metiman

lmao yeah I remember Safiya and Gann ruining MotB, Visas, the Handmaiden, and the Disciple ruining KotOR 2, Mina, Scarlet, Madison and SIE ruining Alpha Protocol, and Fisto ruining Fallout: New Vegas. Please. Go troll somewhere else. WTF are you on about?

Did I say 'post Dragon Age'? That's not what I meant. I should have said post NWN. Basically everything that Bioware did including Dragon Age: Origins onward seemed like it was coming from a different developer entirely as compared to at least their previous fantasy stuff. After NWN it seems clear that Bioware had lost all interest in the genre itself and just wanted to cash in and do whatever they thought would most appeal to the masses. The old 'embrace and extend', but at some point you cross a line and you lose all of your older customers in order to get your new ones. Most of the current Biowarian kiddies would hate BG2 and NWN.

What makes you think Avellone wants to write Biowarian romances? I don't know what his position is on romance/sex minigames, but I certainly don't think it can be assumed that he would want to write the game equivalent of romance novels or melodramatic soap opera stuff. I'd like to think that he would think it is as stupid and frivolous as those of us in the anti-romance faction and if that's the case I wouldn't go expecting some kind of well written romances. They'll probably just get some female staff member or intern to write them up. Surely MCA has more important things to write. As far as romantic sub-plots, this is not something you can ask for. Either love will be an integral (and non-skippable) part of the main story or it won't be. It can't just be shoehorned in. At least not without ruining the rest of the story. I haven't heard anyone in this thread complain about Deionnara in PS:T. That was a genuine part of the central plot. It fit in perfectly and there was no cutscene of TNO doing her from behind while he yanked on her ghostly pony tail or the text equivalent.

Ewww. Bethesda must have the worst creature designs in the business. Those creatures are so fake and ugly. It would be interesting to have some good examples of creature design.

Why not have both rolling and point buy options? As a programmer myself I don't think that would be too hard to implement. But if there is any randomness involved with rolls I'd like to see an option to get genuinely random numbers instead of pseudo-random. Maybe some kind of agreement could be worked out with random.org to download a bunch of random numbers when you reach the character creation stage.

What Eastern religious ideas?

I am curious about what it is about videogame shooting that is so appealing to some of you. If you want to kill people with a gun, you can just go do it in real life? It's called the US Army, numbnuts. OORAH. Yes, the only difference between romance and flirtation is the presence/absence of sex. For ****'s sake. The difference between romance with sex and romance without sex is this: in the latter there is no sex. YOU'RE WELCOME. Garrus from ME2 is a good romance. Simple, to the point, doesn't do much more than transfer a relationship from platonic to romantic/sexual in a reasonable way rather than some overwrought melodrama (the romantic part basically goes, "hey Garrus, I like you, wanna have sex?" "well... *scratches head* **** it, sure"). Unlike romances fighting/killing can be properly implemented in a game. Without some kind of advanced technology that we don't yet have sex cannot be. And romance cannot really be done properly either. Romance is something that people actually like to do in the real world. Most people have no interest in going out into the real world and actually killing people. Joining the army doesn't necessarily lead to actually killing anyone. I can list plenty examples of fun games where the mechanic is solely about killing people. Can you list a single example of a fun game that is solely about romancing and having sex with game characters? So sex is an essential part of what you are asking for when you ask for romances. The point about sticking imaginary appendages into imaginary holes is valid then. Although that could be seen as sexist. Since romances are probably way more popular among female gamers it is probably more about getting holes filled by various imaginary implements. I don't have a problem with porn. I just don't want it in a computer game. If the game did have porn I'd prefer it to be at least something you can't do in real life. Like maybe tasteful gang rape. So your example of a properly implemented romance is one from ME2. Exactly what I was expecting. So I take it that you are a fan of post Dragon Age Bioware then. My perhaps unfair generalization is that most of the people clamoring for romance are Biowarians who want to make Project Eternity into yet another Dragon Age or Mass Effect spiritual successor. All I can say is I hope that doesn't happen.

If you try to make everyone interesting then no one is. For me the whole point of a melee class is simplicity. I dont always want to deal with the complexity of a magic using class. Before you say that I can just not use the warrior's magic abilities the warrior will no doubt be balanced based on the use of all of his abilities. Not just a subset. For those who think warriors are too boring (I don't) just go with a Paladin or Battlemage or dual class Warrior / Wizard etc. That's what hybrid classes are for.

The ability to roll up all six characters for replay value after you've already played with all of the pre-written ones. As long as it doesn't add too much extra development time to do so.

So then what you are asking for is something that has never (properly) been done before in the history of computer games. Just the sort of thing to try to add to a low budget game with an 18 month long development cycle.

I think post-Gates Microsoft is a train wreck and I would like to avoid Windows as much as possible, but I'm a little concerned that Obsidian had to go with Unity solely due to the difficulties porting Onyx to Linux and OSX. Onyx seems like a more capable engine that might result in better graphics than Unity. So as much as I would like to be able to play games on Linux lower graphics quality is a pretty steep price to pay. It's a done deal now, but I'm not sure it was worth it. It would have been nice to have at least somewhat better graphics than the Infinity Engine. With Unity the graphics may actually be worse.

Surprised I am not, but extrapolating BioWare's romances on every romance plot in every possible video game is still stupid. And stupidity has to be fought with, or it will spread futher Then go ahead and give specific examples of what you consider a game with good romances, if it exists.

I am curious what it is about videogame romance and sex that is so appealing to some of you. I just don't get it. If you want that sort of thing can you not just play some MMOG and chat up every opposite sex character you see? If you do that you might even get some romance/sex in the real world. Some of you are saying that the virtual sex aspect of it isn't important. If we are just talking about romance without sex what does that mean specifically? Are we just talking about some of the dialogue between opposite sexes being mildly flirtatious? I don't have a major problem with that as long as it isn't shoehorned on just for the sake of the EABioware2 fans who are fixated on this stuff. Also, the request for 'romance' is kind of vague. Do you have any examples of games in which you believe the romances were done properly? The only cRPG I've ever played that had any significant romances was BG2. Would that be an example of romances done right?

The Lady of Pain is a great example of a God done right. I would like to see gods that people are genuinely afraid of because they take an active interest in and interfere with the affairs of men.

I'll grant you that Baldur's Gate 1 is very difficult in the beginning. I've never made it very far past the starting areas. But Icewind Dale? The beginning isn't all that difficult. Maybe you don't have enough melee characters. Try rolling a new party. IWD is actually quite fun for a while. The start of BG2 is much easier than BG1 and I like it much better overall as well. The start of BG2 ToB is extremely difficult. There's a point where you fight like a whole army of giants. I must have been killed dozens of times before I finally managed to prevail using mordenkainen sword cheese IIRC. Of all those games BG2 has the best combat IMHO. Especially with the SCSII mod. PS:T is definitely the best game of the lot though. Arguably the best computer game of any genre ever made. You're not playing in real time are you? Go into options and set the auto pause for the end of every round. That's the way IE combat was made to be played.

Here's some required reading on the subject. As always, Vince is an excellent writer. Despite the fact that he doesn't have anything bad to say about cooldowns, it is an interesting read. I also liked the rune system in Ultima Underworld and loved the mouse gesture casting system in Arx Fatalis. A little tricky to get the hang of, but eventually it really made me feel like I was actually casting something. Arx was one of the few cRPGs where mages actually felt slightly underpowered.

If you like games like Project Eternity and want to see more of them vote with your dollars. Getting the paper manual is just a convenient excuse to be generous in the short term and selfish in the long term.

If you are going to post samples at least also mention who the artist is. I also don't like Jeremy Soule's work. It's way too generic sounding. I like the the Clint Mansell suggestion (Requiem for a Dream, Moon) and I also liked the link to Lustmord. That isn't the kind of thing I'd normally listen to but it's very impressive for a game soundtrack. I liked the MotB and HoMM samples as well. One of my favorite pieces of game music was Chiasm's from The Asylum in Troika's VtM. Not sure if that was written specifically for the game or not.

So no classes then? A Bethesda kind of system? I like a system with different specialists rather than a jack of all trades that isn't good at anything. Of course in Bethesda they probably are good at everything, but that is boring as hell. A character's weaknesses are at least as important as their strengths. Every character needs both. Part of the fun of an RPG is planning your character(s). Hell, for some games (i.e Dragon Age) that's the only part that's any fun.

There are more than enough people to beta test already in the higher tiers. If you want to beta test you'll just have to pony up the cash. It's for a good cause. And yes, the whole point is surely to encourage people to up their donations to be a part of the beta. Personally I don't want to beta test. I have high hopes for the game and I'd be afraid it would spoil it for me. I'd rather wait to play until the bugs are fixed.

In BG2 I had to be very careful selecting clothing and hair colors so that I could tell who was who just by looking at them. I don't think Obsidian should spend too much time on character customization since there are far more important things, but it should at least be possible to tell the characters apart from their appearance. The best customization I've seen was in Dragon Age. At least Bioware-2 got one thing right. But that sort of thing is serious overkill for this project.

If this game really is BG2 meets PS:T it could be a truly amazing work of art. I actually don't know which is more important to me the superb, tactical combat of BG2 with Demi-Liches, Dragons, Giants, and amazing encounter design all round or a story that is as engrossing and suspenseful as PS:T. Of course I'd love to see both. I was actually one of those rare people who quite liked the combat in PS:T. Not nearly as good as BG2 or ToEE but still enjoyable. BG2 had better combat but it was mostly about combat. The BG2 story was juvenile and poorly written. I guess if I had to choose I'd go for a suspenseful, well written story and a mediocre combat system over the opposite. The only problem with a really good story in a game is that replayability tends to be inversely proportional. I've probably replayed PS:T less than 10 times. BG2 I've replayed probably something like 50-100 times including TOB and SCS.

Well there may be some confusion over exactly what the term 'romances' (in the context of cRPGS) refers to. To me it seems to refer to the minigame type which BG2 had. A romantic aspect of the story itself is something else entirely. If that is what you are advocating I am not against that. I am only against the EABioware romance-as-minigame and only because it diverts resources, which are hopelessly scarce as it is, away from the core RPG mechanics. As far as an influence system being the same as romance-as-mingame I don't think that's the case. BG2 style romances do not accomplish or implement anything that affects the rest of the game. An influence system is merely a more precise way of measuring your reputation with others. It's really part of a larger reputation system. One might argue that a reputation system itself is not a core RPG value and I would agree, but it does at least add something to C&C by showing what effect your character has on the world around him. While a reputation system does add to development time it is also a part of the overall game design. Not something just tacked on for the lulz like romance minigames.

Classical strawman argument. How hard it is to understand that people who like romances are the people who liked romances in past Obsidian games and Baldur's Gate 2 and would like to see more of them and not lonely creeps. Also, the whole "people who want romances play the game only for romances and don't care about other aspects" is retarded and not backed-up by anything but the creepiest people form Bioware forum. How am I arguing against a point based influence system? Oh right. I forgot that you don't like to explain yourself if it takes longer than a 160 character txt message. Romances of the kind I am referring to (BG2) are absolutely not part of the story at all. They are tacked on minigames. It is their minigame aspect that I object to. General party banter, when written by a talented writer like Avellone is definitely worthwhile, but BG2 style romances as mini-games where your character tries to sleep with the NPC simply do not add anything to the story or the game. I am not arguing that the Biowarian pro-romance faction only likes one particular thing or another, but rather that this need to be loved by a game character is already being met by other genres. That need for a second virtual/simulated life in a computer game has already been met by The Sims, MMOGs where you can engage in real flirting, and most of the mega-budget modern single player RPGs as well. It simply is not needed here and is a waste of resources that could be better spent improving the combat or story. Did the romances in BG2 ruin the game for me? No. Not at all. Some were even mildly amusing and in a hypothetical game with an infinite budget perhaps I wouldn't mind them as long as they were optional. But this game does have a limited budget and I don't want to see resources spent foolishly on any minigame, romances included. I don't think it particularly matters why the EABioware-2 faction here feels that romance minigames are so essential and an inherent part of RPG-ness, but my current theory is that the pro-romance forum faction does mostly consist of female (or homosexual) Dragon Age fans. From what I have read, romance novels are to females what porn is to males. So I guess understanding gender differences is important when thinking about this subject. The kind of game that males like and the kind of game that females like is classically not the same. Of course women are going to want romances in their game. That's why EABioware-2 games are so popular with girl gamers. It's not so different from males wanting cleavage and nudity. In neither case is it at all important to the basic RPG mechanics which make the games what they are. If a game is to have integrity it must stay true to its roots and its essential nature. Romance minigames are simply not essential to the nature of RPGs. Of course it could be argued that throwing in a few token romances, precisely because it does appeal so strongly to females, is not a bad idea in terms of fundraising. But that's only true if their donations add up to at least enough to counter the additional development costs of writing the romances.

This. One thousand times this. I loved the Deionnara part of the PS:T story. The tragedy of the ghost who still loved a mortal was a powerful and beautiful element. I am against mini-game, Bioware style romances which are not part of the main story (except as DLC content), but I am certainly not against the main plot that has characters who love each other. MotB had that too and it was just a part of the plot.