nikolokolus

The ONLY minigame I ever played and somewhat enjoyed was the psuedo Magic card game in the Might and Magic VII game ... everything else? Feh. In general, you can consult Michael Scott above for my feelings on mini-games.

It's a matter of 'identity', not libido. Although those things naturally occur together most of the time, I think. I believe many aspects of the above you listed can be incorporated well in a fictional setting. But getting down to the NPC interactions becomes very granular and complex if we're after a sort of realism, perhaps well beyond what is feasible in the programming (ROI). That is up to Obsidian. For example, considering LGBT, LGB people easily fit in and their proclivities are private--it would only come up in highly private situations limited to a few NPCs at most. But transgender is different. If someone asked to be represented as 'publicly' transgender (obvious or suspicious to observers), then that immediately throws a wrench in NPC interaction design, unless the world itself is designed to not care--and then some may still complain that there should be a reaction. If there is realistic representation there, then that would mean awkwardness and sometimes outright hostility; I can't imagine why anyone would want this in a game they're role-playing. I guess that's sort of my point. I couldn't give a damn if somebody is gay, bi or transgender (and living Portland, OR I know or am friends with some of these people) but I'm mainly concerned about the practicality of implementing all of these design decisions and the amount of branching dialogue that would need to be created in order to integrate this stuff in a meaningful way, so it doesn't feel tacked on or artificial. Bottom line, is that this game is going to have a tight enough budget as it stands, adding features like this will take time and resources that I just don't see this project having in abundance. I would hate to see the game suffer for trying to include too much somewhat superfluous stuff in attempt to appease everybody.

Impossible odds are good. However, I imagine there will be a few people who will just assume they are meant to fight anything that comes their way and if they aren't meant to beat an encounter will probably wait for the scripted cutscene to whisk them away from mortal danger ... I wonder how many times they will die, reload and repeat before they get the hint to flee?

One last thought. What is this obsession with gender and sexuality in RPGs? Is adding a transgender option or the ability to boink all of your companions really going to enhance the story? If the devs spent a ton of time focused on making sure that every creed, religion and proclivity is included in the game, wouldn't that just be time spent away from polishing the story and the actual gameplay? I mean this is going to be a game after all right?

Yup, narration with some really evocative art sounds great to me. There's just something about Ron Perlman and those stills in Fallout in the opening sequence that still haunt me ...

Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. Most of the language in the tiers implies that you get everything at Tier X and everything else below it ... with the addition of the digital only stuff, it sort of contradicts that logic. I saw Feargus post something in the comments on the kickstarter page yesterday, where he said they need to have the people that run kickstarter actually edit the wording, maybe that will happen sometime today?

I don't see how it can be given that the D&D license for interactive games is exclusively held by another company ... besides let's be frank, the rules never really lent themselves all that well to cRPGs, unless it was a turn-based game like ToEE. All indications are that the devs will create their own ruleset customized for P:E

The volume of the writing is less important to me than the actual quality and depth of the prose. So "epic" doesn't mean it needs to be War and Peace. Since we know some of the main developers and we know they do great work, I think it's somewhat of a false choice to assume that you have to pick between memorable battles and a deep combat system and deep, affective writing.

I'm OK with puzzles and traps that are deadly, but they shouldn't be a choke point in the main story. That is, they should be surmountable with mundane means for those that despise them, but it's not a bad idea to have a greater reward for those people who want to take the time to solve it. For example think of a side chamber in a dungeon with a nasty trap/puzzle with a fantastical artifact waiting for the player who can suss it out, but if the player can't, they are free to move on and leave it alone.

Use your imagination. I'm fairly certain there won't be hard statements in the game that you are or are not what you think you are regarding this. This brings up an interesting point for me. Are role-playing games for projecting your own persona, essentially playing yourself in a game, or are they for assuming other roles, basically play acting? I know the answer is personal and there is no right or wrong way to satisfy it, but for myself I prefer to assume personas and characters that aren't just projections of my own ego and id, that's usually half the fun for me.

Mostly because they're already operating on a shoestring budget, so regardless of how "easy" it is to code a port to a tablet OS, it still takes programming and resources to make it happen. Who knows, maybe they'll push 5 or 6 million in their kickstarter effort and adding mobile OS support will become a viable option, but diluting their time and resources at their current funding level (or even projected funding level) isn't just as simple as saying "why not." To get mobile support post release, I'm guessing they would need to generate some pretty beefy sales and then they'd probably contract with a company that has experience in mobile OS games and let them do the port ... but they'd need to see a pretty clear cut demand for such support.

Continuing on after the "ending" of a game almost always comes down to the type of game you are playing. In games that Bethesda makes (typically) the whole point is a free roaming, sandbox with the main plot sometimes secondary or even superfluous to actually playing the game -- they're almost like single player MMOs -- so having the main story end is much the same as finishing a really long side-quest. When it's over you can go back to what the game was designed for in the first place, which is dungeon delving and fighting hordes of bandits/raiders/etc. In a story based RPG, where the whole point of the game is progressing the plot and exploration is a secondary goal of gameplay, then it usually feels awfully anti-climatic to have the hero get to the end, watch the credits roll and then get popped back into the scene of the last battle, accompanied by a hollowed out empty feeling of "Now what?" Can anybody really imagine Baldur's Gate continuing on after the credits rolled? Blech.

My main problem is that I'm not really sure what you're talking about ... If you donated to the kickstarter you can pick one of the DRM free bundles and get your key from GOG.com. If you pick the steam bundle, or boxed game then that's also a choice, nobody is being forced to use the Steam version. The best Obsidian can do is offer choice and they've done that, it's up the consumer to pick the choice that they like best, but you shouldn't have access to multiple game keys unless you pay for it.

The world should breathe, by that I mean shops should have hours, people should sleep, there should be incentives to rent a room at an inn and the world should change even withot player action and also because of it. Tall order perhaps, but it would really help with immersion for me.

I know this will be a minority opinion but I'd love some Tony Di'terlizzi

Im all for dragons just as long as they spawn every hour or so and we can absorb their souls and convert that into psuedo magical powers...

The secret fear of middlemen and hacks everywhere.

Interesting conversation ... I'm also fairly certain that some of you are sociopaths and Flying Spaghetti Monster save us should you ever attain any sort of political power ...

Do they really need 80 thousand beta testers? I get it that some people want early access, but something tells me that trying track that many people would be sort of counter-productive for the actual purpose of a beta test? Maybe I'm wrong.

For this game I don't really care, but as an artist who used to spend hours drawing character portraits for myself and other players in my old PnP group in high school, I can understand the impulse to have full customization of avatars. Maybe the compromise is having a larger "paper doll" in the inventory screen where people can really spend some time tweaking things to their heart's content. However, It's one of those things that I think should be reserved for stretch goals after they can fund a fully realized game from a story standpoint. I'd be sorely disappointed if we missed out on story depth just so people could play with their dolly.

As long as merchants are available, loot is plentiful(ish), and the game has a good balanced economy I'd say I'm in favor of none of the above. These things work OK in MMOs, but aside from the odd quest of reforging Narsil, or the broken bagpipes of balderdash, I'd prefer resources be spent by the devs on things that flesh out the story, characters and world. That said, I think having item degredation or breakage and a repair/smithing mechanic can work if handled carefully.

Arrows and bolts should be finite for sure, special materials add a nice touch and some complexity to combat, and I don't mind archers in close range as long as there is some perk/skill/proficiency/feat justification for it.

There should be one achievement -- and it comes when the credits roll after beating the damned game. Gamer points, or Steam Achievements or whatever are completely immersion breaking for me in a game like this.

Reach seems incredibly difficult to code and we have no idea what the limitations or capabilities of the game engine might be. But I do like the idea of weapons that are used to clear an area; two handed swords were frequently employed in historic battles for just this purpose. I also like the idea of sword-breakers, saps, and other types of defensive or non-lethal weapons making an appearance in the game.

Actually I'm guessing the Devs have a pretty good idea about how many man hours it takes to create, balance and play-test a companion, a character class or a new race and then fully integrate that new race, class or companion into the game world. They have to write dialogues and determine how they interact with other races, cultures, etc. and fit them into the story in a meaningful way. Every addition -- if they want to do it right -- costs a lot of time in writing and balancing. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that with a 20-30 person team (operating on a budget of what will probably be somewhere between $80K and $90K a month, between now and their tentative release date of April 2014) that it could take $200K to create all of the things they're shooting for in their stretch goals. As details emerge in the next few weeks, I'm guessing these somewhat general goals will see some refinement, but the framework seems solid.