nikolokolus

It's comforting to know that this topic won't go away.

But you don't look like a troll. Do you eat goats? Nah, just small children.

Nikolokolus, bridge troll of the order reporting for duty

Maybe the big ass goal should be the answer to the following question: If money were no object, what would you do to make this the best old-school RPG ever? OK, now subtract whatever number puts you at 3.5 million and scale your ambitions accordingly ;-)

A seaborn adventure is interesting, but would maybe hit a little too close to the tack Bioware used in BG2? Personally I'd like to see non-lethal/non-standard weapons and tactics (nets, saps, whips, bolas, garrotes, etc.) announced as a stretch goal for making the combat more varied and rich. I say stretchgoal, because i think its likely that this feature would take a lot of careful balancing and testing which could use up some significant resources. As for the questions being asked. The big ass goals thing is tough for me answer, but i love the ever growing dungeon; really a brilliant idea. Beyond that I also appreciate the measured and careful approach.

Also remember that paypal drops in about 3 days. In the words of the dearly departed Douglas Adams, "Don't Panic"

It's funny, I pop over to the kickstarter page maybe once or twice a day, just to see what people are posting in the comments section and I get the feeling that many people are camped out watching the money counter obsessively and when it's not ticking over as rapidly as they think it should/could be, comments about bigger and more grandiose stretch goals and more demands for more updates start to pour in. From what little I know, it seems like most kickstarters have this kind of lull in the action, and as the last few days approach there seems to be a rush to pledge or up an initial pledge. Why don't we wait until the campaign is over until we write the post-mortem?

I'll be honest, I kind of want gods to be aloof in this game ... in fact it would be interesting to see if questions of their existence could be raised by certain factions within the game world. There's just something a little bit off-putting when interacting with divine entities is guaranteed and almost reduced to the mundane.

Might and Magic VI: Mandate of Heaven, just a huge game Deus Ex: first non-fantasy RPG I ever played. Just loved the freedom Divine Divinity was a terrible name for a game and a great action RPG Arx Fatalis was fun for the first half of the game before it took a poop in its second act.

With chagrin, I still remember trying to run a game after TSR released Unearthed Arcana and how there was always one person in the group that wanted some Drow twink and could never understand why his character was constantly reviled and being hunted down by the pitchfork carrying locals.

The notion of absolute good and evil in roleplaying games is maybe the single worst contribution Gary Gygax made to the genre. It's so reductive and turns characters into caricatures of themselves.

I think Obsidian should focus on their core market instead of trying to drum up interest with an ad campaign where the return on investment seems tenuous at best.

I only want drow if they dual wield scimitars and have a pet panther. That would epic.

No thanks

Two words: Spell components For really powerful stuff, make material components a part of the deal. You can still do vancian or mana pools or cooldowns (blech!) for more the mechanics of casting spells, but there should be classes of spells that consume valuable and/or rare physical matter, which if balanced correctly might make players conserve such magic for really important fights and have to be more strategic and thoughtful.

More than my personal preferences for a particular weapon or armor piece or whatever, the biggest hook for me with an artifact is rich lore ... it also doesn't hurt if the artifact has some seriously nasty side effects to go with a high level of power. Some of my most vivid memories of PnP games of yesteryear came from a campaign that centered around the hand and eye of Vecna.

They have games like that already ... they're called real-time strategy games.

Lookin' good

I sure hope so.

Really? Obsidian? Hmmmm ... well I guess they did have two homosexual characters in New Vegas, but they hardly beat you about the head with it. Weird.

Where's the option for a text based Zork clone?

For the best combat go with one of the Icewind Dale games, For the best story, Planescape is tough to beat For the most freedom play Arcanum ... no wait? Fallout? umm ... no Arcanum ... ummm For graphics play Temple of Elemental Evil For a little bit of everything play BG:2

In addition to all of the great ideas being presented herein, I'd also love to see unarmed combat and non-lethal weapons introduced. grappling, bolas, nets, saps, sword-breakers, etc. Being able to entangle, disarm, disable, tackle, block, stun, knockdown, blind and slow your enemy with melee characters as opposed to just AoE spells would be a great way to make combat feel more lively ... and talk about real tactical options, particularly if the enemy AI in the game takes advantage of all of these dirty tricks.

As long as the mechanics are clearly laid out and choices in front of me allow me to flesh out a concept I have in my head then it really doesn't matter to me. In general though, I don't like long narrative sequences and I don't need everything spelled out for me. NWN2's chargen was good and I still like the way Fallout and Arcanum did it. I don't know how that exactly fits in with the poll, but whatever.

You should watch Tim Cain's update released just a little while ago. They're not even sure if there will be multi-classing, which means they still are probably in the very early stages of designing the mechanics of classes and skills.