Hassat Hunter

Monsters don't give XP per kill in PE... which immediately eliminates many of the problems you described. Besides that PE will obviously be made with a party in mind. I don't think they should design it with making it viable for a single character, as that would mostly gimp encounters. However more power to the solo player, as it will become a real challenge, and you have some bragging rights (of feel-good-for-yourself) rights if you completed it succesfully...

Combat in Arkham City on the PC was fun. However the game suffered severly from "too much respawn", and thus too much re-doing the same combat with thugs you defeated before, and before, and before, and before. Which got annoying and tedious before the game ends already. Almost makes you wish Batman would kill his victims, so they stay down, and you don't need to club their head 20 times in the same game...

Please don't. While I personally wouldn't mind downloading 50 Gig, I can see it being an issue (although maybe not anymore in 2014/2015). However resorting to 'solutions' by making a fragmented system of pre-fab and infinitely re-used content, no thanks. I don't want a second DA2, I want the beatiful handcrafted areas of BG2 and PS:T.

Well, I don't trust online game reviewers, only my favorite mag. Which does like some games way more than me, but that's just a matter of taste. Yeah, Metacritic is horribly broken. Youtube did the thumbs up/down since no one voted 2,3,4 anyway, just 1 and 5. While there was a lot of complaining, it works far better than to hold on to the system currently in place. Metacritic is horribly broken anyway, with so many developers and publishers regarding it with too much interest.

Well, can't speak for Steam, but you don't need Origin for a disk based Collector's Edition. You just needed to log into your BioWare account (which is the same as an Origin account by now though, however no client is needed).

Not really. The choice is no longer bound to "getting more XP for doing X than Y", but rather how you get there, and what the results will be on the gameworld. Also it will make sure that no choice is 'better' than the other. Which then wouldn't be much of a choice at all.

A game a little harder is better than too easy because all classes get godlike powers to match an overpowered one.

Heh, still don't understand why so many people think the hotel is great... or creepy. Personally I found it rather boring and creepy, nope. The prostetic guy freaked me out though... as did the internet cafe (before the beasties overdid their welcome)... EDIT: Suppose spiritual stuff doesn't freak me out (hotel), so I feel not uneasy there. However real life freak stuff (snuff movie making, torture and betheft of freedom) do, since that's a lot more relatable, plausible, and hence... creepy.

That's... a very odd assumption. You think BG1's content level was good. But your improvement to that suggest getting to content faster and quicker. Which could easily (and is, atleast by me) be seen as wanting more content in the first place... *is so confused*

Many discussions here... not just about content density PER area... most people actually rather talk about the *amount* of areas (far more in BG1 than BG2). Which kinda skewers the poll somewhat since yes, BG had a lot of good stuff it was very spread apart, and generally of the "one thing per map" variety. Not that I recall BG2 being much better in that regard. What was there in that forest near the ruins of the Black dragon besides those ruins? I don't recall much. So this discussion is really just about the amount of non-city maps rather than "content density" per map. Personally I would prefer maps to not be as empty, bland and lacked of story as BG1. Working off map per map could become pretty boring. I much rather have less, well-filled areas. It was such a relief to finally reach Baldur's Gate in BG1 and have everything resolved within the same few maps of the city rather than mapexploring over and over. BG2 did well in that regard in that you didn't need to finish 60% of the game just to get access to a quest-rich area. So while, yes, exploration is good maps should still be thought out by "why would I want to explore here, what's there to do". Just adding more maps for the sake of more maps without content isn't good. All these areas are good to breach a link of exploration and requirements between the 2 cities and the dungeon. No having to spend most of the game before quest-center (BG1) but also no longer once the city's done, the game gets railroaded, questlight and also more boring (BG2). Of course, it's hard to find a proper balance. However if nothing's forced (like that crazy "do the dungeon in 1 run" stuff) it does allow people a great bunch of self-moderation. Tired of questing and heavy content? Explore. Tired of that, try some dungeoneering. Now you're fresh again for the city? Well, it's waiting for you... I am not going to disagree with everything you said in this post. Detailly explained why. Sucks for you, since that's when the game raised a gear and improved considerably in quality. It's the ultimate reward for everything you have done before that. Exploring (all those houses!) and questing on an entirely new level, keeping it fresh after all those outdoor areas. The sad thing is is when replaying BG1 it's a little hard to do exploring of all those areas again knowing something far better is out there, and you're delaying it like that. Oh well... Heck yeah, that's fun. Morrowind anyone? Stocking up on fifty quests or so over the entire land, exploring and having fun. Good times. Of course the questlog was a mess to keep up with that, however for that they made improvements in the expansion. I am sure PE also uses the newly gained knowledge of the modern age to not have one big journal where all quests are drowning each other out, but rather have proper ways to organise it. As much as we can remember? Ouch. Again, I STRONGLY disagree. Nothing better than stocking up on quests in a city, then working away your log one by one. And in the meanwhile you might get more! But as you continue on and on, it slinks and slinks, and in the end when you finished your final quest (or still have some due to bugs and such :/) and you've done everything the city has to offer you and move on? Best feeling of progress. If you can only keep a limited quest amount so much gets lost. No feeling of progression. No feeling of advancement. No impression of how much to do. Areas you finish which had plenty of quests, but you couldn't solve a single one since all your quests direct to other areas, adding tedious backtracking of deserted areas. Not to mention *having to remember all the questgivers that haven't given you quests yet*. That's quickly becoming more memory or writing work than ingame quests can ever offer you. Unless the quests are so boring you couldn't bother. But then, the developers REALLY screwed up. And I think OE got some pretty nice sidequests in story for us. Who says large areas need to be managable. What use is having a giant city if it's giving you the feel of being in the local town? Sure, there is overwhelness at first, a sense of so much to do, what to do. But that's part of a big city. Either in real life and games. If one want managable chuncks one could only include taverns and small towns and settlements. Not a good way to make an RPG. And as in real life with large cities, it only takes time before something that looks overcome-able is memorised and you can find the way without issues. Even if the maps cut in 2 parts in BG due to the wall was annoying, forcing you to enter from certain other maps. Please, that not anymore, okay? Wonderful, not? Unless of course they are all fedex quests, or kill x of y. But we're not talking about a MMORPG here, so I doubt we have to fear that. Also sounds like a big case of exeggarating. If you want 50 areas with 1 quest there are plenty of storyless action RPGs or dungeon crawlers. But I like my story to be ripe with conflict, with people who I can help, or doom. Quests to solve. Missions to accomplish. Legendary items to recover. Not spend 5 hours moving on without having any kind of idea what the hell I am doing it all for anyway. No, no, no, no. The less we can avoid a single NPC giving all quests (or, god forbid, a quest-board) the better. Not objecting to a single character having a large (side)story plot, but as the Witcher already showed, too often if a single person is multi-quest giver of town quest end up with X of Y, then again with other stuff being X and Y, and again, cause how many times can their daughter be kidnapped or dragon stolen or dog catnapped or grandmother poisoned or whatever... The more individual stories (and thus questgivers), the more individual dillema's, the better. That also allows you to majorly piss off said quest-givers without locking off 50% of an areas quest. If you design a branch you probably prevent that in the first quest you can majorly mess up. Or if you do get a rematch anyway on the next, which would be majorly immersion breaking if they just shrug off that you brought them their missing girlfriend dead. If they made Fallout that way, there wouldn't have been much of a game... xD A RPG without side-quests... it's a crime against the genre. I was going to point out that you wouldn't do that with other genres, but apparently thinking about that other genres did majorly suffer from self-mutilation, so that wouldn't really help my point. I rather not RPG's do that too. We got enough **** like DA2 to last for quite a while... Yeah, by offering the well known 100 hours of grinding MMO's got too. No thanks. While a few exceptions are good, I'd rather not too many do. They are side-quests after all. Keep it well-spread, so one gamer can enjoy the entire plot without being too forced to do all kinds of other quests to make sense of it. Nor the side-quest player just having his own little stories, but all the time is only pointed towards the main plot and "hey, you should be doing that", which isn't nice either.

Ehm, what's the point of having them all 3 boxed without DLC? There goes there only reason it could have been worth having, gone with the wind.

IE towns (and bars) were generally well-stocked and full of movement, so I am not worried about this element...

Yup, Europeans (and especially Germans) are the worlds biggest clientele of RPG's... so anti-European sentiment... loose it . Also agreeing with everyone you should make choices instead of dragging everything and their cat to the store to sell. Unless it's a broomstick +6 you can keep your broom uninteractive.

Use TSLRCM?

Art's good. Getting more concept art with more quests? Also good. So I support this idea!

This should be easy to model: if the party has somebody with a 'survival' skill then the corpse leaves a skin. Drakensang simulated it in more detail by giving an 'Animal Lore' skill. But that's perhaps too detailed for this type of game. You stole my point. Yeah, Drakensang showed how something that sounds good on paper ("skin animals for resources") is a horrible and repetitive job in execution. So... rather not. The "having it drop on survival skill" would be better, combined with an AoE looting system compared to individually looting everyone. Although I really dislike crafting, so rather not need to gather 10 wolf skins for those gloves etc. and other extremely bad things The Witcher II had with sucked beyond belief.

That was supposed to read "talking and sneaking", not sure what happened there. Aaaaanyways... all this talk of combat builds. About being weak. One might forget you can have a build made for conversation. For stealth. For crafting... but nope, all people here think about is the build good for combat. Problem right there...

Someone's been playing a certain Vampire: Bloodlines quest in Chinatown... Which was also a good example of keeping XP gains simple, what with it's bugs and XP-exploits not being countable on 2 hands anymore...

Lol, gold on wolves. Yeah, I rather not have that, whatever the "justification"...

"go off without a hitch" does also kind mean not bugridden or rushed... so yeah, delay would be better for that than sticking to the date no matter what...

Like the other "immersive journal" suggestion I have to disagree. The journal needs to be functional. Allowing you to recap what to do by reading it. Adding several layers to it by 'scribing' might lead with 1) too much info 2) too little info 3) too much work for developers in general trying to work out a fine balance they otherwise can just ignore for one entry

So, randomly checking GOG, to suddenly notice Theme Hospital (which I wanted) was on sale, without any notiifcation in the mail or something. Or maybe it was, but I ignored it if it was just a mac announcement. So, obviously purchased it. Also some other titles... little more than a day; http://www.gog.com/en/promo/mac_games_launch_promo_18_10_12

It's on sale now

But... a 1d2 broom can be a legendary weapon... think of the broom of [insert someone who payed 1000 dollar here], a +6 legendary broom...

That may be true for the tiers... not so much the addons. Unless people where NOT paying $10 for playing cards near the end. And I just imagined that...