Rabain

That would be if they consider the Hall to be only a place to hire Mercenaries. Perhaps the intention is for it to be more like a club where people who like to go out and chance their luck in an ancient ruin meet other like minded people to put together an expedition or just where experienced adventurers; mercenaries, explorers and total newbies gather to find whatever they need. There might even be occasional quests at the Hall where some rich noble or something is funding an expedition into Eir Glanfath to find some particular relic etc.

I did notice that the graphic for the Stretch goal calls it a "Big Big City 2". We can expect a bigger city than the big Athkatla? I hope so!

I guess we all have our own very different opinions on what "feels like a part of the world". To me a UI like DAO makes me feel more a part of the world because the UI is less present and less in my face. The UI you present above feels less like a part of the world to me because looking at the screen all I see is a big dashboard like I'm driving a car with the game world visible through window. It might be pretty to look at in its own right and the design might match the game worlds but it is still a dashboard and not part of the game world itself. No UI will do that unless you use a hide UI option but for me the more minimal the UI is the less obtrusive it is during gameplay.

The line directly after your emphasis also highlights the main reason why a lot of players feel the IE UI's are no longer good enough, the scaling left a pretty bad impression. The IWD2 UI removed the UI bars on either side of the screen which many people considered a good move though for me it is still to blocky, scale that up to todays resolutions and it seems like overkill to have a bar that thick run all the way across the screen. I could definately live with the ToEE UI with updated graphics: http://samouchka.net/uploads/posts/2009-05/1242567857_4e26c6910af6.jpg I'd rather not have the IWD2 UI or any IE UI. I couldn't find a DS: SL screenshot that shows what Josh was getting at though I did find the following Darklands screenshot that seems like a precursor to the BG chapter narrations system of image with text. Both sound like decent systems. http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/194/Darklands_5.png http://www.myabandonware.com/media/captures/D/darklands/darklands_16.png

I agree with Indira, there shouldn't be a prohibitive cost to using the Adventurers Hall. We have already been told that you will be able to complete the game solo, so why should they care if we run to the Hall and make a full party as soon as possible? There must be some mechanism they have to balance things for a solo player vs a group so it will apply as soon as you fill up your party. In BG2 you almost had a full group before leaving Irenicus dungeon and had a handful of npcs available 2 minutes after leaving it and going to the Copper Coronet, why would a full party early in the game be overpowered if it is actually considered during development? Even though the description of the Hall mentions employing adventurers I think that terminology was used as a more RP description of the Hall than actually as how it works game mechanic wise. I think we all see the Hall as somewhere we can make our own party, not somewhere were we meet pre-rolled templates and just ask them to join us. So saying we employ them, in my mind is equal to saying we create them but it doesn't sound realistic to say you create a person. The whole discussion of money sinks is a different matter. I'd rather they had an overall view of the economy rather than plan a few big money sinks you cannot avoid, that is too reminiscent of MMO's where you need to farm to get gold. BG was okay with the economy because there wasn't really anything you could buy to make you super powerful until you had built up a decent amount of gold, by which time the powerful items were just a bit of bonus over the gear you had acquired. Even though you could build up gold fast it wasn't really that detrimental to the game. In DAO for example they just severely limited your ability to acquire gold, which was good because even though powerful items were being sold it took you some time to actually get the gold, however the powerful store items were typically much more powerful than most of the stuff you found. On a side note, a money sink is not somewhere you just pay a small fee for something, a money sink is typically somewhere designed to be a drain on the players acquired gold. Consider in BG1 if Edwin refused to join you unless you gave him 2000g, that would be money sink. If he wanted 1g that would just be a fee. Personally I'd like to see some magic items on vendors but I'd also like to see our acquisition rate of gold to be very low. That alone should negate the need for money sinks to be created. I also think that expansions that add a lot of content tend to ruin the economy for the entire game, things like Durlags Tower or Watchers Keep provide massive income early that can really mess up acquistion of gold for the player, giving them large incomes very early. I'd like to see something like all vendor costs rise by 10-20% when an expansion is installed with content that can be done below the max level of the game before the expansion (if that makes sense).

I'd rather not go back to an IE UI just for the sake of it. The nostalgia is the gameplay itself and having a decent party size with good writing. Trying to clone an IE game in all but name is not what we should be aiming for, at least that is my own opinion. The IE UI's just all seem like they are crowding the game screen at low resolutions and look odd and out of place at high resolutions. Whether people like DAO or not I'd rather Obsidian at least consider adopting some of the more recent features of various game UI's, transparency being one of them.

Josh said in a recent interview that the current map is about the same size as Spain in real world terms. You are probably only viewing less than 20% of the current continent if that is the case.

What I am saying is that people should offer criticism appropriately and where criticism is unnecessary actually ask for information. This thread is called "I love Cloth Maps but, frankly, the one being offered is terrible", if you think that is valid criticism when we don't even know if the map is just going to be straight up printed onto cloth or not then I doubt your ability to offer valid criticism on anything. The OP goes on a rant over something that isn't even announced, with zero information except his own assumptions. If he had of just asked for information we would all have it and then we can offer valid criticism. So yes I would call that nerdrage, uncalled for and worthless to the forum as a whole.

Graphically it would be nice if during casting the character is holding the grimoire open in one hand and then on completion closes the book one handed and uses his other hand/weapon to direct the spell, like throwing it at the opponent. I'm all for graphical magical jiggerypokery.

There is an npc damage mod made for BG2 where someone made various versions of the BG2 companions with cuts, bruises etc and then had a script to replace portraits at different damage levels. http://www.shsforums.net/topic/32425-original-portraits/

There are 22 Updates on the kickstarter page, start reading and watching!

DAO tried to do bandits seeing you as stronger than them though it was usually a dialog stat check of some kind. Personally I think DAO could have had a great item system if they had stopped at tier4 and didn't add super powered items for free via DLC. Some of the DLC actually just got dumped in your bag at level 1 even though you needed level 10 just to get your stats increased enough to wear it, after that you didn't need any armor from anything for the rest of the game. That was totally broken system of gear. But if they had of kept at Tier4 and lower most gear had positives and negatives, bonus to armor, penalty to fatigue, bonus to fire resistance, penalty to cold resistance etc as well as various combat bonuses that made choosing a harder decision. Perhaps talking of legendary items is bad because it puts us all in mind of games like diablo or warcraft. Just have more powerful weapons in hard places to reach or in parts, like BG2. Bottom of the Endless Paths for example.

Specifically we are talking about a difficulty mode change and one difficulty having content the others don't contain. That rarely happens in crpgs at all and if it does they are typically bad games for it. I am not talking about the difficulty of a wolf being rewarded the same as the difficulty of a dragon. If you kill a boss sure, you are welcome to a reward. If you kill the same boss on a higher difficulty level I don't think you are entitled to better rewards because of that. To me that kind of defeats the purpose of a higher difficulty, why get better gear to make the higher difficulty easier?

In all the IE games major characters including party members all had a portrait that appeared on the left of the dialog screen when they were talking. Minor characters did not; merchants, commoners etc. I made a mod for BG2 that added a portrait for every single npc in the game based on gender and race. I think there were over 2000 images included. For PE I can understand this might be an issue, I got my portraits from random portrait sites, Obsidian would probably want to make them all and that would take considerable time unless they did "generic commoner" and it appeared on every commoner of that gender/race. I like the idea of portraits for all but the practicality of it might be a bit too much.

I wouldn't care about XP and gold rewards, you can get both of those in a normal game with extra effort. Exactly what I DON'T want to see in hard modes is unique stuff no one else has access to, that is the type of pandering to elitism that I hate to see in any game.

It is not that people are being mean spirited, it is that the KS is a limited period "offer" kind of deal. Back us during this period and we give you this. The money donated is coming out of each individuals pocket and you have to respect that whichever way you look at it. I like the fact that Feargus actually brought it up, there is the respect right there. It really has nothing to do with feeling entitled but all about someone asking, someone giving and a mutual respect. Many people donating are really digging deep because the KS is such a short period and they really are behind the projects success. You think they feel entitled to something after spending their own money on something that at the time they didn't know was going to happen or not? Upping their pledge to reach X goal because they really want it to happen. Then after doing all of that someone says; "hey we really didn't need all that money in that 30 day period, you can just buy whatever you want for the next 18 months until release". Think about the people who don't have a crap tonne of cash to lay out and have donated in the lower tiers, if they knew from the start they could buy at any time in the next 12 months they may have never pledged at all simply due to financial circumstances and maybe the KS would not have reached its first goal at all. If we start analysing this too much you can come up with a dozen reasons why people should or shouldn't do certain things but myself I think the idea behind the KS (donate in limited period to kickstart the project) should be maintained and the respect for the pledges in that period should be recognised as the project continues.

If you are roleplaying then you wouldn't "see" peoples names floating over their head... Anyway I think this argument is pointless, I have never considered the map Josh did to be a final version, hell the game is hardly even started in production yet. I know if I was designing a world the first thing I would do is create a map so I had an idea of where everything is in relation to everything else and it would look like **** that I drew on a napkin in McDonalds. It is a pretty decent map for something made and released to the public before the game even got off the ground. Lets relax a bit and ask the question instead of blowing your load and going nerdrage over it.

And while I also like a challenge from harder modes I don't think it is fair to add content that only hard modes can see. The challenge of a hard mode is that the game is harder, no one should feel compelled to play a hard mode because if they don't they miss something. I'd rather see silly achievements in the game than exclude content based on difficulty.

You do realise there is game going on behind the BG UI that you just can't see right? Saying that transparent menus etc cover the useable screen space doesn't make much sense when at least you can see around them, for example in the Dragon Age UI where you can see left of the character portraits, if there was an enemy there you would see it. If that was the BG UI you would not see the enemy but it could still be shooting at you. I don't like the DA2 UI as much as DAO because it seems like they went backwards with the character portrait display, it looks like something you'd see in an arcade game from the 80's. I understand they were trying to maximise screen space but they could easily have done that with a pop up UI, where it slides or fades away until you hover over it. I think we need to have decent sized portraits in the UI for our party in PE because that is part of the feeling of adventuring with a group and is reminiscent of IE games without necessarily copying it outright. Especially as the game will be isometric, you won't see your characters like you do in either Dragon Age and won't be zooming in to face level ever.

I think Josh said in a recent interview that a pacifist playthrough (his words) was not in the current design plan. He did say they planned to make plenty of encounters and opportunities to use non-combat abilities and options to avoid combat via dialog etc in certain circumstances.

I think we can do better than the IE UI's these days and though the IWD2 one is better than most I still think it is too blocky and takes up a large strip of the lower screen. Perhaps if it had an opacity scale or something.

I prefer Hylspeak, to me that sounds kind of nordic whereas Hillspeak doesn't conjure anything for me. So already I am seeing these people as a nordic type hillfolk. They are elves and we have Eir Glanfath that sounds gaelic, the gaelic and scandinavian cultures have often intermixed over millennia with trade, exploration and some pillaging... They mentioned that it is generally used in folk song and poem that I imagine to be something like Beowulf which again links to Scandinavia and if you aren't familiar with the literature perhaps you have seen the CG movie. This is the kind of thing that feeds imagination, that is why I like it. So yeah I prefer Hylspeak.

This is my interpretation. The box in the lower left would be dialog and is fully collapsible up and down or left and right. The basic character selected info on the right of the dialog moves with the dialog box. The party portrait circles are bigger than they would be in DAO. Obviously I've left out the player character, use your imagination. The minimap is optional, I don't really care if there is one or not on the UI in an isometric game but as it is collapsible anyway I left it in, might be handy if you are in a dungeon and want to run back to the start of the map without opening a map window to see all the lefts and rights you need to take. With all the buttons on the bottom row there is no need for a fixed ability button menu like the IE games so long as there is an ability/skill menu we can drag buttons from. An optional second bar could be in the Options menu for those who might prefer to keep their abilities all on one side of the screen. The ability bar can be dragged from the right to collapse to the left so you only see the number of buttons you want to see. (For anyone not familiar with Dragon Age Origins).

You make it sound like PE team have already sent you a memo with the entire story, told you they don't know what to do and asked your advice about how to write a good one. These guys were responsible for PST, with possibly the least traditional antagonist we have seen in any video game before or since. I'm quite happy leaving them to their own devices and coming up with whatever it is they come up with.

They could do it easily enough without going overboard (get it?). Remember in BG2 when your ship gets attacked by those Gith looking for their sword back or something. Do maps like that except with 2 ships side by side connected by planks, or have ropes on the deck that you click to "swing" across (it just moves you to the other deck). They could be random pirate events or part of a larger story of rival city naval warfare. The ships don't have to move or anything complicated like that. http://www.tgeweb.com/ironworks/baldursgate2/maps/chapters/AR1607.jpg