Design Flaws ...

Karas: Something's wacked with your computer. My dungeon maps are all completely lighted, only a slight difference between a well-lit place and a not-so-well-lit place. There's definitely no areas of complete darkness except where I haven't gone yet.

What I do hate about the automap is that it uses a tiny fraction of my available screen size. Why the heck did they decide to put this huge useless border around the edges, when it could be used to see more map. I have a 19" monitor and I I'm looking at a 10" section of the screen. I can't imagine playing this on a 15" monitor.

As for weapon/armor damage - yeah, it's annoying. I sympathize with the other Half-Ogre guy - that leather armor is a huge pain to get repaired. Is there even a master repair guy anywhere in the game? I've gotten to Caladon without finding one yet, so I end up having to load and then take off my armor whenever I go up against traps or fire elementals or the like. Although I guess I really don't need armor - 50 speed and 50 damage per hit with master melee is pretty much guaranteed to kill multiple anythings before they can attack me.

XP/level cap. I agree 100% I was 45th when I made it to caladon and I still have a few quests as yet unfinished. I kill 99% of all enemies solo (Dog and Virgil are with me, but with the stats mentioned above, they almost never get to attack at all) so I get all that damage xp. Maybe I should be playing on hard or something - I'll have to check out what exactly that does.

Maybe I'll have more trouble with my halfling thief character that I'm starting.

-The Souljourner

 

Tech Melee is okay, but ranged combat is pretty screwed.

Melee needs:

Strength: For Minimum Strength Requirements as well as Bonus Damage.
Dexterity: For Armor Class Adjustment and Action Points.

Ranged needs:

Strength: For Minimum Strength Requirements.
Dexterity: For Action Points.
Perception: Because it effects To-Hit for ranged.

You have to spend more CPs for ranged than melee in your basic attributes. That kind of sucks. If they lowered the MSR for ranged weapons, they could greatly balance the two, since the dependence on Strength would be lessened.

Now, for tech and magick...

Tech needs:

Intelligence: This is what determines how high you can develop your tech skills.

Magick needs:

Willpower: They determines how much you can advance in spell colleges.

The annoying thing here is that Willpower also means more Hit Points. Intelligence doesn't provide much of a nice side benefit like Willpower does.

This gives magick a nice little bonus that techs don't have.



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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saint_Proverbius on 2001-09-20 21:04 ]</font>

 

actually , techdude, bother to read. a friend of mine wrote that. ive never played a mage, and ive beaten the game with three techs so far.

the point, if you had bothered to read, is not that tech sucks but that its not balanced. sure, you can steal some advanced tech at level 4. whippy, so can i with a pure theif. but what can you make at level 4 that is as good as that harm spell?

magic has no barier to entry like tech does. you need points, schemtaics and parts to make any tech item, and the effects are not neccessary better. worse, some of the high level tech items just blow. you ever use the high velocity pistol? or the miners helmet? they suck. they dont make sense and they arent worth the components theyre made of.

tech is not balanced with magic becasue magic users can become more powerful faster . at later levels, magic begins to blow. fatigue becomes an issue and then mages are fucked. but as far a balance goes... like she said, wheres the disintigrate of tech?

 

My major gripe with the game is that it gets to easy towards the end, especially the final battles. Most RPGs I've played the showdowns with the major villain are tough challenges which quite often have you reloading and desperately trying out new tactics. In Arcanum this happened to me just once against the powerful lich in Ashbury but that was only because I took him on when I was still level 10 (I did get the lesser lich though :wink. All the others I defeated on the first attempt.

IMO they really need to beef up the opposition in this game. As for lifting the level cap, that would be a crazy idea for the main story, things are too easy as it is! Hopefully the player community can build some of our own mods that really stretch a 50th level character.

I'm now running a new character, a Gnome Shopkeeper and I'm deliberately not developing kick-ass combat or magick skills in order to keep the game challenging.