PsychoBlonde

ZOMG wasn't this the truth. Thieves were basically pointless in pnp 2nd edition D&D anyway. Need to sneak? Get the wizard with invisibility 10' radius. Clerics got Find Traps as a 2nd level spell, and it was 100% effective whereas your rogue actually had to search and roll dice. Backstab damage only multiplied the base weapon damage and was far less worthwhile than having a good strength. And they got screwed on AC and HP. Just please keep in mind that "each class can excel in something" shouldn't mean "we put some annoying obstacles in that can only be bypassed by this one particular class so you'll be obliged to haul them along". I'd almost suggest you sample some Dungeons and Dragons Online if you haven't gotten to it, because here is a game with 13 classes yet all of them are distinct, bring something unique to the table, and yet you aren't absolutely STUCK with having any of them--well, apart from raids which cannot really be done without clerics or favored souls because you need the big heals. But you can (and I have) do every. single. quest. in the game with ANY kind of party makeup. And most classes have plenty of opportunities to contribute in areas that aren't their main focus. Fighter types can CC enemies with Trip and Stunning Blow. Rogues can heal with Use Magic Device. Wizards can tank.

They've already done some talking about speeding up map transit via various means, so there may be rent-a-horse locations available that provide instant travel.

I, personally, would not touch any East Asian market with a ten-foot pole after the Blizzard offices got raided in Korea. There have been some weird legal changes regarding video games there in the past few years. That being said, it'd make sense to save more localization until after release when they see how sales look. I am 100% behind efforts to let people play games across the world, but advertising it and distributing it yourself can be a legal nightmare waiting to happen.

I can't begin to describe how badly Dungeons and Dragons Online is INFESTED with Drizz't wannabes. Fortunately they tend to be pretty thin on the ground in late-game combat because that build is pretty lousy.

I generally prefer this sort of system as well, so your fighter can be a frontline melee by picking up a sword and heavy armor, whereas your cleric does it with buffs, your wizard by turning into a lich, and your rogue by having some ridiculous dodge. All the classes have distinct roles in the sense that there are benefits and drawbacks to each approach to the "role". Fighters soak damage. Clerics can heal their own injuries. The wizard drains health off slain foes. The rogue tries to avoid getting hit in the first place. What I also like is when different fights put you in the situation of having different characters assume different roles. When you're fighting lots of little enemies, the cleric can dispatch them in melee, but when it comes to a single large enemy, he needs to stand off and heal while putting his buffs on your fighter instead of himself. The fighter might switch to a bow. The wizard will burn spells like there's no tomorrow. This, I like. I don't much like it when the ONLY possible type of wizard is the "glass cannon" and so forth.

I enjoy it when they take a somewhat ridiculous aspect of the game like this and adopt it as part of the "physics" of the game world, such as the "Inventory scroll" in Stonekeep which was supposed to, literally, transmute items into little pictures and back so that you could carry unlimited amounts of stuff. That was kind of a neat little conceit.

So you would say Baldur's Gate Enhanced instead of BG2? Because isn't the sequel the one reveres as the better one? I have played BG2 but never the first one, so it might be cool to experience BG:E The Enhanced Edition has a ton of new content and has been reengineered to work on more modern hardware. They're going to do BG2 also.

I had an idea a while back for a game with an actual "economy", where different items are worth different amounts in different places and dump-selling a lot of the same item causes the price to drop like a rock and eventually merchants just won't buy any more. Likewise, if you buy a lot of the same item (like, say, healing potions), the price goes up. Over time, the gluts and shortages would tend to even out over the world as trading took place.

Yes, let's have a fantasy game that's just like working in an office! You can have meetings. And meetings about the meetings. And a budget. And customer service objectives. And performance reviews. And that jerk in the office across the hall whose main output seems to be excuses for why he can't do any of the work he's been assigned. And someone who complains constantly that you don't respect them. And another person who doesn't like the tone of your emails. Sounds delightful. /sarcasm off Seriously, though, I'll bet this would be insanely irritating if they actually took it seriously and made you spend time jollying your companions along every time you decided to do something. That, and implementing it would be a HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. I mean, look at Origins. If you take Sten with you when you go to Haven, he gives you a little lecture about how this is pointless and you ought to be doing something else--and it still makes no sense whatsoever. He waited until you walked ALL THE WAY THERE before protesting?! I mean, you're HERE you may as well do the stupid quest now it's not like the hour and a half you spend hacking your way through the dungeon compares to the DAYS AND DAYS of walking you've already wasted. What a headache. I'm all for chatting with companions and having them (occasionally) question your leadership, but if they start acting like the obnoxious people in MMOS who think they can hijack your farming group to go do quest Y even though the Looking For Group CLEARLY stated that you were doing quest X at the moment, imma do what I do to said obnoxious people and boot them. Joining my party at all is predicated on you not being a Major Pain In My Ass About Everything.

I think it'd be cool if they made a stab at eliminating the money system altogether. 99% of the "gear" in these games exists for no reason other than to generate minuscule amounts of cash which you accumulate so you can get something decent. So why not just make it that you can turn heaps of mediocre junk into better items directly via crafting or barter? Want a bribe system? Make it so you have to surrender an item of X quality for the bribe. Barring that, I don't care what they decide to call their "money" counter. Gold. Chocolate. Squibbles. Don't care.

I didn't vote because I'm not sure I'm visualizing exactly how some of these options would work. I also object to the use of the term "Immersive" here because character *creation* ought to PRECEDE the game. Lemme see here: PRELUDE--this sounds a lot like how Bethesda has done character creation recently, no? I'm not a huge fan of this because it becomes INCREDIBLY annoying to play through the same very restricted series of mini-quests in order to start a new character. THEMED STEP-BY-STEP--can I get an example game for this one? Are you talking about the character creation screen(s) having some kind of voiceover that informs you "if you lower your strength that far, you will have to make 35 trips to the dungeon to carry out enough loot to repair your gear" Or are you talking about something like the old Daggerfall system where they'd have questions like "what's your most prized possession" and depending on what you pick, you get a bonus starting item? (I always picked the ebony dagger because a.) worth a lot of cash and b.) only way you were guaranteed to get a weapon that could hurt that @#$#@ imp at the end of the first dungeon.) Either way, it sounds like pointless cheese which would definitely get annoying on repeated playthroughs. RANDOM ROLL--I don't even think this one belongs on the poll because this has nothing to do with the stylistic fixin's surrounding character creation. It's just how you generate stats. I notice you didn't include point buy as an option. I (kind of) like random roll in that it gives you the (theoretical) opportunity to create a character that's unusually powerful provided you have the patience to roll 5,000 times, but, ultimately, I'd be just as happy if they let you manually max out your stats and go. Or just gave you fixed stats or point buy--it's the same in the end and saves a ton of clicking. I would like it if you get more stat points for a new character when you complete the game, though, that'd make trying out new builds more fun for me. INTERACTIVE--Personally, I think this sort of thing is a colossal waste of time as character creation. It becomes INCREDIBLY annoying when you have to repeat it every. time. you. play. If they did it like Baldur's Gate's tutorial where it's a completely separate sideline to the game (Candlekeep was not actually the "tutorial" for that game), that'd be okay. RTFM--I prefer nowadays that games don't really even have a manual, but I would like the game to be deep enough that if you want to really powergame it with all the hard modes turned on, you're going to be considering where to spend every point. Likewise I'd prefer if newbies just looking for a good time can toss their points in any old how and go. (Or even use a pre-generated build helpfully included by the devs.) So I'd prefer there not be Required Reading. OLD SCHOOL CHARACTER SHEET--This option is covered under at least 3 things you've already listed. PRE-GEN--now you're talking about story and not stats. This isn't and doesn't have to be a DIFFERENT option from the ones you've already listed, it could be combined successfully with any of them. GET ON WITH IT--even with The Nameless One you had to decide how to spend your stats, so, again, this could exist alongside any of the other systems above. Ultimately, I just don't want to be forced to play a tiresome little mini-adventure questionnaire thing before I can distribute my stat points (or however character creation is going to work), mod my appearance (as much as this is going to be possible when your character is ONE INCH HIGH), and go. I REALLY don't.

They could accomplish this a bit more simply by having your first loading screen into the game list out your major decisions thus far, as well as your most recently acquired quest objective. They could also change the appearance of the splash screen based on what kind of character you've been playing--ruthless human fighter, kind elven mage, etc. If they leave the splash screen visible until you do something to dismiss it, I'll bet this could be a very nice memory jog for people who can't play all the time. Don't ask for lots of animated stuff though, that gets expensive and complex to implement.

Sewer tunnels like those in most games largely don't exist. That's not to say complexes of buried tunnels don't exist under cities--and they often wind up filled with water/waste/mud--but they weren't originally built as sewers and (usually) can't be accessed by opening a handy grate in the street. The drainage tunnels are usually too small for most people to stand up in, let alone fight in. That being said, I don't really care if there are sewers or not.

Planescape: Torment begs to differ. So does Mask of the Betrayer. The story is the story. A villain may be a device serving to drive the story--to create motivation, but there are many, many potential motivations other than "kill that dude!"

I find New Game+ to be INCREDIBLY pointless and boring. I don't want to keep playing the same character through the same game over and over. I always prefer to generate one from scratch on every playthrough. That being said, if New Game + means you get interesting little bennies for stuff you unlocked in your previous playthroughs, this might be interesting. DDO has a mechanic much like this (granted, it works very differently because the game is an MMO) where after you level a character to 20, you can True Reincarnate them and they have more starting stat points and a passive feat based on what class you were in your previous life and an optional active feat. Plus you keep all of your equipment. A system like THIS, where you (can) get interesting new bennies every time you play through might fit really well with the game's theme of reincarnating souls. Play through as a human? Get a bonus stat point and your starting gear includes a "ring of Humanity" that gives you a small bonus to all skills. Play through as a fighter? Get a bonus to hit, and your chest of starting gear has a better sword in it. Of course, activating these would have to be optional so people who hate this sort of thing wouldn't be forced to have them. But just putting in the option to start the game over with your already existing character? Myeh. Skip it.

Read the thread, not just the original post. I wasn't replying to "the thread", I was replying to the original post. Hence why I quoted it. That being said, if I'm REQUIRED to respond to this drivel about level caps and pacing to post in the thread, here's my take: I don't care. I REALLY don't care. I have just as much fun cheat-leveling my character to the cap and THEN playing the game as I do if I'm still 3.5 levels shy of cap when I finish it (actually, I often have MORE fun this way because I can get some USE out of the cool abilities instead of just DROOLING over them until the end). Or if there is no cap. Why? Because I don't expect every game to be exactly the same. The reason why I'm playing and enjoying them is rarely the same across 2 playthroughs let alone 2 games. I would, honest to goodness, not mind one bit if there is no leveling mechanic whatsoever and you just build your entire character at the start of the game and all mechanical progression comes from other systems. Granted, I don't expect that to be the case with this game.

For me, in RPG's there is usually one or more characters that I'd really like to romance but can't, and it would just be nice if you could. That being said, I find I don't like the way Bioware does it that much, where you always have a couple of in-party characters that you can romance, plus a brothel. I would much rather have a wide variety of potential romances be salted all over the game--NPCs, party companions, heck, even ENEMIES you wind up killing. I think Obsidian could really accomplish this well due to the way Chris Avellone talks about writing dialog--he likes to have dialog where if you really pay attention to what's going on and pursue certain things, you can have a very different experience and learn very interesting things. So I'd kind of like it if some of the romances are hidden behind a complex series of gameplay choices and dialog choices. Granted, it'd also be nice if some of the romances are considerably easier to dig up than this. Nor do the "easier" ones necessarily have to be *more casual* in the whole depth of affection sense. I would also really, really, hugely, majorly appreciate it if every. single. romance. doesn't follow the same general structure as the entire rest of the game, so you only get to chat with your romance in an increasingly familiar fashion until the night before the last battle where they finally confess their love and you have sex. NO. Have OPTIONS please. Have a romance where you can get married early in the game and they stay home and most of your interaction with them consists of you visiting them, telling them about your problems, getting advice/sympathy, etc. And please don't copy the system from DA2 where initiating a romance means, universally, flirting with a given companion. Maybe you bring them a special gift. Maybe you stand up for them. Maybe you make horrible jokes until they pee themselves. Maybe you're just the Only Sane Man. Oh, and please have options where your responses don't amount to "Tee Hee" and "Kick them to the Curb". Something along the lines of "let them down gently" (perhaps followed by a righteous slap and kicking them out if they don't get the hint) would also be nice.

For you, we shall create a mod which multiplies all numbers by 10,000. Size isn't everything.

I'm not sure you can isolate the villain from the context of the entire game in this way--what might be compelling in one context (having your soul ripped out of your body) can be perceived as a **** move in another context. I liked it when they did it in Baldur's Gate II, for instance. I found it eye-rollingly-dorky in Mask of the Betrayer. If they'd put Irenicus in MotB and Akachi in BG2, it wouldn't really have made any difference. The key was in how your own motivations came about, the kind of control you had over what you did, how the NPC's treated you, how the actions of the villain were revealed. That, and at the end of BG2 you didn't have a freakin' god show up and say "well, you can take your soul back but not accomplish ANYTHING else because I won't let you", to which I wanted to say "well why didn't you go fix this all yourself before I got involved you stinking twerp". Who cares about the Faceless One when you never really interact with him but hey, here's Jerk God of the Century. Sheesh. I suppose ultimately what makes a given villain story compelling is that a.) the player reaches the conclusion that this person really DESERVES to go down and b.) can (eventually) accomplish this goal. So it's going to be somewhat subjective. That's not to say that every story HAS to be a villain story in order to be compelling and meaningful.

Basically, I ask myself one question: Is this still going to be fun the 100th time I do it? No. Do I want something like this in the game then? No. If you want to have complexity, don't put it on every dang pointless lock in the dang game. Write some interesting dang puzzles instead. Dangit.

It ALSO sounds like "James Bond Goes Into Space" instead of "medieval swords and sorcery". There may also be some pretty nasty trademark problems with using the title "Eternity". So the game itself may have a radically different name.

It's not, but they're stuck in a paradigm where you get rewarded based on how "difficult" it is to complete a given quest, so they're thinking that one of two things will happen: 1. You won't *really* have much choice about where to go because you won't have any hope of accomplishing certain quests until you do a bunch of lower-level quests in order to level up. 2 You can go where you want and do things in any order but the game will feel horribly unbalanced/schizophrenic because one moment you're fighting the Doom Squadron of Doomtown and getting 500 xp and the next you're killing rats for some old lady and getting 1500 xp. So, in their minds, the solutions are: 1. Linear game 2. *barf* "scaling". However, neither of those are completely necessary. For instance, this problem could be solved by having each general area of the game contain numerous minor quest objectives that turn into higher-level quest objectives depending on what level you are when you arrive there and pick up the quest. For instance, if you arrive there at level 1, you get a quest from Jimbob the Farmer to investigate his fields at night because somebody's been creeping around the place and killing his chickens. If you show up at level 3, the situation has progressed into a different quest: someone was killing his chickens, and now his daughter has disappeared. (All the clues from the Chicken Quest still exist, and can help you find where the daughter has been taken off to--a bandit lair in the woods.) If you arrive at level 5, the bandits have sacrificed the girl to raise some Evil Sorcerer, who you know have to deal with(but still, the clues from the whole chicken-killing quest are still there and important), and if you arrive at level 10 or above, the Evil Sorcerer has succeeded in summoning some kind of Badass Demon you now have to deal with. It's not scaling in that you just fight the same bandits but they have more HP and do more damage--the quest actually *changes* and the denouement is still level-appropriate. And, it doesn't have to be linear--you can arrive whenever you please. One suggestion I would have about a system of this kind, however, would be that levels ought to all take the same amount of XP to progress and you should get the same amount of XP for completing a given quest no matter what level you do it at. Also, you wouldn't want to base your loot rewards off the level of the quest, either, which would mean you'd want to tune your gear system more toward the concept that better gear = having more gear: more different bonuses to pick from, the ability to put a magic item in every slot on every party member, having a stock of potions, scrolls, wands, charms, etc. This would be a horrible system if a.) it meant that in order to get some super-powerful items, you had to "hold" specific quests until you were at the max level, or b.) you could do a given quest at the lowest possible level and still get the +5 Vorpal Greatsword of Badassitude. That's not to say that you can't HAVE the +5 Vorpal Greatsword of Badassitude, just that, say, instead of getting it as a quest reward, you MAKE it by destroying 10 other magic items of your choice. Or by getting all 10 pieces of it. Lots of options for doing this sort of thing well.

There was a major problem with this sort of thing in Fallout 3/Oblivion, though, which was that as you leveled--regardless of HOW you leveled and what skills you improved, you'd find yourself facing tougher enemies regardless of whether you were, in fact, any stronger in combat. I hate scaling as a mechanic, too, it's just one more example of devs trying to dictate to players how the game "ought" to be experienced. The thing is, I don't really *mind* most mechanics if they're implemented well enough to be invisible, and if they add something to the game for people who are Not Me, by all means have em. When they're blatantly obvious and tiresomely repetitive, I get bored and cranky and start looking for something else to do.

This argument would hold weight if they were doing a "use to improve" system like Skyrim. As it stands now, with combat XP you can kill 10,000,000 goblins and... become better at talking to people. Any kind of realism argument never holds weight because the system isn't going to be realistic no matter what you do. It is abstract and representative not a simulation. Even the "use to improve" system makes no "sense" in this manner--why should casting Nighteye 5,000 times make me better at casting Invisibility? And why, after improving my Illusion, Stealth, Speechcraft, Blacksmithing, and Destruction skills should I level up and get to improve magic/stamina/health and select a new Enchanting perk?

It's in the Kickstarter update video where they talk about non-combat skills.