PsychoBlonde

Erm, whut? All of the oddities of those characters are only meaningful because these are human sorts of struggles, which could just as easily have been put onto human characters. The oddball aspects of those characters were hooks to help highlight the alien nature of the setting. If you're going for an alien-feeling setting, yeah, characters like this are totally appropriate. If you're going for a different feel, they aren't. Either way the depth and the conflict rely on human concepts that relate to humans.

That and this opens up the question that if these giants and demonic enemies are REALLY so much statistically better than your party, HOW THE HECK did you just defeat 40 of them?! I don't mind if companions have a couple of abilities unique to them, this can be cool and fun. But overall I'd prefer the game "physics" to be as close to uniform as it can get. Er, well, up until the point where the enemy mages start hitting my Warden with Mana Clash. Cause that spell was SO, SO BROKEN.

I can spell lawyer, too. And I haven't played 3.0 or 3.5 in YEARS. If you don't want your casters running around throwing a bunch of unimpressive pew-pew spells, it's generally best to have them be pretty durn useless when they hit OOM. Why? Because otherwise what reason do you have to conserve your resources and not just throw everything + the kitchen sink at every encounter? The Mage I'm currently foodling around with in Dragon Age: Origins is a prime example of this. There is absolutely no reason for any other party member to exist, my mage can solo everything--her armor and resists are so high that she's pretty much indestructible. AND she can throw enormous CC effects AND AOE damage when she feels like it. And heal. When mages can do everything but fighters and rogues have limitations (they can't heal or CC very well, and they certainly don't get instant-death or big resistance/immunity spells), the system is degenerate. It is not complex, interesting, or mechanically functional. Of course, you CAN do a system like Diablo 3 where the difference between a wizard and a Barbarian is one of style more than substance. Both do damage. Both buff and debuff. Both have big flashy effects. But then the whole OOM problem is moot because you never really are OOM and reduced in effectiveness. But, here's the thing--DIablo 3 is terribly boring. It's hard to summon up any interest in trying another class or build in that game because they really are functionally about the same. So if you want to build a system with the kind of depth that keeps people coming back, that means that different builds need to look, feel, and play *very* differently. This is even HARDER in a party-based game because you (pretty much) will wind up playing ALL of the classes at least a little. So you're best off with having way more potential builds than the available party members can cover. Part of accomplishing that is in having limitations, so that the various builds have very different approaches to timing, application, resource use and regeneration. This is why casters get OOM while fighters don't get Out of Swings. Granted, you could just as easily reverse that and create a caster who endlessly pew-pews away while the fighter gets several big attacks and then falls over exhausted, but either way there's going to be this differential between the classes. (And even if you don't have classes, this differential between builds needs to exist in some way.) Or, you could just make a boring-ass game that people will only play through once. That's an option too.

That is some interesting political correct history white washing you got there. This must be the disney version of our history because it sounds too politically correct for the history I read about. Actually that poster is quite right in implying the the modern form of femininity and the role of women didn't really mature until well into industrialization, although as with anything its origins can be found far, far back. Indeed. It wasn't until industrialization first started to take off that it was really economically possible for people to be picky about their roles. That and the financial independence, particularly for working-class women that came about with industrialization created an ENORMOUS cultural backlash. The hyper-prudery of the Victorian era being one such example--the preceding period was in many ways much more liberal. When a large segment of the population exists perpetually on the brink of starvation, nobody cares who plants the potatoes. A lot of people's views of history seem to come from MODERNIZED fairy tales and historical romances which contain an AMAZING preponderance of pathetic, benighted, helpless noblewomen. That's not to say that cases of horrible oppression didn't exist but they were about as statistically significant as the newspaper headlines we have today about gang shootings and serial killers--if you were to get your entire impression of a culture just by reading the headlines you'd wind up assuming these kinds of things, too.

*sigh* 1. You can't use the Weapon Finesse feat with a longsword. 2. You can't take the Weapon Specialization feat without FOUR levels of fighter AND Weapon Focus. 3. Gaseous Form makes it impossible for you to attack and do damage. It is strictly a stealth/locomotion spell. 4. Mage Armor doesn't stack with Bracers of Armor--both grant an Armor bonus. If you're going to blither about how to build a mage who can function without spells, it helps if you actually know the system you're talking about. If you want to build a truly functional 3.0 or 3.5 D&D fallback for an elven wizard or sorcerer, though, you pick up a longbow. No need for a feat, because the bow already uses dex for your to-hit bonus. Greater Magic Weapon, Bracers of Archery, and Tenser's Transformation can help make up for the serious base attack bonus deficit that wizards have (particularly at higher levels). And, of course, if you're 21st level or better, you can Shapechange into a Solar which gives you DR 15/epic and evil, fly 150 (good), immunity to acid, cold, and petrification, regeneration 15, resist electricity and fire 10, and spell resistance 32 just for starters. Not to mention +21 natural armor, +18 strength, +10 dex, and +10 con. Ahh, Shapechange. The original "I win everything" spell. Lasts all day. Lets you turn into any creature of less than deity status. So, so broken. Casters being near-useless once they are "out" of spells is actually a DESIRABLE condition, part of a functional game balance in games where casters have many, varied, POWERFUL spells. It is the ONLY thing holding them back. Otherwise casters are absolutely the most powerful classes across the board no contest. They can make themselves immune to just about everything and always kick out mass destruction. If they run into trouble, there's always the Emergency Contingency Plan known as Teleport. And then they go and give wizards spells like Invisibility and Knock. Why even have a rogue when the poor schmuck has to spend an hour taking 20 to open the lock but the wizard can get it open in 3 seconds? And don't even get me started on clerics. My cleric arcane archer in Dungeons and Dragons Online is a healer AND an offensive/defensive caster AND ranged DPS--about the only things she can't really do well are tank an epic raid and disarm traps (and if I wanted to make the effort, she could do those TOO.) I challenge you to find a non-caster character who can make that kind of claim. When people are talking about caster fugue, they're not COMPLAINING about it. They are trying to come up with ways to arrange for it to happen so they can a.) get cool, powerful, flashy spells and b.) also have some point to playing a class OTHER than a caster. Everybody knows how to make their caster useful when they're OOM. The trick is designing a system where the fighters and rogues aren't just a cheering section.

I'm only getting digital versions but if it were me, I'd VASTLY prefer the more durable, more stackable, wipeable plastic boxes.

Historically accurate, maybe--if real-world history had magic. I suspect the historically paternal societies would have been radically different in a world where women could wield magical power and also had magic around to cure diseases and control fertility. Most people have an erroneous view of gender "roles" across history, though. It was never a straightforward case of men do this, women do that. Instead, the general situation was that most women were not independent--someone had legal authority over them or their property and so they had to put up with whatever that person would allow them to do. But the smallish percentage of women who were independent did pretty much whatever they liked within the constraints of their wealth. Heck, wealthy noblewomen would raise armies, defend their lands, etc, it's just that they usually didn't have the opportunity to do so until their father and husband were dead. I wouldn't find it intolerable if certain cultures consider certain class/race/gender choices to be genderbending, however, and make fun of you for being "mannish" or "effeminate". But being unable to play a female fighter or a male witch? No.

I suggested a fatigue system of some kind in a thread about degenerate resting mechanics. Hmm, can I come up with another mechanic for spell limitation . . . 1. They could make all big spells be activated modes that have their effect over time, and you can only have so many of these going at once. Or, alternatively, just have it that the more of them you put up, the less effective they all are, so if you have 4 buffs running and try to throw up a damaging spell, the damage is going to be trivial and all your buffs are going to lose effectiveness. 2. They could make big spells/abilities be combos that result from you activating several things in a particular order. Or, that if you just fire off the ability, the result is very minor, but if you stand there charging it up over time the effect can be really powerful. Or even a combination of both, so if you want to cast, say, Plague of Insects, first you have to charge the "area effect" benefit, which lets you get more than one target, and then you have to charge the "swarm" effect, which gets you more damage, and then finally fire it off. This could actually be pretty interesting if one of the effects you can charge is "no friendly fire". This could be handled by having a little timer pop up over the caster's head with notices like "AOE CHARGE 2 REACHED!" or "SWARM CHARGE 4 REACHED!" Or you could set the autopause to go off either when you have a new charge available or when the maximum charge is available. So this could be manageable even with 6 characters. Plus this could have the additional amusing effect that if you have a sufficiently stealthy caster, they can sneak into a group of enemies, charge something up, and just nuke the ever-living crap out of them. Granted, if they notice your caster, that caster is MINCEMEAT. 3. They could make it so that using a given spell on an enemy has a good chance to make that enemy immune to further iterations of the same spell category--regardless of whether it actually affects them or not. So, a big splash spell MIGHT wipe out a group of enemies--or it MIGHT just make them all immune and force you to switch tactics. 4. They could have it that you must shift into a particular "form" in order to access the abilities tied to that form, and that switching between forms gives you a massive debuff for, like, 5 minutes.

You know what would be a cool stretch goal? To let you acquire and build special objects in your house that give long-term lasting buffs. (Perhaps it sets the buff button on you and then you can trigger it whenever and it lasts for, like, 3 minutes or something.) Not only would this give you a reason to return home periodically, this can be a fun mechanic that takes some of the buffing load off your casters. It's not a lot of fun to have a caster when 80% of your spells are just buffs that make your party combat effective and you don't really get to use a lot of the more interesting and situational spells. It could also be a fun thing if building the object that gives you the buff requires you to find plans and materials and spend a ton of cash to get it installed. You could also, say, have rooms that improve your crafting or let you fast-travel to certain places. You could even have, say, an "anchor" obelisk that lets you instantly teleport to your house.

I expect they may adopt a system similar to what they have in Dungeons and Dragons Online, where certain very powerful, devastating spells--Implosion and Wail of the Banshee, Symbol spells--have a lengthy cooldown. But these aren't simple damaging spells that have a cooldown to force you to use other spells in sequence in order to keep your DPS going, these are "I win this fight now" spells. Spells and abilities that actually do damage have minimal cooldowns and you can freely spam them as much as you want within the limits of your spell point pool, even ones that put up long term AOE effects like Wall of Fire and Blade Barrier have pretty minimal cooldowns--you can blanket the battlefield with them if you REALLY want to. Waste of SP, usually, but you CAN. It's a very fun system combat-wise, with a TON of VERY useful spells--even the oddball situational ones are great sometimes. The cooldowns keep casters from becoming Wailbots and make you think about when it's most efficient to use the big whammy while not leaving you stuck with only one or two big whammies per rest, so your poor casters have nothing to do after they shoot their load--casters can solo just as well as any other class, and while they do need to refresh their SP periodically, it's not an every-other-fight thing. The cooldowns don't force you to sit there counting the seconds in order to hit some DPS target. That would be a HORRIBLE system in a game where you can run up to 6 characters simultaneously. What I would like to see, however, is if they do go for cooldowns of this kind, is to put in the ability for you to order a character to use the big ability even while it's on cooldown, and they'll throw it when it becomes available. This would make managing this sort of thing with a 6-person party a lot easier. And it might make for entertaining combats when you forget you gave that order and they throw a big spell you no longer need where you didn't want it to go. :D

This was an interesting mechanic in Titan Quest because when rare items would proc you could actually SEE the mobs wielding them--and you got to experience their effects first hand as you got walloped with them. If enemies are going to drop what they've got, then they also ought to use up their potions/wands/consumables in the combat unless you manage to drop them very quickly.

I can't decide whether I'd like them to add more stretch goals so we can get more cool stuff or whether I'd rather not see cool features I want get cut for lack of money. Oh, who am I kidding, bring on the stretch goals, if we don't get to em on this funding run they can put em in an expansion pack or similar down the road.

Since the projected release date is a very loose estimate at this point, why futz with it until they actually know they need to? Don't jump the gun.

I think this system (or one fairly similar) does a pretty good job of keeping the inventory management elements I like while dispensing with the ones I find ridiculous or annoying.

Or, they could have it be that at higher levels the fetch quests are incorporated into bigger quests, so you can do them as you are doing something else, so it's less "yes, I will go fight the bandits in order to get your sword back" and more "Oh, hey, dude, while I was destroying the Bandit King I found this sword stuffed in a chest, is it yours?"

Is it okay if the NPC's make assumptions? Like, they say, "oh, you're so nice!" when you complete the quest even if you were, in your head, doing it strictly for the reward? I think that would be fine if the NPC has no reason to think otherwise. If you are a flat out jerk to them that would seem silly though That makes sense. It's just hard sometimes to know what's going on in Sylvius' head. I wasn't sure if he was talking about people thanking you for saving their lives or a more meta system like the game awarding you good-guy points for doing it when the "real" reason you saved the village was because you want slaves for your evil empire. But, yeah, if you're a jerk to them and then go pull their bacon out of the fire it would be nice if their response is less "OH I LOVE YOU MUAH MUAH" and more "Ummmm . . . thanks, I guess?"

Well, unless basilisks are REALLY BADASS. They should still let you OFFER to do the fetch quests, but it'd be nice if around a certain level people start being baffled when you offer to help them with their personal problems. :D

I would turn this around . . . how did those "most powerful NPC's" get to be what they are? And why should you NOT be able to at least do the same? You could argue that some of the power of those "most powerful NPC's" comes from stuff that the PC probably doesn't have the time or opportunity to accumulate on that scale--land, followers, wealth, armies . . . in which case you probably shouldn't be able to take down their ENTIRE ESTABLISHMENT. Okay. I will buy that. But Mano e Mano there's no reason why you shouldn't EVER be able to give them a run for their money. Granted, if their power comes from them being different in KIND from the PC instead of just different in DEGREE (like, they're a dragon and you're human, or they're a god and you're human, etc.), I'd buy that too. But if they're just another member of a player race(Elminster, Drizz't), all bets are off.

Is it okay if the NPC's make assumptions? Like, they say, "oh, you're so nice!" when you complete the quest even if you were, in your head, doing it strictly for the reward?

This is why I (somewhat) enjoyed the beginning of BG2 where they gave you a REASON to do all these little bull**** quests--you needed money. Granted, it wasn't that well done in BG2 because it was an absolutely trivial amount of money. They did it again in Dragon Age 2 and it STILL wasn't all that well done. And that guy in Skyrim DOES give you some training if you do his quest. But there are good ways and a bad way to do this kind of thing. Presenting it as you just randomly doing favors for every wandering idiot is the bad way. A good way might be to have this particular bandit lair be on your way to someplace else, and this dude offers to give you directions to a secret back entrance if you pick up his sword for him. Or you see him kicking ass in the training arena and when you ask him if he'll train you, he says, well, I really can't without my special family sword . . . That enitire quest arc was awesome. It was also buggy in a lot of cases because at least one other quest intersected with it in such a way that you could inadvertently make it impossible to advance the quest.

If you were actually applying the backstab multiplier correctly, where it only multiplies the base weapon damage (and the biggest weapon pure thieves could legitimately use was a d8), then the 5d8 you get from "backstab" is nowhere near as powerful as the 10d6 sneak attack rogues get up to in 3rd edition. I'm not a big fan of summoning in most games--it's usually implemented poorly and the summonees are either way too weak or way too powerful and get in the way because you can't really control them effectively. If they do decide to do some kind of summoner/pet class, I'd make these suggestions: 1. Make the summons immortal during their summon duration, but they can be dismissed or otherwise disabled in a variety of ways. 2. Each pet has ONE ability. Maybe one shoots ranged damage spells at the enemy. Another goes around knocking enemies over. One throws small heals. One distracts enemies into attacking it. Stuff like that. 3. Strict limits on how many pets you can have out at any one time.

That whole system was silly, because if you were playing a class that didn't need to rest much (like, say, a monk), you NEVER even got REMOTELY close to running the timer out. I don't really have a preference as long as it's well-implemented either way.

Yeah, how many quests in Baldur's Gate consisted of you finding a weirdly named but otherwise unremarkable item and then hunting around until you found the NPC that lost it? MANY. I don't mind this sort of thing. I don't mind fetch quests or fedex quests too much. What I would like to see is a return of the older-style quests where you could get involved in the quest in a number of different ways instead of them all being this linear "talk to person with ! over their head, hear their tale of woe, go get them their shiny, get reward". I hate that. It is BORING. Even in simplistic cases like that, I prefer it where you can stumble upon the shiny by accident. It's even better when the quest is more complex and you can burst in around step 14, get TOTALLY THE WRONG IMPRESSION, then run about doing steps 3, 9, 18, 4, and 6 getting more and more baffled until you suddenly figure out what's going on and go slaughter 9/10th's of the people involved from sheer bloody-mindedness. That's fun. I miss being able to do that. Also, it is much, much, MUCH easier to build these sorts of complex multi-directional multi-branching quests when you don't have to do VA and animation for every word that comes out of anyone's mouth.

This is kind of a silly poll, but I just wanted to say that art direction is way, way, WAY more important than "graphics" in a game like this. I really don't care if the graphics have all the bells and whistles if the game is beautiful.

Shouldn't this type of thing wait until after the Kickstarter is OVER?