Humanoid

To be fair, the $65 tier is actually two copies of the game, and therefore domestically would be outright the better choice for two people making a joint pledge, and for the internationals, it's effectively $10 more to get the physical copy. Somewhat too late to add early bird tiers now, I don't imagine there's any system to allow for automatically downgrading previous pledges from the corresponding full tier, so just unilaterally adding one is just asking for problems.

Had a relatively recent experience with Might and Magic 7, where choosing to get resurrected in the wrong temple brings you back as a zombie. Not a permanent affliction by any means though.

If the 1.1m figure isn't reached, then Kickstarter/Amazon will not take any cash at all, and they'll have to try again from scratch. If the figure is reached, then the entire total is charged, so the more the better - Amazon then take their cut (5%?) and the developers get the rest. Pledges sometimes get withdrawn or otherwise not paid, but this does not cause a project to "fail" if it's done in the last day or so of the drive. Stretch goals don't exist as actual things in the Kickstarter system and therefore aren't taken into account in terms of actual funding, they're just promises from the developer for certain milestones hit. One thing I am curious about is pledging directly via Kickstarter vs Paypal once the funding goal is reached - who takes the bigger cut? I suspect that the latter is actually more money in the bank for the developer once all fees and charges are accounted for. That said though, in marketing terms, having a high number on the former has its own benefits in terms for the snowball effect, seeing the number crystallised right there.

Well a large part of the problem with Dragon Age Origins was the Origins part of it. By funneling the half-dozen different starting points into one choke point at the beginning of the game, then proceeding linearly afterwards, they reduced the possibility of further personal character development since there were so many backgrounds just squashed into one and struggled to split back out again - like what happens when you mix the colours in your Play-Doh. The player character was overshadowed because the player character was metaphorically short, as opposed to the characters surrounding were tall. That said, points C and D are fine, indeed almost expected features, and I'd be happy to toy around with option B as well.

So, Mickey Rourke?

Can't really lean either way until we learn just how fine grained our control over the NPC's is. Yes, the fighter traditionally doesn't require a lot of micromanagement in this type of game, but whether that's a virtue depends on whether it's the only thing you're doing, or one of half-a-dozen actors you're directing. Mages having the wand autoattack in DAO was something I liked in this context, as opposed to the babysitting you'd need to do in the IE games.

And the sound quality. For audio obsessed people like me. FLAC Though providing multiple other formats both lossless and lossy should probably be done for the less tech-savvy people.

Actually makes me wonder whether it's just a screenshot of a scrollable map, or if those are the hard limits of the world as used in the game. Will the cloth map be an exact facsimile of that image, or show a wider perspective? In terms of a playable world, what we see is more than enough, but would be interesting in terms of both lore and aesthetics to have a bit more revealed.

A PC home, as long as it's strictly that (both the PC part and the home part), makes sense in that it gives the player a sense of belonging in the world. But as discussed in the NPC thread, it shouldn't really be a base of operations where your unused NPCs hang out and that, making them into subservient lackeys without lives or agendas of their own. It's just your home, the place you've lived prior to the events of the game. Of course, this assumes the player character isn't some outsider/outworlder shipwrecked/teleported into the setting. But I'd rather not see that.

To be fair, these days you'd probably get more people confused about how one would go about ripping music from a CD than the number of people confused about how to get the tracks onto CD or some other portable media. I'm still mostly CD-bound myself in terms of music listening, but all that an "official" printing of a CD would give is the art on the CD itself. That said, the tiers above $140 are pretty sparse, not talking in terms of rewards for them (since at that point it's really not about value for money anymore), but in terms of granularity. A couple more options - say $200 and $350 would probably both be worth consideration.

Looks like "White March" to me.

I like the descriptive place names over the generic fantasy type gibberish names - as a civilisation trait, I think having the prevailing one having a very literal sense of nomenclature is interesting in itself.

I'd take a design where the only *known* race is that of the humans. The other races may or may not exist, but regardless, have them portrayed as mythical creatures and not known to the civilisation of which the player is part of. Diversity is nice and all, but I feel it detracts from the world if within the first few hours of playing, you've assembled a ragtag group of elves, dwarves, goblins, kilrathi and whatnot. If the other races do exist, a later encounter can evoke a feeling of awe and wonder at discovering such an alien culture.

I'm assuming you can supplement your pledge (or make a brand new one) via Paypal anyway even after the close of the 'official' kickstarter, so presuming it hits the 1.1m target, there's probably no reason to feel rushed about which level you're shooting for.

My concern is not so much how the inventory is managed, but in keeping down the amount of stuff lootable to keep that inventory management in the background as much as possible. While I very much like ME2/3's essentially non-existent inventory, that's probably not suitable for this particular instance - but I don't want to see mundane crafting materials (e.g. spools of twine, non-magical hides, iron buckles) for instance, let alone outright vendor trash like in the Gamebryo games. I'd also prefer no alchemy, if not altogether as in no potions at all, then at least no player-brewable ones from gathered ingredients. Handwave stuff like medical/first-aid supplies away as an assumed persistent 'kit' instead of having multiple consumable ones. If you have to have food, abstract it has having X days of rations instead of having actual food items. Leave quest items out of the inventory altogether. More contentiously perhaps, and as mentioned in some other thread here, I'd also be keen to experiment whether armour could be something that's implemented not as loot but as, say, a character enhancement you buy from the smithy. It'd be something that exists on the character sheet but not in the inventory menu. You could upgrade it, buy a new set, or otherwise change it, but "piece of armor" would never be a thing you could carry. But as for the inventory management, then yeah, I'm happy enough with a party-based pool of general stuff. Anything to keep the complexity of it down.

Tangential perhaps, but I can see a possible design choice to make the majority of armour (and clothing I guess) not lootable at all - rationalise this by reasonably stating that in the act of murdering wearer of said attire, you have also rendered their gear unsalvagably repaired. For one, this will cut down on OCD looting tendencies and prevent the absurd scenario of carrying multiple sets of full plate in one's backpack. I'm also in favour of the angle of having your gear acquisition be more "special" than lucking out on a dropped piece of loot. Back to the nudity thing - I do absolutely support it in context, in that it's pointless having to force the direction to imply it rather than just show it. A comparison would be how the 60s Batman depicted violence (fun as it was). I like how The Witcher 2 for example does it. And in a game setting where a strip club is a reasonable location to implement, it'd be the same. Not sure this new medieval-era gameworld would manage to fit any relevant context in, however - limited as my knowledge of old-timey whorehouses is, I'm not sure you'll find the, ahem, merchandise lounging around unclad in the lobby.

Yep, naming your game Eternity is on the level of calling it Duke Nukem Forever.

Whether a romance fits into a game has a lot to do with the timescale of the game. Do the events of the game happen through the course of a week, a few months, or years? This is part of why Mass Effect romances tended to feel like absurd wham-bam-thank-you-mam affairs, while it's a bit more natural in the long form games where your companions basically *are* your social circle.

A specialist still needs their tools, helpers, and copious amounts of time, so in practical terms it's still a matter of "heading back to town" - though I'd certainly be supportive of a medical skill which would determine how serious an injury can still be dealt with "in the field." To clarify the concerns though - yes, this would be mind-numbingly tedious to do if combat was both frequent enough and damage unavoidable enough to necessitate repetitive ferrying of the wounded. I'm thinking more along the level of Fallout's crippled limbs, or maybe even D&D's 0hp critical state conditions which would have this kind of treatment. Certainly a simple flesh wound from dispatching a couple of highwaymen should be fully recoverable after the fact, on the spot.

True insofar as seeing the underwear layer is about as necessary as the nudity part. From a practical perspective I'd make the equipment slot strictly an "armour" one, which if blank would just leave you in practical civilian clothing - it could be an interesting decision from a design standpoint to stay in ones civvies in certain contexts instead of wandering cities in full plate.

Not just in terms of healing, but in general, I'd like to see the game step away from the system that makes the player's party more or less a fully independent and self sufficient nation. In terms of healing, this would mean that some conditions may not be curable at all without external help from a specialist. More broadly, it means I'm also against having a comprehensive crafting and repair system, instead limiting player crafting to makeshift gear at best. Resting in proper accommodation would be meaningful, and scavenging materials should be a very limited exercise. But back on topic, it means I want to see fairly minor healing being able to be done in combat, some limited healing - enough to carry on but not back to tip-top shape - outside of it, and needing help to get back to full health after serious injury. One thing I'm less sure of, although interesting on the surface of it, is to encourage some party shuffling because of an enforced layoff due to said medical aid. Severely injured party members would need to undergo some meaningful time off for recuperation at a hospital, and you may opt to switch them out while they do so. Think Jag2 for this, though if it's the player character down, I suppose it'd be just some timeskip forward.

The only stretch goals I'd like to see are the ones that make the game bigger. No exclusive content (preferably no DLC at all), no new character options, no fancy equipment. No. So by bigger I mean I want to see more cities, more NPCs, more in-depth quests. Now the catch I guess is that it's hard to separate additions of this sort into something as rigidly defined as stretch goals - after all, one would already assume that each dollar pledged is a dollar adding the nebulous term "stuff" to the game. I suppose something like the Shadowrun Returns city vote could be done to make the "reward" of hitting each goal more tangible.

I'm okay with crates as long as you can't search them for loot. Nothing I hate more with a room of crates where I end up having to compulsively look in every single one on the off-chance of there being something valuable in them. Besides that though, go wild. Smash them, climb them, fry them, juice them, serenade them, go for it!

The risk is somewhat lessened with a party though as you would naturally tend to specialise rather than generalise. And the backgrounds of each given NPC would give a nudge in the favour of such. Further, provided skill points/levels/whatever are distributed sparingly throughout the game, the character system (given that it's meant to scale into multiple games) would not have you hit the ceiling of any particular skill during the course of the first game anyway, let alone hit them *all* in the manner of Skyrim and its ilk. The reverse fear I have is that I may end up having to ignore that cool thief NPC (because I will most likely be playing one) with the interestingly written personality and dialogue, and take the boring brash fighter instead, all because of a rigid class system. A classless, or loosely classed (e.g. dual-classing) system would let me instead develop that thief into some sort of swashbuckling fighter, who despite not being as tough as that burly seasoned veteran warrior, would be a valid and balanced option to take on roleplaying grounds.

I'd be curious whether a completely hidden "morality" (by which I mean reputation-based, as discussed in the general gaming forum) system would work. Let's abstract towns, factions, and important NPCs (including party members) each as an entity, and define each entity as having two things: a) a reaction to each one of your choices (including a null reaction for things they could not possibly be privy to); and b) a hidden reputation counter which cumulatively keeps track of such. Note that by "hidden" in this context I mean that it's never quantified. You can have reactions - a snide remark from a party member, a dressing-down from the local lord of the land, effusive praise from the clergy of a particular deity, or be outright attacked - and for the most part they should be predictable, with only the rare gotchas. Reputation can act as a sort of latitude from your out-of-character actions, a favour mechanic of some sort. You could commit a capital crime and be pardoned, or be given the benefit of the doubt when trying to tell a bald-faced lie. The examples may be a bit too specific, but going back, the broad idea is that it'd be a modifier to future reactions with a given entity which can modify the outcome of a given decision outright.