Pool of Radiance:RoMD Questions..

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(Originally posted by Nazgul)

Jon Kromrey, Producer, SSI/Mattel Interactive

Here's a few answers as to how PoR:RoMD fits the bill:

1. Character development
In PoRII the player is in control of how the character grows through class selection, use of skills and so on. Personalities are completely left up to the player to decide(which is another reason why we're supporting voice chat).

2. Actions must alter the world in noticeable ways
Every decision the characters/player commit to is tracked in the game and has consequences that they have to live with. Talk rudely to Nottle before trading? He'll charge you more. Tell a warring faction of orcs that you'll help destroy their enemy (and then tell their enemy the same thing) then they may fight each other while the party watches... unless the orcs have smarter orogs with them... then they're harder to bluff...

3. Your role should impact on the world
NPC's are important because they bridge the gap between character and world. Each NPC in the game has a deep background that extends beyond the game presented in PoR. Through their actions and deeds, even how they speak, the player can glean information about the ruins and the dangers (and hopes!) that still run rampant.

Will the death's door rule will be implemented in POR2:
Yes. We support the "up to -10" rule, and during that time consider the character to be bleeding to death. Any other player with the heal skill can stabilize the wounded character and bring them up to zero HP... alive, but not dying.

What's the status or estimated release of the Demo?
We're focused on the game right now, and I can't lock down a particular date at this time.

A problem I've had with many games is that when it's night out, even though the game provided means of producing light, it was not necessary since you could still see around you. Will this be the same in PoR or will it actually be dark out? If not, will there be penalties suffered if there is no light source for races that have no darkvision or low-light vision? Also, very early in the year it was stated that it would be possibly to douse the light source so not to attract too much attention. Is this still possible? If not, will light sources still attract attention?
It will actually be dark and unless the characters have a light spell on them or torches nearby, it will be hard to see. Selecting characters while it is dark is not a problem, nor is moving them about. The light-source attracting attention is no-longer supported, but enemies do have a spotting radius.

Is the fate of this great game now at stake? Man, 3 times now we've (the public) been faced with the fear of PoR2 being cancelled:
The fact of the matter is that Mattel Interactive has been up for sale since March. The good news is that PoR is one of the top of many titles that the enterainment division has.

Are the 16/16 level characters final:
The whole thing about 16/16 in my mind that that it gives players who want to spend a lot of time playing the game something to look forward to and have fun achieving.... especially in Multiplayer mode with the random dungeons, speicalized class weapons, and algorythmically harder monsters.

From what I have read of all the rangers abilities being stripped from him in the game (tracking, two-weapon style), what is the point of having a ranger class:
The ranger is a class that we've supported from the beginning of the project when it was a 2nd Edition game. We wanted to support dual-weapons, but found too late that we couldn't with the time allowed.

So is the algorithm for difficulty only for multiplayer:
Too easy? heh heh heh... we've just been looking at the AI and easy is definately not in it's vocabulary . We're play balancing the game and it's our goal to make sure that its challenging and fun on all levels...

Could a patch be made to add difficulty options (whether in game or .cfg / .ini):
Possibly. Right now a patch is the furthest thing from our minds, for obvious reasons.