wanderon

As I recall one of the devs made a statement at some point to the effect that opening doors in one faction might well close some doors in another - I particularly like this idea for it's positive impact on replayability.

Eternal Obsidious (and the Ancient Poets)

^^ - I think in PE you will be able to just buy a few more verbosity points or give some extra points to your diplomat - this isn't Bethesda where you are going to have to skip rope and jump everywhere you go to max out your skip & jump skills ...

The questioner is so certain, and so certain based on . . . what? I share Sawyer's disbelief in the above quote. More and more people that think they know more about the game the Developers are making, than the Developers themselves, despite having next to no information on the game made public yet. This - exactly!

Looks like the winner is "I picked from the first question"

And this saving & reloading is a problem to whom in a single player game?

@ Lephys - and do you actually think there is even a remote chance that a well seasoned group of devs like Obsidians would even remotely consider making a tactical retreat available that simply required a single mouse click or do you just need to excercise your verbosity skills on a regular basis...

I'm sorry I just can't see the "fun" involved in spending a huge chunk of dev resources in the creation of a robust and dynamicly operating economy - next we will have a merchant class and banker class and god forbid a politician class - lets stick to having some resources to find and some merchants to sell/buy from and leave it to that and spend the resources on things that are actually fun like encounters, exploration, dynamic NPCs, great companions, awesome enemies...

I'm not seeing why there needs to be special mechanics tied to running away if you are within range of enemies that have already turned hostile they will follow you for a time and both you and they should be able to use any of the game mechanics provided for use in a combat situation - if you are fast enough and or sneaky enough you may be able to get out of sight before dying or you may not depending on what sorts of enemies you are facing - or actually not facing - I don't think this needs to have any special little "quirks" added in just to make it more difficult to be succesful in order to please the folks who want you fight to the death in every battle - it's not like you are taking away that option so why take away the option to retreat and/or make it more difficult.

Frankly I don't see the issue people seem to have with the party resting after a battle to regain health, spells etc. isn't that exactly what a group of wounded people who's energies have been sapped by a brutal battle SHOULD be doing? Is it just the idea that the mechanic seems too simple or that it doesn't require much player input to be accomplished? I thought the IE games did a good job of making it dangerous to rest in the wild thus forcing a wounded party to make a choice between attempting to rest where they are or hiking off to a more civilized or safe area.

My point was that it appears in a higher degree on the internet than possibly any other place except of course areas of political discourse...

Optional puzzles are my favorite...

It should be noted that running away doesn't need to be a win/win for the player it may often come with a cost - a good example occured recently in BG:EE in a game I was playing with no reloads allowed. The party was pretty banged up and we headed to an area where we could rest up and sell our loot but were ambushed along the way by a large group of undead - worried the whole party might fall if we stayed to fight I beat a hasty retreat to the border but alas both Xzar & Monty died along the way and no one was near enough to grab their stuff and since it was an ambush between maps there would be no going back once we left. It wasn't until I had raised them that I realized Xzar had lost what is probably the best mage ring in the game with no way to replace it. Still we were alive to fight another day and had we stayed and fought we probably would not have been...

People Exaggerate? Surely not on the internet?

I don't think a "blurb" should appear necessarily altho I think it's certainly possible that parties with rangers or druids might have access to more information about certain enemies than parties without them and I'm fairly open to how that information gets to them and when - it's been done with the tracking skill in other games - ID2 and NWN2 IIRC.

The option to flee is clearly superior to "just reload if you die".

And thats a good reason to include them and make them good!

Put me down as one who likes the whole BG1 exploration feel vs the more streamlined BG2 and forward feel. Been playing BG:EE since Sunday and other than the much smaller mobs I'm still into the wide open spaces with the occasional encounter one often has to search out to find. I'm also OK with the slow walking speed of BG1 and would suggest PE offer multiple walk/run speed options if possible. I really really prefer relatively large open mapped game areas (preferably with a fog of war to determine where you have or have not been) that need to be explored to discover whats there whether it is treasure, ingredients, or encounters vs a series of pathways where everything you can interact with is on the path.

BG:EE added user options for the journal - I like the concept but suspect many gamers are going to be too focused on playing to stop and make detailed journal entries - I've logged a lot of hours in the game already and haven't used the journal at all yet - but then I am already very familiar with the game and pretty much all it's nuances. I guess the point I am trying to make is while I definately think a journal (and maps) should have user options for them - I think the auto journal entries should still be very robust and if the player has options as to how they want the information in them displayed all the better.

Great update! I'm loving this!

I found Watchers Keep sort of average as well - sometimes I went in early in BG2 just far enough to get the choice items on the first floor and left the rest for "later" which sometimes never came. Of course the Mega Dungeon in PE is definately not an add-on - it's right there in black and white at the start of production so I am confident the devs will find ways to make it memorable and I suspect at least some of it if not all may tie directly into the main story in some manner. I just don't see a 15 level dungeon as an "optional" side quest myself - that would truly be a waste of resources and would almost certainly make balancing the game a nightmare.

BaK.. is that Betrayal at Krondor? or something else? I couldn't get into BaK but played the hell out of RTK (Return to Krondor) which was essentially my first CRPG - if you don't count Zork...

I was thinking about reloading BG back in September and dreading the process of figuring out what mods in what order and not happy with all the changes from the original just to play in higher resolutions when I first heard about BG:EE and I preordered it on the spot. The only bad news is I'll be at work when it releases tomorrow and probably wont get more than a couple hours to fool with it until Sunday - after that I'm hoping it will fill the void until PE releases...

Frankly I am having a hard time taking the OP seriously on this and wonder if he isn't really just putting us all on to see how silly things get. If not then as I understand it you want a special difficulty level that makes the game harder by restricting saves in some manner to make it more difficult to save and reload when things get screwed up - right??? But wait - this doesn't actually make the game harder - it just makes it longer - becuase you may have to go back further to load after you screw up - but you still have to play it until you get it right from one save to the next (at the same difficulty level as the first time but now you know whats going on so it should be easier) and you can still go back to some save point and replay to make a different dialoge choice too. So in effect it just makes saving more annoying it doesn't really make the game harder at all - especially for the folks who want to play that higher difficulty and NOT have their save mechanism messed with. I'd suggest making a poll - if you can get enough support I'm sure the dev's will be happy to make a Hormalakh difficulty level - even if they don't surely there will be some modders out there that can help you (and all the others out there who want to see this) bring this to reality... (or not)

We? Have you become a spokesman for a particular group? The Theurgist Consortium perhaps as thats the only title visible? Glad to see you are keeping track and also that you understand that of the three possible options: 1) For them 2)Against them 3)Undecided I am indeed against the use of minigames - obviously the one argument you were able to discern from my numerous posts was enough to get my point across to you. Thanks for sharing.