Humanoid

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.

I can't see it worth the effort now, but from what little I know, future console generations seem to be heading in a direction that is somewhat converging with the PC, possibly making a future port an easier proposition than what's possible with the current generation. It may or may not pan out, but I see the direction as a good one, to the point where a console may eventually be, more or less, a mass-produced mini-ITX PC (albeit running a different OS). I hear stuff like going back to x86 architecture and even implementing DirectX on consoles - again from my limited knowledge of console design - so in future it may well be very much a viable decision.

Presuming the character development is based on levels (is there any information on this even out), I think that, correctly approached, you can have the effective level cap without having to actually implement one. If you design the game without any infinitely respawning or repeatable sources of experience, no further action is required. I'm a firm believer in decoupling kills from experience, except in the case of unique plot-based foes (in which case they'd be functionally identical to quests anyway). Another thing that often leads to level inflation is excessive XP awarded from optional side-quests. Perhaps the design could be calibrated such that side-quests award a fraction of what mainline quests do, and instead award other interesting things, like a slightly better version of the current level-relevant gear, unlock alternative means of completing an upcoming mainline quest, or even give purely aesthetic "fun" items. An additional benefit of this approach is that it'd be a lot easier to balance the mainline content without having to excessively scale it, since the levelling curve becomes a fair bit more predictable. All that factored in, the game should be able to be calibrated so players naturally fall into an expected, and fairly narrow level range, and like BG, one well short of what the character mechanics are capable of handling gracefully.

In an absolute vacuum, I'd absolutely be on the turn-based wagon. I the context of what is known about this game though, what I'd have to consider is turn-based player-character-only control versus RTwP full party control. Much as I love Jag and X-COM, I feel that full turn-based control of a large party would be somewhat overwhelming and overshadow the roleplaying aspects of the game (the bit I really care about). And well, I don't trust present levels of AI to not spray me in the back with an SMG/triple crossbow. So yeah, for the moment I'm supportive of the current design, though as a disclaimer I will add that I've never been one to particularly enjoy to combat aspect in *any* RPG. I tend to leave it on easy or normal and just get through it to reach the next interesting decision point. I leave my tactical turn-based combat urges to, well, to tactical turn-based combat games.

Tangential, and going back a ways, but I liked UO's aesthetic option of a cloak/robe not being an alternative or form of armour, but just an option to have draped over your actual armor. Sure, I like "cool" looking gear, but in terms of gameworld design I'd prefer the heroes to be a bit more subtle outside of combat - a group of vagabonds and not some paladin in armour so shiny you could use it as a mirror. I'm not so 'hardcore' as to ask for armour to be gender/race specific, made to size, have varying levels of durability/quality and so forth, but I think it does add to immersion if a particular piece of gear looks more or less identical besides those scaling factors - after all, real world clothing, size issues aside, is functionally unisex. (The opposite would be the ridiculous shapeshifting sleepwear in New Vegas - not sure if it was in FO3 - which morphed into either pyjamas or a nightie depending on who equipped it)

The trainer idea is neat and certainly adds a bit of flavour - it doesn't have to be as specific as one trainer has one unique style, but more along the lines of regional, or school-based fashions. Think learning how to play football like a Brazilian or like an Englishman. I do think that breaking down dodge like that example is being overly specific though - but that may just me my preference towards simplicity poking out. I'm thinking more along the lines of abstracting dodge into a particular combat skill, say for instance swordsmanship. A trainer from one region may emphasise a defensive armour-and-shield technique, another towards a stylish fencing-esque agile fashion, and another may emphasise a reckless berserker style.

Probably a ceiling of four or five for mine, but, as I rambled on about in another recent post, designed such that smaller (not necessarily solo) parties are also catered for with a reasonably consistent difficulty curve, and are properly playtested as a valid, supported gameplay style. (As opposed to the IE games where soloing seemed more of a happy accident with certain dual/multi-class combinations than a design choice) Three for example is a fairly small party, but given the option is the one I'd go with on my personal playthrough, while still acknowledging that a majority will probably go for a larger, full-sized party. Something to keep in mind here is that a larger maximum party size may increase the pressure for the character designers to add to the quantity of potential party members at a potential loss of depth in each. Choosing four from say, ten potential members leaves much more room to develop each one than say, eight from a pool of twenty inconsistently realised ones.

My personal, somewhat idealistic preference would be to have a somewhat stripped down, relatively simplistic mechanics system - largely because my RP preference leans towards a more interaction-based, almost-adventure-like game. Torment for example, made very little use out of a significant proportion of the D&D ruleset, swathes of which may as well have not been implemented if not for the licence requirements. Ultima 7 was an RPG in which the player had to pay little, if any, attention to stats at all. That said however, I concede that such a system in the context of what we know about this particular game, may not be such a great fit. Specifically, elements such as the desire for tactical combat and interesting party member ability diversity can be at odds with a very simplified system. So to that end, I guess my rambling is a bit off-topic. For this game, I'm thinking something halfway between SPECIAL and Vampire - keep the separation between the hard-to-raise core stats and emphasise development in more specific vocational skills from the former; and the task-based experience gain and background-weighted skill selection of the latter. The last point in particular is particularly relevant in that it sort of simulates a class-based system to ensure NPC diversity in a party-based game, without being a rigid straitjacket and forcing you to select party members based not on their character but on the meta-level of their class. *cough* Wynne

'Tis no time to rest! At the rate the counter is going, you're going to have to come up with a few stretch goals before the day is through.

I'd lean towards having each of the relevant NPCs having their own hangout, and the subtle suggestion that while not with you, they're doing their own thing and not just standing there. Even if not explored at all, it'd at least avoid the "gaining XP while drinking the house down" issue. Which is to suggest yes, I would hate to have to micromanage companion XP. Hopefully the concept of grinding XP is knocked on the head early too, I'm in favour of mook slaughter awarding no XP. I suppose unique, non-random spawning foes could do so, but for the most part I'd leave it linked to quests. Veering off on a tangent though - what I consider more important than any of the above points is party size scaling. Above all I'd love a system where I'm neither be rewarded nor overly punished for carrying a smaller than "standard" party. Not saying the challenge needs to be exactly balanced for each permutation, but at least checked for each size to make sure it's reasonably doable without having to game the mechanics too much. In IWD2 for example, my first and only complete playthrough started with only two characters, which was good for a little over half of the game - at which point the scaling somewhat broke and I ended up adding a third, and later, fourth member to finish the game without having to rely on excessive AI and geometry "exploits". I've no doubt that it wasn't impossible, sure, but what I'm asking for is a relatively steady difficulty curve when attempting to tackle the game in this fashion.

It'd be nice if we had a medieval-era RPG without any of the fantasy elements at all. I'm mildly curious to strip something already pretty bare like Darklands and do away with the supernatural element altogether. The closest comparison would be post-apocalyptic RPGs I guess, in that it would, aesthetics aside, share elements like sparse human civilisation, mundane mechanical gadgets, limited character accountability, etc.

Dragon Age wasn't even that different from is your run-of-the-mill fantasy setting. It differs from standard Tolkien stuff about as much as any other derivative setting that's popped up over the decades does. Which mainly involves renaming the various monsters.

It's about as believable as them making an RPG based on South Park. Oh.

I'd take the old established setting as a pragmatic decision, assuming the licencing costs aren't prohibitive, purely as an effort-saving measure. Perhaps exceptions can be made, say for example adapting the lead writer's homebrew tabletop setting, but for the most part I'd prefer to see development effort remain focused on the narrower micro perspective of whatever's relevant to the player.

Trying to keep a lid on the anticipation but it's danged hard - one look at that (concept?) art posted and there's no need for any description whatsoever to immediately think Privateer, New Detroit. The downside of course is that any info that follows can't make a strong an impression and each subsequent shot might reduce the chance of it being a new Privateer game (whether with the title or without - EA certainly still own WC but maybe Privateer is considered a generic term, like Armada and Academy? P2 was released without the WC prefix anyway since it was for all intents and purposes developed as an independent gameworld). Random observations: - Tom Wilson spilled the beans a full year ago about his involvement in Chris' new project, whether this means reprising the role of Maniac is, to my mind, maybe about 50:50. - Ginger Lynn (who has recently been active on the wcnews forums) on the other hand knows nothing of it, however. - Chris has as recently as last month spoken of the difficulty in EA's continuing ownership of the WC rights. - That massive carrier concept art is much more complex than WC capital ships have been in the past (disregarding WC3/4's simplified designs due to technical limitations), including the Tiger's Claw/Concordia/Midway. - The render of the capital ship bridge (assuming it is as such) would suggest a more Confed/general military oriented title though, over Privateer's more 'dingy' technology. - Croshaw system means nothing to me. Possible plot point about undiscovered jump out of Sol?

I would suggest a mod that allows fast travel from indoors - just checking the one I use, unfortunately it's been discontinued due to compatibility issues - but there are plenty of them out there. Used it specifically to avoid the multiple loading screens involved in just getting in and out of the Thieves' Guild area, really. Another one to save frustration is something to raise the pickpocketing chance cap - the default is that there's always a 10% minimum chance of failure which is kind of silly. Another big convenience one is Glowing Ore Veins, but on reflection I'd suggest just not bothering to mine ore at all, rather pointless timesink. And finally, if playing a mage, consider grabbing a mod that allows damage spells to scale, as I believe (never actually played a mage) that the spells by default do static damage which gets obsoleted very very quickly.

Also playing KoDP, which I'd never heard of until the excited comments of certain people in the GoG thread here last week. Good little pickup and probably the best $6 I'll spend this year - racked up about a dozen hours over the weekend - but I think the claims about its replayability are somewhat overstated. I've played three spectacular failures to start, then won a short game. Started a long game to play over the coming week, but really, it doesn't feel all that different and I'm mostly retreading ground covered by the first win - even as I try to play differently (i.e. a lot more antagonistically for this long game). I guess my chief complaint is that it's all rather heavily railroaded. I understand it's a deliberate design decision to keep the story development roughly within the confines of the game setting, but it's not great in terms of replayability. I feel that adding a few different victory conditions would add a fair bit to it. As it stands, you freeform a bit until you're successful enough to enter the end-game plot thread, then follow that to the end rather rigidly. Specifically, it's the way there are certain hard limits to the way you develop. Want to play an expansionistic game? Game says no, you must split off part of your clan or your people will whine. Want to build a massive army to crush all your neighbouring clans underfoot? Game says no, your warriors don't like having so many fellows. Want to rid yourself of the threat of neighbouring non-human civilisations? Game says no, instant game-over screen. Heroquests, RNG gotchas aside, are also very predictable - it would have been nice to maybe have a random subset of each myth played out each time instead of doing the same abridged full myth everytime. Anyway, I emphasise that I think this is a very good game, and that I understand their reasons for doing what they did (after doing some basic research about the setting - I knew nothing about RuneQuest), but I also see why it's confined to a very small niche and why it's mostly found success as a casual mobile game.

Heh, just replaced a mouse too, but in my case it's because I got sick of trying to manoeuvre a mouse around a coffee table, so I picked up a Logitech M570 wireless trackball. It's a known quantity for me since I already have the corded version that I use for my notebook, but still, it's a market that I wished had more options. I'm also a big fan of Logitech's free spinning Revolution scroll wheels, so I hope that someday that gets implemented in a trackball. Also bought a 4-drive HDD enclosure for my HTPC which was running out of space (12GB filed to the brim), but can't bring myself to buy enough drives at current prices to fill it up, so at the moment I only have one 2TB disk in it which I had spare (from back when they were <$70 a piece *sigh*). It's a Vantec NexStar HX4, and while the chassis is fine, the stock fan it uses is a horrible grindy thing - not sure if it's faulty or just crap. Luckily it seems to be a simple two-pin 80mm case fan, so it should be fairly simple to replace - except all the spare fans I have are 120mm. Blergh. Guess I'll try oiling the hub for now. Oh, had to add a USB 3.0 expansion card to the HTPC as well to run the thing properly since in my spectacular lack of foresight a couple years back I thought that saving $20 on the motherboard in exchange for USB 2.0 only ports was a good deal. 4-port "Astrotek" (looks generic to me), seems to be working fine. Doesn't require an extra molex plug which is nice.

Oh absolutely, did a quick count and of my ~120 titles owned on GoG (counting bundles as one item), I own about 70 of them in hardcopy somewhere - most of which are still in my parents' garage. And yeah, NOLF2 is still the most recent FPS I've played, unless DXHR counts as one.

Not necessarily after good games, but there's stuff I'm interested in as a sort of historical curiosity, e.g. - The more obscure Sim-games, like SimIsle, SimFarm, SimAnt and er, SimHealth. - Ultima 8: The Lost Vale expansion, which was completed but then cancelled with no known copies surviving. Then there's the more obvious stuff like a fair chunk of LucasArts' adventures, late 80s to mid 90s flight sims, some ignored Microprose titles like Covert Action, Grand Prix 2, Transport Tycoon. Privateer 2. On a more mundane level, GoG ought to work on finishing up the various titles they have that are still missing their expansions.

You're not the last, I'm going through NV veeeery slowly, about 2-4 hours a week, and I haven't started any of the DLC, none of which I had on my first playthrough. About level 12 now I think, supposedly too low to start them, but I hear the recommended levels for the new stuff is very conservative - so I'm not sure whether to go on with the post-reaching Vegas drudgery (a bit of an exaggeration, but the weaker half of the game for mine) or take the plunge. Not playing anything else either, knocking off one or two movies a week from my couple-hundred title long backlog. Did pledge a hundred to the Broken Sword Kickstarter though, and I imagine the QFG one will be up soonish.

Not that I'm not delighted, but I was under the impression that the game was just about done already given the hints we got last year and earlier this year. Given that, I'm somewhat surprised to see they've had to go to Kickstarter to get it finished. Hope it doesn't mean they ran into trouble. It was also "known" that Revolution was working on another (new IP allegedly) adventure at the same time, but that it wasn't Beneath a Steel Sky.

EDIT: Just for fun, since I've got my game designer wannabe cap on, an example of how the original scenario could play out if you shift the scale to be external to the character, i.e. reputation-based. For the sake of this scenario, I will call the system the nasty/nice system. Some outcomes are straightforward, and not all necessarily modify your reputation. Now the way the above is constructed is deliberately constructed to remain a single-step depth decision tree modified by a single variable. Given the resources, some options can lead down interesting and perhaps unexpected paths. Restating: