Bonecrusher

Which in real life would GET WORSE not better in a matter of minutes. real life is very different than games. in real life, if you get stabbed to chest by a dagger or a blade, you take a wound. the wound starts bleeding, you will bleed to death (start to lose hp continously) until you close that wound somehow (bandages, stitches, similar medical treatments). this wound will be closed after a specific time (a very shallow wound will be closed in a day, but a deep wound need weeks). when you get stabbed or shot, the damage can also make you feint and fall down. even after the wound closed, there can be temporal or permanent damage to your organs. even worse, you can lose your organs (permanent Stat damage, and side effects to your character) because of this wound. if you get punched by someone or mauled with a mace, you will not get a wound (non-hp damage) but your bones can be broken (again, Stat damage and appropriate side effects). simple bruises and muscle damage can be very painful (stamina/endurance loss) and recovery can be a long time. bone damages are also very painful, and you might be wrapped with plaster for weeks, months and even years. if your bones break, you also need to think about nerve, tendon and muscle damages (Stat damage, and restricted movement). real life anatomical situations can be really hard to simulate for games. you must to dumb down those things, one way or another. white wolf settings creates a health system for their games. bruised, hurt (-1), injured (-1), wounded (-2), mauled (-2), crippled (-5), incapacitated. you will get penalties according to what kind of damage you get. d&d settings have more dumbed down health system. you will get multiplication of hp each level (10 times more hp (blood) at lvl 10). you will get stabbed, zapped, burned, mauled, but you will have no penalty even if your hp decreases to 1. you will fight perfectly with this 1 hp. if you lose that hp too, you will suddenly fall down. d&d has another weirdness, after you get wounded over and over, if you rest 6 hours, you will miraculously fully recover into perfect condition. however during day time, even if you are just relaxing in your home, you will get no hp regeneration in those 18 hours. each tabletop p&p game have their different health systems. but most mmorpgs keep d&d formula because it is more widestream and famous. and of course, it is also easy to implement into the game.

in my opinion, dragons should not be "just another creature to kill for lvl XX players", but they should be very powerful beings. their draconic magic can be very flexible and hard to guess. instead of fighting toe to toe with the enemy, dragons can use these mystical force to weaken their foes first. with such thing, even the youngest dragons might be very challenging for the most experienced adventurers.

My favorite games from the poll are Planescape Torment and Bloodlines. I wish Project Eternity will be similar to Baldur's Gate 2 story/characters with Torment dialogs/philosophy. I think if you combine two games, it will look like Mask Of The Betrayer. And I hope Project Eternity will be something like that. (By the way, I didn't see Arcanum and Kotor 2 on the list. Also I want to mention Icewind Dale 1-2, its landscape designs and musics were awesome)

I don't say NWN was terrible. Story might be boring and dull, however features of the game were amazing. How many games can provide you the tools to make your own campaign very easily and also be a DM for playing that campaign with your friends... I hear there are some NWN2 servers which present more dynamic RP worlds than current MMORPGs.

I think this is a stupid poll and unnecessary discussion. BG1-2 are good games in their own way. They have epic storyline with interesting characters. However I prefer Planescape Torment, because its rich world, heavy atmosphere, deep dialogs and description texts. This has nothing with Obsidian specifically. My first favorite cRPG is Planescape Torment, made by Black Isle. My second most favorite is VTM Bloodlines, made by Troika. My third most favorite is KOTOR 2, made by Obsidian. However I don't hate Baldur's Gate series. I sometimes replay BG2 because of the stories in it. It is a good game. I agree with Haerski

So we basically have regenerating health, but only renamed and reflavored. Basically they try to sell us the same casual and dumbed down mechanic under new name. Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment didn't try to sell us dumbed down casual mechanics. Yes, they are right. I miss those games. For sure. I really don't understand some gamers. They really want to hate different systems. It is being discussed to put mechanics of older and more complex games than Baldur's Gate, but still being accused that they are dumbing down the game, because they will use "rejenerashuuun"... by the way, for a side note, Baldur's Gate was not that much a complex and detailed game. It was casual and dumbed down game compared to older crpgs or tabletop systems. D&D 2e was not "the perfect system".

Indeed, and PE is no hack and slash. So how am I completely wrong? Because you don't know if it is hack and slash or not. Especially with regenerating spammable (low level?) spells and regenerating stamina and no rest - "spamming" to boot, it has all the features of a hack and slash like DA2. hahhahaha, you are joking, right? and the joke is: calling PE's spammable low level spells (similar to Pathfinder's change over old D&D rules) as hack&slash system, although many famous tabletop settings have no-cost-low-level-magics for higher characters.

Apart from the "hardcore players" (I put it in quotation marks, because even if I am an old school gamer (playing games since 1988), I find extreme amount of conservatism very annoying) think, I really like the different HP regeneration styles of current MMORPGs. What I mean is: - No regeneration during combat. -This will make heal spells and regeneration rings still useful. - Little regeneration other times. -You are fully healed during resting, why shouldn't you during normal times also? Out of combat regeneration seems a fun and still challenging system. However if you use memory slot system for magic and not MP system, it could be unfair for spellcasters.

Most RPGs gives us "good" choices. But these choices are always "the default" ones. Do the quests, kill some monsters, romance with your companion, and your "good" meter goes up. But what if I am doing those quests, in order to get the mission rewards, but not to help some people? What if I am killing some monsters, in order to teach them who's the boss, but not to save a town? What if I romance with that companion, in order to sleep with her, but not to love her? Wouldn't such thoughts made me an "evil" person instead of a "good" one? Yes, doing quests, killing monsters, romancing with companion, would benefit my reputation, and make me a more popular person. But they would not make me a "good hearted" man. That's why I find the "good-evil" choices in most games very dull. Even worse, those games prepare the "evil" choices to act like a "frenzied psychopatic mass murderer". There are some games that I love their concept of good-evil balance. One game will be KOTOR 2. That is a great game to play as "evil". The game points you whatever your thoughts for your choices, the results can be different than you imagine. For example, you see a dirty orc stealing a rich man's wallet. You are a "heroic paragon of virtue", so you catch him and kill him. But in reality, that orc was a private spy trying to find a clue about a kidnapped girl. Your "bravery" costs the life of that child. It can be vice versa for evil alignments. But Project Eternity is being made by developers of KOTOR 2, Planescape Torment, Alpha Protocol, Fallout... Of course they would definitely already realize these things I said.