Rabain

Actually what I liked about some of the DLC from DAO was telling the story of some of the joinable npcs. In this respect Origins can be interesting and give insight apart from what you learn during the core game. Leliana's Song was short but interesting, that kind of thing would be nice to see. You don't have to see your characters origin to offer an interesting alternative to the main storyline. Imagine getting an addon for BG2 where you play Keldorn or Cernd for a short while prior to their joining your character on his adventure. They each have compelling personal problems as well as difficult practical work related issues to work through. Let the player character be whatever the player imagines.

I think there is a risk attached to stretch goals too though. They have enough money to make the game they initially planned on, the more they get the better the content within those boundaries can be. The further they stretch goals and the bigger they make those goals the bigger the risk becomes of not meeting them or affecting quality or development time. Personally I'd be happy stopping at the 2.2million goal, new region, new faction means bigger world. At that point I don't want some fantastical goals added that will just slow down development.

The DAO system was pretty decent, it gave you specialisations to choose within your class which on their own gave you certain benefits as well as a set of abilities to develop as you levelled up.

Realism isn't part of the game though, there is only a certain amount of realism people can handle in a game before it becomes irritating and an annoyance. It might be realistic to understand you can kill and be killed, unrealistic that pressing a button resets the world to a previous time etc. Calling players pu**ys because you disagree with what 90% of games actually do is a bit egotistical no? I bet if you found a magic shield and a magic sword and could only carry one, what you would do is run all the way home and then come back for the other other item as fast as possible and you would call it unrealistic if the game just erased the item you left behind because you hid it under a rock and disguised it with some bushes right? You still got both items but you just wasted 10 minutes running all over the world, very realistic.

To be honest I find this type of argument to be totally silly too considering that the majority of rpg games go with combat XP. Why should I need to explain it to you if you haven't figured out why yet. Quest XP is not inherently balanced, it is only biased in a different way. With Quest XP speed of objective completion acquires XP faster, if you can sneak or invisibility to the objective and get out you will acquire XP faster than the person fighting, is that balanced? Likewise with combat XP some classes level slower due to combat taking longer, how has nearly every game dealt with this? They reduce the amount of XP those classes require to level up, that is not hard to understand. That would take a hell of a lot less development time than trying to fix a broken system where avoiding combat gets you XP faster by completing objectives faster, the exact same issue you say combat xp causes by being biased towards fighters. Regardless I think going with only Quest XP is a terrible idea as it means you will need a quest to do anything and anything that doesn't have a quest is a waste of time. Why fight through an entire dungeon if all you want is the Holy Sword at the end? Why explore any random map in the world if I don't have a quest to do so? Any mob I kill will be pointless. My journal will be a nightmare of questlines halfcompleted or just queued up because I don't want to miss a quest so I pick it up in case I miss it on my next way through. Basically with that kind of system you would say that 50% of the areas in BG1 didn't need to be there, all those Sword Coast large areas with just mobs to kill etc, wasting my time while I try to find X quest objective. Sounds like an exercise in frustrating the hell out of me rather than engaging me. When a mob offers me XP I will kill it, I am both rewarded and further along to my quest objective and closer to levelling up. I'd prefer a mixed system where I get rewarded for doing something, even if that something is killing a mob, I shouldn't need a quest to get XP, I should be able to level up some amount without even doing a quest at all. I'm fine with hitting a wall at some point where I need to follow the story questline, just like BG1 where eventually you just had to go to Cloakwood to move the game forward. If you think Quest XP is a perfect system you are far from being right, it has plenty of flaws.

Dragon Age Origins would have been 10 times better if it had less quests and more areas or at least it felt like the areas only opened up by attaining a quest. BG1 had the best system in my opinion, gave you a certain amount of freedom while still channelling you through the main questline (cloakwood etc). PST kind of dumped combat XP in favor of quest XP, yes there was combat XP but dialog choices rewarded bigger chunks. Still there wasn't necessarily a quest attached to speaking to everyone. I'd feel very railroaded by a system that required a quest to get any XP.

That doesn't really make any sense, the definition of a custom UI is that it can look like anything because you customize it. In WoW if you use or make your own UI addon the game can look like any UI from any other game you ever played or look like something you made up yourself. So you are saying you want a custom UI that allows no customisation at all? Myself I prefer the DA:O UI because it is minimalist but functional.

The problem is that most games tend to never get it right. Either the items crafted are too strong and are either too easy or too hard to craft or they are too weak and not worth crafting. There are a lot of people who don't consider going out and searching for 20 parts to craft X Sword of Killing a big deal while there are many others who look at the requirements and write off crafting altogether and call it bad. Finding a decent balance is hard.

Personally I think games like Dragon Age Origins suffered heavily from everything being voiced. The reality is that while you might think it adds immersion it doesn't really because you have to wait for your choices to appear and then read them when in a real conversation that would occur while the person was still talking and your response would be instant. DAO was a good game but it could have been great if it had more areas to actually explore that didn't have anything to do with the main plot. I can imagine that even considering adding more content brings groans of pain when VO work is mentioned. Also additional mods and official addons are usually few and content light due to the weight of VO work required. BG/PST system is the best, it is part of the reason why we love them so much even if we don't realise how much it contributes.

Actually, it does add something! ...A headache. Then you need to lobby for an equippable icepack for your headslot!

The Infinity games had scripts you could apply to your characters that they would carry out depending on circumstances, even out of combat, just like DAO. The only problem with the core games was that the scripts were not very complicated and the game often had problems activating the scripts due to the game itself, walls, small space, objects etc. I think DAO was designed with much more open areas, very rarely did you have halls or caves with barely enough room for 1 or 2 characters to move through, perhaps they gave a lot of thought to that during design.

The main problem with a system like that Humanoid is that it would erase 90% of the item rewards from mobs, quests, crafting etc from the game or at least render it meaningless except for its sale value. You could kill a King in his lovely golden armor, only to find out you can sell it for 10g and buy new tassels for your crappy mail armor. I'd be all for a toggle for civilian/combat clothing but I'd still want control over all my armor slots, it is what makes for a lot of the sense of reward when you get an upgrade.

Too much micro management can really kill a game. The reason so many games don't do it is because in most games you are not Lord High Whatever of Fashion Town. You are Billy NoName from Bumpkin Junction and can't afford decent gear so you use what you can get and replace it bit by bit as you find better items. Your party members are helping you fit it and equip it each morning after burning the breakfast on the campfire after you have filled in the latrine trench with a shovel but you don't see any of that because it is boring...now onwards to slay the dragon!

Who is to say that Legendary items are always unknown missing items though? Isn't that the whole logic behind Lore in DnD in the first place? It is not that you just pick something up and look at it with your magnifying glass and say "Hmmm this is Shortsword +1!", it is that you have experience and knowledge other people do not. In fact Legendary items should be easier to recognise because they probably have unique features other weapons do not. A Hammer with a golden head that glows white? Sounds like Ashideena, I read a book about that once in Candlekeep...etc. That is Lore. Of course you could be wrong but its a game so you are either right or wrong when you try to identify something using Lore. Identifying something using magic is different to Lore, it is a bit like scrying, the spell is examining the item at a fundamental level and recognising inherent magical qualities and because you are the one casting the spell you get the results. Anyway, I really hope there aren't so many Legendary items that we need some crazy identify process in the first place.

Project Eternity is what causes the Event our character witnesses... Actually I wouldn't mind if the game was just called Project Eternity, even if that had no meaning in the game, the public don't usually get this kind of insight so early and the name has kind of grown on me now.

It would be really funny if you got a quest to get the Missing Sword of Awesomeness from the Lost Caverns of Doom and when you got back to town the Loremaster says "what is this crap, its a +1 shortsword" because the real Sword of Awesomeness wasn't in the hand of the Skeleton King, it was wrapped in an oilcloth, in a bucket at the bottom of a well ... Anyway there are some really crappy identify systems in some games. Dragon Age doesn't bother with identification at all, Diablo 3 lets you right click to identify...nothing else required, total waste of time. Baldur's Gate kind of had a decent system, where you had to put some effort in, either by paying a vendor, memorising the spell (at the cost of some other combat spell) or carrying scrolls. As your characters levelled up the low level gear was easily identified by Lore values while higher level stuff still required effort. I wouldn't want something too complicated because personally I think it detracts from the game, just forcing you to jump through hoops either by travel, or requiring some potion with material cost etc. The simple BG system seems best because you still get the thrill of finding out exactly what you got with a tiny cost associated with identifying it but not detracting too much from actually playing the game. A nice little edition might be for icons not to be so obvious before identification so you really don't know what it is, it could be the Sword of Awesomeness or Shortsword +1, you just have to identify it first, not just look at the icon.

Another point you need to remember is that the Kickstarter money is going to make the game. It is not after development profit. The game still needs to sell X number of copies on release for it to be considered a success. With projects that are funded in house or by publishers there is a budget and the hope that sales will recoup costs and bring profit to make the next project bigger and better. Most of us who have pledged on Kickstarter are only paying for the game to be made, more people need to buy on release for the game to be profitable for Obsidian, which we will want. They could continue to fund a new project via Kickstarter but I'm sure they would love to have the independence to fund a project or multiple projects themselves. My point is that translations allow the game to be sold to a much broader audience who perhaps have no english at all. It is not a waste of resources, it is sound logic looking to the future, never mind the fact that non-english speaking rpg fans deserve good games.

I thought Dragon Age handled damage very well. Your health bar regened very fast out of combat but you still had other injuries like Cracked Skull, Gaping Wound, Bleeding eye, Broken Arm etc that you had to either rest at your Camp to be rid of or use an Injury Kit or high level spell. This at least meant that Herbalism was a really useful skill to have. In combat your health regen was rubbish without spells or potions. It meant you could move through an area fairly fast with little downtime, considering there was no rest option and it was awkward to return to your camp with no fast travel. Baldur's Gate actually made you use potions a lot but how people found themselves sleeping for 8hrs after combat rather than wasting potions? Wouldn't if have been better for your health to just regen so you could continue questing? It might be realistic to rest but 8 hours really isn't going to fix every injury.

Is it realistic to think Justin Sweet himself would be okay with waiting around to become part of a stretch goal? Surely if PE was thinking about it they would just contact him, ask him if he is interested but only after they have the cash? It's not like they can guarantee his interest or availability. Even if they contacted him before having the cash to ask him if it was okay to use him as a stretch goal how flattered would he be, or how annoyed if the goal was not reached?

I'd much prefer if polls were the sole domain of Moderators and Developers. If Devs are too busy they could maybe shoot a Mod a message to stick up a poll. At the current rate we are seeing very similar polls every day or two, they just don't stay on the page long enough for the next person to see it, so they make their own one. Also if you want to ask a question you don't need to make a Poll, this thread for example doesn't need to be a poll. The Poll several threads below about what game brought you to PE doesn't need to be a poll either.

I'd go for a happy medium, if dialogue regarding the npc and your current quest didn't contain too much exposition then I can avoid it by choosing that particular dialogue option. If the npc also has an "Ask more questions" option I'd be fine with that too for those of us who sometimes like more info. One of the things that really annoyed me about Dragon Age Origins dialogue was that some npc's, including merchants, wanted to talk about the weather or whatever for a few lines before asking me if I wanted to buy something, even though I'd spoken to them 10 times already that day. The Codex in DAO was both a godsend and too much information. I much prefer BG's level of dialogue for standard npc's and PST's level of dialogue for key npcs.

I disagree, this totally possible, with enough patience and precision In your imagination perhaps, in reality not so much. I think this is why so many people just don't want the possibility of it in a game because somewhere some nutter is thinking about it. Even if we leave out the real world vs fantasy world, the game isn't about killing children even if you want the option for your roleplayed childkilling murderer to be a valid option. There is a point where certain options just start appearing ludicrous rather than actually adding to gameplay. How many players will actively pursue their roleplay as a childkilling murderer, 1%? If children are treated in game in the same way they are in BG and PST then I'll be happy, it shouldn't really be something development needs to spend any time focusing on as a major concern.

So if there is no XP for killing the guards that are guarding the whatsit, what is the goal? The goal is to get the whatsit, so you want me to choose to waste my time or do it your way? Because I would see it as wasting my time to kill the guards instead of just giving in and sending the rogue in. Many players will feel this way. It sounds great to say things should be goal oriented but large parts of the game have no goals at all. I want to travel to Bigtown at the end of the map, do I get a reward for just getting there alive with no combat involved in my travels? If I randomly get ambushed and fight my way through I do I get less or more or no XP on arrival in Bigtown? Combat XP would give me something, goal oriented XP would give me nothing. If I choose to free roam in some random dungeon simply because I saw it on my map do I get no XP even though I cleared the entire thing of demons/undead/kobolds? To be honest this goal oriented system seems to me to be extremely limiting, I basically have to have a quest in order to have a goal and get XP? Sounds like a game with zero freedom. You need a quest for everything and are a slave to your quest log. Goals are great in the real world, they give us impetus and push us forward to attaining them but apart from work related goals I don't have a Quest Log tracking my progress, the goal is internalised. Most games are the same way, they provide some goals via quests but reward activity through XP (by activity I mean combat, picking locks, disarming traps etc). The goal is something you internalise, you want to clear a dungeon, you want to kill everything in the town etc, it has little to do with a directive from your Quest log. I prefer a system that rewards me for doing stuff, even if that stuff is just killing a rat when I'm level 1. For me it makes more sense to get XP for doing things instead of getting XP only for working for people. Maybe the balance of combat XP could use tweaking but a system with no combat XP, sorry but it doesn't sound attractive in any way to me.

My point was that if you have a Strong, Intelligent, Dextrous, Cunning, Conversationalist Warrior then there isn't much left to do in another playthrough. All options are available to you, of course you can only pick one but you get to see them all if your one character can be everything. If it was impossible for a Warrior focusing on the Strength stat to reach the max level of Lockpicking for example because the max level of Lockpicking requires a high Dexterity score then you might find certain locks inaccesible to you. Sure you could throw points into dexterity to get the max level and you can do that if you want, I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to but there is a cost involved, the cost of the points that didn't go into more Strength to hit things harder. This is where I'd like to see more info. If you can make a character that can see all options simply by being everything at once it will be a bad system in my opinion. For example there are certain skills you might choose to ignore because they have less impact on your game choices, particularly dialogue or thievery encounters. Like Herbalism, there might be certain conversations that utilize a high Herbalism skill level but they will probably be few and far between. On the other hand something like Bluff, Picklocks or Disarm traps would have much more impact on your gameplay. What I am saying is there has to be some cost to trying to be Mr Everything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feargus_Urquhart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Cain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Sawyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Avellone Maybe not as up to date as they could be but somewhere to start. Cain, Sawyer and Avellone are the main guys for Project Eternity content. Feargus is the guy with the big stick in the background. I like that the wiki mentioned that in 1999 IGN gave Feargus the Unsung Hero of the Year award. Also might be worthwhile listening to Feargus on this interview, I think he comes across very well: http://www.puresophistry.com/2012/09/21/project-eternity-radio-interview-with-feargus-urquhart-ceo-of-obsidian-entertainment/