anubite

I do agree that if you're going to ask for more personal information, you should ask for the country of residence. It kind of skews your poll if a bunch of South Africans take your poll, who on average make less in a given year, but relatively, they might fall under a higher income bracket compared to what they would make in the US.

Anyone else frustrated with how difficult it is to find kickstarters that interest you? I think the site needs a huge revamp, or I'm missing something. They don't let you view enough kickstarters on one page - honestly, the site should print out a huge list of them if you give search criteria.

I think "long term buffs" are boring and pointless. Just make them passive abilities or auras. Short term buffs should be so powerful and impactful that you WANT to use them over fireball, but they obviously shouldn't be trivial to cast - make them cost lots of mana or come with an interesting downside.

There is no way, nor will there ever be, to explain Daikatana. Daikatana wasn't that bad.

Oh, I think anyone who's read a few of my posts or watched my inane rant in my signature that I don't believe BioWare has a chance in hell of coming back from where they're at, but there are a lot of people who are sympathetic to BioWare, so I don't see the point in being cruel. Nor do I feel the need to lie or misrepresent the truth. The truth is that demos are prohibitively expensive to make. The fact CG trailers and demos get made for events like E3 is a travesty (I'd rather they go to furthering the game's complexity or development). Of course, a good demo can be used to market a game later, but not so early in development.... I'm speculating anyway. We don't know the facts. I can't be too judgmental without having them. All I know, is I don't like Gaider's tone. I can understand he and other BioWare developers are stressed and maybe frustrated with the community, but they're just handling everything wrong. There are lots of gaming companies that figure out how to communicate with their customer base. A recent one would be GrindingGearGames. It can be a challenge sometimes, but I would say good communication trumps a fancy ad campaign, CG trailers and special event demos.

I'm not sure why you would even need a database, even for a very complex RPG. For MMOs - duh - you're storing instance data, player account data, world data et cetera, but for a single-player RPG you just have a couple megabytes worth of data on what's going on where in a dungeon and then you have a file that saves the state of areas you're not in, which won't be queried until you enter a new area, which prompts loading. You'll need to be more specific, honestly. What are you envisioning? You can't use SQL databases for rendering anything, as it would be way too slow (you use lists, arrays and such). What do you need to search for in a game that requires a look up? If everything is indexed, you'll get it fast. If you're not indexing, chances are, it's because you don't have a lot of data. I mean, you don't really need to sort anything if your list contains <50 items. When are you going to have more than 50 items in a single player RPG? Even if you have 1000 items, you can do one of the cheaper sorting algoritims and be fine. I only see the point in a complex database once you move beyond that, to 50k or 100k items you need to search through for whatever reason, which will never happen in a single player game - unless it's Dwarf Fortress-esque complexity.

Good point. But realize that demos are very expensive to create. They consumea lot of dev time and are merely for marketing purposes. Since the game won't be going to market for a while... they saw no need to. And if the game isn't well received, that's just a lot of negative publicity. They'll keep it under wraps "until it's ready". By extending the development by a year, BioWare can avoid the whole issue of it being shamed by the The Witcher 3. They can be more reactive to how it's perceived and make some last minute changes do their game. I think the extension proves the reliability of that leak on reddit, where a BioWare employee (or was it an alpha tester?) confided that DA3 is nowhere near ready and an assured train wreck if it were to be launched this fall.

What is a "truly open world"? What does that mean? Open-world games can be highly linear, where you can go anywhere in the world, but you can't do anything in the world until you pass through some quest check point or trigger. Skyrim is full of linear dungeons that are boring; a lot of them have nothing to offer you unless you're on a specific quest, too. A "truly open world" would follow the same design constraints I outline above, on a larger scale.

I agree. I think death/defeat should be something meaningful. I'm fine if characters can survive after being felled in combat, but it should come a cost, or be naturally scary. For instance, in BG, you can have a petrified character - potentially, or at least, in the early game, it can be very difficult to unpetrify them. That kind of thing, I think is really cool. I'd love to play an RPG where there are multiple forms and degrees of death that require certain solutions that may be very expensive or challenging to overcome. It might be that you decide to abandon a party member if the means ot revival is too costly. The same goes with level drain and other debilitating effects.

I can understand this abstraction of hit points. But as others have noted, it has resulted in weird results as P&P rules moved over into computer games. Why should a backstab of a high-level mage be less effective than a low-level mage? Perhaps a high-level character would be more likely to notice someone before they attacked (having years of experience dealing with sneak attacks), but they shouldn't be able to shrug off a critical hit. Similarly, as I noted, once firearms get into the picture, it just gets ridiculous. Even in action movies, one typically cannot continue to attack after getting shot in the head. One might miraculously survive the attack depending upon the needs of the plot, but you don't just keep on charging. I don't want combat to be fun (or at least, far from the most fun thing in the game). If combat is fun, we're artificially rewarding body-count heavy play. I think by making combat have so few repercussions (lots of attacks to kill foes or kill the player), we're inflating the amount of time and energy which should be devoted to encounters. I'd love to see more games, for example, do what KOTOR2 did where a huge amount of prep work involved strengthening a settlement for a known assault. That sort of planning is most instrumental in winning, not what happens on the battlefield once the melee is joined. I hate arcade action games. I think people tend to have too negative a thought about save/load use though. Sometimes you just lose games, even things like solitaire. You just try again. I don't see the issue with this. In a long, plot-driven game, it makes sense to try again from a point before the beginning, as the crucial mistake you made may have been just before perishing (or whatever). Regardless, in my ideal RPG, you'd be able to avoid rolling the dice most and resorting to it though, since you go diplomatic, recruit allies, set the opponent's camp on fire, assassinate, divert a stream to drown them out, cause a cave in, plant evidence they falsely committed a crime, etc. Any number of ways to ensure that you do not meet the enemy in the field of battle, unless you can bring down numbers heavily in your favor. I'd be okay with a mechanic similar to recent Bioware games though, where "killed" characters are simply unconscious and can be revived provided you win the encounter. Particularly because most people before this mechanism used to just reload when a party member died anyway. It would still mean you'd be highly unlikely to wade into (as an example) 40 goblin mooks, who would likely kill all of you due to sheer number of attacks and flanking bonuses (regardless of how low-level and inexperienced they otherwise are). I think you should avoid saying something like "fights shouldn't be fun" because fun is a nebulous concept. Are horror games fun? They're certainly horrifying, so why do people play them? Getting into a fight should be stressful/nerve wracking but it shouldn't be something players hate doing. Fighting should be fun, but it should be something to be avoided, because it is highly uncertain. Making a game with realistic combat is an interesting choice, but inevitably, but if you try to make combat "scary" like a horror game might be horrific, the game ultimately needs to be about something other than combat, which may alienate a large core audience. PE and cRPGs in general are about collecting items, plowing through story, and learning lore. Fun strategic combat synergizes with all that. Combat that you dread, something akin to Demon's Souls/Dark Souls (where combat can be scary at times) is better suited for an action game, or something like Dwarf Fortress (where it's about non-static characters).

That is an interesting interpretation. Are you saying we'll be able to explore multiple planets? Or will ME4 be about being stranded in a single area on a single planet...? I don't expect ME4 to allow real time interstellar travel...

BioWare exists because of consumers and because of fans. Not because they contribute art to a majestic Lord in exchange for patronage. This doesn't mean they should listen to their fans, but it does mean they should please them. And if they will not please them, then they should please some other audience that will pay them for their work. Nobody is going to fork over money to BioWare because they're acting tsuntsun. Make on with the dere, Bioware-san. If the fans don't like Morrigan's look, I think there's a problem. Why? Well, for one, she was a love interest in the first game. That immediately means she has a following. A big one. She was a sex object. And if you're going to take away that aspect of her character, don't tell me she's suddenly going to morph into Kreia...? Let's face it: if Morrigan is not going ot be eyecandy, she better damn well contribute to the story, the world, the theme, and the weight of the game. But I'm pretty sure Morrigan isn't going to grow wings and become this beautiful character that enthralls me like Kreia. So, already, BioWare is just alienating consumers for the sake of being a big ass. If Morrigan is going to contribute something more significant to the story this time around, then by all means, show it to us. Why did we not see any of that in the gradiose trailer at E3? Where's the substance at, if this will be a substantive entry into the series? And before you get on my case - the climax of Dragon Age Origins is a choice: Will you **** Morrigan, or will somebody else? Or will you not **** her at all? I'm not exaggerating. This is a pivotol choice in the story for saving all of Ferelden. Your life, or sex. How can she not be a sex object, then? The writers begged us to treat, to look upon her that way. Isn't it kind of backwards to throw misogyny at us for reaping what you sowed?

Fixed. Of all the things Bioware was inconsistent about DA2, the art direction was the least problem. Fair enough, but what I specifically mean is - RPGs are very story-driven. You become attached to the characters in the story. If the characters change their biological look with every new entry to the series, then we have a disconnect. This is only further hurt when characters (like a certain terrorist) start acting radically different from before and the "canonicalness" of character deaths are ignored. BioWare's designers have said they want to make their own game; the fans will not be the rudder to steer the ship, so to speak. That's perfectly fine, but the way Gaider says it in his posts is not only disrespectful, but down-right stupid. Yes, 90% of people commenting on the design of a game should shut up, but every single good game I have ever played has been extensively playtested before and after release, furthermore, player input is always heard and contemplated, if not acted upon, during development, or after. Games have become a service-industry partially because of this. You cannot stick your fingers in your ears and ignore feedback. It just doesn't work. The fact BioWare continues to do this only further cements the obvious fate that awaits them.

You can defend BioWare if you wish, but I think the fans' discontent stems from the fact DA3 will have a different art style compared to DA2, which had a different art style from DA1. This happens when you change your art director after every game. BioWare has not been consistent with the look of their characters, which I don't think is a wise chioce.

I liked some things about DA:O, like the ability to harden Alistar/Leiliana, and I liked Morrigan's snark. I liked that it was a Baldur's Gate successor, even if it didn't get much right on that front. I also liked the tone of the first game and I liked that each race had two or more origin stories - that you had origin stories at all. But having played the game close to three times, I think I'm pretty cemented in my dislike of most what it stands for. DA2 was just awful, I needn't say more. I'm not a huge fan of The Witcher either. The first game had some really, really awful elements (the swamp, a lot of the early game combat, the sex trading card game nonsense), the second game was a little too linear and heavyhanded; but I generally enjoyed both games enough I'll get a used copy of TW3.

http://www.vg247.com/2013/06/18/dragon-age-inquisitions-open-world-is-pretty-ambitious-says-bioware-gm/ BioWare will attempt to pull of a Skyrim - push out a buggy, shallow game with a huge open world and (hopefully) some mod tools. Modders will fix the mess for them and they'll get 8/10's and 9/10's like DA2 did, and the game will be labelled a success. If they're smart, they'll do better than Merril and introduce a new Tali to rope in some of the desperate types. The best thing BioWare can do at this point is realize Dragon Age isn't an ARPG. There's a big difference from Path of Exile or Diablo and Baldur's Gate and I don't believe BioWare is capable of delivering something on the same level of quality as Torchlight or Path of Exile. You can't do Button=Awesome and you can't have "fast paced tactical combat" simeltaneously because that's a contradiction. It's either slow-paced tactical gameplay or it's button-mashing ARPG combat. You don't do both. Will BioWare realize that? I honestly doubt it. Will BioWare realize a huge open world doesn't equate to a deep or engaging RPG experience? Will BioWare design hallway-fest hyperlinear dungeons with spongey boss fights again? I assume so. Will there be melodrama and gratuitious sex while underpining some vague notion of "pushing the medium foreward" (look guys, equal rights! Look at how progressive and modern our story is!!!)? Most assuredly. Will we see ME4 or will the company dissolve after this game? It's too soon to tell, but a strong possibility considering EA's previous strategies. All it needs is a small financial crisis to justify it and poor sales from either title. These are all my predictions. I'll eat my foot if any one of them is wrong.

So far, my favorite Kickstarter Game. Solid 8/10 from me. There are lots of ways the game could be better, but it's currently very addicting with a lot of replay potential. Grab it from Steam/GOG when it goes on sale this Summer, that's for sure. It's worth a playthrough, even though it's a little less historically accurate than I'd prefer (the amount of female characters in the game is... excessive, for one. I would not have minded some, but it's ridiculous I can be a female conquistador commander and have an all female troop at the onset).

My perspective was acknowledged in the very-long (and hopefully very dead) DA2 thread we had, where even a BioWare employee acknowledged my posts (though I don't know in what capacity they chose to read into them). I don't think my points would be appreicated there, as I've made them thoroughly in the past, and people think I'm too negative/hard on the series, which may be the case (but I don't believe so). This is neither here nor there, of course, but I don't have any confidence for DA3, with BioWare's latest comments about merging "fast paced" gameplay of DA2 with "tacticalness of DA:O" -- you literally cannot have tactical gameplay that is fast paced. That's an inherent contradiction. All tactical games are slow paced, because all tactical games require thought. You cannot be tactical and make split-second decisions - that's twitch reflex and finesse, which is usually abstracted in an RPG. The fact BioWare cannot even understand why BG2 was a success, or how the RPG genre even works, suggests to me the game will only be saved if it can pull a Skyrim (make a huge ass open world and let modders fix the game for them). To put it simply: DA2 is a cRPG that wishes it was an ARPG, so it does neither of them right. If they try to do that again, DA3 is doomed to repeat DA2's failure.

Um, no? I don't really mean that. I just mean, fighting is unfair. Yes, that means one-hit deaths ARE possible and happen often enough, but even if you don't allow one-hit deaths, generally speaking, fights are still brutish and short. A solid punch will knock anyone dizzy, allowing for following punches to send them to the floor. Jab my fingers in your eyes, now you're blinded, slap your ears, now you're defeaned and imbalanced, a kick to the crotch is so stunning there's little defense to it; even if you're a master of any kind of martial art, training your whole life day in and day out, the most novice opponent has a high chance of defeating you on the battlefield. Because battles are exciting, adrenaline clouds your senses, things happen, simulated combat isn't suited to games about character development, because real-life street fighters, warriors, and commanders of battle, have very short, very stunted lives, save a very select lucky few. In order for an RPG to feature modern or medieval combat, we need to give players ways to survive their battles consistently, otherwise the game becomes frustrating and obtuse. If I break both your arms, how do you have any chance of winning a fight? You don't, really. It's why true fighters do as Sun Tzu suggests - they avoid battles and win without relying on direct confrontation. If the RPG is designed to accommodate battle simulation, you probably aren't playing a cRPG, but a sRPG, or a roguelike, where the game procedurally generates content, making individual failures and deaths less demoralizing, or gives you more units to work with should others falter... Real combat isn't like the movies. It's honelsty over in less than thirty seconds for each individual, unless you're doing trench warfare, or you're a sniper sitting around for days. But for the most part, combat isn't extended, it's sharp and quick with very little room for reaction or strategy. It's about skill, luck, and finesse - people don't tend to enjoy luck-based games and RPGs tend to abstract skill/finesse to the point where a simulation of combat using RPG mechanics results in us watching our heroes get randomly crushed. You could be level 100 with 100+ in all stats, and a level 1 rat might bite your toe, make you stumble and fall upon your sword, a level 5 thief might nick an artery and spell your doom. Most players won't settle for stuff like that.

Right, I can agree back-tracking can feel a little dull, however, I don't see it as a significant issue if it allows the level to have an open-ended approach. Back-tracking SHOULD NOT be the way you make a level non-linear. A clear example of excellent non-linear design is the first major mission in VTMB - where you get the Astrolite. The area is EXTREMELY tiny, but there are six (or more? I've only found) six ways to complete the task, with two ways to enter the building and several ways to distract or incapacitate the guards.

The element of game design I think gets neglected the most is "emergent play" - too many games these days are "linear cinematic experiences" that are highly polished and tested, but offer the player no real choice. There's a hallway, some whack-a-mole-based-gameplay, an "epic" story with bells and whistles, but you end up a passive entity in the "experience". You aren't playing a game so much as interacting with a movie. I think all games should enable the user to make choices that have tactical or strategical worth. Recently made a thread about what I sort-of mean: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63960-level-design/

The truth of the matter is that realistic fights aren't fun. They're dirty, brutal, and short. There's not much to the game if your opponent goes down in several hits, which is realistically what happens (unless we restrict ourselves to full medieval plate and give our fighters weapons ineffective at penetrating the armor). A street fight is usually over in the first strike, a large-scale battle you'll probably die from an errant bullet or arrow, or being trampled by a horse or crushed under the weight of a toppled ally. People want their games to be "fair". Fights aren't fair in reality. A game which simulates realistic combat is frustrating at best, and really only suited for games like Dwarf Fortress (where the focus of the game isn't combat, but strategy and resource management), where combat is fairly realistic. Massive Chalice, a recent kickstarter title, is the kind of game where combat could be ideally "realistic" - because the loss/death of your fighters is not that significant, as you're always popping out more. But since RPGs (like PE) are generally about a static cast of characters, realistic combat just can't be realistic.

I'm not sure I understand. If you're playing an RPG, shouldn't choices have consequences? There is a difference between a goblin boss and a ghost boss. A ghost might have "dark magic" and a goblin might do physical attacks. Meaning, if your party is more equipped to deal with the ghost boss, then the path you take matters, the fight you choose to fight matters. The only advantage linear levels give is developers can put extra special detail on the linear path before you. But to me, a dungeon has no quality to it, if all I'm expected to do is walk forward and kill the next encounter. Fighting becomes a grind; a chore; a slogfest, when levels are designed like "The Dead Trenches" where there is no choice but to move forward and to always fight that group of enemies the developers have tailor made to fight you. There is no emergent play and there is no quality to the game, if there are no choices. Now, the number of branches that you want does matter. If you have a dungeon with 99 branches, then making custom story content for that level is impossible, it will need to be generated procedural and I understand there are people who want a more "cinematic experience", but I think you can marry non-linear level design and that "cinematic experience" because Baldur's Gate 2, at least in the dungeons I show/mention above, does manage that. I don't know what the popular opinon is of de'Arnise Keep, but I happen to like the level a lot for what it is. There's a big difference between a cRPG and a Roguelike, I'm not asking for RPGs to become roguelikes or anything of the sort, however, I think we can demand a little more weight to our choices than "always going forward".

I um, decided to do this just because. I hope the developers are mindful of what I want to show here, but I imagine they are. Right, so. Here. What I want to illustrate here is mostly from my memory, so it's probably not 100% accurate, but basically, you follow each of these colored paths to correctly navigate the dungeon and complete it. This is the very first part of BG2, mind you. The very first zone in the game. I think you can notice and appreciate how non-linear it is. There are side-rooms you must investigate and places you must explore. Notice how the red passages make up the center of the level and how doors are locked until you get key items to open them. At the major juncutions of the game, you can't proceed without exploring all facets of the level, but you still have choices to navigate. The level design here is very simple and straight-forward, but on your first play-through, you'll definitely be wandering around a bit. The level, in its "solved" state is pretty linear (there aren't any choices for our player to make here - they need to get certain key items to progress and there is a certain optimal order and way to clear this zone), but for a "tutorial" area, it's pretty ****in' neato. Let me compare this with an extreme, well-known case of linear level design. That's a pretty significant portion of Final Fantasy 13, which is now infamous for its nearly 100% linear level design. Every area is a literal corridor that you must walk down. This is a very extreme obvious case of linearity in level design. But I want to use to illustrate a few points. 1. In this case, "linearity" is literal. We have nearly straight lines composing levels. But when I talk about "linearity" in this post, I don't mean that at all. A level can be linear and use only curved, parabolic, or non-euclidean shapes. What is meant by linearity is sort of a kind of "graph theory", that is to say, there is a solution to a problem, and that solution is singular. You can create a path of least resistance. There is only one way to play the game. That is what is meant by "linearity" - that a level can be broken down into a superficial solution that requires little to no thought. 2. Linearity is bad. I honestly cannot come up with a good reason to have a linear game. Maybe there are good practical applications for it, but I can only see the negatives at the moment. Why is linearity bad? Because everyone experiences the same thing when they play the game. A linear game will play the same way for everyone; there is no emergent behavior. It's like writing a computer program that can only do hard-coded things. It's worthless. What's the point of making a video game if players cannot make choices or deviate from what is expected? Linear games often feel too restricting and are very tiresome in how there's very little room to /play/ with the mechanics of the game. Linear level design is determinism of the worst kind. In the case of Final Fantasy 13, Square was pretty much humiliated and the "splendor" of the Final Fantasy series is a lot grittier ever since. At least, in my eyes. Not that Final Fantasy was ever known for non-linearity, but go play the first Final Fantasy for the NES, there's a lot of freedom of choice and movement, even if the game is rather linear. 3. RPGs as a whole, have been suffering from linear level design ever since World of Warcraft got popular. I don't know if it's just a coincidence or what, but I think we can all agree RPGs need to offer some degree of non-linearity. Just another example of excessive linearity in RPGs. Here is Dragon Age: Origins, which, while not nearly as bad as Dragon Age 2 in its linearity, still has many levels which are practically straight lines. But allow me to put what I mean in a little more abstract and mathematical manner, so I can better define what linearity is. Imagine the red rooms are "encounters" or "rooms" in a dungeon. Imagine the black lines are hallways that connect them (or some other method of navigation, like a teleportation trigger). Example A: This level is linear if and only if there is one entrance and one exit to this level layout. There is one choice to be made at the beginning of the level, where you take the left branch or the right branch. You explore either branch of the level and find the exit. Since there is only one exit, one branch of the level contains it. The level is linear because there can be only one solution to it. Because there is only one choice to be made, the complexity of this level is also very low. You could actually simplifiy this entire 'dungeon' into 1 room connected to two others, one containing the 'solution' or exit to the dungeon. Example B: This level is linear under the same circumstances. If there is only one way to solve this level, you will find it exploring one of the branches. The point of this is to get across the idea that ADDING SIDE ROOMS DOES NOT MAKE A LEVEL NON-LINEAR. The numbered rooms all have "choices" - two to be exact, but these choices are imaginary. Since there is only one solution to the level, once you replay the game again, you will know the optimal way to beat the game. I'm not saying example B is necessarily a bad way to design a dungeon if you only intend players to play a game once, but I feel video games can and should have a high replayability factor. Furthermore, all players will perform the exact same solution as any other, all that will change among plays of the same RPG is how many wasted steps were taken. Nobody is going to creatively solve the dungeon above, you either find the exit, or you don't. Example C: Okay, now we're entering non-linear territory. Let's say the 0th room is the entrance to this dungeon. The "E"'s represent a solution to the level, they are the exits. This level is non-linear because the player has two concrete choices to make: does he take the left path, or the right path? Let's say the purpleish rooms represent very dangerous encounters in example C - this means, if he takes the right path, he has to fight a dangerous enemy RIGHT AWAY, this makes the right path a lot scarier to a player doing the level for the first time. He may choose not to take the right branch and instead take the left branch, which is fine. He will continue on and explore the dungeon further. He'll find a consumbale item in the room marked "I", making the dangerous encounter in the room ahead easier. The exit to the dungeon on the left path is just past the difficult encounter. By the very nature of this design, the player had two choices to solve the level, each choice has its own ups and downs - the right path actually has one less room to clear before reaching the exit. But, taking the right path gives you access to an item, which you could always hoard for later. This is non-linear level design. Note how all you really need are two solutions to a level and branching paths (your level isn't very non-linear if the two solutions to the level are connected one identical room, or other silly design decisions). A similar kind of design can be accomplished by turning this level on its head: What if the "E's" represented ENTRANCES and our 0th room is our exit/goal? The level is non-linear then again, because the player had two ways to access this level from the outside, giving some level of player agency to choices made prior to entering the level. VTMB is well-loved for its non-linear level design. One reason why that game is non-linear is because nearly every major area has a sewer system, allowing you two or more entrances into the same combat area. Similarly, VTMB often allowed you to complete its "dungeons" through the use of lock picks, stealth and persuasion, not just combat. Rewards were dolled out for completing tasks and not killing enemies or fully exploring areas, meaning, you didn't feel like you "missed anything" by finding the best solution to an area for your character (though, there are some ups and downs to solving levels in various ways, but I don't want to delve into that). Example D: This is how you'd attempt to implement some kind of computer algorithm. You assign rooms "difficulties of traversal". Notice how each path adds up to 7, meaning, each branch is considered to be "equally difficult". If branches are "equally difficult" in sum, then no branch is an optimal solution. Meaning, the level is truly non-linear, the player must decide what is the best solution for the current situation of his character/party. The numbers here are just whimsical, but they could refer to enemy spawn counts by the computer program, or they difficulty of various tasks in the room (solving a puzzle, having sufficient lockpicking skill, et cetera). So, in theory, non-linear level design is so simple and intuitive, designers could just write a program to do all this stuff. I'm not asking for all that much here. This isn't rocket science here, I'm sure most computer scientists/programmers are aware of what I'm trying to suggest here. So thanks if you bothered to read through this tripe. It might read a little heavy-handed, but I'm honestly sick of being spoonfed my RPGs. Go replay Baldur's Gate and appreciate how circular the level design is there - de'Arnise Keep is a particuarly interesting level to examine under what I've described above - what's the optimal solution to the level? How many ways can you approach the level? How many "solutions" are there? How many entrances are there? Why is this early zone in the game so well-designed, and why haven't other major RPGs implemented what has already been done before? If anyone has any C&C I'd like to hear it - I want this post to be as concise and clear as possible because I really want to pitch the ideas in this thread to whomever game designers/programmers will listen. Is everything here crystal? Am I right about how level design should be gone about? Is this the kind of level design you want Project Eternity to have? Or do you not mind the kind of level design we see in FF13 or "The Dead Trenches", above? I will grant that SOME amount of an RPG has to be linear - we need "choke points", otherwise games get a little too complex. A game like BG2 followed a linear story, I'm not asking for macro-non-linearity (which is something a roguelike could only deliver without spending millions on development), but 'micro-level linearity' - non linearity for dungeons and the areas that connect dungeons to the game/hub world.

I'm kind of skeptical too about Mister Fargo as well, Volourn. I think it would be smarter to announce this thing... once Wasteland 2 has been successful. Or that people can be comvinced that they've already gotten one good game from the guy. This seems like a good business decision, but a bad PR one.