues + rangers, wizards + druids), we've called out what non-combat skills each class emphasizes, but yes, the skills are largely class-neutral.

Dialogue options are also largely class-neutral. Most threshold-based options are opened up based on the character's attributes -- using Perception to notice something, Resolve to threaten someone with scary intensity, Strength to intimidate someone with brute force (or just to smack them around a little), Dexterity to swipe something, etc. Picking these options is not always a path to success, but the attributes are what open them up. The same applies to class-, race-, sex-, or background-based options that pop up. We decided to avoid dialogue skills since it pushes characters to invest in "the dialogue game" or miss out on a ton of enjoyable content. By using as many basic elements of the character as we can to shape dialogue, we keep dialogue open to all sorts of characters, from meat-head fighters to sassy wizards and everything in-between. Attribute-based checks worked well in Planescape: Torment and we think it will work well in PoE as well.

hemale in pain posted:

Maybe I should read some Shakespeare

MadJackMcJack posted:

The films are better.