Sabotin

I think the portraits are there just for visual distinction between characters. Unless they'd be too small to distinguish I don't see any reason to make them bigger. Now when in dialogue or character screen that's another matter...

I don't give a damn how the UI looks, my brain will tune that out in the first 5 minutes of play. What will bother me is if the UI is obtrusive (size/colors/weird positioning) or non functional (requires lots of movements/clicks/searching etc). I really don't mind the originally suggested UI. Might be because I don't have a widescreen monitor and those ornaments on the sides look like just the right thing to cut off to accommodate that, hehe. Anyway I checked how it looks on a wide resolution and I don't really think it's bad. The area of visibility should be about the same as before, considering the areas are rendered at a lower angle. To be sure I think I'd really have to have a hands-on experience, it depends also on the encounter and area design I think, which is hard to judge by just a mockup screenshot. I think the part where all this actually matters is "only" the combat as I'm pretty sure there will be a button to hide the UI, right? It's probably even gonna be possible to play blind with only hotkeys and mouse. For the abilities something like that quick cast menu from NWN2 would probably be enough?

Didn't IE games have this? I distinctly remember there was an out of game menu where you could bind spells to keys.

A quick search on Wikipedia will tell you what the fundamental difference is between action and classical rpgs - direct control of a character versus telling the character what to do. I agree with that and would like to add that every other element of being an RPG is unrelated. The combat, story, dialogue are all dependent on the design of the game, not the genre. Sure, they bring some general guidelines and limitations with them, but that's about it.

The Ixamitl remind me of Ex-Yugoslavian countries, like Serbia or Croatia. Maybe they'll be some kind of analogue of the Ottoman empire? The technology level would kind of fit I believe. The name I would put as something Aztec. Indeed wiki says xāmitl means "clay brick" or some such in the Aztec language.

I think the issue with being overwhelmed with quests is not necessarily about the number itself but by the implementation: - Pacing of quests. You know, you have some things that require you to get on as soon as possible, some that you just complete while in the area and some that are fragmented over the world and even non-quest distractions. I think if this is kept diverse it would nor put as much pressure on the player, quest wise, as having a bunch of "urgent" stuff or a laundry list minor fetch quests. - Pathing of quests. With this I mean how many new quest you can encounter while doing another. It can be distracting or annoying if the game keeps trying to sidetrack the player. With a proper placement I believe the density of quests can be made to appear lower or higher, as required. - Quest coherence. This might be more personal than the rest, but I think it is a factor in determining whether you're swamped in quests or not. The majority of quests should be relative to one another; you have the main quest and then the subplots and then the subplots of subplots, etc. I think it's easier for the brain to compartmentalize branches instead of areas, making the world feel more alive (specially when one quests references something from another otherwise unrelated).

The view is at an angle, not top-down. And since it's isometric, the weather effects should be, too, I think. To keep the picture consistent, even if not entirely realistic. Regardless of that I would indeed like to see improved weather effects. I guess rain can be really hard to simulate in such a game simply because water droplets are smaller than a pixel. Perhaps if it is modeled more as a fog with the tiny splashes on the ground (and/or make the ground a bit darker as if wet?). Based on that dynamic lightning shown in the video lightning flashes should look great.

It's not so much about the number of summons, but what they can do I think. In theory you could use them for practically everything; distractions, lures, scouting, trap triggering, avoiding damage (which would be extra important due to lack of real healing), dealing additional damage, engaging enemies, etc. So they either need to be very weak (stats, duration, reuse) or they need to restrict their range of usefulness. Rather than lowering their stats I'd go with giving them various "disabilities". Maybe the AI mostly ignores them or they temporarily blink out after getting hit/dealing damage/getting out of range. Maybe you can't control them individually or with complex commands. Maybe they're just slow moving. It would also be interesting to make them good at "feeding" certain powerful enemy abilities, so that you'd need to be careful when and how to use them. Another idea would be to just have stuff disguised as summons, for example an area DoT attack could be pictured as a swarm of some kind of spiders jumping on everyone in the area. Or a disabling spell could instead be a small group of 1hit skeletons being raised and engaging the target, where one more is raised every time one is destroyed, until the duration expires. And one more thing I'd point out is that the summons should probably be fairly simple, ability wise, so as to not overly raise micromanagement requirements or require UI adaptations.

The way the mechanics are set up I believe resting will be something you only do at designated areas (like Inns in BG), not done by pressing a "rest" button. I mean, the inventory is limitless, the abilities mostly per-encounter, stamina you can recover (regenerates out of combat I guess?)... If they add health regeneration out of combat to the easy difficulty that could be a way to solve certain problems, too.

Take it a step further and have a "maintain formation" check box or something similar in which case the party would try to stay in a relative position to each other for the whole trip.

For my tastes it would have to be pretty darn amazing dog to warrant missing out on a companion and all his dialogue and interactions.

I'm wondering how this dynamic stuff is interacting with the manual artist touch-ups. Looking at this picture: http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0025/PE-TempleEntrance-ProcessStack-1340.jpg I'd say the video is closer to the 3rd shot than the painted over one. I realize all these things are most likely just for demonstration purposes, but even though the dynamic stuff looks amazing considering it's all 2D, I would not want it to compromise the paintwork. Since it could just as well be a full 3D game then. That said I was definitely not expecting (or thought possible) most of the stuff shown in the video. Color me impressed.

I'd have to disagree on pacifist runs being too simple. I think that while there should be more ways of overcoming an obstacle, you should not always have all the options be feasible. I would think that a pacifist walk through would require a wide range of skills and some player ingenuity, actively trying not to get into a conflict or at least not kill anything. An be more of an "easter egg" possibility, with perhaps some nods here and there that you hadn't killed anyone. Having a prominent role in the game - no, I don't think it a good idea. At best if the number of kills is used somewhere I'd propose to have some zones, for example 0-10 kills you're a pacifist, 10-100 normal, 100+ mass murdered, etc.

I think this might also have something to do with the increasing "fantastic" factor. Compared to the other titles BG1 was fairly down-to-earth. Another thing I've noticed when replaying BG1 was that I was trying to play it too fast. I enjoyed it a lot more when I advanced really slowly, taking time to breath in the world and notice the small things. Anyway the best experience I've had in IE games was the first time I played them, I couldn't not duplicate it anymore afterwards even after re-playing some games after years and remembering very little about them. I really can't agree with all your negativity though, however I look at it, I just do not see the issues.

Yeah, I don't really like limited gold or limited buy lists (dealing with it in Arcanum right now, the armors are friggin HUGE). How about instead of these hard limits the merchants just use very different pricing? For example you could sell your sword to a herbalist, but only get a fraction of the money you would from a blacksmith. I think it'd be a good deterrent to shop dumps (so limited/unlimited money would be less apparent), but in a pinch you could still get rid of stuff (in need of quick money or inventory slots). Though now that I think about it not being able to sell stuff will just mean you have less money in this game since you have the stash. Well, I still wouldn't want to visit 20 merchants to sell all the stuff I've gathered.

I think it's a really nice idea. It doesn't remove kiting, it only gives it a "time limit". I do have some thoughts about this, though: It should be VERY clear what's happening, with some icons or symbolism to see when a character is engaged. When you say sticky, I think it's actually a good idea for it to be literal - characters stepping in and out of the engagement area, sort of like snapping to the character when it's close enough to be engaged? I guess the character stopping could also be an indicator that it got engaged though. Speaking of which, instead of totally blocking movement, how about making the character move extremely slow instead? Sort of simulating those 5ft steps from d&d. You could then still turn the character (flanking/backstabs/whatnot) by moving slowly around him or lead it to someone better suited for killing him/keeping him in check. Or a fighter "gathering" more opponents, hehe. The disengagement should also be very clear I think, perhaps requiring a press of a button, or if right-clock means movement, then disengage+move could be shift+righ-click or something? Doing it by mistake could be really frustrating. I also have a concern about this - By how it was described, if a melee character catches you and is actively attacking you, short of a special disengagement skill or outside help you have no way to get away from him (because of the hit reaction)? What happens when you have multiple people in a melee fight though, I could see that complicating things a bit animation wise. In NWN the AoO and Cleave attacks could prevent regular attacks from happening on time, could change the attack target etc. NWN2 solved the problem in favor of the mechanics side, but it could still look rather silly (though I preferred it)...

Here's some ideas: Cyphers are entirely mind based - I don not agree that this would be too narrow as the mind basically governs everything for a certain person. The explanation could be that mages are doing mostly thoughts->reality gymnastics, but cyphers are are simply operating with thoughts. Perhaps mages are limited in power by this (think energy transformations/ and thermodynamics) and cyphers have a higher "limit" (albeit different use of it)? Now from this I'd derive some mechanics: Single target - I'd keep the vast majority of their buffs/debuffs single target, for obvious reasons that they would be strong and resulting from the cypher actively focusing on someone. And you can have some added fluff function - all the meetings/negotiations/etc. can happen with groups, as a simple way to avoid mind controlling. No health damage - Again, bar some high level abilities, if something does damage it should be stamina, since it's all in the target's mind. Unconsciousness from pain sounds pretty plausible for example. Though I suppose mind controlling/depressing someone to the point of suicide could be possible, too. Speaking of nonlethal take-down, that could be useful in law enforcement in an advanced society. Wasn't there some concept art of an orlan, which people have speculated is a cypher policeman? Progressive complexity - Low level cyphers could have just simple abilities, like causing pain, fatigue, anger, while higher level could be more complex, providing hallucinations, complex feelings, communication, domination, etc... Situational buffs - Well, they can invade enemy minds, why couldn't allies allow them to manipulate theirs and perhaps remove some fear on improve morale and so on? The emotion line of buffs/debuffs from IWD seem right up their alley. To differentiate a bit from other classes there could be some negative side effects - they would function as both buffs or debuffs, depending on the target and situation. Maybe allies would be forced to use a saving throw, too. Added cost mechanics - Strong skills deserve some added cost to them I think, to prevent them from being the go-to in every situation. For cyphers, perhaps their per-encounter pool could be smaller or the stronger abilities could have a fatigue cost. Their beginning skill seems to note that perhaps they'll have some scaling over time mechanics as their primary concern. It could be interesting to make these vary by race and enemy intelligence - it would take more time to manipulate the thoughts of a different race and less time for simpler brains.

To me it sounds like some developer testing ground where they have all the door related mechanics in place . Nice interview by the way.

Well I'd rather there be less stuff you can loot to begin with, but whatever. This "taking everything not bolted down" just isn't my thing (thinking of TES games here). But still, it will depend a bit on the economy, too. If I have dozens of armor sets in the stash I expect that I can unload them somewhere, too, not having to visit 20 different merchants. Or if I can't they'll just be there until the end of the game I guess, making no difference in my picking them up or not. Then there's also the value of the stuff chained to this. If those armor sets are worth nothing it's again just an annoyance to pick them up and deal with them, but if they're worth a lot you will have "farming" of stuff to sell... The stash idea seems sensible to me. It just needs to be executed well, too. For example it should be hard to place something in the stash by accident and it should be impossible to place quest items or other such things in it (or at least inform the player). It would irk me if I pried a ruby off of a statue and placed it in the stash and then 5 minutes later I'd come across a secret door that requires a ruby to open. Then again that'd bring some metagame as you'd instantly know if something is quest related or not. We've yet to know if this top-of-pack is per character or for your entire party? I guess it's per character if it acts like the standard inventory The bag of holding would seem redundant in this, but I would like to see some sorting options, like those gem bags and scroll cases provide. Maybe some keychain? One that lists keys you have, where you got them, and when you use them, what they open. Oh, it would be nice if when you came across a locked door you got a popup where you would pick which key to use or if you pic the lock. Ok, getting offtopic...

How about some vague description of the area when you use such a spell, similar to what wilderness lore was doing in IWD2: It could be a bit different, perhaps concentrating more on geography (your visions are fuzzy, you can only make out stuff that sticks out - notable landmarks). Different levels of divination spells could have reduced/extra lines. I know wilderness lore wasn't particularly useful, but maybe it will be different this time. You could also have some "long range" divinations that would work from camp (so you can prepare your expedition) and some "short range" that would just temporarily reveal a part of the area.

What if they make you acquire XP for sneaking past someone (enter an area where the specific enemy can see you, bot do not be detected by it) with the same (or different) XP you would get for killing it? And when you gain XP from a creature (kill/stealth/other) change a variable on it so that it does not give XP again. It's the simplest thing I can think of.

In my opinion the GUI has one job it has to do: be totally ignored. What I mean is that the player should almost not notice he is using a metagame tool to interact with the game. That means it has to be in the game's style so it doesn't stick out, but it also should not have anything that attracts attention to it; no fancy animations, no "in-world" connection, nothing to frustrate the player and trips to it should be short and to the point. Now going from this I think that the interface is a very personal preference (different people are bothered by different things), so there's no way to make everyone happy. As for having an info hub I'm all for it, but without countless menus for different stats just for the sake of being gimmicky. Maybe have basic info on one page and have detailed tooltips when you mouse over them or something.

I'd stick to only visual stuff and even then minor. Actually then I'm not sure it would be even visible. I'm talking about different styles of the same armor type, for example a rogue could be wearing leather1, leather2 or leather3. For the weapons I don't really care as long as there's some consistency (I'd laugh my ass off seeing a random gnoll with a rapier). But depending on the numbers of enemies I'd say that it might not change gameplay that much as they would just always be a random assortment (2 blunt/2sword/2 spears -> 1 blunt/2 sword/3 spear -> 2blunt/3sword/1spear), which would in my opinion do exactly the opposite of what it's meant to.

Eh, I don't really see the low-intelligence angle about the class. If people play it that way there must be other reasons I think. I see the name is invoking some reactions, so changing that would perhaps help. Combat wise I think Barbarians should be more of a risk/reward type than other fighters, which would also move them a bit more into powergaming circles I guess. Barbarians would fight with only power in mind, their hits hurting a lot, but leaving them dangerously open. Their combat style would reflect this; when attacked by a particular sword swing a fighter would deflect it aside into a miss with little effort, but a barbarian would block it head on - something the enemy combatant would likely not expect. Perhaps strength would play a bigger role in their damage or they could trade defense for damage (a twist on power attack feats). Those glancing blows to anyone near also sound like a good idea, a fighting style with strong and wide swings sounds like it needs room. I'd also give them some charge bonuses, that sounds like it's right up their alley. Rage I'd handle as some sort of adrenaline burst of superhuman proportions (that could kill a lesser person). It would provide a nice boost to the power and speed of attack (str,dex?) and maybe prevent unconsciousness at 0 stamina (not sure how to differently implement a painkiller effect, hide HP maybe)? Starting out as something used in a pinch it could be upgraded to get to the point where you could sustain it every encounter. Maybe the player could pick between different "levels" of it; gaining higher bonuses, but at the expense of damaging the barbarian as the muscles themselves tear from their own strain. Defense wise I guess they'd wear some form of non-heavy armor, such as to not restrict themselves. I was reading on Wikipedia something about berserkers not fearing edged weapons or fire. I could see that as some extra damage reduction from those sources, or maybe neutralization of glancing blows. Increased "health" would fit too, but more as a resource/limit for their abilities I think. For crowd control I'd give them something that would work along the line of suppressive fire; locking opponents down with wild swings or make them lose their footing and the like.

I feel that fighters are very often mishandled - classically the most monotonous and boring class, specially in d&d games, where they're very often just part of some dual or multiclass character or dipped into for some bonus or other. Conversely other games try to fix this by giving them abilities that are practically magic - various agro and pulling mechanics, random invulnerabilities, special super attacks etc. Now PE seems to be taking a more grounded approach (or that's the feeling I've gotten up until now), so I guess that won't be happening here. I think one problem with fighters is that they are covering a very wide selection of archetypes, compared to other classes. A wizard is usually the old bookworm guy with the beard and pointy hat, a paladin the goody two-shoes religious zealot, the rogue the shady thief/assassin. But fighters, they can be mercenaries, weapon masters, samurai, knights, duelists, gladiators, generals and peons, pirates, archers,... So a fighter needs to be able to evolve into any of these which I think can result in either a lack of options or lack of direction for the class. This would be some of the traits I would attribute to fighters, also in the interest of keeping the flavor different from other warrior classes: discipline, learning, fulfilled potential, constancy, reliability, focus. A fighter is supposed to be good at fighting. The best in fact. Not the strongest or most resilient/determined/flexible, just simply best at what it does. When I say reliable I don't mean mediocre or boring, I mean that its risks are measured and mostly successful. Its strength would lie in the mastery of a weapon. Now considering the class abilities tidbits we've got before the holidays the thought might have occurred already, but I think having various modes/fighting styles would be a good idea. Something akin to lightsaber forms from KOTOR2 - bonuses and penalties to various stats. At the lowest levels the way a player starts building the character would be determined by gear more than abilities, with them gradually becoming available through the lower levels. Certain modes could exclude others or provide small synergy bonuses, as an incentive for a player to specialize - providing a clearer focus for the class and reducing the power potential (i.e. you can't be the best in every situation). As fluff, this could provide other benefits. It would represent something you learn through drill or a rigid technique that is passed down as a certain way of fighting. It could also offer some visual candy in the form of changed animations, gradually, completely or perhaps just for a specific weapon. The standard +1 to attack passive ability type has gotten a bit boring in my opinion. While you can't really change the function much, I'd like to see a bit more flavor injected. For example learning weapon specialization would instead of adding a static +2 to damage with the chosen weapon make the fighter use the upper half of its damage spectrum more often. The fighter is not hitting any stronger with the selected weapon, just utilizing it better. When using a shield he/she could use it in such a way as to deflect the attackers' weapons to the side, leaving them more open to counterattack. Using armor so that it gets hit more often - less damaging attacks, more glancing blows. So on in this vein. Some active abilities are definitely needed, we want to enjoy the gameplay, not just character building. I would really like these to stay somewhere in the realm of possibility. I think some kind of combat maneuvers would fit. Sort of what like the rogue got, but less movement and more combat oriented. There was something written about a charge ability, that sounds good. There could be some abilities that focus on attacking certain body parts, unbalancing or disarming the opponent, or even using them for cover. Thoughts?