Ieo

My parties always have a mix of armour 'weights,' so I view it holistically; and I'll most likely play each class in PE anyway. Sounds like with the addition of the hand cannon, though, there will be more variety. I'm sure plate holds a special place in mediaeval fantasy stories because there's always some kind of knight...

I was going to try KoTOR2, but someone inadvertently spoiled me on the Exile's fate (SWTOR) so I just can't bring myself to do it. Got ToEE from GOG, going to try that. I wanted to try FO:NV but see that it's a Steamworks thing, so..... meh.

Yeah, not into the boob plate with nipple bulge. From the practical and realistic POV, that's just meh. Very much get the vibe of "of course we're catering to stereotypical male gamer expectations, duh." True, hopefully that's toned down a little bit in final version. At least they avoided making the two-separate bulge mistake, There's a good article I read somewhere (edit: http://madartlab.com...-and-lady-bits/) on this mentioning how having two bulges would deflect strikes straight toward the middle where a normal plate deflects strikes to the sides. Good point! Bonus points for that... Leather *could* be form-fitting (not protective), chain mail drape makes sense, but I can't help but think about form-fitting plate (with nipple bulge): SMITH: So, higher or lower? CADEGUND: Here, look... SMITH: *feels it up* Oh, yeah, higher. By the way, this will take an extra hour or two to fine-tune so it fits perfectly, so stay put... *bangs metal with a delicate hammer* But! Relatively speaking based on extremely low expectations set by other games, as someone else mentioned somewhere, then this is certainly better than basically everything else out there. (Except movies--some movies are doing better in that regard.) The female Dwarf ranger is still my favorite concept art at the moment; everything about it turns expectations around and convincingly.

Yeah, not into the boob plate with nipple bulge. From the practical and realistic POV, that's just meh. Very much get the vibe of "of course we're catering to stereotypical male gamer expectations, duh."

Great, it even has a visible nipple bulge. How 'typical' in a bad way. I guess guys really need their boob plate, huh. (Yes, I know plenty of guys aren't into that either.) Well, at least her midriff isn't visible.

Per the unfinished content from previous games and promises: It's the publisher that would hold the dev to a more restricted release date and it's the publisher that asks for content to be changed or removed. With the publisher out of the equation for this, I think the game development cycle will be much smoother and flexible. The amount of content per funding level is purely conceived by Obsidian themselves, after all, and not constrained by publisher demands. I'd expect fans of this project to be self-policing to some extent and forgive Obsidian room in case they do need more time.

I went to see the FAQ thing, and it does look like static but zoomable is "probable." That's interesting; a better argument for ROI increase. The other arguments are then surrounding gear visuals in relation to gameplay (interaction mechanics, especially other cultures/factions). I don't like the idea of full-on cosmetic changes for this (like you change the look of a robe to plate) but rather something incremental like colors (BG/IWD did this). Crafting might work in the sense of specific additions adding specific special effects, but a crafting system is a whole other complex mechanism and there's already another thread dedicated to that. Ultimately, I'd still like to see certain gear and clothing race/culture/faction-specific with interaction consequences based on that.

I haven't played ToEE so I'll concede that. But the level of gear detail and "show" in any 2D iso pales in comparison to 3D zoom-in, which are the ONLY examples given, so the point still stands that the ROI for this is truly minimal. The other thread about spell visuals makes far more sense than this because spells are always larger than the character sprite and must be 'visual' as a combat mechanic.

I don't even dislike it on its face; I just think it's utterly pointless for a 2D iso game with zoomed out camera, a point OP desperately ignores because he can't answer why it makes sense to dump resources into a cosmetic system for, really, only the paper doll UI. I adore the cosmetic system in LotRO and it makes sense in an MMO. It wouldn't work here. Mod toolkit is all fine.

Right, as others have said... The reason why the idea proposed in this thread is a waste of time and money is because it's based on the 3D zoomable games, and OP nor anyone else has yet addressed that: If the only detailed model we'd see is the paper doll UI, where this would even matter, why is changing the cosmetic look gear shown of a user interface element worth the resources? A party-based tactical isometric RPG must have a zoomed out fixed camera. You won't be seeing much of it while actually playing. So asking for that and giving examples only from other 3D zoomable games like Skyrim and a bunch of MMOs leads me to believe they subconsciously really just want a "modern" 3D zoomable game engine with cinematic cut-scenes to actually show off their cosmetic looks, and PE isn't it. Another point: PE will have different racial subcultures, and I fully expect these cultures to have their own looks. This is part of the game; if for example the player can develop reputation with a cultural faction and earn the right to ceremonial armour, that's a good way to tie gear to story, but adding a fluid cosmetic element would completely defeat that purpose. Let Obsidian design the armour, because given the few examples already out, I think they'll do well, and they know what the general audience wants ("realism!"). Even mentioning MMO high-level spiky idiocy as a "reason" to want a cosmetic system like this is irrelevant. I like it fine in LotRO, where MMOs are extremely gear-based and content exclusive, so I can save myself money. I've never gotten into SP crafting systems because they typically just fill my inventory with a bunch of stuff. At most, I stick with maybe a couple basic potions and enchanting gear, if it seems like it would make a substantial difference. If Obs were to implement some kind of crafting system in PE, I'd want it to be very easy on inventory (not just taking up space/weight but few items to sort).

Make it a stretch goal at $8M and add 8 months to dev (writing) time, I guess.

I would think it would be extremely cheap actually and very non-time consuming as well All it is doing is telling the game "the player is wearing this item visually, but using the stats from this item." That's it, There's no special things they really have to do but simply tell the game to visually show this "model" while using the stats from this equipment. all they would really have to do is code for that and put a little UI work into having it in the game. At this point, I can assume you have no programming experience whatsoever, whether through a relation or classes or having done it yourself. Adding a UI element and a final visual check is all the end--this doesn't take into account programming for triggers and limits and 'what happens when player drags this to there', things that lead up to the final visual the end-user sees. And you conveniently didn't address my first two points, nor the fourth. Try doing that first. Because mine are arguments that this would be a waste of resources for the ROI. This thread is more along the lines of "but it wouldn't affect you and I want it so it should be done." The problem is that with poor ROI, in a non-AAA-funded KS game, wasting effort for something so purely cosmetic that doesn't relate to combat mechanics, story content, NPC content, or setting would affect other players. You'd be better off begging for a stretch goal, but even then, the game purpose in PE is so nonexistent, I'd rather Obsidian work on just nice-looking gear to begin with. There are other cosmetic issues like spell effects, but those are tied so closely to combat mechanics and quite visible in 2D iso that it makes sense to get picky about them.

My experience with LotRO's cosmetic system has been good (yes, it's an MMO)--though it has much to do with being on an RP server and MMO gear designs being generally cartoony and stupid. (One of my favorite cosmetic sets is just a plain white mail set with plain cloak, boots.) Another reason is that a piece of gear that looked good on the average human male avatar often looked weird on other races and then completely crappy on females (same with various armours designed for other races, of course). And then there's the whole nonmatching annoyance. And then, being on an RP server, players are expected to dress their avatars to the occasion. But, I don't see those reasons applying very well in PE, if at all: (1) MMOs are 3D zoomable, so of course you'd get some godawful close-up shots of horribad looking gear. PE is 2D isometric zoomed out. Our only detailed view of the gear will likely be the paper doll UI, and it's not worth it to implement a cosmetic system just for that. Unless there are going to be a whole bunch of cinematic cut-scenes. (Oh HELL no.) (2) The (very) few designs I've seen of PE so far indicate that sets will be designed tastefully. Hopefully. (3) LotRO's cosmetic system is 'layered', where you can 'save' a gear piece's look temporarily over the matching gear piece slot in a separate outfit tab--your actual worn gear is not affected at all. It's kind of hard to explain, but suffice it to say, I do not believe this sort of system is cheap to implement at all. The other systems that involve actually changing an item may be more prorgammatically complicated, even. I dunno. (4) MMO itemization is typically quite different from most SP games--you are constantly changing gear per level and there are thousands upon thousands of gear pieces; PE does not have these resources. If PE were to implement a cosmetic system, it would be for far less benefit/usage than in an MMO because we're not expecting thousands upon thousands of gear options. So, honestly, while it's nice in certain other games, those games (especially MMOs) have their reasons to use such systems, and I don't see good reason to work on such an implementation here, unless Obsidian felt it worthwhile to add to a stretch goal or something. That's their call.

I've already pledged more for this than I've paid for any other game (short of auto-renewing MMO subscriptions), upped specifically at the beta announcement. Probably the only thing that would get me fired up at this point is Avellone declaring this will break 800k words without including world 'codex' text.

The problem with your (and others who want MP badly) perspective is that you're seeing this issue only as the end-user who saw nothing of the balancing act done during design and development. So this always bears repeating: I really can't imagine the likes of PS:T to have co-op. BG was much lighter in narrative content than that, and IWD even lighter still. I suspect the majority here are not after a mere dungeon romp but something with depth, even moreso than BG (because Avellone is involved), where the truth of "reading is not a team sport" would be much more obvious in practice.

Totally disagree. Combat should come first. Fluff is just fluff. I love the combat in RPGs. It can make or break the game for me. But calling the story "fluff" in a game designed largely around interacting with the story is ridiculous to me. I expect to spend pretty similar time in conversations as in combat in this game. I'm guessing the people who believe combat mechanics > story "fluff" have never played or didn't like PS:T, one of the "greatest." PS:T, now that's the fluffiest game ever. With pink sparkles even. On-topic: I expect 'easy' mode will be IE easy. I also expect there will always be a minority who cannot handle game combat mechanics, though, who like a couple friends of mine had to use cheats even for DA:O's easy mode (srsly). To be honest, I expect players to at least try to understand and use the game mechanics to best effect, maybe asking for tips or something; because not doing so, playing "only" for story/characters like my friends do, and then complaining about difficulty later is actually offensive to the efforts of developing balanced game mechanics for a CRPG. A holistic CRPG of this genre should include all elements of game mechanics, story, character depth, and world building in a balanced way. For me, that means the holy trifecta of PS:T + BG + IWD. With extra fluffy pink sparkles.

I'd rather Obsidian not put romances in PE but will tolerate their decision either way. And the main reason why I'd Obsidian not bother is simple: I'm a social scientist, and I see far too much wrong with these kinds of "relationships" portrayed in all sorts of media from films to games to whatever (and of course, IRL), and games in particular suffer from fundamental mechanics limitations. Other reasons include breadth inclusion alongside depth all tied together by the project management trilemma. First off, I expect nuance, depth, and 'realism' in PE's social interactions, as much as possible, because that is what makes a fictional setting "alive" and personable. That means, from a role-playing perspective, "meaningful" romance is far more immersive; of course, others will say this would be too much of a 'dating sim', but really it's just a different type of NPC interaction, and I want all of them to be fantastic (PS:T). That said, the problem with software programming is that it tends to be very binary in decision-making. It's easy to see what went wrong in some other game romances: (1) "The critical dialogue option" -- where, after building up "loyalty points," you chance upon a dialogue tree where you must pick the "correct" option or forfeit the path forever. It only makes sense IRL in particularly binary life choices like "must marry a Muslim." In games, this fork appears at the weirdest places sometimes; the vast majority of people do give second chances. Even third. A related problem to this is, if the PC has the "yea/nay" dialogue option, the wording is usually both too absolute and binary. (2) "Flirting is the only obvious path" -- uh, that's one way; some games handle this better than others, though this obviously also depends on the NPC in question (some people really just flirt as a hobby). (3) "The score" -- There must be a way to "keep score," and some games make this more obvious than others. There is no possible way this mechanic reflects healthy or realistic relationships in real life, though; score bribery is part of this (thanks, DA:O). Some relationships endure despite the incompatibility, others fall apart at the smallest thing. Humans really are neurotic creatures. The only positive thing about the DA:O system I can remember is in relation to below.. (4) "Breaking points" -- Love and happiness are not the same thing. There are plenty of very loyal "love" relationships out there relying on momentum, and the people involved are not quite 'happy' despite the relationships surviving many would-be breaking points. There are also plenty of happy love relationships that do not survive a breaking point when they should have. When navigating contentious subject matter within a relationship, people generally exhibit some "give," but this isn't easily calculated in programming because people have different levels of "give" for different topics. Some topics are outright taboo and can break a relationship while others have very fuzzy lines; game programming can sort of address this (the taboo topics are easily binary) by applying different scoring values on either end of the binary scale for a given topic, but this is still rather limited in dimension. (5) "The prize" -- should be obvious. The real prize, 'marriage/long-term sole' by most cultures, isn't even addressed in most games containing romances due to the fundamental nature of storyline RPGs. (6) Other psychology -- Sometimes NPCs say things in the name of shoehorned romance that just don't make sense. Also, subtext is great--from the gaming perspective, it's better for the player to expand the blanks, IMO, for NPC relationships where there is such room. IRL, just be aware that this method sucks, and communication is always best. The "leading so-and-so on" bit is stupid on so many fronts, saying this to both men and women, because I can't even count how many times merely "being nice" somehow counted as "leading someone on" or vice versa depending on the party. Stupid. *cough* I'll stop now; I could never get into a therapy practice because I'd be screaming at everyone about how stupid they were being. Implementation... Specifically, I don't want cut-scenes or cinematics. BG2-style dialogue is enough and should be the focus (having witnessed so many crappy relationships, I can say that the biggest issue is always communication, FFS). And to be honest, the game development should be structured somehow such that the romance doesn't "take over" the rest of the game; some people play DA# just for the romances, for example, but that should be (quite) secondary to the main storyline. Not saying people who enjoy romances shouldn't have their fun, but this is a sort of content balance... Think about the amount of content for a solidly built NPC, like Dak'kon and his Zerthimon personal discussions. Now, a 'romance' could and should ostensibly cover most or all of that content--implementation can cover a romance with a deep NPC either by true binary branches of content which means doubling development or by overlap with existing NPC content and adding more romance-specific content. The third and unacceptable option is romance-only NPCs, so never mind that. All of that content is, of course, to do a romance "well," and in relation to the breadth I'd expect on top of depth, this is not small request. In my mind, since this isn't a AAA-funded title, if some players truly demand this, then they really are asking for specific priority to romances over base PE content. I mentioned in a couple other threads that romances would be more unique in PE if they were between companions and not the PC--make PC the counselor and witness, if you were, with the power to influence or even shape said relationships depending on the PC relationship to each party NPC. Love stories out in the world would be great too--PE will have several cultures to present, and I'd love to see different cultural views about and involving love stories among world NPCs. Better yet... "Affection" more generally should be explored more in various media venues, including games. This is the Facebook Age--as far as I'm concerned, many people these days are losing touch with what "friendship" should mean. Camaraderie. Bromance/womance, etc.--deeper non-romantic relationships could stand to see more media development. I'd rather have more of this to appeal to a broader base and no explicit 'romances' so players could expand the blanks if they so desire on their own time (since people will read subtext into anything anyway). Romance, in itself, is not required for immersion; meaningful NPC relationships can and do cover a gamut far around that. But, if Avellone, Romance Writer Extraordinaire (Not), decides to do it or is forced to by higher Obsidian powers, more power to him. I'd fully expect only dark/grim unrequited and failed romances, though.

UM! UM! Dear Mister Avellone, I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet because 12 pp of forum posts is kind of a lot, but... For the novella, would you please consider using the female Dwarf ranger (concept gal) as a major character?

Keep in mind that's a female Dwarf ranger (which is why it's so cool--the ultimate rarity because no one plays female Dwarves, c'mon). I can't figure out why my sound isn't working at the moment so I'll look forward to watching the vid later. Ah, fandom. See what PE is doing, Obsidian? No pressure at all. (No, seriously, I wonder what sorts of clubs and cults will pop up by 2014.)

For some people, it will be their first game. Yeah, gamers don't pop up out of thin air with lots of experience in older titles. True. The problem is tutorials are often useless and teach trivial things (left-click to move, my ass). I think an easy first mission (with possible tooltips) is the best way of introducing the game to new players. Learn by doing! But. It seems like PE is going to be pretty hardcore and nostalgic-gamers-oriented. Is it really wise for the developers to outdo themselves while trying to smooth things out for first-time casual gamers? I'm not that hardcore myself, frankly, but it seems to me that this is a bit misguided. This is not their game, it's ours. While I certainly don't suggest making it artificially inaccessible, it seems to me that we may pass the playground and get straight to action. You're missing a critical point: Obsidian is not profiting off the Kickstarter. Their entire hope for a franchise, the future, is riding on this KS-funded being successful on the market to fund further games and nifty things. This cannot be done if the game is not reasonably accessible. Most if not all the hardcore old-school gamers have already popped in here--this isn't going to really take off unless new gamers are brought in to enjoy the intellectual and immersive depth of the old-school iso CRPG. An in-game tutorial is a must. While the "you don't notice" ones are best in the immersive sense, the problem is that those may not be skippable for replay value. Separate tutorial with a simple check for first installs is my vote.

Context: OP and other hardcore MP supporters want MP at the expense of SP design. There really are design issues that are mutually exclusive (but going by Bobby Null's post, that's only if you want quality MP, implying crappy MP shouldn't affect SP as much).

I think I'd like to know more about the game world, and there's also the sub-title issue if this is a franchise (which is up in the air, I think). I'd honestly rather avoid "common word" titles unless it's compounded or in a phrase--just Eternity would be kinda meh in my book, for search engine purposes. Baldur's Gate was named after a city. Icewind Dale was named after a region (right?). Planescape: Torment was named both after the setting and the game storyline--I rather like this, because the colon also allows titular franchising. Geography seems safest. Ummm. Does the campaign world even have a name yet? I mean, the map only says The World...

Tablets and consoles are different, but the problem is that the tablet OSes stated in OP are still different OSes that require porting work, even ignoring the different hardware architecture (not talking about computing power). Thus, people really can't say "tablet" without specifying the specific OS in relation to the architecture---a Windows 7 tablet is vastly different from an iPad on so many levels. And of course add to that specific HID requirements on top of hardware architecture, computing power, memory, and required storage space. If we were talking about a full Mac OSx tablet or Windows 7/8 tablet these days, it might work (I can attach a USB keyboard and mouse to mine, so I'd give it a go). People can keep talking about how Android/iOS tablets and whatnot should have enough computer power for an isometric game, that's all well and good, but a significant part of the PC platform is the HID: keyboard and mouse, not touch screen. The programming involved in allowing touch--on an architecture different from x86/32-64 no less--to properly replace both key/mouse is probably not insubstantial. And people need to consider the nature of the game. Don't mention "But even phones can run a 3D game fine!" because those 3D games are little action games that don't require much if any reading. For a game that intends to have textual depth, I wouldn't want to run on a tiny screen where the dialogue options cover the entire thing and requires scrolling to boot. Ew. And forget about micro-managing a 6-party member! Special comment: I know for Android users, there's a way to install a working Linux boot beside the Android OS. So... that's kinda moot. So. PC only, 3 full desktop OSes. After that, maybe a separate KS or something, but not for this.

Oh HELL no. The slow-mo break-combat-flow idiocy in Dragon Age pissed me off to no end, catering to the adolescent consolers. > And this is NOT a 3D zoom-in game with cinematics. NO. NONONO. On the other hand, hearing an emphatic yell from my companions (I think Minsc's was "HA-HA!!") during combat for a critical hit was great. More of that, please.

Funny choice of words since the majority of "romances" so far seems to have been targeting male gamers. It's no secret novelists, movie makers, game makers, well every form of entertainment categorizes both sexes. If the differences weren't true to some degree, they wouldn't persist like they have. I like my vampires white, pasty, and looking like the villain in the original Nosferatu. A whole hell of a lot of women like them as a sparkly twenty-something Brit. So...do I want to play a game designed with women in mind, romances or otherwise? To be honest, not really. Because culture is the biggest influence in perpetuating gender role expectations across generations and centuries. It takes a ridiculous amount of constant backlash covering a large portion of a given generation to make any dent in these kinds of social expectations. The biological differences are distinct but still less than most people realize. Look at the Baby X experiments and the influence of all the people around us. I'm reminded of an analysis written on Pixar's recent film, "Brave." Those of us who paid any attention must know that there's been quite a lot of controversy and critical social analysis of this one, silly kid/family film. But a quote from Peggy Orenstein really struck me (I don't know anything about her otherwise): With regard to gaming, discussion of the treatment of the female sex both within the game and as gamers relating to content comes up often, particularly in genres like this, but I don't think women gamers have strong advocacy from broad media venues. Keep also in mind that much of the self-advocacy being done by women gamers are asking for equal "decent" representation--e.g. romance options--compared to male gamers. Anomen-vs.-Viconia/Jaheira/Aerie in BG2 is a perfect example of this. I still don't care for 'romantic' content in PE, but if Obsidian decides to do so and promises to put effort into equal and good representation, then fine. It's one thing to argue about the merits of the general content type, but seeing arguments degenerating into the men vs. women sexism definitely shows how far the gaming "community" as a part of larger society still has to go until such things are no longer worth discourse except in historical context.