Ieo

There were two spells in BG2 I vaguely remember that would allow you to magically divine various dangers in a given area. I only used one of those once (I think it cleared the fog of war in the target area) and the other one I remember was Wizard Eye, which isn't quite the same. The biggest issue as to whether it's even worthwhile to include divination mechanics is replay value, something that isn't part of the tabletop scene with free roleplay and a good GM. Unless there is randomized content, these things are probably only used in the first playthrough, if at all--because stealthy scouts can cover much of the same function.

Hmm. Well, to be honest, given what's going on with the combat mechanics, I'd like to see more than attack animations but not more death animations. That is, if you miss, I'd like to see the avatar "miss" somehow. Josh says it'll be possible to build "dodge"/"block" character concepts, so if your character dodges, I'd like to see a dodge. If you have a shield equipped and manage to block, I'd like to see the shield block. Nothing too fancy. I'm not sure if all the math will be so finely tweaked that we can tell exactly what happened with a roll (dodge vs. block) since I haven't paid too close attention to the exact numbers that Josh has been proposing.... So I suppose my preferences are more in-line with the second option (Basic death animations. Multiple attack animations for different scenarios) though what I'd like aren't strictly attack animations per se.

Interesting. As a side comment, I'm curious if there's an "in combat" state flag? I think the IE games had this. For control-loss effects/debuffs of long durations (relatively), I play a game where the full duration would run so long as you're "in combat," but the effect would fall off shortly after you enter "not in combat" state regardless of how much time is left on the effect timer. The advantage of this is that you wouldn't be waiting around for that party member to drop out of the Hold spell, yet the full tactical effects of the debuff were in play during combat, when it matters most. As for this accuracy-vs-defense concept, sounds interesting indeed. I'll never care for a miss mechanic, but I can't wait to try it out anyway because building for different combat character concepts is fun.

omg, when the poor wizard is paddling on his barrel, makes it up the ladder only to be dragged down the hole again, I lost it. So funny. They have "death animations" in today's games, but they largely seem to involve "body part gibbing" or dissolving and little else ... I definitely miss stuff like in that video. Varied, often humorous. Ah, dammit, I wanted to watch that but forgot until now.... when I'm back at work, oh well.

Why is the quote function all screwed up in the add-post thing? You're missing the point. Osvir wants sexism built into parts of the classes themselves--some by title only (without actual differences, hence pointless), another by getting rid of Obsidian's own already described priest and paladin classes... Basically, his approach is bass-ackwards: Obsidian supports player choice in most things (as many things as possible). That means freedom for whatever class and sex you choose (think about the "purpose ready" update statement too). Then the WORLD reacts to those initial choices and subsequent actions at the local level. Of course there's going to be racism and sexism, but that's endemic to parts of the world itself, not something at character creation (i.e. that wouldn't be "reactive content"). I mean, Osvir did propose something about global "good/evil" reputation, but all of that flies in the face of Project Eternity's direction because we should all know there's no concept of alignment. Did you just say we need more people like Peter Molyneux? Now I really have heard everything. I'd actually agree with needing more Peter Molyneuxs - I'd rather the games industry be in a state where there are loads of hyper ambitious people who fail to live up to their imagination than one where people aren't even trying to push the boundaries. Well, besides which that comparison is irrelevant here. There is a vast, vast difference between an actual game designer and programmer in the industry who creates his own contexts for his ideas and tries to follow through, even with failure. That's why his approach, while off-the-wall and whatever, is respectable in some sense. Here? We have people throwing half-baked ideas at someone else's creative context. If you think you're all that awesome creative, build your own world and game rules or write your own book or something. Like some of us are already doing on our own time.

Historically, Osvir, your "brainstorm" threads aren't very fruitful and more often than not aren't appropriate for PE for a variety of reasons. Don't get me wrong; I'm sure you're a nice guy and all, but it's like you don't understand how the preproduction stage actually works: OBSIDIAN brainstorms, we vet, they tweak. This is their creative product, not yours (ours). The most we should be doing is offering feedback or specific ideas that are not only content-positive (i.e. argumentatively improve player experience on its face with decent perceived RoI) but also appropriate for PE as an IE tribute. Your ideas, historically, are neither content-positive (lots of resources for little or no gain, or a layer of unnecessary complexity) nor appropriate for PE (e.g. full VO, emoticon-like facial expression for every dialogue option, gear-based character advancement, LOS mechanic that requires a 3D environment with rotating camera, limiting pause functionally as a measure of difficulty, etc.). IMO. Now, I'm not encouraging a chilling effect or anything, but you could be more mindful of your topics. And yes, it's easier to pick on your threads due to frequency. Does a proposal go with the feel of the IE games? Would the inclusion require significant resources or impinge on the player experience instead of enriching? Well, I suppose in terms of judgment, Obsidian is always in the better position, so I'll remain confidant that they can separate the signal from the noise. We'll still evaluate as players, of course. ...Still NO. (Reasons explained by others already. )

U36, at least that is covered:

Some of these are design-driven answers, so I'll answer a few. We're starting out with one basic attack for each weapon type with variants as a lower priority. Making all of the weapon attacks unique/good is more important (IMO) than having variants. Also, a lot of our animation time is traditionally spent on creatures, and I think having a large bestiary is important. On Black Hound, we put a lot of effort into standard melee variations and I don't think it would have had as large of an impact as additional creatures/creature animations. I'd like to have special death animations and that's something Dimitri, Mark, and I have discussed, but not in detail. Good and unique but simple animations--sounds good. As for different death animations, so long as they're not slow-motion super-lit-up aurora-borealis screen-shaking, I'd be fine with it... (with option to turn off?) Usually these things are just so overdone in (esp console type) video games.

BG had some terrible weapon animations. Are there any games with good staff animations? It's amazing what an aesthetic difference a simple slashing motion plus body posture can make for a given weapon. I play a particular class in an MMO for which there is an exclusive weapon; some people play the class only because they like the weapon. Problem is, I and a good number of other people never use that super-special exclusive weapon because the combat animations are terrible. So I hope the weapon animations will be great. At least not super awkward. And if spears are getting love, I hope less popular melee weapons like staves will get some love too.

I will be ****ing furious if they nerf or get rid of spells that allow you to lose or simply not control your character. Sure it's not fun when one of your characters gets held in a web while there's 2 sword spiders next to it or imprisoned by the Maze spell in a lich battle but it's all part of the challenge. There's a good encounter in BG1 Durlag's Tower where you come up against a bunch of Skeleton Archers which aren't that fearful enemies on their own, but all the platforms are covered in Sleeping Cloud and Cloudkill traps, which made that encounter a challenge. I don't really care how much they nerf it for people who play on pissant difficulties but on expert mode, I hope there are such punishing debuffs. Charm, Hold, Stun, Paralyze, Sleep, Fear etc. Wouldn't feel like an IE game without those. This is a case where an MMO mentality doesn't port to the SP party genre, so I must disagree with Luridis on cc and general "control loss" spells - PE should have plenty of these. The reason why control-loss skills and spells stink in MMOs is because you literally lose all control over everything--your own toon. But that is irrelevant to tactical party games: You always have something to do. I have never lost control of my entire party in any IE game; some members will escape a trap or miss it while others make their saving throw. I can still move at least one member and try to save the others or something. The frustration level compared to the MMO genre is completely different in this case.

They haven't gotten into the specifics, but the latest information is Update 36.

What? What's the point? Priest is already a different class than Paladin so your attempt to combine/separate based on sex makes no sense. None of that matters, really, and gendered class titles... so the point of your post is just to suggest gendered class names? Leave that linguistical exercise to the endemic cultures. Oh, I see, you also want sex requirements for classes. Look, having different dialogue reaction to PC sex and/or PC class is already a reasonable expectation--pinning that to some extra class-sex-title thing is completely unnecessary unless Obsidian writes it into a particular subculture. We don't need additional sex/race requirements on classes, either. NO.

Also, that anyone would think Josh Sawyer of all people, whose biggest investment in the PE blurb is IWD (compared to Avellone's PS:T), would somehow be "anti-combat" is complete and utter rubbish. Irrational, hysterical, whiny. I mean, really.

An Isometric camera, party based fantasy game with a strong central narrative. Beyond that the road was open as far as I could see. YMMV or course. And deep companion interaction and reactive world content! At the time that it was pitched, I wasn't sure that it'd be more IWD or PST in terms of companion interaction, so for me that wasn't really an issue (since I liked both games). Well, I'm thinking of-- The other part (reactivity) I admittedly must have assumed because Chris Avellone is involved and two thirds of the game pitch contained that sort of thing. Not to mention the rest of Obsidian's games apparently had a fair bit of reactivity.

An Isometric camera, party based fantasy game with a strong central narrative. Beyond that the road was open as far as I could see. YMMV or course. And deep companion interaction and reactive world content!

Well, about mechanics, I think the grimoire-cooldowns are interesting; health/stamina is interesting and a good counterbalance against lack of healing spells/resurrection, class resource management imbalance, and required resting; zonal locked encounter scaling with main campaign bounded scaling sounds great to me; back-loaded objective xp also sounds great to me*. I wish Josh would get rid of the miss mechanic entirely to allow for far more varied and elegant defense solutions, though. Edit: Oh, Obsidian, please also take a look at dynamic encounters--especially patrols and migrations. I hope the engine can do that sort of thing! *It's interesting to me that the people whining about objective xp firstly have very binary and simplistic thinking and secondly assume that noncombat options are always easier than combat. Rather, I'd say taking the combat path has always been easiest or the most direct route in any CRPG of this type. PS:T isn't necessarily an exception because you had to have specific character stats to even see certain dialogue options--if speech skills/stats in PE are going to be robust, then it stands to reason that players must still willingly choose those stats/whatever; likewise, since PE will have factions, you can't be friends with everyone. Obs already said that there's no pacifist path, so anyone who whines otherwise is just throwing a short-sighted tantrum.

You know what, the idea of getting rid of the "miss" mechanic entirely (which is only perceptual in real combat) and adding broken-out dodge/parry/block mechanics does not actually remove the RNG but rather shifts it to something both more meaningful and realistic (IMO). In the usual weird "miss" scenario the die roll is on A's turn: A attacks B, A misses A attacks B, A misses A attacks B, A misses A attacks B, A hits A attacks B, A misses A attacks B, A hits versus die roll on the defense side A attacks B, B dodges A attacks B, B dodges A attacks B, B parries A attacks B, B is hit A attacks B, B blocks A attacks B, B is hit See the difference? The first is "My character is too low level and lame" while the second is "The baddie is better than my character's combat skills." The RNG applies to both sides just fine. And then the additional, finer distinctions on the defense side also mean that classes can be built to differing and more unique combat specs. Then what about critical misses and hits? Removing the "miss" mechanic means that avoidance depends on the defender, so a "critical miss" instead could be shifted to the defense. For example, we have the basic combat actions above--attack, dodge, parry, block, hit. Perhaps another combat action would be retaliate. A attacks B, B retaliates A retaliation may mean that B, the defender, was not only able to dodge/parry/block the attack but was able to do so in such a way that the attacker, A, was unable to return to proper combat stance--like blocking with a shield but redirecting the full force such that A lost his footing. That would be a "critical miss" by A's perception. Critical hit is easy enough... Yes, this is my pipe dream that I wish Josh would consider. A related issue is how all of that would line up with the stamina/health bars.

You do realize this is a 4M production, right? Not a 100M production. Of course cost will be a pointer. How much of that 4M do you want for merely VO? I rather have it spend on the proper places. Since in current game-land, it's not much... Not much, however even lots of voice acting is a tiny cost in a $4 million budget for this type of game. If they were making a first person RPG where you see the characters mouths the whole time they were speaking, it would be a different story, but all they have to do is record some voice and accompany it with the text so it takes hours and hours less work. If you paid attention (i.e. if you actually read this thread, which you didn't), Feargus already gave the answer. Around half a million to voice less than half the word content of PS:T. That's "only" over 12% of the current PE budget; what else could the $500k buy? An entire faction? How many maps? 3-4 party NPCs? Who knows, but Obsidian knows, and I'll bet any other actual content is still >>>>>> "full VO" (or even "mostly"). Voice acting in RPGs may be more trouble than it's worth. And with the decision Obsidian back in September, this thread is still entirely moot.

A particular realistic "immersion" example for respawns would be critters repopulating a cleared wilderness map from outlying wilderness area, so if you traversed the map again days later, you'd have to battle through more critters to return to a specific spot (e.g. remote quest NPC or quest area). Those pesky static skeletons and gnolls as you kept going back to High Hedge for swanky shopping. Respawns in enclosed maps like caves or dungeons are trickier: For one, the above respawn example in open maps requires "travel" as an excuse, but you generally don't travel through an enclosed cave/dungeon to get somewhere else; rather, in classical enclosed areas, the purpose to enter, clear (complete missions), and leave. You wouldn't return to particularly large enclosed, dangerous structures because quests have never been set up that way for them, at least in any SP game I've played. But I suspect a fair number of people would hate having to traverse through a claustrophobic maze-y enclosure (with respawns to boot) to reach a multi-visit quest hub as well, so that's not necessarily a great sort of implementation. There is one possibility I can think of at the moment pertaining to enclosed map respawns in PE: The mega-dungeon. So, there has been at least one other thread about allowing easier player travel in/out of the mega-dungeon (because 15 levels is ginormous); the discussion included different ideas on realism and difficulty settings and the like. This may have been mentioned in the other thread, but what if respawns would occur at varying frequencies and densities in the mega-dungeon depending on how far you've gotten and whether you finished it? That is, if you choose to leave before completing the 15th level, you'll have to fight through respawns upon return, maybe with fewer in density the more you had cleared prior. Tactically (and strategically), that sort of setup would offer a counterbalance for players to decide whether to take a break or tough it out. This can be appropriate in a difficulty setting, perhaps. That said, I still favor the patrol approach most for more dynamic play. Different types, different reactions, etc. There's something else related to patrols for non-encampments, though: migrations. I'm sure there's a game out there that makes use of the idea, but basically, a migration would be a group or particularly dangerous critter that traverses the world map (across multiple maps in this case), in a preset path and speed (measure of time). Maybe a tarrasque-like critter may be found in one of three wilderness areas slowly plodding a specific loop, and your party may need to avoid crossing its path for a while as you're too inexperienced--perhaps it wouldn't attack immediately until you got too close, or maybe it gets bored of chasing you if you run away and simply returns to its usual routine. Perhaps its cross-map loop takes three in-game days to complete. Hmm.

Oh, hello. Spear and shield (plus)?

Oh yes, all of these should be options. The feedback sliders should certainly stick around, maybe with discrete distinctions (checkboxes) as well. I think an option to show all (optionally chosen) indicators only when paused would be great too.

I was just thinking about the selection circles the other day. I truly do not like how BG:EE changed them for no reason (a closeup for a better view): Double circles with all the wrong colors! What's the point of that, to match their equipment color? They're not even all unique to tell apart the individual party members, which would make these new selection circles minimally practical when you're trying to figure out who the heck pathed all the way to the other side of the map for no reason. DO NOT WANT. There are four items Obsidian needs to keep in mind when it comes to the selection circles: Enemy/ally/neutral Which one is actually selected Control status indication Directional indication IMO, 1: I agree with OP that the coloration should be the same as in the IE games. Green for party, red for enemy, blue for neutral. 2: The IE games merely "lit up" the selection circle along with the party portrait when you had a specific character click-selected. The lit party portrait is good enough on the UI side, though a double-circle on the selected avatar may be more helpful than just a brighter circle. I don't mind either way, though. Perhaps these things can be put into options. 3: Fear from either spell or low morale was indicated by a yellow circle, but that was the only other categorical addition to #1 in the IE games. Obsidian may be able to be a little more creative with status circles, but it's just a matter of going overboard, especially when the portrait icons should be clear and concise. For example, since we have 3D rendering, perhaps all status indicators like fear/confusion/etc. can be floating icons above the avatar's head while the general ally/enemy circle color remains the same. Or maybe all status changes like confusion/fear/hold/etc. will change a circle to yellow meaning you lost control. Regardless, selection circles should be categorically consistent, unlike the BG:EE party stupidity above. 4: I didn't think much about this before because the only directional action I use regularly is backstab, but if positioning and the like are going to add even more tactical flavor to PE, Obsidian should figure out a simple directional indicator; maybe there can be multiple options? A simple line (like the "power" symbol), an arrowhead set flush to the selection circle, half-circles, varying line thickness, etc. (A bi-direction keyboard shortcut to turn avatar facing direction would be very nice, too.) Edit: Oooooooh, did not know that. Awesome. *plays around with this in BG:EE* Obsidian, can you expand this ability? Like allow small indicators to remain on the map for each pathing waypoint you set? That would be.... so cool.

I'll agree with the less random... More decision-making, more skill mechanics, so forth. Most of the things I really don't want are already off the table: co-op/MP, full VO, tablet OS support (iOS/Android), console support, ridiculous metal-bikini/ultra-boob armor on female avatars (hopefully that's still off) The only other thing on my list is--no excessive and exclusive romance content that locks out a companion's development (e.g. your PC is female and a female companion has 80% romance content, ergo you have nothing to say to each other). By the way, for all the NEW people coming in and whining about co-op/MP yet again, see the links in my sig that lead to developer interviews and forum posts. When the developers themselves say MP hurts SP content, MP adds complex debugging and no content gain, a small minority asks for MP and then an even smaller minority actually uses it... That's the truth. (Preemptively, anyone who counters "no it didn't for me i enjoyed it lots," your perspective is from a lowly basement player and not a game developer who actually codes stuff for thousands/millions of people.) Co-op/MP is off the table for the first PE game and should stay off the table for the rest of the franchise besides independent standalones (i.e. not expansions but a whole new game in the same setting) that might be Kickstarted. There are half a dozen other threads about this already just like the romance threads, really. Do a search.

I agree in general that the patrol -> warning system should be more organic than it is in some other games; but I think there's room for finessing in RP, lore and difficulty settings. Maybe the leaders of an enemy base never experienced a break-in (because no one would be that stupid) and have lighter patrols/guards around; maybe the patrols are new recruits; maybe you can capture one of the and somehow get additional information by either threat or persuasion; maybe the technology/magic and lair setup doesn't support instantaneous base-wide alert, or maybe there's a delay. So on. (I would love patrols that are stealth-sensitive, though, because I felt stealth/invisibility was one of those overpowered things in the IE games.) That's an interesting idea. The only issue is that Obsidian is on record that major zones are encounter-scaled and locked, but maybe the mini-zones or "instances" within these areas can have their own scaling and respawn algorithms.

I think it's good to think of it this way: It's safest for Obsidian to err closer to BG1 as hub/campaign quests should be directioned enough that players can figure out what's optional side content. The amount of resources that would go into rendering and repainting new "empty" spaces--this is "probably" far less limiting than developing the intricate plot, lore, and dialogic machinations and getting all the mechanics to work properly.