Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil Forum News

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(Originally posted by Veldrin)

Here are today's Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context.

Tim Cain, Lead Designer

Quote: I'm very curious about the game, and it's great to hear Steve talking about how Troika weighed fun versus reality. Most of the fun level of a game is captured in the game engine itself.

I tried to think of what RPG qualities I liked the best and the least, and I used that to come up with a list of questions that would help the community learn more about the game.

I'm sorry if I went overboard...

1. Will there be formations? If so, will you be able to rotate the formation? If not, how will you be able to keep your spellcasters in back?

2. Can you set waypoints?

3. Can all the spells in the game be cast instantly on the caster's turn?

4. Will combat be initiated if your sneaking character gets near an unsuspecting hostile? If not, will there be a surprise round?

5. Will enemies be pre-placed on the map?

6. Will there be any random battles?

7. If a character multiclasses from a cleric to a paladin, does he get two turnings?

8. When casting duration spells outside of combat, how long is a round?

9. Can you toggle the user interface on/off?

10. Do you support right-clicking as a shortcut for buying/selling?

11. Will there be a fixed dialog box, or will we have Arcanumish bubble-boxes? If we do have bubble-boxes, can we please have an option to make the background opaque?

12. Will there be an option to resize the dialog font? (I remember the eyestrain caused by NWN - the game literally gave me headaches.)

13. Since backtracking is my #2 source of annoyance (right behind bugs), I'd like to ask...Will any steps be taken to help reduce travel through cleared dungeon levels?

14. Will there be teleport items? If not, can I beg you on my hands and knees for them? If that doesn't work, will you accept bribes?

15. Can you assign a group of characters to a selection hotkey?

16. Will you be able to assign spells and skills to quickslots? If so, how many quickslots are we going to have?

17. Can we turn animations off to speed up the game?

18. Will your ranged attackers have a chance to nail the teammate they are standing behind?

19. Will we be able to see if our ranged attack will have a distance penalty assigned to it? (With a colored cursor or something like that...)

20. Will we be able to see what percentage chance we have to hit a target with melee and ranged attacks? (This would be very very very nice, since combat will be tactical instead of mobbish.)

21. Is subdual damage implemented?

22. Will some items (gold, gems, ammo) be considered weightless?

23. Do fast characters move fast outside of combat, too?

24. Can we rest anywhere?

25. Can we save anywhere and at any time?

So many questions, so here are short answers.

1. Yes and yes.

2. No, but maybe for travel on the townmap level.

3. We have some full-round spells.

4. You can initiate combat to attack someone who has not spotted you. They are flat footed and you attack first.

5. Yes.

6. Yes.

7. You can turn as a paladin and as a cleric, each at its level.

8. Duration is real time outside of combat.

9. Most of it. You always see your party portraits and associated health and condition bars.

10. No, but I like that. On cool list.

11. Fixed dialog box.

12. No, but you can change resolution.

13. Teleporting exists. And there are shortcuts in the dungeons to be discovered.

14. There are some. There can be more. I'm listening...

15. No, but we have hotkeys for each character.

16. Yes. 10 per character.

17. No. Maybe a cool list thingie (cool list getting big)

18. No.

19. Hmm, right now you can see penalties after the attack. Cool list.

20. No, but this I like, and it should be easy.

21. Yes.

22. Yes.

23. No. All characters move at the same speed outside of combat.

24. No. Some places not at all, and some places risk encounters, and some places are safe.

25. Yes. This almost wasn't true, but a quick beating took care of that.

Whew.