nikolokolus

I only want kill moves if we can have ridiculously large pauldrons, 12 foot long great swords and eyes eight sizes too large

Of course it would be trivial to implement it, but more importantly, would it make the game more fun? I really doubt it would for me.

I'm not sure how anybody can come up with an experience table without knowing what the actual value of a single experience point is. Having said that, if the goal is a geometric increase in the amount of experience needed to go up a level, or generally "slow levelling" then I'm fine with that. Mostly it just comes down to what kind of story the devs want to tell and whether or not they see this an episodic game, with the first chapter being P:E with subsequent games being true, linear sequels (Like BG 1 and BG 2). In the larger picture, experience points are such an abstraction, that it's completely pointless to talk about them until you know the actual mechanics of the game.

I think care needs to be taken when adding features that are meant to be "realistic" ends up slowing the game down or making it un-fun for a large segment of the game's audience. In theory, I guess this could be a workable mechanic, but in practice I'm afraid it would just be more headache and aggravation than anything. The thing to remember is that it's meant to be a game that is focused on tactical party-based combat with deep storytelling; how does fiddling with looted clothes and armor enhance those goals? To me it starts to become more of a sim than an RPG at some point. Who knows, maybe there could be racial types for armor and clothes and that would work OK?

I want a well-written, fun-to-play game, that rewards cleverness, punishes stupidity and keeps me engrossed for about 40 to 80 hours on a single play-through, but that also has enough twists and turns that I'll want to play it in an entirely different way a couple or three more times ... and then I'll play it the first way again just for fun. Is that too much to ask?

True artifacts and relics should be super rare ... like one or two that you can possess in a single playthrough. That doesn't mean that the devs should only create two artifacts or relics period, but getting one should make others mutually exclusive. Not only would this make items feel more special, but it could increase replay-ability.

I would say "understated" ... That bodes well for me when it comes to the tone they are hoping to set for the gameworld.

Pretty close to wakey, wakey time across the pond.

Many Europeans / South Americans would love to play this game but will refuse to pledge if the game is not translated. It was a smart move. Just wait until tommorow when Europe is awake... you will change your mind about the translations. I sort of liken it to a very, very savvy investment: Spend 200K and potentially raise 1 million in capital. Not a bad ROI.

Where's the patience? Take a deep breath, have stiff drink, smoke a spliff, whatever. Chillax

Ezactamundo

They need something special to identify them, like a wizard, a loremaster or a scroll, but conversely I don't want them to be un-equipable (sic) either. How else are cursed items going to graft themselves to the player's hand?

I'll be honest Imoen's voice was kind of grating after awhile. To each their own I guess.

Sure, but that's just, like, dialogue-writing 101? People shouldn't go out of character to give exposition. It happens frequently in games if I recall.

New Vegas is chock-full of exposition. Hell, one of the most apropos criticism of its writing I've heard is that it relies too much of telling instead of showing. Which is also one of the reasons I'm not too worried about a lack of exposition in Project Eternity: he might say that, but so far, none of his work shows such a design philosophy. The thing with New Vegas is that everything you heard was clearly coming through the filter of the character. "Truths" were never hard and you always got the sense that people were giving their opinion as much as they were conveying "facts." This seems to be the crux of what Mr. Sawyer was getting at. Not cutting dialogue down to the tersest amount of prose possible. Still not answers the mentioned parts of his first comment I've pointed out. If the lying thing was the only thing he was getting at he wouldn't have said as much. It'd be nice to have another statement regarding the whole though. We're kinda repeating the same thing over and over. Again, I'm not saying every NPC has to tell the truth. Not what my first post is about at all. I'm not talking about lying per se, I'm talking about the notion of dialogue furthering character development vs. using NPCs as a walking encyclopedia -- which is what they frequently amount to in some cRPGs -- and that was my take away from Josh's comments. I just feel as though we're getting a little bogged down in the minutiae here. After reading his comments, I don't believe Mr. Sawyer, Mr. Avellone and co. wish to write a terse, dumbed down RPG.

That reminds me that very much depends on perspective. I see nothing dark about assisted suicides and making food of humans, first because I believe in unalienable right of people for choosing death, which in itself is not dark, and second because why not? I see no difference between eating a cow and eating a human. How "evolved" of you ...

New Vegas is chock-full of exposition. Hell, one of the most apropos criticism of its writing I've heard is that it relies too much of telling instead of showing. Which is also one of the reasons I'm not too worried about a lack of exposition in Project Eternity: he might say that, but so far, none of his work shows such a design philosophy. The thing with New Vegas is that everything you heard was clearly coming through the filter of the character. "Truths" were never hard and you always got the sense that people were giving their opinion as much as they were conveying "facts." This seems to be the crux of what Mr. Sawyer was getting at. Not cutting dialogue down to the tersest amount of prose possible.

I don't know, maybe your fears aren't unfounded, but personally I see it as a tempest in a teapot ... especially when it seems as if Josh is arguing for deeper and richer conversations and interactions and the player having to spend more time deciding if what he's hearing is true or not or at least accurate or not.

Items wearing out makes for a nice gold-sink and a way to make a repair skill useful, but as somebody else mentioned above, with a party of six that's a lot of micromanagement and as another said, repair and maintenance should be abstracted, not something that you should be spending hours fussing over. I can't think of a single PnP game I ever played where equipment care and maintenance ever took up more than a minute of game time and it never hurt my immersion in a game that didn't have it.

I have every confidence that the devs aren't going to go "dark" just to be edgy.

I always thought the worst parts of the dialogue in games is when you talked to an NPC and milked them for information, knowing that everything they told you was completely true. There are better ways to convey important story-related information without resorting to expository text in conversations with passers-by. or even central story characters. So in that respect I do agree with Mr. Sawyer. Do people really believe that the dialogue is going to be stripped out or dumbed down in this game based off that single comment in a discussion forum? Was Fallout New Vegas hindered by the lack of exposition?

I think some of you people need to read the full text of that discussion in the somethingawful forum. Maybe Sawyer isn't presenting his views very well in the snippet above, but he goes on to say the following: [JE Sawyer]: Trudi is the main person who tells you this (often in the process of talking about where Benny et al. came from) and she does contextualize it/give it her own spin. EDIT: Lore is very valuable; I just think it's more valuable (and entertaining) when it's communicated with a voice and an opinion from the author/speaker. This can happen in a book, a note, a poem, a conversation, whatever. I just think that designers are wasting opportunities when they present information "straight". I think what he's trying to get at is that characters in the world won't just dispense useful information, they'll put their own spin on it and because of that personalized spin you'll get a sense of their character ... hell, you might even get wrong information or flat out lies depending on the speaker.

I see that the word "Cult" has raised quite a few misconception. Some of you are thinking this is a typical bwa-ha-ha, I am a member of an evil Cult that is wanted by the authorities and hated by everybody. The Cult based on my idea is more or less like a secretive religious organization that does a lot of good work on the surface. If it's based on such a scenario, your decision is going straight into the Cult HQ and start massacring their followers will have grave repercussions. What's your justification? Without any investigation, you are just going to start killing old men, women, children also just because they happen to be in the Cult HQ? Perhaps, let me change the Cult HQ to say, a Learning Centre or a Temple. Are you going to kill them just because they happen to have different beliefs? I think the authorities will also come after you if you do anything like that. What you describe is not a cult....by definition the group has to be harmful to others(human sacrifices, violence towards outsiders, brutal initiations or other such things) to actually be categorized as such. As I said the word has been misused for all kinds of things from different religious groups to small and dedicated niche groups of fans but those are NOT cults though they may fancy themselves as such. Uh ... nope ... didn't find that bit: http://dictionary.re...com/browse/cult

No, none of this at all really. I use both Linux/Unix and Windows environments for work and play and my preferred OS is *nix and if games were more readily available for it out of the box (instead of having to resort to Wine) I would probably use it almost exclusively. The real drawback is the amount of market share it has and how many software and hardware vendors have been willing to support it and that emulation isn't always reliable. That said, I'm building a new PC this winter and I'm seriously thinking about just going with a Linux distro and skipping windows 8 when it comes out -- and Obsidian's announcement of a native Linux port (along with a few other factors) is helping tilt me toward that decision. But, Hell if it sucks so much why is Valve releasing a steam client for the platform? Must be because Linux is just for work and academics right?

Assuming the three major archtypes will be warrior, wizard and rogue and each of those can be specialized in some way, then other classes should be distinct, sort of like the ascetic monk from the original 1st ed. AD&D or the ultimate jack-of-all trades Bard (not based on the rogue archetype in D&D but more in line with the historic warrior-poet, scholars from Celtic history.