LadySpace

First goal should definitely be a toolkit. Modding is awesome and enables the players to make the game their own, which is incredibly important to an active fanbase. Plus, with a good toolkit, we can add in pretty much all of the other things listed if we want to. As for the other options, all are pretty important save for graphics, but top of the list should be choices and consequences, a larger gameworld, and more companions, with text following close behind.

If we're doing new-world accents, how about a culture with a Caribbean-style accent that isn't horribly racist in the vein of Warcraft trolls. Like, maybe a Guyanese-accented culture? Seriously, Honestly, as long as the accent fits the culture and the style and isn't annoying, anything goes. Just make it work with the aesthetics of the game. The world (and all its English-speaking inhabitants) is Obsidian's oyster.

And why not? I mean, having an issue with GenAm being the baseline dialect from which everyone else in-universe deviates is a problem that needs avoiding, but why make a conscious decision to avoid an entire subsection of English dialects, one that forms more than half of all English native speakers? Plus, who said we're limited to accents based on English-speaking nations? Why can't a culture have a Turkish accent, or Thai, or Brazilian?

I'm not sure I understand the problem. Characters with lower HP totals who withstand the same amount of damage need more healing than do more resilient combatants. This makes perfect sense to me, and shouldn't be a balance problem provided that low-HP characters can find other ways to not die, including not only armor, dodging, and blocking, but also personalized healing methods, arcane shields, elemental resistances, and so forth. Playing a character who's frail and weak is going to require that character be sneaky or skilled or magically powerful in order to stay alive; I don't see that as a flaw, I see it as rational design. Agreed on both points.

When I think of Dwarfs I think of short strong humanoids with beards, essentially small Scottish people. Who would you rather see given the Scottish accent then? Do we need Scottish accents so much that they have to go to another group if they don't get slotted in with (a certain subculture of) dwarves? Is there some sort of Law of Conservation of Scots that I've somehow missed? Accents should: fit the culture from which they stem in-world; be easily comprehensible; and avoid seeming artificial and forced. That's all.

I originally voted in favor of stat requirements, but you've convinced me otherwise. Allowing for people to design their character builds to work best with whatever armor/shield.weapon combination they see fit - even ridiculous or largely ineffective ones - is just plain good design. Restrictions should be organic and emergent from the properties, bonuses, and detriments of equipment and playstyle, not built into each class for no reason. Plus, the PE approach to magic doesn't make it sound as though there's any good reason to restrict mages from wearing armor, nor does it sound like a good idea that warriors be punished artificially for making a lightweight fighter. Nicely argued. That said, I disagree with your three-tiered damage avoidance system. In my view, dodging, parrying, and blocking are all one in the same, in that they allow the character to avoid a blow outright. The next step down should be armor, which grants damage reduction by a set amount (perhaps with a caveat that armor degrades over time and its damage threshold decreases, and of course with considerations for armor-piercing weaponry). There's no real need for a percentage reduction because hit points, which I am assuming will be used because they always bloody are, fulfill the same role: if a big, beefy godlike has three times as many hitpoints as a scrawny elf, then any damage dealt to the godlike will be one third as effective.

I've apparently exceeded my "quota of positive votes" for the day (a community that puts an upper limit on liking things, eh? Intriguing...), so consider this a giant "Like This" button-press from me. It's a little too on-the-nose, but it works. A+ satirical hilarity; would twitch and snicker uncomfortably again.

It doesn't look like this is going to transform into a poll yet, so I'll just add my voice to the booming chorus and say that YES a massive dungeon would be FANTASTIC. That said, if the rest of the game is shaping up in such a way that a mega-dungeon would be out of place or an unnecessary strain on resources, then don't worry about it. Quality first.

I agree that creating characters should be fun, but I see no need for rolled stats to be included in order to make that fun a reality. I mean, Darklands had some of the best character creation processes of any game ever, to the point where I would sometimes spend literally hours on end just making and considering party members, but the only random aspect of the creation system was initial formula and saint distribution. If the system is innovative, engaging, and complex enough, randomization only detracts from the experience. It doesn't hurt, of course, that any game design choice that trends towards something Darklands did is almost guaranteed to make me pee myself with excitement.

Well, unlike the suggestion of asking for fans to act as amateur voice actors in the game for free or for reduced pay (which is folly), the idea of having Obsidian fans - many of whom we know to have excellent artistic abilities - chip in their own work for, say, one of the reward tiers on Kickstarter might hold some water. I mean, the fanart community is full of incredibly talented and creative artists who are just bursting with love for the company and the material, and I've no doubt that they would love to see their work featured in-game. Any thoughts?

This is a perspective that isn't getting enough attention. If the rest of the game winds up meshing best with traditional fantasy races, then that's all fine and dandy. If the design of the game and lore turn out to work better with something more outlandish or innovative, then please please please don't just default to the standard races. Even if it results in some people being alienated by the strangeness of the world, having the racial selection fit the rest of the game in atmosphere, tone, social order, and so forth is far more important than sticking to the elf/dwarf conflict just for old times' sake. That said, all else being equal, I'll definitely vote for non-traditional races. I like my fantasy with a dash of spice.

Fallout's probably my favorite game/series of the lot, but I'm not feeling the Fallout connection with PE as strongly as I am the Planescape one, so I'm gonna go with that one being what really drew me in.

Keyword-based dialogue systems are (or rather can be) fantastic, but not for the sort of game PE is setting out to be. I'd rather the designers stick with the dialogue trees and make them kick all kinds of tuchus (which we already know they can do) instead of trying to shoehorn in keywords.

The PE team doesn't need more design talent from yesteryear; our cup already runneth over on that front, and too many head chefs may spoil the broth. Bringing in Bio talent will almost certainly only wind up muddling the vision Obsidian has for the game. What we really need is to have talented young professionals with varied and wide-ranging backgrounds and design skills. We should spend less time concerned about which big-name RPG mavens will be in charge of the general course the game will be taking, seeing as we already know PE is flush with design wisdom and talent, and more time helping those same people get in contact with the animators, programmers, artists, and voice actors whose presence, while perhaps less notable and sexy than that of Ohlen or Ziets, will greatly affect the final quality of the game. That said, if we're throwing in potential names into the pot, Brian Mitsoda's presence would not be remiss, even if it's split with his work on Dead State.

Abso-flipping-lutely. There are so many ways around problems that don't involve mass murder, and at least putting in a good faith effort to make such optional pathways available to most (if not all) classes would not be remiss.

Yeah, massive agreement over here. You can have varied and aesthetically pleasant designs without having to make everyone over level 6 look like they just waltzed drunkenly out of a WoW raid. Absolute realism isn't necessarily a requirement, but keep it within the realms of good taste and good sense.

Fantastic opener. Really likely to make people consider your points with an open mind. You do realize that the presence of only five classes almost certainly ensures that the party size will, in fact, be smaller than 6, right? Now, admittedly, your later point makes it seem as though smaller parties are akin to somebody bending your soul over their knee and spanking you with a morningstar, but most of us will just take it as a game design choice. Plus, there are a boatload of ways to differentiate characters with the same classes that have nothing to do with Diablo-style skill trees. Diversity can be achieved even with only a small number of classes if those classes are either largely unrestrictive after character creation or extremely open to bizarre ability/skill/stat/item combinations and tactics. Leaving aside the question of why you feel such a semantic distinction is so important, it's painfully obvious that they're calling it a house because they don't want to make it precisely identical to BG's stronghold and they don't want us to expect that same direct correspondence. The first part - a small party size - seems to be a major issue for you. I'm not clear on why. The second doesn't seem to me like it's guaranteed at all. I don't have any more information than you do, but if nothing else I can look back on previous implementations of "soul"-related mechanics and atmospheric choices in games designed by these folks and tell you that, no, you're almost certainly incorrect.

In the same place where it says "Quote" and "MultiQuote" on other folks' posts, yours should also have an "Edit" button.

As a practical matter, races and companions are some of the most expensive things, development-wise, to add. They require a huge amount of work. Well, obviously I can't argue with that, as I haven't got a lick of experience in the matter.

It's metaphysical in our world, so we can call it metaphysical when we're discussing the fantasy world. It's the same logic that applies to magic; no matter how well-studied and "unmagical" it is in-universe, the fact that it goes against our physical laws means it's still magic.

Oh, yeah. We definitely need a toolkit/SDK. A game like this just screams "awesome modding communities would improve me immensely."

I can't tell if you're making a portmanteau of "bro" and "rogue" or if you're saying that Vin Diesel would do a good Irish accent. I choose to believe the latter.

Oh, yeah, definitely no voice acting for the main character. For me, that was a major problem with both ME's approach to dialogue and Risen's. No thank you.

Anything that discusses the soul in concert with magic and has ties to Obsidian immediately puts me in mind of MotB. This is an absolutely good thing. As for OP's actual questions, I especially like the idea of everything having a soul/spirit and having that link in with the magic system. Animism is a concept ripe with potential for really interesting extrapolation within a fantasy universe, and I'd love it if different magic-using classes were mostly differentiated by how they approach the problem of altering the world through interaction with the spirits that inhabit it. For instance, one class might make deals and pacts with spirits of various types, trading them shares of his soul or potential favors in exchange for power, while another uses those spirits themselves as a power source, exerting her will over the souls embedded in the world around her in order to rip them to shreds and fuel her own machinations with them. Just an idea. That said, this is a lot of heavy philosophical consideration. I'll be coming back to this thread often from now on. Well posited, Pop!

"WOooooOOOooooOooo!! My fireball is BLACK!" Black as my SOOOOUUUUUL! *black metal plays in background* Agreed, but we already know that ain't happening, so we may as well roll with the punches.