aluminiumtrioxid

This please.

All in all, it was an awesomecool game, if you could stomach the mind-bogglingly primitive plot (hero searching for his lost love, seriously?).

It's all very cool, but what about the non-combat applications? Intimidate and suchlike depend on Str, you can pickpocket/do sleight of hand stuff with Dex (doesn't sound particularly useful), have Resolve act as a Charisma substitute, check Intellect to play smartass, and Perception to notice stuff (like in KotOR 2). What about Con?

I like quest markers. I also like being explicitly told how to get somewhere. My gaming time is too short and too precious to waste large chunks of it wandering around, increasingly frustrated with not getting to the good parts. (Yeah, I'm a fairly story/character development/dialogue-oriented player.) So, unless there is a specific feature to ask generic NPCs for directions, I'd prefer if they'd at least have a BG2-style map, with the important locations pre-labelled.

Oh, right, and let's not forget about the part where they had to **** all over Kreia, too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YV6TpNvBsM

Aww, isn't the wildly screaming little bundle of negativity just adorable? Yes, yes he is! Well, you do spend about a half of the game crouching/hiding behind some kind of cover, so...

Yeah, let's not have that. I distinctly remember BG 2 and the poisoning Jaheira quest, where there were these mercenaries helping out the guy. They had a wizard slinging spells all over the place without impunity, so I've decided to pay a visit to the government building where you can buy your permit, to find out stuff about them. They didn't have any info, but the mercenary leader came to me after I walked out of the building, offering me to double-cross the poisoner guy for a modest sum of gold. I've paid up, got a sizeable amount of xp, and felt very clever. It lasted until a second walkthrough, where I had no money at the time, and decided to just kill them instead, and not only got some semi-useful loot out of the deal, but also way more xp. Including clever options with less reward usually ends up with the clever players feeling incredibly dumb and frustrated for jumping through hoops to achieve their aim, just to find out that it wasn't only a lot more of a hassle than smashing faces without thinking about the situation, but they are actually being punished for doing so.

I wish I could, it was you guys excitement that got me to preorder it, but I literally dry-heaved 15 minutes into the game from the first person perspective. A 3/4 scroll back like in FONV or Skyrim works for me but I just cant handle the first person perspective. Well, after the first 10 minutes or so, the perspective changes to third person (except in dialogues).

Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't Temple of Elemental Evil do just this. Yeah, it was pretty horrible. No point in memorizing Identify, ever, if you lose the same amount of coin you'd pay for an NPC to do it for you.

I dunno, I've always considered myself rather sluggish and inept, but I've never felt that the "need to constantly be aware of every current and potential action and react accordingly in realtime" overwhelmed me anytime. Oh wait, that's because you don't need to react in realtime - that's what the pause button is for. (Also, "being constantly aware of every current and potential action" is a rather lofty term considering that it usually entails "monitoring the health of melee combatants who kind of do their stuff without the need for constant supervision, occasionally ordering the healer to get them out of trouble, and choosing between the about 4 spells of the wizard that are usually viable in a given situation" - in the IE games, you didn't even need to micromanage your rogues, because they were useless in combat anyway, so the only thing they could do was occasionally shooting a few arrows. Yes, I know, backstab, but I ended up almost never using it - invisibility potions are expensive, backstab often misses, and even if it does hit, it can't down an enemy on its own - and the fragile rogues get skewered on their own in basically any kind of combat that involves the enemy hitting back.) Abuse means "the improper use of something" - pausing was specifically implemented to allow the players to issue commands and assess the battlefield without the pressure of time. Which is what it is used for. I really don't see the "ab" part.

Which is to say the classification is unneccesary and superfluous. They also do not serve their purpose very well because, as you agreed, most people won't even know what it means except for those in the know. I've also said that something like that would only interest someone in the know, therefore making the whole issue moot Well, to be fair, both Warhammer 40k and basically every steampunk thing ever has a very strong "style over substance" element - ok, you can say that the original Difference Engine didn't, but it was written by post-Neuromancer Gibson, and therefore can only be described as "an intellectual bluff masquerading as a novel"* -, so the aesthetical part IS (or, in the case of W40K, is half of) the whole thing. * The only difference being between the two that "style over substance" at least has style going for it. Aside from that, this would be a very convincing argument except for the fact that "science fiction" also carries little meaning about what lies at its core. I mean, yes, it was supposed to be about the examination of the effects of technological progress on the human condition, but let's face it, in the last, say, 50 years, most SF writers haven't even paid lip service to this ideal. Between this "rootlessness" of the genre and the fact that aesthetically, it can mean anything from the worn-down yet strangely cozy-looking space western of Firefly through the bloodsplattered industrial nightmare of Dead Space to the shiny and light world of the first Mass Effect, I think if you're a developer and you just go like "I want to make a sci-fi game", it will mean something completely different for each fan. Also: Arcanum was basically a fantasy story, with the trappings of steampunk, so... the chosen subgenre doesn't really determine what kind of story you will tell in the end.

These are labels. They exist to ease classification, not to tell you that "these are the confines you're allowed to create content within". If you're saying "space opera", and think of Warhammer 40k, while hearing it I think of Star Wars, and a third guy thinks of Mass Effect, it means "space opera" as a label serves its purpose rather badly. On the other hand, "cybergoth" immediately tells you that "this stuff has high-tech stuff in it, and it was probably influenced by gothic aesthetics". "Clockpunk" says "I have clockwork stuff running around" (and not much else, because "-punk" has lately become just a cool suffix entirely devoid of its original meaning). (I don't think these are particularly limiting, by the way.) Also, the whole point of creating (at least semi-)exotic stuff is that it's specifically made for people in-the-know. You don't really have to worry about scaring customers away with arcane terminology, if your game has, say, all-female bug-headed sculptor-people whose male members are just mindless giant ****roaches and communist nomadic bird-people and steam-powered robots, because you've already lost the attention of the wide audiences at "bug-headed female sculptor-people who reproduce by having giant ****roaches hump the back of their necks". And in these cases, actually informative labels are useful. At least, that's what I think *shrug*.

I don't mean to offend you here, but cybergoth? Clockpunk? These things strike me as "look at me being a connoisseur with all the labels I have". Warhammer is space opera with horror undertones. Cybergoth? Really? While describing W40K as "space opera with horror undertones" strikes me as oversimplification (Of course, if you're not familiar with the setting beyond the Dawn of War/Space Marine/whatever games, your viewpoint is understandable - it doesn't make it any less wrong, however.) "Cybergoth" is a fairly self-explanatory term, and I really don't think it's more obscure than, say, dieselpunk (which, for some reason, appeared in the poll, while the lot broader "horror" label didn't *grumble grumble*). "Clockpunk" also exists, and its appeal (for me) stems mainly from its aesthetics, and the fact that it's close enough to steampunk that it can scratch the "we want an Arcanum sequel" itch of the fanbase, while being a step away from the "zomg steampunk EVERYTHING" trend of late (which has significantly reduced my interest in anything steam-related for the next few decades).

We just had Shadowrun Returns, and have CDPR's Cyberpunk whatever to look forward to. In a similar vein, Wasteland 2's almost out, and Fallout 4 is in the making. And we'll have a new Mass Effect game sometime. I really don't get how people could want even more cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic/space opera stuff. Hell, I'm bored with them even now. (Warhammer 40k-ish cybergoth, or Hammer Horror/steampunk mashup, or anything clockpunk or biopunk would be welcome. If they add China Miéville-esque weird fantasy stuff to the mix, I'll be overjoyed.)

That's how. Actually, now that you mention it, I think an Eclipse Phase RPG by Obsidian would be great.

Modern horror. (Why on Earth wasn't it included in the poll, by the way?)

I actually think there's potential in an episodic RPG with high reactivity. Can't look up the consequences beforehand, the reduced length of the individual episodes encourages experimentation and replayability, etc. etc.

That kinda worries me. I hated the Dragon's Eye with a boundless, burning fury. Watcher's Keep = awesome, Dragon's Eye... not so much. Why isn't it more like the Watcher's Keep?

Well, my thoughts are "your numbers must be off" (But even if they aren't, areas can differ in size. I seriously doubt one megadungeon level will directly be equal to one wilderness area/city area in size and content).

They're more work than they are worth, easier just to balance around the fact that magic is now more easily available. Btw, it's "vancian" spellcasting

No, they are icky, overused, and usually done all wrong. And, despite that, still awesome. That article is BS by the way, in a sense that you can't do things like that in an RPG like PE, because it would make them too OP compared to other creatures. And some tings just cannot be done because of engine limitations. The article does have some good ideas though - increasing their speed across the ground for example. I'd like them to have proper creepy sound-effects too for their scuttling. (I'm a bit arachnophobic but haven't been scared by computer game spiders since Eye of the Beholder - but then they could get behind you *shudder*) If you didn't feel the inescapable urge to scream like a little girl at that last gif in the article, you ain't a proper arachnophobe. *shudder* I honestly think that you must have insanity rules in your game if you want to include spiders. Seriously, f*** them.

Yes please. Let it be something (new) World of Darkness-ish contemporary horror. I'd say no to licensing either, though.

That actually seems useful. Could you update us when it's ready?

Ooh, last episode of Agents of Shield was semi-interesting. It's still bogged down by unlikeable characters and taking itself way too seriously, but I can see this working in Season 2.

No, they are icky, overused, and usually done all wrong.