JediMB

Sounds like the PE Paladins will be more about morale/charisma and sheer force of will than... you know... holy powers. Which is a good thing, since it keeps the class from overlapping with the Priest. I like the sound of this, most definitely. Same with Chanter.

I still advocate giving the player to choose how restrictive the game's save system should be when you start the campaign. That should keep the players happy, right? Right, what I was referring to is nothing like the Diablo-esque "save on quit" system. Rather, the games (like the updated Final Fantasy titles for the GBA and DS) normally let you save at specific save points, but if you find yourself deep in a dungeon and have to stop playing you can "Save and Quit" (sometimes confusingly referred to as "Quicksave"), which basically creates a temporary save state that is automatically removed when you resume playing later on. So this would be a mechanic that exists in addition to whatever regular save system the game uses, and it lets you load the game exactly as it was the moment you had to quit.

EDIT: Moving this post to the primary Paladin and Bard thread.

This is the sound of me upping my pledge from $110 to $140+20. I feel confident that we'll make $2.7M on time, but not as confident about $2.8M. I really hope we'll get there, though, since getting Ziets rehired would be a very cool thing to be a part of.

As far as your first point goes, there are plenty of games with save points that allow you to "Save and Quit" regardless of where you are. I've seen the mechanic mostly in GBA and DS games.

I think it would be cool if we could choose between traditional hand-drawn portraits or customizable 3D portraits for our characters. But I suppose implementing a character customization system might be more work than it's worth. Still, I'll cross my fingers.

It would be nice to have an option when you start your game to have "limited" saving capabilities. I'm very well aware of that my obsessive quicksaving and quickloading takes away from my experience, so it would be nice to have an optional aid to prevent that behavior. EDIT: Man, I'd almost forgotten about the save points of olden times and JRPGs. I'd totally be up for an optional mode where save points and the map screen are your only options for saving.

I think charisma should basically be treated like social intelligence. One's ability to sound convincing regardless of if one is right or not. Charm. Must refrain from making obvious joke about almost every modern politician. Gosh, no. Go ahead.

Regardless of if there's going to be a Paladin class or not, I think I'm going to have to try to model one of my characters after IXA... ...And I suppose Kiva/Wataru could be considered a Bard.

I don't think that many of us want to have WoW or DAO-style systems where your stats increase tenfold (or more) over the course of the game, at least. I'm all for something similar to Fallout's SPECIAL, personally.

Rather than having spells with unlimited use, couldn't wizards just have some sort of ranged attack with their staves/wands/etc.? Or a focus ability that speeds up the recovery of one or more spell tiers?

I think charisma should basically be treated like social intelligence. One's ability to sound convincing regardless of if one is right or not. Charm.

I very much welcome dialogue adapted to the character's intelligence. Hopefully charisma will also play a part, if that attribute exists in the game. I think I need to go back and play the original Fallouts again. But I already have a bunch of RPGs queued up for my enjoyment...

'Cause I can't make up my mind on if I'm supposed to be naïve or cynical.

I'm still hoping that, given how word-of-mouth had the opposite effect for DA2 as it had for its predecessor, the third installment in the series is at least partially going to go back to how things were done in DAO. I have very mixed feelings about DA2, but among the things that disturbed me the most were when the plot did its best to defy one's choices, the way the tactical combat mechanics were pretty much ruined by "reinforcements" and bad boss balancing, and just how very shallow the game's RPG mechanics had become. Not to mention that the game was clearly unfinished. So, yeah, I'm hopeful, but my expectations for future BioWare games in general are way down low.

Eternity: Single-Word-Subtitle-of-Plot/Premise-Relevance

Couldn't and elf be a human? Couldn't a human be a dwarf? Yes, yes and yes. Have you never role played an elf who is actually a human (race reassignment surgery) but thinks that he is dwarf? What measure is human? What can change the nature of a man? What is a man? *throws wine glass* ...What, there's been an official statement on Paladins? *starts searching*

I like video games. Also swords. I refuse classification, and I'm terrible at picking favorites. But for whatever it's worth, my current pledge is $110, although I'm unsure if this poor student an actually afford that. Had I a steady income, I'd definitely go for one of the $1000 backer levels. Designing an NPC or a high-level item for an Obsidian game would be bleeping awesome.

As far as that whole issue with "rest spamming" and similar problems go... well, I'd be surprised if someone else hasn't already brought this up, but suppose a game could use some sort of "chain" system that rewards players for not resting* between encounters? The easiest way to go (both from a lore and mechanics standpoint) would of course be an experience point bonus, but they'd of course have to consider how this would affect the player's progression through the game. Having a static "chain bonus" would probably be enough to give the player incentive to avoid resting, but the first game that comes to mind with a similar system (Final Fantasy XI) used an incremental bonus system that rewarded sustaining long chains. (But level progression functions in an entirely different way in a grind-oriented MMO, so the incremental version likely wouldn't be a good idea.) Of course this also assumes that enemy encounters reward you with experience points to begin with. Unless it was a matter of experience point rewards being exclusive to "chained" battles. * In the case of a cooldown system, standing around and doing nothing would be considered "resting"

And that's fine. As it is fine if they had made barbarians a sub-class of fighter, ciphers a sub-class of mages, rangers a subclass of rogues and druids a sub-class of clerics. It can be done. But there are stretch goals for all the sub-classes - why not one more for bards and paladins? I don't understand the resistance, except for those who "hate bards and paladins." I don't get it. If bards and paladins don't fit Obsidian's vision, that's one thing. That hasn't been said by Obsidian, though. If they would have stuck to 4 core and just had "builds" under them, that'd be great. But Obsidian has very blatantly opened the the door to more specialized classes - druids, monks, ciphers, barbarians, rangers... ... the door is open to specialized sub-classes. There's no real sense to wanting to close it now. Were it up to me, Barbarians would definitely go under Fighters unless there was a really good lore reason (and different mechanics) to justify a separate class. Ciphers, however, already seem to be more of a "psychic" class than a traditional magical class. I'm not against the inclusion of Bard and Paladin classes, as I'd probably like playing them, but actually asking for them seems wrong when there are so many other specialized classes that likely have as many fans among us, and I think that too many classes could make the game really messy. And it seems to me that the class lore detailed in the latest update makes Paladin a good fit within the Cleric class.

I'd be all for having Paladin as a Cleric specialization/build, and Bard as an equivalent for the Rogue class. (Yes, I know Dragon Age already did the Bard-Rogue thing, but it's the class it makes the most sense for.) I think having a limited number of flexible classes like this would make a lot more sense than a bleep-load of similar classes.

I've been reading it as Direwood. Seemed like the logical pronunciation in a fantasy game.

Well, I'm unsure if my bank account can handle it, but I've pledged the basic $20. It's really cool to see more old-school RPGs being made, and with both Commander Keen and DOOM being quite significant parts of my childhood (I've yet to play Anachronox, however, I really want to support Tom Hall. The recommendations from Notch, Avellone and Broussard helped in my decision too, and I really loved Notch's part in the pitch video. Not very familiar with Wizardry or Brathwaite's name, but I like what I've found out from some quick wiki-research well enough.

I really don't place any value in the old cardboard boxes, since they tend to get hidden away in storage due not not fitting on the shelves and such. That said, I've accumulated a good number of smaller cardboard boxes for games recently, and... well... as long as they're small enough (they can still be thick) to fit on the DVD shelves with the other games, I can appreciate them. Cool-cool-cool.

So, yeah, I'm just going to trust that the Project Eternity team know what they're doing, what with their experience and all, and save criticism of game mechanics until their implementation can be seen in the beta testing.