Rabain

Hey Guys, just upped my pledge to the 288 (250+30 shipping+8 ObsidianOrder) after seeing the hardcover announcement, I'm such a nerd for books... Knight Hospitaller of the Obsidian Order.

It all comes down to preference, on the face of it, bards are just singing rogues and paladins are just armored priests, barbarians are just crazy warriors, ciphers are soul mages. Everything really boils down to mage, thief, fighter and priest. Personally I've always liked the paladin class and disliked rogues so I'd favour paladins being added but each to his own, plenty of room for everything.

I think the system they talked about in Update 16 kind of removes the need to worry about a Rest mechanic that becomes meaningless or spammable like in previous games. If you can use spells again in a longer battle then the need to Rest is reduced, therefore you won't feel like Resting requires some risk because you will rest much less often. Also random events like ambushes can then be tied to travelling, night city encounters etc which make much more sense than being attacked in your camp. Seasoned adventurers are much less likely to be ambushed while resting if they take precautions such as a watch rotation, trapping the camp approaches or even just picking a defensible camp spot.

1. If there was a dynamic drain on the players income then the issue of unlimited money on merchants wouldn't be such a big issue. Consider if you have a fortress and suddenly you have an influx of cash from questing or whatever, the game could then trigger an event at your fortress that requires a lot of your gold, say storm damage or a poor harvest and you need to feed the peasants etc. Now this doesn't need to be a yoke on the player but actually a response to a large increase in player income. Or prices at the vendors could just rise by X% in response to you having more gold, after all, you are a really the only person buying from them. This could work though if it was done to be a mix of limited gold and barter, the kind of system you have in Fallout 3. 2. I don't think more than one currency really serves a purpose, all it means is you would require a Foreign Exchange merchant somewhere, it would just be added tedium that doesn't add much to the game. I'm all for having copper/silver/gold just not USD, GBP, EUR etc. 3. Barter sounds like a good idea but in a game it never really works, at least true barter does not. You still need a base currency in order to establish a value. I have an armor to trade, the other guy has some arrows but doesn't need armor so he doesn't value it highly, so how many arrows is it worth? If I can wait 5 minutes and travel to a cash vendor and get 10g, then buy twice as many arrows would it be worth even having barter at all? Like I said above I think this could work if it was like Fallout 3. You have very little gold, so does the merchant but you can trade 1000's of golds worth of goods to each other so long as the difference in value of give and take is below both your gold values. 4. That could be a good feature or very odd. If you can ask everyone if they want to buy something how do you find out exactly who would give you a better price than a merchant? If it was a limited feature where for example you have a Helm to sell but the merchant doesn't want it, he could direct you to the Captain of Guard who was looking for a new helm just yesterday etc. Maybe the Captain then tells you he will give you X more gold than the local merchants for 10 swords. It would not be a quest but just like a piece of gossip and you have a decent way to make some extra gold for the gear you pick up. At the very least the game might need some gold sink so that the players gold doesn't just keep piling up. Maybe once you get rich the king or whoever asks you to donate to open an university or for another company of soldiers for the army etc.

If you want examples of paladin in a film you could probably say most of the Knights in Excalibur behave like paladins, none are perfect but many are trying to be. Another good example would be El Cid, starring Charlton Heston, I'd consider his playing of that character to be very paladinesque.

I'd agree with Hypevosa, I think prone is only in the game as a representation of your character on the ground but not dead or asleep. While it might be that in real life you could shoot a gun while prone, that might only apply in certain circumstances for example you have a gun ready to fire when knocked down. Most other times you will be trying to get back up as your opponent comes towards you instead of staying down in order to shoot. Otherwise prone is just fine as an animation of your character on the ground.

DAO Plot was to linear. Even though you could do the main quest in any order, if was all pretty much identical on every playthrough. That game seriously needed a dozen random areas to explore that were totally separate to the main plotline. Some areas were added as DLC but not nearly enough. If I could change DAO right now I'd add in those dozen extra areas, reduce XP gain by 50% and remove all items above Tier 4. The game might have some challenge then and perhaps some replayability.

Change the poll to reflect the desire for some other pet. Personally I liked the pet Lim-lim in PST.

It's a game, you are their ONLY leader, so they should follow you or they should be deleted from existence. If you want that level of realism how about as soon as anyone hear's about the big evil (whatever it happens to be) they flee across the nearest border to a safer land. Many players complained about Khalid in BG1 with his "better part of valor" fleeing that basically made him a liability rather than actually adding any realism considering his wife was still standing fighting by your side. It is almost impossible to add this to a game without making a very annoying feature and forcing players away from npc's programmed to flee.

Ridiculing someone for their opinion is just silly, paladin is a valid desire for any player to have. The argument that it is just a warrior priest doesn't really hold any weight considering we could just as easily say the Barbarian is a low armored warrior. No reason why the Warrior class couldn't just have a Barbarian subcategory with its own set of skills. As it stands it seems we can make warrior wizards if we want so why one class is allowed as a class and another isn't really is just a matter of opinion and what the devs want to do themselves.

As soon as I heard cipher in the video I immediately thought the spelling would be Psypher or something like that as it is the "psy" that relates to the mind. Cipher is a cleric sitting in an office doing Admin, though paperwork can sometimes instigate brain death. Also is it just me or is there a few hiccups in the video, it almost looks like images being displayed for a split second and then the video continues. Look at 34-38 seconds in the video as well as the last 5 or 6 seconds though it happens 3 or 4 times during the full length...maybe its just me.

That is why I liked the BG1 approach to the campaign story over the BG2 approach. BG1 you have a fairly short Candlekeep and then a fairly big world to explore before pursuing the main story through Cloakwood. In BG2 you had a long introduction in Irenicus dungeon that fast became tedious with each playthrough and then you get dumped into a big city with fairly comprehensive questlines to follow (Unseeing Eye, Umar Hills, Trademeet). While other aspects of BG2 made it awesome, the continuing bhaalspawn story, the romance options, the fortress questlines etc I always felt much less freedom in BG2 than BG1 offered. What has this to do with AI you might ask, well the world serves as a learning curve for your character, you always have the option to continue exploring and coming back to a fight rather than finding yourself stuck at a certain point with nowhere to go. The freedom to know you are outclassed and return to exploring for a while until you grow stronger is a nice option to know you have.

Too much in one thread and the title is basically wrong, it implies this is THE thread to discuss everything with Obsidian. A better title would be "my suggestions for PE".

How does it encourage lazy design, you only get lazy design from lazy designers, not from specific game mechanics. A scalable encounter is exactly the same as monster scaling with appropriate AI and yes AI is included in all level scaling if you plan to approach it properly. A monster will do nothing, absolutely nothing in a game, even a dragon, if it has no AI. A level 10 bandit with AI will trounce a level 50 mage with no AI at all, the mage will just stand there like a plank and get hit. I could just as easily write a script that produces 2 monsters instead of 1 when you double in level and it would be equally as lazy as you say level scaling would be. To be honest It looks like to me that you just have taken a dislike to level scaling monsters with no thought for what you can actually do with the system. Your fighter doesn't eat demons for breakfast, your fighter just got his ass handed to him by a level 10 wolf, live with it. You were in a forest, there was no reason for a demon to even be there, the wolf bit you in the ass, you lost. Why does everyone always take the worst case scenario and then play it out and call the system terrible because of their imagination gone wild? What if there was a bandit camp and in the camp there were 5 archers, 3 assassins in stealth, 2 mages and a Captain. Why does that need to change to 10 archers, 6 assassins, 4 mages and 2 Captains when you could just as easily make the original group stronger, use different abilities appropriate to their new level and provide a challenge that way? To me that seems much more realistic and logical than just increasing numbers for the same imaginary reason (you leveled up). As for the suspension of disbelief with regard to the power of enemies you encounter, it is all relative. The bandit doesn't take over the world because the King has an Army, the same reason you don't go on a rampage in most games either. Did you ignore everyone in Athkatla in BG2 and just kill everyone you met, merchant and child and guard and cowled wizard? You could probably do it a few at a time but it would severely hamper your movement in the city right? The suspension of disbelief is a strange thing because it just as easily applies to fighting dragons instead of wolves as it does to fighting a level 1 wolf or a level 10 wolf, it is in your head. To be honest I think most people need to really stop and think about what their level means to them and your place in the game world relative to your level. Your level is basically just a reward system that the game uses so you don't get bored only killing things instead of actually seeing some progress for that effort. If you have a decent imagination there should be no difference to you between a level 1 wolf and a level 5 wolf, they are just wolves right? So what is wrong with a level 20 wolf? It is just an indication of its power relative to you, it is not an indication of its power relative to the King or anything else in the world. If a wolf is a suitable enemy in a particular location then it shouldn't matter to you if it is level 1 or 20. If level scaling was active in the game then passing through a forest you would think at level 20 you might be attacked by a level 20 wolf in order to provide some challenge to you instead of sticking in a random...dragon? That is when suspension of disbelief is broken, not when wolves attack you in forests. This is why I think level scaling can be a decent system because if you think about it, then it can be done properly, it just has to be done properly. It is not inherently a lazy system or a bad system unless it is made so but then ANY system can be made bad by lazy and bad designers.

Blood sausage is just a type of food, zero chance anyone has that copyrighted. Anyone can use it in any way they want. "slaver was critically hit in the stomach for 22 hit points, his guts spilling out like blood sausage all over the floor."

Whats the difference so long as it is done well? I assume you are thinking of the situation where your level 20 fighter gets his ass kicked by a scaled up beetle or rat or something? I'm sure Obsidian won't be so silly. If you are level 1 and you meet a bandit and he kills you, why should you care if you come back through the area 10 levels later and get killed by a level 10 bandit? Seems find to me, bandits are bad people. I don't see the point in my character walking through a forest a level 1 and being attacked by a wolf and just because he walks through later at level 10 he should be attacked by a demon just because he could kill every wolf in the world at level 10. Try not to think of your level as a degree of power but as a degree of experience. That way wolves can still be dangerous to you at level 10 just as they were at level 1. I don't think scaling monsters is a bad thing, just needs to be approached properly, trust them to do that.

Elves, dwarves, humans, gnomes, drow, orcs, goblins, kobolds, Xvarts etc all have that humanoid shape that allows game mechanics to play cheap and nasty with armors. To be honest sticking a beetle head on a human and calling it a Tssska or whatever wouldn't really present as a new and interesting racial type to me. Likewise lizard people are typically never impressive in most games because they are just humans in snakeskin. Anything with more than 2 arms or 2 legs often presents too many game mechanic issues to be viable. It is probably also why we don't see playable races with robotics or are completely constructs in too many games because the weaponry and armors that go along with those diverge too much from everything else. There is also the argument that even though many players don't think about it or would admit it, they identify with their characters and want to be the musclebound human, the singing and drinking dwarf or the handsome elf etc. Trying to identify with the snakefaced lizard person with a lisp doesn't seem so attractive.

I'd be kind of hoping that we will be looting Generic no-name bandit regardless simply because gold is so hard to acquire. Even if his bow of crapola sells for 3coppers, I'd carry it to a merchant so I'm 3c wealthier. Semi-random at least offers better control of loot drops, fixed loot list by mob type + bonus loot by mob quality. This could mean someone like a Kobold Leader could drop armor from the same list as the kobold soldier while also dropping his +1 Bow of HittingYouInDaFace that only he owns.

Personally I trust you guys to make a great game, all I really want from it is a crap tonne of content. I want zones galore and quests and mobs to meet and/or fight in those zones. At the moment we have no idea how big the game is. I want something on the scale of BG1's world map with the detail of BG2's within those areas with the characters populating the areas as detailed as PST's.

Trying to imagine horses in an IE type game just leaves me with a sick feeling, I think they would be horrible. Rather than adding realism they would probably massively detract from the game due to either being underused, overused, poorly used or just plain ridiculous. How far would you go with it? Would you have to manually dismount? Could you use a door while mounted but not bring the horse inside (for example in BG if you could have a horse there are plenty of doors you could ride right up to)? In combat, bonus or penalty while mounted in different circumstances? I think it would be a big balance issue and detract from combat in general. As for a travel feature, if there is a stable I'd have to go to in order to fast travel I'd be annoyed, run across town to reach a stable in order to fast travel somewhere? Or horses outside every Inn I could just jump on ride anywhere? If I can travel on one why not fight etc. The realism would be massively offset by the ridiculousness of not being 100% like real life horse travel in medieval times. Personally I'd find stable travel to just be another unnecessary hoop to jump through in order to travel somewhere. We are all used to IE games structure, it works, why not just go with that, walk to the edge of a map and choose where to go to?

Actually that would make an interesting Update, info on some of the common as well as the rare monsters in PE. Who doesn't want to fight Xvarts all day?

The only time you get true temporary npcs in IE games is in the section in Candlekeep when you practice with a party, the rest of the IE games don't use temporary party members at all. Temporary in those games is purely a choice of the player, not an actual game feature. Temporary party members typically means someone the player cannot control being in their party or when they leave. There are usually 2 ways this is done, full control while in party or AI controlled. Full control gives you more freedom but adds issues with gear and items when the character leaves, AI can be temperamental in some games, like running ahead, getting themselves killed, refusing to obey party formations to avoid traps etc. If you have played Diablo 3, it actually had a decent temporary party member system. Certain characters joined you for certain quests then left, others only appeared as guides and would not help in combat. It was done fairly seamlessly there I think with characters only leaving when you returned to town or reached an objective and there was always a goodbye dialogue of some kind. You had no access to their inventory. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned a 6+1 system for PE but I can't find the source for that. It would definitely be much smoother than leaving someone behind just because they could join your party as a full member but you had no space for them.

I don't think that really has anything to do with the KS. Obsidian wanted to make an isometric rpg in the same vein as the Infinity games, they needed the money, they went with kickstarter, they got the money. I don't think they really need to provide Stretch goals that blow peoples minds, they are not like Indie developers who have no history of quality games and need to wow you into giving them money. They know what they want to do and what they need to do it. I think people looking for stretch goals similar to other games on KS are taking things down the wrong track. We don't need J.E. offering up weekends at his house on Maui or whatever as a stretch goal, the fact they have the pledges, the experience and quality to actually make the game should be enough. The KS was a huge success for what Obsidian wanted to do, going overboard for the sake of being like every other KS is just a waste. The money is meant to go into creating content or adding features, more money doesn't necessarily translate to a better game or even a more profitable game. The way some people are going on it seems more important to them that the KS is a success rather than that the game is actually going to be made. I'd be quite happy for them to stop providing stretch goals past what they currently have and just providing more info into the KS until it ends. Any more pledges that come in can go into increasing the quality of what they have already promised rather than adding yet another thing to the game, more VO maybe, music, certain artists etc. They don't need to provide a stretch goal to do all of that.

If the game is going to be soloable (as we heard from Josh Sawyer previously) then I'd assume Tim's recent Reddit response is basically clarifying the reason for using a class based system and not specifically saying you will be pigeon holed by your class. For example if you want to play a mage you can perfectly fine finish the game as a mage on your own. If you choose to bring a full party then you might want a tanking character, just like you would have done in BG you pick up an npc to tank for your mage. I don't see what the big deal is here, we all know how hard or easy it is to play any class in the IE games and what 6 character party composition is like. Tank using a cleric with appropriate spells selected, dps with a rogue or mage, heal with a druid. There are plenty of combinations and knowing which character you might aim to pick up when you decide to play as a bow-wielding rogue is useful and by no means limits your ability to play that rogue.

Soul Swap: you violently force your soul into the body of another, controlling it for a short period. Imagine for a few seconds controlling the magic user standing in the middle of a gang of bandits about to attack you, fireball centred on yourself...release soul swap...