Odarbi

That's how I felt the first time I played it too, and it's just never felt the same since I learned otherwise.

I've said it in a few different threads, and I'll say it again here. Make quests that are time sensitive. They don't all have to be, but there should be a number of important decisions/quests that need to be made by the player that also have a limited time to be completed and have a very impactful presence on gameplay and/or story. Players who fail to deal with an evil necromancer early on should have to deal with additional minions later, or potentially even risk finding out that a city was destroyed because they ignored him. Players who fail to meet up with a high ranking official could find out that he was assassinated during the time they were to meet him, and also end up being wanted by the faction the official was representing because people think he was in on the assassination or something. It really takes away from the overall story of the game, in my opinion, when the entirety of the game just waits around for the player to take their time and do everything. If the whole point of taking your time is to just explore the world and find out about the lore, that can be done on subsequent playthroughs or potentially even after the story portion has been completed. A sense of urgency within the story makes it feel like the world is an actual living breathing thing, and may discourage a lot of playstyles certain players take throughout games. Having time sensitive quests in the game may in it self act as a deterrant to the idea of sleeping to recover to full strength after every battle. Not being able to complete everything in one playthrough adds to re-playability, and having time sensitive quests that change the game based on whether they were completed on time or not adds to the number of different permutations possible for each playthrough. The inclusion of something like this would not only benefit the world on an immersive level, but also on a re-playability level.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/59982-non-casters-need-to-have-interesting-choices-in-combat/

I enjoy inventory management to a point. I'd prefer for it to be more weight based than having an arbitrary number of inventory slots, however.

I'd also like to see something like this play into the game, and especially so if it ends up having a large impact on the way the game plays out. One of my favorite aspects of Baldurs Gate 2 was the faction choice at the end of Chapter 2. It only ended up being a minor change to the way the game played, but it was enough to be memorable.

My DM bothers with it, and it's definitely as simple as us brushing it off and saying "Oh, that 100 pounds worth of coins is in the cart", but it's never *pointless*. In fact, I'm in favor of coins having a weight because it makes it less likely that, or at least take far longer until, you'll reach the usually inevitable "I have a billion dollars and nothing to spend it on" point that appears in most RPG games ever.

I'd really like to see Multiplayer if it's at all possible. I may never ever end up using it, but having the option to grab a couple friends and playing through with them would be a grand old time, I think.

I voted "gold should have a weight, determined by difficulty", but that's mostly because I believe inventory management *needs* to be part of the game. Having gold weigh more in the higher difficulty levels could also make for less time spent balancing difficulties, since you'd theoretically be unable to buy as much as someone on the easier difficulties (assuming weight based carrying limitations)... which makes things harder in it's own right. In truth though, I'm really indifferent to gold having a weight. It's not going to make or break the game for me.

I'm not so worried about specific archetypes, but I would definitely like to see companion personalities play out and have an effect on quest dialogues and such. Have the "Whole party" be a part of accepting the quest, not just the main player character.

I'd really like to see it for the same reason, but I don't think anything has been mentioned on that front yet. Hoping it might be one of the further stretch goals if they're not already planning for it.

One thing I'd like to see with resting is to have things like Firewood and Food actually be helpful to resting. Maybe having Firewood/Food or whatever allows you to get up to 75% efficiency while outside of the designated rest areas... but it'll be another item you have to remember to stock up on and carry with you, which might make you unable to carry something else you think you might need. I would just like to say here that I love encountering situations where I agonize over possible dialogue choices. The more often, the better. Another big thing I'd like to see changed... or at least looked at. Weapon and Armor "customization". There was a magical item added at one point in D&D 3.5 known as an Augment Crystal. This was an item that could be attached to, or removed from, an item without much hassle, and granted the item in question a certain magical property based off the crystal. Adding a mechanic similar to this would make it much easier for players to carry different utility magical effects for their gear without having to carry an entirely new weapon on the off chance they need it. This could specifically be done for things such as elemental resistance properties on armor, or elemental damage properties on weapons, and would go a long way in making inventory management less of a hassle if inventory management is, indeed, going to be a thing. I'll dive into a few molds I would like to see kept now, though. - Limited inventory. Some sort of inventory cap should exist. A system based mostly around weight restrictions would be nice, so long as weight is somewhat realistic. Carrying 15 different longswords and 3 suits of full platemail shouldn't really be an option unless you've got something like a bag of holding. - Elemental immunities and resistances. Fire elementals should take no damage from, or potentially even be healed by, fire damage. Players having to carry things like fire resist potions and such things. All a part of good dungeon prep, which any good dungeon crawler should have a certain amount of.

Not sure if this has been mentioned in here yet, because I surely havn't read all 5 pages in the topic... but a Multiplayer mode would be a nice inclusion. As much as I love sitting down and playing games like these by myself, having the ability to play it with other people is always a fun time.

I have a few things I'd *like* to see housing have. I do not really expect any of them, however. 1) Non-static design. Either have a number of different house types available for the player to get and they have to choose which one they get, or somehow figure out a way to have an "open design" segment for it (think something along the lines of like... Ultima Online or The Sims free building). Examples of different housing types could be Temples, keeps, Manor-houses, or even taverns. 2) Something that legitimately plays into the story somehow. As much as I want to say "Keep the housing stuff as a seperate little 'minigame'", It'd be really cool if we're out adventuring and end up encountering a messenger/one of our unused companions who tracked us down to alert us that our house is under attack or was ransacked while the BBEG's flunkies or something was trying to find us. 3) House expansions or upgrades actually taking in game time to build. Mostly a fluff thing, but seems like it should actually take time for your additional rooms to built. 4) Side quests/events to add meaning to the house. BG2 strongholds all seemed to have a couple quests associated with the stronghold, and I'd like to see that same idea of things take place in P:E. Maybe have some/all of these quests involve sending out your companions. Could have pseudo random events, similar to as mentioned above, where your house comes under attack and you have to return and defend your house. Ultimately: Don't just make housing an "additional thing". If you're going to add housing, make use of it within the game. Give us a reason to care about it outside of "My un-used companions hang out there, and I can store all my stuff there too"

One thing I would love to see change is having 'quests' be time sensitive. For example: You might get a quest to go save someone who was kidnapped for a ritual. You might then only have 7 in game days from the time of pick up to complete the quest. If you don't complete it in those 7 days, something related to that quest happens. Not getting there in time might mean you then end up having to fight some horrible monster or something later on, or like... some part of a town gets destroyed, and the prices in that town go up or something. It's probably wishful thinking, since it'd be a pretty ambitious undertaking to do it well... but it'd be really nice to see quests that don't wait around for the hero to get there, kinda deal.

Quite agreed. Looking at it in terms of D&D 3.5 rules, I was thinking something like the Knight's Test of Mettle ability. "Any target of this ability must have a language of some sort and an Intelligence score of 5 or higher. Creatures that do not meet these requirements are immune to the test of mettle. Creatures that are affected then make a will save to resist the effect"

I never said the idea is invalid. However, you are just reaching about the taunts being magical. Actually, why would you want your fighters to have quasi-magical abilities? Is this because of the style of games you're used to playing, or a desire to have your player character be more powerful overall? My statement about it not being invalid was meant as a general statement, not a targeted response. As for how and why I might want a fighter to have quasi-magical abilities? I don't. I do think they need some options and/or abilities open to them, though. You might be taking my replies as a vehement desire to have a taunt effect. As I've said earlier, I don't want threat mechanics. However, this is a discussion chat about how non-casters need to have interesting abilities so that they're not just "good with swords". I simply listed some examples of possible skills that could be in the game, and have been explaining how the one that was dismissed right out the gate can actually exist, how it could work, and how it might make sense given what was said in the Kickstarter video.

I think this is the problem right there. The fighter is not a mage. Given that they're talking in the Kickstarter video about a person's soul being a source of power, and a soul being tied to magic, a taunt could actually be magical in nature in this world. Simply not liking the idea does not make it invalid or "not make sense".

Taunting as a mechanic makes plenty of sense. You attempt provoke or challenge someone. They either take the challenge or ignore it. The fact that it was "never ever needed in any IE game" doesn't mean it's a terrible idea to add or some sort of hideous addition to the game. It's a tool you can use, just like any spell you might have, to affect the outcome of battle. It's there to help prevent that ogre from attacking your mage in a situation where he gets feared during combat, runs away, and finds the thing wandering in the forest.

I've gotta agree with this.

The bolded part is the sort of utility that I'm interested in. But 'taunt' as in 'threat mechanic'? No thanks, I'd rather the fighters soak up damage as the player make use of party positioning (casters way in the back); exploit the terrain (bottlenecks) and make use of aforementioned crowd control abilities to keep enemies from charging into the mage. Quick movement also worries me. It can be too quick and break the dynamics of party positioning. I did mean taunt as a "forcing an enemy to attack someone else for a pre-determined amount of time" type mechanic, but I don't think the ability wouldn't take away from strategic combat a whole lot if the ability has limited uses per combat/day, and/or a long cooldown between uses. No thank you, threat mechanics never made sense and always simplified party dynamics. And if its not even present in most encounters would mean that encounters wouldn't be designed around it. I think you're misunderstanding what I was suggesting when I said "taunt". I don't want threat mechanics like you would see in WoW or whatever. It was just an idea for a utility skill to make an enemy prioritize one target for a short duration before his AI takes over again. You've got an ogre attacking your mage, and you have a fighter use his "taunt" ability to make it want to attack him for a short time so your mage doesn't get squished and has time to retreat a little. You "taunt" to get a ranged enemy to shoot at couple arrows at you instead of your nearly dead healer. Once the "taunt" is over, the enemies are free to go back to whatever they were doing. They wouldn't be tied to the fighter until someone else did more damage than him or anything. It'd really be no different than a wizard using a short duration charm spell on the enemy to make him view your party as allies for 5 seconds before he goes back to shooting your guys in the face.

The bolded part is the sort of utility that I'm interested in. But 'taunt' as in 'threat mechanic'? No thanks, I'd rather the fighters soak up damage as the player make use of party positioning (casters way in the back); exploit the terrain (bottlenecks) and make use of aforementioned crowd control abilities to keep enemies from charging into the mage. Quick movement also worries me. It can be too quick and break the dynamics of party positioning. I did mean taunt as a "forcing an enemy to attack someone else for a pre-determined amount of time" type mechanic, but I don't think the ability wouldn't take away from strategic combat a whole lot if the ability has limited uses per combat/day, and/or a long cooldown between uses. In fact, if it's done right, I would say it would add even more depth to the combat, because your decision becomes "Should I use this now, or wait? Will I find a better time to use this in the next round?" much like the decision of using your last fireball when you're playing Baldurs Gate. The same goes for quick movement abilities, or even just all special abilities in general. I'm not looking for this game to become WoW, but I do believe that high level warriors need something to keep them from feeling boring at higher levels. Special abilities are nice, but they should never outweigh proper battlefield management or make proper positioning and tactics obsolete.

I don't really think they need to do a permanent log with ALL the dialogue you've had with various characters, but I do think a "Journal" like they had in Baldurs Gate could go a long way in reminding the player of what they have done or agreed to do for different people, reminders of strange or potentially important places or events, and other such things.

A lot of the OP's concerns about realtime with pause can really be solved just by doing party AI right, as it was done in BG or IWD. Set up/pick an AI script for your party and let them go, while still being able to give commands and have those trump anything the AI chooses until the action is completed. Want your archers to shoot an enemy mage until he's dead? Selecting them and order them to do it. Have that action persist until a) the mage is dead (where AI would take over again, until another order is given), or b) the player tells them to change to a different target. RTwP doesn't have to be nitpicky, it can totally be about higher level decisions... Party AI just needs to be handled well to do it.

When it comes to giving Non-casters special abilities, I do feel somewhat compelled to agree... but I don't think they really *need* damage abilities. As much as some people might want their warriors to Whirlwind all the things, I'm perfectly fine with options like Knockbacks, Trips, Hamstrings, Quick movement like charge/leap, and even taunt style abilities. If non-caster special abilities really do become a thing in the final game, It'd be nice if there was a means of customizing which abilities each character did get so that you're not stuck with 2 warriors who both have the exact same abilities, unless you really wanted them too. The idea of having one warrior built for front line battlefield control while another is set up for more of a shock trooper/mage hunter style, with each having completely different special abilities, could definitely improve longevity and/or re-playability of the game

One of my major loves about the Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale games was having different AI scripts available to customize how each character was controlled by the computer, but also with how those scripts would suspend for a period or adapt if the player told that character to do something. Many of the newer games, such as Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2, did not seem have that same level of AI. I won't lie. I'm not super huge on having to micromanage or give orders to my party members every round in combat, but I do like being able to tell my party members to do something from time to time, and have them do it before going back to to their AI. I want to be able to have my party prioritize a target until that target is dead. I found a lot of the time in Neverwinter Nights 2 that the AI would be trying to change targets every 2 or 3 rounds, despite me actually telling them to attack someone. I guess my point here is: Please make sure to do party AI right. Have AI in the game to take over when the player isn't directly telling the party what to do, but allow player commands to trump out AI commands. Whether AI is done using a script system such as what was used in Baldurs Gate in the past, with a user defined priority system where they can use dropdown boxes to set up something like "When <ally HP> is <below> <50%>, use <skill>", or some entirely new system to determine how the AI should react in a given situation, frustrating Party AI can definitely ruin a game for someone like me. Please take the time to do party AI correctly.