Orchomene

I'm all for a WoD system. No level, no XP, just talent points earned when you achieve something (quests, particular smart path taken, bonus for being unseen...) It was well done in Vampire Bloodlines.

I'm 36. Planescape: Torment.

Having been working as a project leader in a service development company, I can give you a rough estimate in this activity sector about the ratio between production and structure costs : for a small company, this ranges from 20% to 50% additional cost for non productive work (that's management, marketing, pay, HR, electricity, hardware and so on). In big companies, it goes quickly to 100% In the end, in a business without any advertisement on a product (even if there is some for recruitment and company image) you need to consider the production cost of a project and double it to get the real cost. Of course, if you say that a product has a cost of 2 millions, that means you take account of the non production costs. For the simple reason that non production costs need a way to get financed. And quality, translations, maintenance... All of this is into the productive part.

I'm from France.

Asking if people want translation in an english forum is somewhat like calling deaf people to ask them if they want some auditive support... You know that people that don't speak english won't certainly come here to ask for language support, don't you ? Moreover, lack of translation closes some markets. I know that without at least french subtitles, you can't sell a video game in France. That's the french law. So, in the end, multi language support is like Linux/Mac support. It allows a larger market for the game in the end. In souldn't be that expensive when you think that games in early 2000's already had this option and didn't cost a lot to produce. I know that in northern Europe, people talk quite flently in english, but in south Europe, it's less common.

I think the main great point of the community support in Kickstarter developed games (I mean, outside of the freedom) is the possibility for the designers to have feedbacks from the fanbase on some of the ideas they have. In a published game, it's more difficult to have such feedback since there are confidentiality constraints. I sure have some tastes and expectations. But my first expectation is that Obs develops a game that I really love but never thought at the begining I would love because I did not think it was part of what I love. That's the very point of creativity.

I don't remember the reference of it, but there is a good writing of MCA about writing in general and writing for RPGs. Having writers that came at the origin from the PnP RPG world makes a bit difference : when you are story telling in a RPG, especially in PnP, you have to open the story to the choices of the players. For a novel writer, it can create frustration and the wish to drive back the player on the story you want to achieve. On the contrary, a PnP storyteller will use the choices of the player to shape the story. And if for that he/she has to dump most of what he/she thought about before, then that's the game. Thus, having different endings and multiple choices is not opposed to great storytelling. The main constraint is that you have to give an effort deployed for all the different choices and endings. That means a lot of writing.

What would be interesting is that the NPCs could react in diaogue when you are soloing with some comments like : Did you really made it that far alone ? Don't you feel lonely wandering alone ? ... Or just even ways to do quests differently This way, there is something special in soloing the game, but not something material. Kind of the way of the "stupid" gameplay in Fallout 2.

Exact same choice. But I put replayability above by a large margin, however.

Just to link this to the recent announce. It's in.

I would say BG/BG2/PST as the most important. Then IWD/IWD2/ToEE for a more action/dungeon crawling experience. The two others (Dragonshard and Demonstone) are not really that good.

I would like a very detailed manual with all the details available to plan my character. This hasn't to be very clearly stated in the game if this is in the manual. RTFM after all.

The only one I liked was the card game in Might and Magic 6 or 7. It was a side game to play in taverns and there was a small quest linked to it that had a very interesting reward ( a chest full of relics). But minigames for lockpicking or things like that become tedious very quickly.

I'm more for some hints or flirting like in Kotor2 or Planescape than a real romance : it gives some idea of relationship but don't go too far. Romances like in BG2 or ME/DA are far too artificial to be appropriate and having a romance developped seriously takes a lot of time.

I think a game over based on a preceeding choice is not a good design choice. I'd better see some endings that are allowed only if the correct choices are made. Not 'better' endings, different endings. There is no reason to have an objective classification of how great the endings are.

I think it was a while ago.. when I noticed it (a month ago or so?) and posted about it here I've been told that it's been like that for a while. Still on Gamersgate in the complete pack : http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DDNWNC/dungeons-and-dragons-neverwinter-nights-complete

Exactly my thought. With a Fallout:Tactics system, you may have toggles to go from TB/TB with concurrent actions (like RTwP each round)/RTwP. This way, everyone is happy.

Just finished a first playthrough of Inquisitor. All in all, it's a good game. Very rough around the edge with a low fight gameplay, but the story is well done, the investigations are fun. I would place the game somewhere between Arcanum and Divine Divinity. Some moments are a bit frustrating, with long dungeons and having to backtrack to the city. I recommend it strongly to people that like top down iso RPG with a strong focus on story and interactions.

Paradox strategy games have still a lot in quality.

On Gamersgate, it's pretty explicite : Platform:PC Categories:Action, Strategy, Tactical Action Publisher:2K Games Developer:Firaxis Games DRM:Steamworks (Requires a third-party download and account) Activation:Must be activated on Steam

An old school rpg on pre order at GoG seems interesting : http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/inquisitor/ I don't know what to expect, though.

For the DLC, I think the one that can be done quite easily at level 12 is Honest Hearts.

I totally agree with Junai. Rolemaster is a system where you can pick the rules that suit you the best, depending on your taste. It may be a pain in PnP without a lot of practice because of all the tables, but in a cRPG, this issue disappears.

After a replay of the Kotor games, I'm now replaying FONV.

I wish for a game with the Rolemaster rule set.