PsychoBlonde

What I like the best is when gameplay decisions you make have impacts on story and vice versa. They have some great examples of this in Dungeons and Dragons Online, such as in the quest Chains of Flame there's a guy who's been cursed with blindness and you have to take the curse off him by becoming blind yourself in order to cure him. Here's the thing though--items of blindness immunity prevent the curse from impairing you, and it's not some kind of invincible GM fiat curse--you can remove it with the remove curse spell. I find that kind of thing utterly delightful. Every part of the game is on the same page--a curse is a curse is a curse and what works on one works on all. Blindness is blindness is blindness, and what works on one works on all. Or things like, maybe there's supposed to be a scene where you get mind controlled, but you're wearing an Immunity to Charm item and so the scene plays out differently. Or you can short-circuit a dude who's supposed to raise a bunch of undead by insta-killing him at range. Or you can stun enemies to prevent them from sounding the alarm.

Please, folks, let's always remember for this game that cosmetic issues are going to be a LOT more minor because your character will be ONE. INCH. HIGH. You really won't be able to see details like this for 90% of the stuff. This has been a public service message.

I think this might get pretty laughable in a six-person party, too. 2 people well-fed and the rest starve to death? Wtf. I'm not opposed to having some RP moments when people talk about running low on supplies and, say, you have to go do a quest where you hunt up some grub. Moments like these can be fun. I'm not interested in a "hunger" game mechanic in this kind of game though.

I don't like them either, but there isn't Only One Way to solve this problem. They could just NOT have the NPC come over all "please hurry hurry!" at you, but instead present a level of urgency in the dialog that reflects the ACTUAL level of urgency. I don't care which way they go, I just want them to be consistent with whichever one they pick. If there's no time limit, don't yell at us to hurry. This will also have the effect that if there IS a time limit, you'll be able to TELL without them beating you over the head with it. You won't get a situation where some invisible timer starts but you didn't realize it because the NPC giving you the quest sounded like every other "urgent" problem you get.

This is really what the OP should mean, in my opinion. I use the term integration specifically because the elements that are often disparate should instead work together and reflect each other as a unified whole--that's what integration means. The game doesn't have to react to everything, but the devs should make certain design decisions based on whether or not they can integrate certain things into the game. It is a design error to make a game where you can simultaneously rise to the leadership of a powerful faction AND be running around in the sewers as a nameless thief. They don't HAVE to make the game react to this situation, what they can do is just not create the situation in the first place by tuning the quest lines to be more "you play an important behind-the-scenes role" rather than "you save the guild and become the head of the organization". Putting quest lines that are better-suited to a linear variety of game into a big sandbox game makes the game disintegrated. The bits don't match up. I'm really hoping they'll make a serious effort to integrate PE as much as possible. I don't expect it to be perfect--I can overlook the occasional bit of fridge logic. What I *really* dislike is when a big, important element is completely undercut by some spectacular bit of disintegration. Well, that, or when a large portion of the game is undercut by small but consistent problems.

1. They aren't using D&D mechanics in PE. 2. Dungeons and Dragons Online has spell crits. And they are awesome. So don't rule out other mechanical variations on the basis of "that's how D&D does it". They might be cool.

I don't care all that much about whether specific elements get included in the story or mechanics. What I do care about is whether the story and mechanics are INTEGRATED. A LOT of RPG's are HORRIBLE about this. You get dramatic plot deaths in games where resurrection is as easy as clicking a button (Neverwinter Nights 2). You get incredibly ordinary tasks like getting a dang note to somebody that could be solved by some means such as WRITING A DANG LETTER yet instead require you to join secret organizations and do 15+ quests. (NwN2 again). You get games where people ask the freakin' Archmage to join the Thieves Guild. (Skyrim) You get games where the lore considers your mage to be evil and dangerous, but NOBODY NOTICES when you go flinging fireballs around the city streets. (Dragon Age 2.) You get "urgent emergencies please hurry!" where you can take your sweet time and nothing changes. (Every RPG ever except maybe Fallout). Please, please, PLEASE integrate the lore, story, dialog and game mechanics. If "blood magic" is dangerous, then HAVE it cause the PC some distress if they choose to use it. Or don't let them use it at all. And this should cover even the little stuff. Remember the beginning of BG2 where you had to collect 10,000 gp and everybody talked as if that was some huge amount of cash? I had like EIGHTY TIMES that much before I was finally ready to go to Spellhold. Don't have informed traits like this. If an amount of gold is "a lot", then it should be A LOT. Or, at least go to the trouble of hanging some kind of dang lampshade over it.

Depends on the nature of the main quest line. If the end of the quest involves you ascending to godhood or radically changing the world in some way, it'd make no sense whatsoever for you to be able to still wander around. If it involves, more, you killing Sarevok or finally getting your soul back, eh, why not. You're not radically different than you were prior to the End. I don't particularly like the way it works in most of the Elder Scrolls games, however, where they assign some huge sweeping significance to the Main Plot, yet after it's done you can go join the thieves guild as a low-level grunt. I think this is more a problem with how *disintegrated* the ES games are--the various big quest lines have NOTHING to do with each other and none of them are mutually exclusive. I grant you, it's a sandbox game not a story-oriented game, so it's somewhat legit to just expect people to ignore the glaring weirdnesses, but given the option I'd rather skip this kind of goofiness. Addendum: And Bethesda COULD avoid this problem entirely if they'd just tune their stinkin' plots to the type of game they're creating instead of writing stories that would be more appropriate in a linear game and just jamming them in any old how. Story writing is not their strong point, however, so it may be too much to expect them to write a properly TUNED and INTEGRATED story at this stage. Maybe in 10 more years they'll figure it out.

Pretty much. Since they're talking about having slightly different systems for little spells vs. big whammies, it'd make sense from a tuning perspective if the little spells can potentially miss but you need special protection (like spell resistance) to avoid the whammies.

This is something that kind of annoyed me in Baldur's Gate 2--all the artifact super-items were WEAPONS. Put in some cool interesting non-weapon items please. In fact, these should be the vast majority of items, since you generally have, like, 12 slots for non-weapon items and can only use one (or at most, two) weapons at a time. Yes, I know there are more TYPES of weapons (cosmetically speaking) than there are types of belts or pants, but I'm perfectly happy if somebody in the party gets stuck with a dagger if the selection of magical rings isn't so small that the only person with 2 is my PC.

I actually have no preference about this, because I can't think of any circumstance where it matters to my particular playstyle. In fact, I find I enjoy the game a lot where I use cheat codes or the dev console to max out my characters right away and THEN play the game, so obviously "leveling" per se is not that important to me. I think the question ought to be, what is the level/exp cap in there to limit, exactly? What design purpose is it serving? Also, what do you GET for additional levels? Are there systemic limitations that might cause the system to become completely deranged if someone (somehow) leveled their character OVER 9000? I mean, heck, even something like the potential to overload the integer field that holds your HP total and end up with -32,337 HP might be something worth avoiding by putting in a hard cap, even if that cap is something like twice as many levels as there is potential xp in the entire game. One point, though--if you have potentially many more levels than available possible XP, this does (in some people, anyway) encourage people to play in such a manner as to maximize their XP rather than their enjoyment. Granted, I've seen some people complaining that they farmed up to the XP cap before they were halfway through the game--apparently they want some kind of Zen perfection where they hit the level cap at the EXACT MOMENT when they get the end credits. But, here's the thing--what's the point of having that highest level if you never really get to USE any of those ultimate abilities you just got? There's no one perfect solution. The devs just have to decide what type of game they're going for and go for it.

This, so much. Every weapon type should have an answer to the question: "why should I prefer this weapon type over another one?" If you can't answer it, don't include that weapon type. However, I am NOT opposed to having there be cosmetic differences between weapons within a type. So, if you have a one-handed blunt weapon type, you can have maces, morningstars, clubs, whatever, that are all mechanically identical but look different. Or, heck, if you REALLY want to be nice about it, let people SELECT the cosmetic appearance of the item, so if they're playing a barbarian type, they can wield a big club with a nail in it, but if they're a civilized knight type they can have a nice ball mace or something.

I'd rather have the Baldur's Gate system simply because the 3D model of your character (which is where the 3d model comes from in NwN2) is going to be TINY. So either you'll be way zoomed in on an INCREDIBLY low quality model that will look like a child's drawing (at that zoom level, anyway), or they will have to build an entire separate system for creating and customizing a portrait model, which will be AMAZINGLY zot-intensive for the benefit you'd get out of it. Either way, TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT. The point of doing this game IE style is to eliminate a lot of the expense of all that 3D modeling and animating so they can write a dang good story instead. However, one thing--I want the PC portraits to be COMPLETELY SEPARATE from the portraits given to companions. I do NOT want to be able to select a portrait that would be assigned to a companion. This drove me NUTS about Baldur's Gate when I found out that I'd made MY character look like Jaheira and now Jaheira looked like someone else. Dumbest design choice EVAR.

Yes. Since we earned a crafting system, I would like both. However, I have some expectations for how I would prefer it to work: 1. "Random" items should have FEW bonuses (one or at most two) that may potentially be INCREDIBLY big. However, if you use them, you've got a severe slot problem where you can't get a LOT of useful bonuses on the same character. It also helps if certain bonuses can ONLY be found on certain slots on the random gear, so if you want, say, an item that grants fortification against critical hits, that item's gonna be a belt, so you better have the belt slot free. Oh, you have a really cool belt you'd rather wear? YOU EATIN THE CRITS THEN, BEYOTCH. SUCK IT. 2. Premium loot items (named items you just find with unique bonuses) should have a stack of thematically related pre-set bonuses that are all good, but not the best possible available through "random" gear. They should and can have bonuses in slots where random gear can't. 3. Artifact-level items (named items that are quite difficult to get, and require some combination of scavenger hunt, ultra-crafting investment, buttering up certain NPC's, completing complex quest chains a certain way, etc.) should have several thematically-related pre-set bonuses that are potentially the best possible available. They shouldn't have slot restrictions, and they should have some customization depending on how complex it is to acquire. 4. Craftable items should be fully customizable, but have strict limitations based off the crafting system. You should be able to make some really good stuff, but it should require some serious investment of either finding specific materials/recipes, leveling up the crafting skills, using up special mats that exist in strictly limited quantity. The very best craftable stuff should be about premium-level in usefulness, BUT there should be some synergy between artifacts and the crafting skill (perhaps people with mega crafting can, say upgrade the base damage on artifacts or something) so you don't just quit crafting once you start acquiring artifacts. Anyhow, that's my take on how to manage this sort of system. Above all I think there should ALWAYS be tradeoffs, so no matter what level you are you're still sitting there going, is this random item better, or this artifact better? Or should I just craft something to get the 2 specific bonuses I want? This also helps keep the loot system in flux, so when you find something that (yay!) has those 2 bonuses you really want, even though power-wise it's more of a sidegrade than a true upgrade, or helps you consolidate slots so you don't have to switch gear to fight fire monsters, whatever, it's still a cool find. This helps reduce power creep where every new item has to be a "better" item otherwise it's just vendor trash.

I'm happy enough with 8, I think it'll be cool to be able to have the majority of them in party at once.

Plus I doubt the PE one would break dance. Or wear a top hat.

We're gonna have to wait to see how well it sells before we can really start hypothesizing on this stuff. If it does reasonably well, though, I expect we'll start seeing more games that try to mix up the old "standard" mechanics in new and interesting ways.

This is a good point, but what they could do to make the levels and the interconnecting structure unique is give each level (or each set of 3 levels) a distinctive "look" and "feel" that makes it visually and thematically part of the same whole. Thus you can kill two birds with one stone--have a complex, convoluted dungeon with multiple entry/exit points, but still have it feel like a unified multi-level dungeon. This is what mega-dungeons like Eye of the Beholder and Diablo did, after all, and it worked well.

This was one of the best features of the original Eye of the Beholder--you stopped going straight down after the first few levels and started wandering all over the place. Granted, that was a game without vendors of any kind whatsoever, so it was a radically different mechanical system.

Not *quite*--people who just want to wander around and maul random encounters won't level. And, yes, these people do exist. But it does make all playstyles that involve completing objectives equally viable.

Having convenient exits ruins the game experience?! Yeah because my FAVORITE part of a game is always the part where I spend half an hour running through 12+ consecutive load screens to get somewhere. If you want to make it feel huge, sprawling, and complex, you don't do that by making it stupidly inconvenient for no good reason. What you do, is make it convoluted as heck. Instead of having 1 nice convenient exit per 4 levels that's right in the middle of town, you have a dozen exits that lead to various areas that interconnect with various other areas in weird ways. Sure, as soon as you pop out you can fast travel to a shop and sell off your loot. Then you go back, and discover that getting back IN that way winds up leading you into a part of the dungeon you haven't explored yet and you're not sure how it connects with what you've seen so far . . . The Eye of the Beholder games did this really well. There were fast travel gates and teleporters all over the place, yet still getting to the NEXT part of the dungeon was a considerable effort. You don't HAVE to be a **** in order to create a fun level of bafflement and dread.

Yeah, I consider the effort of giving commands while the battle is going on to be part of the challenge. However, I make one exception for this--commands that take more than 2 clicks to execute. If I have to select a character, select a menu icon, pull up the spell, target the spell, then click to cast it, imma pause. I'm hoping they're smart enough to make pretty much everything a two-clicker--click the hotbar icon (I want to be able to put all of my abilities on the same hotbar), click the target, whammo!

Turbine did something goofy with this in the Menace of the Underdark expansion--in the King's Forest you can kill harmless forest critters (frogs, squirrels, deer, etc.) for no particular reason. Only, if you do it enough, an angry dryad shows up and kicks your ass.

I'm not completely opposed to scaling, but I'm not in favor of it, either. In any case, if you design important encounters and the basic game mechanics well, you shouldn't NEED scaling. I mean, yeah, if you design the game so that a level 10 character is 10x as powerful as a level 1 character, then level 1 mooks are a joke when you hit level 10. If you design the game so that a level 10 character is more like 3x as powerful as a level 1 character, but with a lot more flexibility, then even level 1 mooks in quantity can still be problematic, particularly if they're, say, shooting at you from high atop a rise with several trapped switchbacks to climb to get up there. I consider scaling to be kind of a lazy way out to cover for mediocre AI, encounter, and mechanics design. Granted, doing all of those well is expensive and time-intensive, so it's not The Devil or anything. It's a matter of priorities. I expect them to skip it for Project: Eternity since they're (hopefully) going to be aiming more towards tactical combat and less toward "spam spells and attacks until everything is dead" style.

I do like that this skirts the issue of having game physics that don't match the story. Mechanically, I expect there will be a work-around (the whole "maimed" thing) that will let you get, er, dead-ish companions back on their feet again. I know it doesn't add anything to tough fights to have to reload again because somebody bit it in the last 3 seconds before you finally got the boss down. I'm a perfectionist type, nobody dies on my watch. Even if the fight was friggin' annoying. But aside from that mechanical aspect (which I expect will not turn out to be A Thing), I'm fine with this.