Rabain

This is more about how they do it than how often they do it. I don't really want XP every 5 seconds for "walking around a corner" or "picking up a weapon" etc. I want my XP to be meaningful and yes XP for kills is meaningful, I killed something, I have improved in my ability to kill, eventually that will be reflected by levelling up and having points to spend or stats to boost or whatever. What I don't want is some ambiguous reward that I'm not sure why I got it. For example if I have a quest to kill the evil mage do I get the XP when I kill the mage or when I hand the quest in? Or do I get some XP for both? Will the quest auto-complete when the mage is dead and I get XP for that objective...that would be bad from my point of view, immersion breaking. All I want from this system is for my actions to feel rewarding and for the rewards to not be arbitrarily handed out based on some ambiguous formula I have no clue about. If I can sneak past a group of enemies or kill them I think it would be bad if I killed them all and then only got XP after crossing some imaginary line on the ground that defines the point where XP is handed out if you had of sneaked past instead. The only downside I can see to Osvirs Combat XP separation is that players who want to play a more stealthy, sneaky or diplomatic character could be gimped in combat later in the game because of their choice of how they play. And lets face it, eventually you will be forced into combat no matter how you play.

Linearity doesn't really have much to do with how or where you enter an area. Linearity should be avoided by giving the player many options of which area to visit first, second, third etc and many quests to do in different order. Look at BG1, you come out of Candlekeep and can go anywhere. The story is very linear; Friendly Arm, Nashkell, Cloakwood, BG City but because there are many other areas to go to the world feels large and free roaming and you can explore in between any part of the main story. BG2 is more restrictive but has such a wide variety of quests in Athkatla that you can get a very non-linear feeling just by doing big questlines in a different order each time you play. So it is kind of like BG1 except they chose quests as options instead of areas. I don't think changing a door with roof top or sewer will make much difference, players aren't stupid. Getting to a place takes very little time, it is the options available before you start travelling that breaks up the game into a different experience each time not how you get into the same place each time.

I'm sure PE will have its version of rats, like Fallouts Rad-scorpions; rats with a twist.

Blizzard rarely uses more than 1 or 2 of the same type of creature in any area. The example given above was totally misrepresentative and probably covers models used over the main game and 3 expansions. They also do a very good job of tying the model change to the story of the area. Peaceful areas have the standard model, infected areas have patchy looking models, fire models are used for elite mobs or in offworld zones with radiation / mutation etc. Blizzard is probably an example of how to re-use models properly rather than an example to avoid.

From what Josh said in the update thread I gathered that it was the model for Edair. It doesn't look exactly like the concept art because well the concept is just concept. Maybe that's what he looks like when he has no proper armor equipped. They probably won't have him wandering around with +4 mail at this stage.

Surely if resting at will is impossible then players will naturally gravitate to backtracking to "rest spots" and this will essentially be degenerate behaviour you were trying to avoid? If you want players to risk combat with low health / high stamina characters then you have to give them some way to reduce the risk, otherwise all you are doing is forcing them to make a choice, backtrack or risk death. They won't see this as a valid form of enforcing a no rest spam policy, they will just see it as being forced to backtrack. There really has to be some valid way to regain health without backtracking, otherwise the natural direction for the majority of players to gravitate to is backtracking to the closest rest spot. If it isn't magical healing, it should be rest at will or some kind of triage skill that buffs health regain over time so you aren't just always stuck at 1hp until 30 minutes later when you come out the other end of the dungeon or are forced to backtrack to rest.

If it is the EE version recently released the empty world feeling could be because they changed the spawn system for enemies. Core difficulty basically reduces many enemy groups to 1 enemy. Areas that usually had many enemies (gnoll stronghold, bandit camp) now have almost 50% less enemies. Enemies that used to attack in reasonable sized groups (6 xvarts, 8 gibberlings etc) now attack in groups of 1..yes 1. The logic was that the groups would scale up with difficulty level. I think that reducing numbers of enemies from the original game is a pretty bad decision to make even if you think it is a good thing to tweak enemy scaling. Lots of folks complaining about this unannounced "feature" of the enhanced edition. If it is not the EE version...well I'm not sure I'd agree the world is so empty, has more encounters than some more recent rpgs.

You remember the githyanki attack in BG2, happens on the ship at sea. A small little map with a boat on a sea. Sea battles could be easily done in PE in the same manor, bigger boats provide more area over which to battle. A small map with a sea monster attacking a ship you are on, another map with two ships side by side; you are attacked by pirates, three ships side by side, you are coming to the aid of a ship being boarded by pirates etc. Randomize the ships and events a little and you have a nice little sea battle scenario you could encounter any time you travel by sea.

Didn't they say they were planning to move to a monthly update system after the KS ended? The last 5 updates were October 30th, November 9th, 15th, 20th and 27th. I think that qualifies as pretty regular even if some of them were small updates. I think it feels slower since the KS ended because every day during the KS there was a lot of activity, excitement and interest just because there was a countdown on. Now the countdown has been reset and is at 16+ months, that's a slow countdown to watch tick away.

BG1 did it best I think, they gave you a reasonably open world to explore but eventually you were forced to continue the main story because you run out of places to go until you do (Cloakwood for example). BG2 kind of did the same thing but there it felt much less realistic because of the whole Imoen kidnap, bhaalspawn, soul thing going on as well as the game being pretty linear from Spellhold onwards. Rather than putting a time limit on things I prefer the bottleneck approach of the BG series. Let me wander around the world, the bits of the world I can wander around at least but eventually push me through that bottleneck into new areas. There has to be some line between realism and entertainment in the game. If any story is to be compelling it must have some time compunction but the more you force on the player the less entertainment they can seek in other parts of the game because they are constantly reminded they have to do X before the time runs out. If the story is so time sensitive then there will be no time at all to do anything other than follow the main quest until completion. To me that is boring and restrictive. Even if the story allows me to pursue some minor sidequests while doing it, it will still feel very linear. Personally I prefer the open world, bottleneck, open world, bottleneck approach. It allows the player to feel like he is in a large world while still bringing him back to the main story periodically.

What I'd like to see is some option to tone down graphics without making them go away completely, most options usually don't scale very well and there is a fine line between the setting that is too flashy and non-existent. Some kind of transparency slider might be good so we can set it where we like it. I think BG2 definitely went overboard on graphics, it was like each graphic was accepted on its own visual merit without looking at what a character who had 3 or 4 or more graphics on them at once looked like....walking christmas trees.

Didn't they say already that godlike might be like DnD's Aasimar or Tiefling races. Pretty much look like other races with minor differences like tails, glowing eyes, horns etc. I'd say that is what we will get because anything too big, like wings or extra arms, would be too much with regard to armors, combat mechanics etc Aerie is a winged elf whose wings were cut off, that's how they worked that into the game without worrying about graphics too much.

Friendship is too much like romance, it shouldn't exist in PE, including the forums.

Talking books: http://youtu.be/hmyuE0NpNgE

Why are people using this interview as some kind of announcement for no romances in PE? All it basically says is that Chris doesn't like writing romances, is everyone who enjoys experiencing romances supposed to just admit defeat and walk away? I don't see anything here that indicates romances won't be in PE, just Chris stating he doesn't like them. George can write them, problem solved.

In the update realism with regard to real world armor is barely touched on. The realism commented on several times was "realism" from a game perspective and explained as a players understanding of armor based off familiarity with dnd. Dnd Scale is better than leather for example but in the PE example given Leather (tier3) is better than Scale (tier2), would players complain about that or consider it less "real" and cause them to be annoyed by it? At least that is how I understood the "realism" in the update. BG1 and IWD does armor and weapons pretty well with regard to "realism" (real world in a fantasy setting). Most of the weapons look reasonably good, not too fantastic while also incorporating the fantastical with things like Ankheg plate etc. So long as players don't look like robots in armor or swords aren't 10ft long it should be okay. Ashideena is a nice example of something magical but appropriate.

Nothing wrong with respeccing if there is an appropriate cost associated with it. If we have stats, skill and abilities that are somewhat inter related then allowing free respeccing could cause some of that degenerate gameplay Obsidian spoke of trying to reduce. Things like a cooldown on respeccing or a high in game gold cost...something, it just has to have a cost that works to reduce the chance of it being abused.

From what we have been told so far I'd believe the opposite. Resting heals health while stamina is something that just returns naturally shortly after combat, say within 2 minutes of combat ending you will have full stamina again but if you move forward immediately or are attacked your stamina continues to regen slowly. Health never regens quickly and requires Rest (8hours usually) to return to full. There are benefits to both systems, no health regen but reasonable stamina regen can keep you moving but still provide that "danger" aspect to every fight. Healing spells and abilities provide the ability to move forward but come at the cost of carrying a healer in your party and depending on their number of available heals. No doubt there will be tweaks to the system once they have the basics developed and actually play test it. On the point of magic not being magic if you can't heal, well to be honest I'd much rather my mage was blasting stuff than healing friendlies. It will also be interesting to see classes like the priest be much less healing focused and more buff/attack focused.

I'd be all for Curses being applied on equip to the character and still being able to unequip the weapon if there was an appropriate cost to removing the Curse. Otherwise what you get is a gimpy system where players equip weapons, live with the curse for the duration they need to use the weapon for and then remove curse when they are no longer using the weapon and have the time. It'd be like having all the benefits of the weapon without the negatives. At least the IE system punishes you a bit more by forcing you to use the weapon without being able to switch to something else. What could also be interesting is being able to remove the Cursed aspect of the weapon, either through some quest (with specific items) or via crafting or temple payments etc.

I thought I'd put a link to some of the Hudson River School art, mentioned as inspiration in the interview. A lot of the images have a similar feel to the screenshot we got, I have to say I like it. http://www.metmuseum...urs/hd_hurs.htm

Well lets all just pack up shop and stop discussing everything here on the forums because we can make a mod after release to do pretty much everything...this a pretty awful argument for anything. The entire point of the forums being here now is to discuss what will actually be in the game, how it will work, how it could work differently and what every one thinks of each mechanic. Another spurious argument. So far everything we have seen has been European flavoured. A reason for offering up Flagellant instead of Monk was proposed, it in no way suggests that every asian influence is inappropriate. For all we know next week will see a lore release outlining some asian themed culture but we haven't seen that yet so people post based on what they have seen. I'm not sure what you are trying to say here either. The lack of grappling limits no one, I'm sure all classes will have appropriate abilities to perform on as balanced a platform as Obsidian can devise. All the lack of grappling affects is perhaps the level of visual eye candy for players during combat.

The problem is that if they come straight out and say that they have previously lifted ideas from posts they have seen on the forums you can expect the forums to suddenly have 10000 people all with their own idea being repeatedly posted in order to catch someone's eye and be immortalized in the game.

If the race is going to be playable I doubt we will see any major fish or lizard fins just because creating armor models for a single class is a lot of extra work. While it would be great I think that kind of thing might be put aside in favour of spending resources elsewhere. I'd think some kind of reptilian humanoid: or aquatic humanoid: So they could wear the same armors as other races and still be different enough not to be just "big ugly human" (half orc). I'm not sure how they would include the aquatic nature if they turn out to be aquatic, unless they have been pushed out of the sea by some other cultural force (giving the player a reason why you can't just swim across rivers and oceans etc).

Time is money, the longer you take to complete something, the more it costs. Pushing out the release date with a goal of producing a better game has the knock on effect of costing more and thus your budget is much more stretched and you are just restricted in a different way.

Lots of games have done this, the only downside is the amount of work it requires. If areas and quests etc are class specific it means a lot of content is not seen by many players and rather than it seeming like you are providing more content some people feel as though they are being forced to play all characters in order to see everything. Given that PE is being done on a smaller budget I'd be happy with just class, race, gender, faction options in dialogue rather than restricting specific areas to some subset.