anubite

I don't want to turn this thread into... another dragon age thread and I can certainly agree BG/BG2, after a point do become, brainless slaughter fest, DA:O is just way too clunky for me. From the camera, to character movement speed and turn rate, to the fact most fights are ambushes or near ambushes (enemies go hostile only a few feet from your party)... most of the tactics in DA:O revolves around you kiting enemies, spamming AOEs or disabling them to death with CC, all of the difficulty stemming from the fact harder difficulties just double an entire enemy group's life pool. Certainly, a few fights, namely the Broodmother, can be a little tactical, and it's certainly a huge step up from DA2... and certainly, there aren't too many tactical RPGs with similar enough combat to compare, but both BG2 and DA:O could have done their tactics a lot, lot better. It's just, DA:O's flaws stand out far more due to the level design/camera. BG2's flaws are mostly related to party balance... which is a pretty tricky thing for very late game in an RPG.

I honestly don't know and although I do try to tag things I think are actual spoilers (Dumbledore dies, Spike dies, etc.), certain things to me are just... a given. If you're playing a popular game or reading a popular book, don't use the internet for a week. Those two characters dying TWD is very old news at this point (their deaths were also practically telegraphed a mile away), I may as well spoiler tag all my posts from now on? I mean, I could tell everyone how Planescape Torment ends, and lots of people pick up that game for the first time every day. Sorry, I guess I've never understood the point of spoiler tags - I always click on them even if I don't know the spoiler. People hiding parts of their posts looks ugly too

You cannot actually disguise your identity while using a torrent. The only option is to use a VPN to access it, which costs money. Pirates don't want to spend money, so they obviously are not going to purchase a VPN to pirate "safely". (I suppose one other option would be to use TOR, but you'd get like 1 kb/sec download rate, if that -- have fun) It would be trivial to get everyone's IPs from a public or even private tracker. If a company wished to, they could try to sue all these people. But they would have to prove, case by case, that the IP address used to download something illegally 1) was actually owned by the peroson accused (someone can steal your ip, like if they have a laptop outside your house and catch a wifi signal or something) 2) was actually doing it deliberately 3) does not own the product they were pirating (it's not pirating if they already own the product, they're entitled to a backup copy by law) And you must prove all these things to a juror who is likely to be close to ignorant about the internet, torrents, viruses, IPs, identity, etc. it takes an expert to determine these things; reasonable doubt is not hard to prove in these cases, that it was really deliberate piracy. This is why people pirate, because they know that it would be expensive to be prosecuted by these companies (who just lose more money by going to court) and they know these standards are not enforcable by most legal systems. Taking people to court "as an example" will not stop people from pirating either, because such people always believe, "it won't happen to me". So taking these people to court rarely renders money (they don't have enough you can sue for to make up for the damages of going to court in the first place) and it's not going to curb the ever-growing popular opinion that media is "free to share".

Moby ****, specifically, not Melville for me then, as Melville's other works aren't quite like MD. It may seem like an odd choice, but I think Moby **** would have an excellent structure for PE's narrative. You have fantasy (whales being more than they are; representing something greater about the soul or humanity) merging with reality and betwixt moments of narrative, you have scientific pieces about whaling or whales - which would make a lot of sense for a game like this. You have moments focused on narrative, but you weave in moments where things go off tangent, a character explaining some complex psuedo-science that the PE world uses to make its muskets work, or rant about why some odd food eaten in some major city is terrible - moments of ordinary story interwoven with facts about the world, given to us by an interested/biased narrator. Basically, info-mercials or academic discussion mixed in with story. Some games already do this, though they do it passively by giving us codexes/books to rifle through, they don't try to integrate it into the narrative in an interesting way.

Lee is suicidal. Although charging through the horde is a strategy, it has the highest chance of death. He was also pretty much already dead at that point, so it's perhaps why he only had to kill a few zombies instead of a majority of them. Before, they could sense him pretty well, but I guess the infection and his already almost-dead body covered in blood was enough to neutralize most of their interest. TWD was a pretty big disappointment for me. TWD has been an immense financial success. For what it is, it's a decent zombie drama, but to call it a game is an overstatement. It barely has any features. At least BioWare lets your choices impact what color ending cinematic you get.

Authors for their ideas? Or authors for their style...? I agree mystery is absolutely necessary for this to be pulled off well. You can't tell a good fantasy story by telling it. You need to show it. And you can't possibly show us everything. So show us what you can and have us infer the rest. Don't treat the audience like they're unable to do this, even if they really can't. Leaving things left unsaid creates a mood unconsciously, even if it's not understood. Video games aren't books, so you can get a ton of mileage out of audiovisuals. VTMB accomplishes more in the sound of a car alarm and its ambient apartment music than I got playing through the tutorial mission of Kingdoms of Amalur. Of course, don't be oblique. Give us detail. You need to give detail to build a world. But don't explain. Show. Make us accept what is being shown.

Nitpicking this point - you're wrong. Any martial skill is a process. Or at least, you learn any martial art this way. With a kick aimed towards an opponent's knee, you learn the process. Lift leg, extend foot, pull foot back, re-ground leg. If you don't learn this process, you have no form. You're wild, executing what your body believes to be a kick. Marital actions are structured, they are not wild or innate to humans. They are not motions that come naturally. Swinging a sword in the martial sense requires practice. You simply cannot pick up a sword for the first time and swing it correctly, under any martial system I know of. There is form. How you hold the blade, how you maintain your stance, how you strike and where. There is a step by step process you learn for wielding a sword and making a simple strike with it. Every strike is made with this learned process, which is increased in speed until it seems smooth, one motion instead of 10 steps. In time, after much instruction and practice it might become merely an "action" and not a process, but any action can be broken down into a process. Infinitely many times. All things are processes in the world, down to the molecular level and even further down below that level, to who knows how far. As for lock picking, there is no reason to waste development time or a player's time doing a mini-game to open a door or a chest. This isn't an ARPG, this isn't an action game, this isn't an adventure game, this isn't a lock picking simulator. There is no value to adding a barrier to opening doors and chests when there certainly will be one already: a character skill-based check. The only thing is, I would suggest we emulate 'real life' by structuring how lock picking works. Many PnP games have systems like this, but basically, let's say there are 5 levels of the lock picking skill Dunce Dumb Bad Good Master When you find a chest, you get one opportunity to open it with your lock picking skill. Anyone, even anyone without a skill in lockpicking, so long as they have a tool to pick with, can attempt. Dunces can open Master Locks. But, the chance of doing so is very, very low. Master Lock pickers will always suceed to open chests below their mastery level and have a chance to fail against locks greater than or of their level of mastery. If you fail to pick a lock, you can attempt to use a spell to open it once. If you don't have the spell or you fail with that, you can force open the chest. Breaking the chest has a chance to destroy items inside it and requires a character with a large strength pool to open it. Some chests should be open-able with a special key which can be obtained by answering a riddle, killing a special foe, finding it in the dungeon, etc. - point being, no mini-games, but give us many opportunities and strategies to opening locked things, with various levels of consequence and difficulty.

I'm not advocating for the removal of ambushes, it's just, in DA, you enter a room that half the time locks on you, and entraps you surrounded by a dozen enemies at once. In this small room, with slowly-moving player characters, you literally have one strategy: sit there and take it. That is probably a larger flaw with DA:O and DA2, rather than it being ambushes (in both games, there are a very limited number of strategies available to the player at all) exclusively, but ambushes themselves do not invite much strategy. It's basically gut reaction, "Oh ****. I'm surrounded without any preparation. What will I do?" This can be exciting especially if tension is built up (you know people are chasing/stalking you and are going to eventually ambush you, you just don't know when/where), but it's very cheap and hurts the game when done too often. You have to make ambush-based encounters less difficult by default, because you have limited available strategy. A tactical game where tactics are often limited is silly. Ambushes are like jump scares in horror games - keep them limited.

Bg2 is very tactical. When you're fighting Ithilids, you know it. You know to open the door, your whole party prepared. You know to expect some chaos thrown at you from those hulks and you know to pull your melee fighters back if they get intelligence drained. Rooms with these foes are often designed so you can close doors and lock Ithilids inside if things get too messy. You also have a lot of room for kiting when you first open the door/enter to a room containing these foes, enough time to react even though these enemies are shrouded behind fog. I've been replaying DA:O and DA2 and I think the reason why THESE rpgs aren't tactical is because most of the fights fall under these conditions: You enter a room. Enemies do not go hostile, you can't do anything to them, until you're smack dab in the middle of them. Foes like bandits or spiders that descend from the ceiling. You basically cannot get your positioning down, you're completely caught with your pants down. This means most strategies involve spamming radial AOE spells and carrying a lot of tanky fighters instead of squishy classes. This also means that classes that focus on debuffs or single target abilities are significantly inferior to classes that have tons of AOE (rogues are pretty darn useless in DA:O for non-boss encounters, you only take them along for treasure chests it feels like). You open a door, monsters come pouring out. It's the same story, there's a barrier. You need to open it before you can fight these monsters. You cannot de-engage these enemies once you open the door. You can't close it in time, even if you could, the enemies still stay hostile and lock you in combat no matter how far away you run. Yesterday, I opened a door in the fade and two mages proceeded to stun lock me death with the combination of freeze-->paralysis-->prison-->freeze. I literally could not do anything because I couldn't even see what was in the next room until I opened the door. You clear a group of enemies, a dozen materialize out of thin air and/or come pouring out from adjacent rooms for another wave. Wave-based encounters are fine, but it's extremely deceptive to at all times not know how many enemies you are fighting. In BG2, this kind of encounter would be terrible, because you wouldn't know when the best time to use a spell or ability would be, due to cooldowns. Should you save it? Should you burn it? Will more enemies come? You really have no idea, and that's okay every once in a while, but this happens way too frequently in the DA series. Every encounter happens in a closed room. You cannot manipulate enemies to fight where you wish them to, easily. This effectively makes making traps utterly worthless. In order to have tactical large-party combat combat work, I think PE designers should endeavor to: Telegraph encounters. Tell me what kinds of enemies I will face. When. Where. How. Why. Give me time to plan a tactical-strategy! If I'm not given the opportunity to, I certainly won't be able to. If you must ambush our party (it's hardly an ambush if it happens 1 out 3 encounters), telegraph it's going to happen so I can plan appropriately. Otherwise, this hurts the game, because I need to tailor my party so that it's adept at dealing with constantly fighting in melee range of foes. This can be as simple as letting us SEE enemies before we can engage them. Let us disengage from most fights. Maybe closing a door seems kind of silly, but I shouldn't have to reload the game from my last save so I can have metaknowledge to deal with encounters. If you're going to hide enemies in rooms or not make them appear until I'm standing in the thick of things, show me this is going to happen and where enemies will appear. Design dungeons to be more than highways. Bridges, pillars, corners, tight corridors - natural cover or areas designed for us to lay traps and lure enemies into them. If the environment consists of square rooms and wide halls, there really isn't much strategic opportunity. Give us choices. Don't make us slog through every room. Lay out dungeons so that we can pick to fight Ithilids or we can pick to fight Beholders. If you make dungeons too linear, then we can't make strategic sacrifices based on our party's aptitude. Give us environmental-context abilities. Doors are one, but traps innate to a dungeon, or drawbridges, or other nick-nacks, give us environmental-specific ways to deal with encounters. Give us ways to boost our party's mobility. Nothing hurts more I notice in DA than being slow. It's very hard to do an about-face, to get people rapidly into positions where they won't die, when everyone moves clunkily and slowly. I don't think kiting will be an issue in this game, but if that is a concern, let speed boosts be expensive or risky to utilize constantly. These suggestions are based more towards the player, but perhaps, monsters should have their own strategic/tactics as well. Do have high enemy variety, but don't let enemy variety sky-rocket right away. Keep enemiy variety low in an area until players are comfortable with how each kind of enemy works, then start expanding. Don't give one enemy too many abilities. How do you know what will be thrown at you? How do you know what to focus on? How will you react to something constantly changing? Give enemies abilities that are diverse, but make them distinct. Ithilids are distinct, hulks are distinct - they have unique abilities, but they have really only two functions (attack/drain intelligence, attack/chaos). Together, they are very lethal, which invites the strategy of peeling them apart. In my earlier example, a single enemy probably shouldn't have freeze, paralysis and a prison spell (unless it's a unique/boss foe), because in large numbers you have very problematic, obnoxious encounters where you cannot do anything.

I recall there being one European country that recently legalized a person's right to download music. Or was it Brazil? I forget. But anyway, it doesn't really matter whether something is legal or not, people will try to pursue civil damages for copying copy-righted material. I think people have demonstrated the flaws of the copy-right, how it has been grossly abused by companies, especially in the US, where many things have been extended past the 75 year limit. The fact is that an entire generation now has been raised under a lose idea of "ownership of media". That the idea of "fair use" has been overblown (its definition is fairly nebulous at this point, is parody even sacred anymore?). Companies are seeing this as a "war" that they need to win. Given how other wars (like the ones on drugs) have turned out recently, I can't help but shake my head at the short-sightedness. There are many good reasons to do away with all forms of copy protection. Having most software open-source would certainly be a massive boon for the industry. Hiding and building walls is hurting the creative spirit... the same spirit that brought about this technological revolution. But of course, with trust, there is a price. And we can't really trust everyone to have goodwill. There's no easy solution, but the best solution is to understand this much: When people covet beauty, ugliness arises. When people covet what they cannot have, piracy arises. When people can just have what they want, they might be more willing to support those who brought them the things they liked. They might see creators as allies and not capitalistic enemies. There might be grossly more harmony in just giving in, than trying to dominate. Of course, this could backfire, though under what circumstances I'm not sure. Indie game developers would do well to know they exist partially out of good will. Destroying that will probably all they need to do to bring about their own ruin.

Where will it end up? I dunno. Their stretch goals will decide that. Anything involving the licensing of celebs to have their likeness in the game or extra content would be great. Someone even suggested using some of the money to persuade Barkley to play the first game...? Not sure if that's such a grand idea but it's pretty funny to think about.

DRM doesn't stop pirating. It just incentivizes it. End of story. Piracy rate is <10% and the people who pirate will continue to do so. Just don't even think about those people, you simply cannot punish 90% of your consumer base to try and lock down 10%. You simply can't anyway, because pirate groups can break any DRM you make, no matter how ingenious you think it is. It's also nonsense to have pirates IN your consumer base. They aren't purchasing your product, just ignore them. As far as you're concerned, 100% of people who play your game pay for it. There's no "theft" or "missing profit" because chances are, pirates weren't going to give you money even if they couldn't pirate it. Why do publishers think they are clairvoyant and know that because 10,000 people pirated their game, it means they lost 10,000 sales? It doesn't mean that at all. No one can bankrupt activision by pirating the latest Call of Duty game 1,000,000,000 times. There is no money lost when someone pirates a game. The loss of revenue is only a potential one. A "what if".

According to Ubisoft, piracy rate of PC is 95%. Given Skyrim's sales numbers for the PC, this would mean something like 50-60 million people pirated Skyrim, twice as many people who play CoD. Such exaggerations are enough to make you shake your head at anyone who uses piracy as an excuse not to do something.

I backed with $10. I expect you guys to do the same

I do have an introduction which explains my tone. I am not trying to be "arrogant" however, there is no "accepted" or "universal" theory to most things, let alone art (if video games are an art, if game design is an art), however, we can still be critical of them and present arguments. If the arguments I present in my video are not sufficient to back up the theory behind them, that will be for the viewer to decide. Video games in their current state are still developing and it should not be wild at this point for people to put forth their ideas as how they "should be" developed. Consensus can only be reached after a sufficient amount of structured debate and analysis, of which I have seen little, at least for public consumption. Perhaps there is literature I'm not aware of, where people in the industry have analyzed Dragon Age 2 for its faults, but I believe I will be the first to be putting out in plain view all of its faults for examination. I will be accompanying my findings with my own "opinion" but I think there is a very large disconnect when the word "opinion" gets mentioned. Everything is everyone's opinion. Facts, I feel, are hard to pin down. Yes, there is a Queen of England. We can go see her today if we wish, we might call this a fact, but to what degree is it a fact? What if she's really NOT the queen of england, but some kind of impostor, who's been fooling us all along? As silly as it sounds, there is such a thing as 'unreasonable disbelief', but the degree at which we say something is sufficiently reasonable or not, can vary. My opinion is not simply the statement, "dragon age 2 is a bad game" - my opinion is a long, drawn out argument that uses evidence from dragon age 2 as well as evidence from DA:O (which I have also recently replayed), VTMB, BG2 and other RPGs/cRPGs. The point is to compare DA2 to these other games, point out what THEY do well and try to explain them using my analysis. Then it's to compare that understanding to DA2 and explain WHY things don't work. Perhaps I should structure what I posted above better, by analyzing the openings for VTMB, BG2 and other games. Though, I'd like to keep the running time of this analysis under one hour, as it is it's going to be tough keeping this thing at a reasonable length for people to consume and I do want to be very specific and point out some of the flaws in DA2 by example. Urgh. In any case, DA2's opening scenes are integral that I examine in depth, I'm not sure I can do the same for every good RPG ever. If I only try to compare DA2 with one other game, I will simply be accused of wishing DA2 were that game, which isn't the case at all. I want DA2 to be its own game, but I want it to be GOOD AND BE ITS OWN GAME.

Hmm, they look better than I remember. I think they would be passable... though maybe not. I mean, this is for tablets right? Tablets have pretty big resolutions, if they couldn't upscale those movies then they'd look horrible stretched on a screen that large.

Go play BG1, the movies, while great for their time, are ugly as sin to look at today. Your average consumer, ignorant of how old BG1 really is, would likely be thrown off by their bad quality. They might consider the work "unprofessional" or shoddy, had they stayed in. They could even disturb 'immersion' I guess. I think MOST of us end up skipping these movies after a certain point, so I suspect they are not all that important. But... well, it's hard to say one way or the other whether their removal was justified. It does seem like nitpicking though. How is the EE besides that?

First draft of a (small) part of my video analysis. I'd love to get some feedback on it, even if it's only trolls telling me it's just my opinion / it's bad. Right now it's mostly words, kind of messily broken up, but the main point that I'll be delivering is in there, the video evidence for my points in my possession, though obviously not displayed here. The tone here is very informal, with too many air-headed likes/i means, but that and the grammar, and probably most of the informal stuff, will be cut out, though a some of it will linger, just so I can hopefully entertain while still being analytic. Polished youtube poop still has to be poop. My video analysis is divided into two major parts, part one is about the roleplaying aspect of the game - namely why the world of DA2 doesn't work. My second part focuses entirely on the "gameplay" - the itemization, the classes, the spells, character advancement, strategy and tactics, boss fights, enemy variety, and more.

Why didn't you post this on Bioware's forums? It's a rant obviously aimed at Bioware and Obsidian wasn't involved with Dragon Age or 2 in any way (unless there's some massive CRPG destruction conspiracy going on behind the scenes.) I don't know where you might have gotten the idea that PE would be taking its cues from Dragon Age 2, anyway. Because BioWare social network is North Korea of the internet. end of line It's not a rant about DA2. It mentions about what it did wrong and I learned from what it did wrong. What I've demonstrated applies to ALL RPGs, or should, if they are to be called RPGs. RPGs are ABOUT their worlds more than anything else, DA2's world was not convincing - it wasn't plausible, consistent or conveyed. What DA2 does wrong is very important. But it's not my focus of this topic - it's to remind Obsidian to focus on conveying the images, the sounds, the feelings of PE's world - as well as a logical consistency to its world and people. Perhaps I'm preaching to the choir, but eh, why not. It's the internet. Perhaps I want validation, or my points disproved, which I don't see you doing. Do you know how utterly arrogant you sound? It doesn't lend your message any credence. Basically you read like a troll. As with any game, DA2 had its good points and its weaknesses. I personally found it entertaining enough to play it to nearly the end. It has some design elements that remain appealing to me. What you need to do is accept the fact that it is mainly an action RPG. Huh? But it's not an action RPG. Anyway, I do acknowledge it does a few things right, like some of the Qunari scenes. What you sound like to me is an overly sensitive fanboy. You just have to accept that the game is bad and why it is so; because you can't put your fingers in your ears and ignore it. You have to acknowledge the game's flaws. You have to talk about it. I'm not unintelligently just "hating" on DA2. I JUST recently replayed it for the second time to make this analysis. I'm studying the game. Examining why it sucks. Because it does. So that we don't make a game like it ever again. I'm making a video that will expose all of DA2's flaws and HOPEFULLY BioWare will see it, though it seems it's already too late, from what we've heard of DA3 so far... they're making the same mistakes they did in DA2. Anyway, just get over it. The game is bad, this thread isn't really about that. It's about conveyance, plausibility, consistency and simulation. If you want to argue how DA2 has one of those 4 elements, I'd be happy, no I'd love to hear it, as I could use it in my analysis video, but so far, I've not found enough evidence that DA2 has these elements in any significant degree. Or, you could try to consider a good RPG that has NONE of those elements, suggesting that my initial analysis wrong, that RPGs don't need those elements to be convincing and/or good. I don't exactly want to turn this into a DA2 thread... unless it's constructive discussion about its flaws/merits, as I have only done in this thread. Instead of whining about how I'm hating on the game, why don't you construct an argument about the features Obsidian should take from it? I'd say DA2 is probably one of the biggest lessons Obsidian could learn about RPGs today. It's very... provocative.

Duos the God(dess) of Plurality Duos appears as a pallid man with soft features. Or as a dark-skinned woman with hard, bony features. Duos enjoys riddles. All of his riddles are related to the concept of duality and dualness. Duos claims he does and does not exist. Duos believes in the concept of balance. But enjoys finding people whom are extreme. His riddles are usually aimed at the righteous and the wicked. He delights when he can confuse them and is angered when his riddles are ignored or easily solved. His goal is usually to make the one he is tormenting question his/herself, to the point where he can convince them to do an "about face" - changing the charitable scholar into the murderous book-burner. Or the other way around. Lune the God of Ignorance Lune often appears as a blonde human, entirely ignorant of the world. He is immortal and a god. He is so powerful, he can grant any wish he desires. However, he can be killed. When he does die, due to not eating/drinking or being killed by someone, he is simply reborn after some period of time, as another blonde human. He is completely unaware of his power. He does at times, understand speech. And is even capable of it himself. But most of the time, he does not know language. The only thing he does know, is that he knows nothing. He knows only that, for certain. At times, his senses suddenly stop working. He may stop seeing, hearing, speaking, feeling, smelling - any or all. They eventually return. Lune does have long term/short term memory, though at times, it can be fickle. He can forget everything all at once. Usually, he speaks of the present moment or topic at hand, rarely dredging up the past or thinking towards the future. Ironically, legends say that Lune, when he does speak says profound things that change men. For all his ignorance, he must know more than he seems to? It is also said, that he has been abused by the powerful. He can be tricked into granting wishes or empowering or murdering or helping others. Near the Crow God He is the god of crows. And usually appears as one, or so they say. He can only speak in one-word sentences, though he seems to completely understand any language spoken to him. He blesses the dead (then eats them) and defends murders of crows, when threatened. Some territories are "protected" by him and are sacred to crows. Massive numbers of crows will nest here, making huge, tranquil societies of this odd bird, or so they say. Near loves silver and will do favors for offerings of silver at sacred places for crows. His powers are enigmatic. Those who have ravens or crows as familiars would do well to earn his favor.

I generally agree with this, though I don't think it hurts to give the PC a previous history that you as the player are expected to roleplay. Of course, having a blank slate works, but having an interesting backstory can add some interesting conflict to the story (eg you were raised by wolves).

I prefer systems where attributes remain as fixed as possible. You can increase your attributes, but it's difficult, requiring some very specific items/gear/passives/bonuses. Attributes should be powerful, rigid, but not immutable. I'll leave Obsidian to decide what's best... but here's my own world STR - Increases damage with melee weapons by a lot, ranged weapons by half as much. Increases the "maximum burden" of your character (so if you have high str, you can use plate armor no problem with no penalty). Increases the chance of stuns with physical damage. AGI - Increases attack and cast speed. DEX - Increases chance to hit with weapons and chance to evade vs weapons. CON - Increases maximum life and mana/stamina/energy regeneration (where stamina/energy are the resource for skills that don't use mana, if there is such a thing). INT - Increases spell damage. Increases chance to critically strike with weapon attacks (and possibly spells). WIS - Increases max mana and gives slight magic penetration (so you can pierce magical resistances on gear) Notably I think there should be many passives/feats which allow you to scale your character in interesting ways. Here are some things I have in mind that may seem familiar... Finesse - Dexterity increases melee weapon damage as if it were strength if it is higher Nimble - Dexterity increases your spell damage as if it were intelligence if it is higher (being dextrous should make you good with complex spells, I think ) Blood Magic - Use life instead of mana for spells. Barbarian Magic - Strength increases your melee damage and spell damage but does not increase damage you deal with ranged weapons or increase your maximum burden. Sage - Your wisdom increases your stun chance for physical damage and attack speed. Basically, feats/passives for altering how you can build your characters' attributes -- would be really nice. Also nice too, is having at least two effects per attribute, one for spell casters, one for non-spell casters. This has the bonus effect of encouraging hybridization (if your mage is very intelligent, he can still hit reasonably hard with a dagger, since he'll get criticals often) as well as encouraging the use of diversified builds, breaking down min/max syndrome (you can have a warrior that focuses on intelligence and strength or dexterity and strength or agility and strength or even wisdom and strength).

More like it's become the boogeyman of RPGs. Don't do ___ because the ghost of Dragon Age will get you! *giggle* But yes, I do understand that my "simulation" comments may be outside the realm of PE's budget. I was NOT however suggesting we turn PE into M&B:Warband. MY MAIN POINT IS THAT DA2 DIDN'T HAVE NPCS REACTING TO YOU LIKE THEY SHOULD. If you're going to have civillian NPCs in your game, spend five minutes to give them enough AI so they simulate proper civillain behavior! Gosh! BG2 did fine with a relatively static world, though it WOULD have been a more immersive game were it not so static. I am not proposing we turn PE into Dwarf Fortress, but that we be mindful of systems we can have because this is a computer game and not a PnP one. We can add systems and SHOULD where we can, to simulate the world. Having non-player entities and having the player be subject to certain world-systems, do build immersion, although I do agree such systems could be buggy and backfire, simple systems, like civillain behavior, are absolutely necessary. I apologize for using DA2 as an example, but it's basically "garaunteed replies" - which I like - also, I do need to use examples of both bad/good world building, because I can't talk in high language on a forum, it's going to jump over everyone's head. I need to provide concrete examples of what I'm talking about so everyone can be clear of what I'm saying. Anyway, I can attribute the thread's negativity to my lack of description. I'm actually doing a video on this subject. Hopefully will finish it soon. I suppose I'll post it in this thread when I'm done. I'm sure none of you want to hear my horrible voice prattle on about what I think is important about RPGs, but I assure you I'll be providing enough video evidence from... you know, video games, to hopefully dredge up my points a bit better. You're all welcome to have dissenting opinions, but... I think such opinions have less value... when they don't try to use evidence. No offense, I mean, I'm guilty of this as well, it's hard to cite a video game, after all, but I think we're only going to be able to make intelligent points about video games by citing them, after a certain point. I'm not trying to simply state my opinion, but show Obsidian why my way of thinking will produce a better game. By you know, copying games that work. And yes, yes, PE is just supposed to copy BG2. And I'm sure it will be a fine game if they ONLY do that. But we've learned a lot since BG2. We can improve upon what IE games did. And by improve, I don't mean copy Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, or Social Games. By improve, I mean learning by using other RPGs. VTMB, Mount and Blade, NWN2, DA2, DAO - all have important things to contribute when we examine them. That doesn't mean turning PE into a non-BG2 successor, it means acknowledging that we can improve the genre. That it's not nostalgia talking. That isometric cRPGs can work in a modern setting and can be "modernized" without turning them into slop. What I think we have learned, over the years, is that good RPGs have believable worlds. Believable worlds come about by good emergent systems, or by good writing. I think this is why Morrowind is so beloved and Skyrim/Oblivion are so detested. I mean, Skyrim/Oblivion had detestable guard/prison systems. They really break your immersion when someone teleports half a continent away to arrest you for that mug you stole in some guy's tavern. Or when infinitely respawning guards come after you to kill you. Obviously, bad systems will kill immersion. Buggy systems less so, but will too, but good emergent game design will enhance immersion far better than an amazing plot. An amazing plot is alive only for the first time you play it. Amazing choices can only be so deep - it's hard to write a branching narrative that is complex and will entertain for many playthroughs. Computers can make RPGs be very dynamic. And I'm not saying we should cast away good plot or good characters, just that we can enhance both by adding as much simulation as we can afford to. I think... I mean this is obviously impossible right now, but the ideal way to simulate the "Game Master" for cRPGs, is not to try and write/hard-code some crazy choice-consequence series of plots, but to make something like L4D's AI director and combine it with Mount and Blade's economic/warfare systems or Dwarf Fortress's society simulation. Again, this is way out of scope for PE, but the idea I think it theoretically possible - that we could have a psuedo-random cRPG that doesn't give you "kill 10 rats" as quests over and over, and it would be immersive. That is obviously a very different game from what PE wants to be, but PE can be what it wants to be and more than that, if it's mindful to implement cheap simulation where it can. That is my suggestion, but probably my better points are my original three. I'm not putting emphasis on them, because I... I think - or hope - Obsidian already knows how important good world building is. VTMB succeeded because WOD is an amazing world. DA:O was rocky because BioWare was creating a whole new world. And they got a few weird mechanics and story elements and got started off on the wrong foot, but delivered an okay game. In DA2 they really fell apart in the world building, which is what the draw was to their games. Mass Effect is so beloved because it has a pretty... well, it has an okay universe. It's not ideal at all (way too many humanoid alien races for my liking), but it's plausible and consistent and it has conveyance! The prothean focus was really well done. When the reapers became though... squid ships and protheans were no longer the main focus... ME2/ME3 began to crumble. ME2/ME3 definitely have a huge lack of conveyance and consistency, though ME1 provides enough plausibility most people can enjoy the series.

I think we're talking about the same thing. The audio/visual cues in games aren't explained, but they convey a theme. My point was that Dragon Age 2 has poor conveyance because their symbols don't mean anything. The slaves... the golden eagles? None of that has any meaning because none of it is integrated well into the game. The symbol is there but what it means isn't conveyed. I'm convinced it doesn't have a meaning, it's just set dressing for the game, unlike in VTMB - where you know the clinic has the sounds it does, why it's designed the way it does - it's designed to represent oppression, to represent dark times, to represent a dirty, dingy medical facility in an urban setting, which fits in well with the gothic imagery of vampires and the "coming apocalypse". This theme only grows the longer the game runs on. Dragon Age 2 has these golden symbols, but they have no context, besides Kirkwall being narrated to us that it was "built by slaves" - we never learn any more detail about who these slaves really were, what the descendants of these slaves are really like, or how any of that even matters in the overarching plot of mages vs templars. Are the mages slaves? But slaves back then didn't rise up and brutally kill their oppressors with blood magic? It's hard to give the symbols any context or meaning; the're just THERE. There's poor audio conveyance because it's inconsistent. Kirkwall is supposed to be LOADED with refugees - yet we scarcely see any the entire game; we don't even HEAR the sounds of crowds, or muggings, or suffering, we just see beige dusty houses and an underground section with sewer pipes. There are multiple quests in VTMB related to hospitals, blood, suffering, the poor, and sickness, which help to further give symbols meaning, which results in the abstract idea in video games as mood or atmosphere.

Where are you getting realism from? VTMB is hardly "realistic". DA2 isn't bad because it's "unrealistic" it's bad because it isn't consistent. And although PST may have an unusual setting, it has conveyance. Granted, I haven't played it in /forever/ but if I must.... I could prove that it has all three qualities I mention in my original post.