PsychoBlonde

That's kinda the point? Read lore, ask around, keep magical weapons, use spells?... Tactics, you know. That's not "tactics". That's Strategy. Strategy consists of carrying around the 3 or 10 or 18 weapons you need to be able to affect every type of mob in the game. Tactics would be actually switching to that weapon at the appropriate time. The prep you do before the fights is strategy, not tactics. Tactics is what you do DURING the fight. That pedantry aside, this situation is a large part of the reason why a really good party in BG2 contained 5 casters. I could never put up with it because I didn't want to pitch MInsc, so I frequently had 2 non-casters.

Okay, if you haven't personally played a game where you wind up having to carry around 15+ weapons, that's fine. But you have NO PLACE to be criticizing my honesty. I play Dungeons and Dragons Online. You want me to list the weapons my characters carry around? My monk/rogue, who is UNCHARACTERISTICALLY NARROW has: +5 Metalline Flametouched Iron Handwraps of Improved Destruction. Breaks Silver, Byeshk, Adamantine, Cold Iron, and Good DR. Basically used for dealing with raid bosses who almost all have multiple DR types, usually Something + Good. +4 Corruscating Handwraps of Disruption (undead beaters--do Light damage and Disruption) Unstable Handwraps (break lawful AND chaotic DR) Calomel-studded handwraps (dragon beater) Grave Wrappings (my epic and evil set) Scorching Wraps (breaks piercing DR) +2 Banishing Handwraps of Stunning +10 (for dealing with outsiders) +5 Metalline Handwraps of Smiting (construct beater, also breaks Silver, Adamantine, Cold Iron, and Byeshk DR) I'm unusual because I got lucky on Metalline drops--many people have separate adamantine, cold iron, and silver sets. That, and because I use handwraps, I only need 1 weapon per set and not 2. I also don't have a slashing set because this particular build doesn't have enough wis to get Vorpal Strikes. I could carry kamas but they usually do less damage than just standard handwraps, even with the DR penalty. Baldur's Gate wasn't too bad in this respect because it used the SECOND edition rules where Magic trumped everything (except arcane oozes). But, it didn't have DR--if you didn't have a +3 weapon on the mob that needed +3 or better to hit, you did NO DAMAGE WHATSOEVER, whereas when enemies have dr 10/slash, if you do more than 10 damage you at least do SOMETHING. Still, I'd rather not have the Insane Weapon List in this game if it can be avoided.

I would indeed prefer for the game to encourage you to switch between ranged and close tactics. And a variety of other tactics as well.

Yes, and your biased trivial poll shows this. No one ever needs, so many weapons. It's basically silver for lycantropes and adamantum or magic vs anything else. You've never played DDO, I take it. I have characters with all of those weapons + specific bane and debuffing weapons for use against specific bosses. Not to mention things like swap gear that grants specific debuffs. People will boot you out of groups if they find out you don't know what weapons work on what mobs.

Bows were "nerfed" in BG2 (and BG lategame, actually) because of the prevalence of casters who could make themselves flat-out immune AND the increasing power of other methods, not because the bows themselves were functionally balanced with other methods. They were still pretty durn powerful in most situations.

I like the way DDO does containers: you can set the container to "auto gather" items that fit in that container, or not, if you don't want random BS items wandering into your sorted containers (in DDO there are like, 4 major types of containers--ingredients, collectibles, gems, soul gems). The container has limits on total number of DIFFERENT items fit in it, as well as how many you can STACK in a different slot. (So you can get better containers as you go along.) and vendors have a "sell gems" button that sells ALL the gems in your inventory and gem bags. (Gems are the only junk-that-turns-into-cash item in DDO.) You can also (mostly, still some bugs with this) use ingredients and collectibles directly out of your bag without having to first a.) find them and b.) drag them to inventory. They could also have a storage site (presumably in your Player House) where you can drop off items you neither want to sell nor carry. The ammo problem isn't too bad because generally you use up the ammo as you find stuff to replace it. It was mostly an issue in Baldur's Gate because of the Strangely Enormous Gems and also because Ranged Weapons Were King. Quivers are also interesting in DDO, because there is a Quiver equip slot (and some quivers actually have magical bonus effects on them), and it pulls arrows from that quiver in the order you have them sorted when you run out. They work like other bags in that you have a max of different items as well as a max stack for each item. You can also put quivers on your hotbars and switch between them. They could also have an option on vendors where you buy ammo to "fill current quiver" with the selected ammo type for easier restocking. So the containers CAN be done in a way that doesn't require you to constantly be taking **** out and putting **** in.

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have: The Bludgeon weapon The Piercing weapon The Slashing weapon The Adamantine sword The Silver sword The Cold Iron sword The Lawful sword The Chaotic sword The Good sword The Evil sword The Epic sword The Wood sword The Crystal sword The Adamantine and Good sword The Silver AND Good sword . . . Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane. Not to mention the fact that you can't REALLY build that Fire Specialist mage because, like, 1/3 of the mobs in the game are FLAT OUT IMMUNE to fire. And if you do a fire/acid specialist, there's still always gonna be some that are immune to both. And PLAYERS never get IMMUNITY gear. Let's have resistances, sure. But I'd really prefer to ditch outright immunities unless they're extremely specific or only on unique boss mobs where it's pretty dang obvious. Let certain creatures be immune to Piercing weapons (and have weapons that do 2 or more damage types), maybe or have the Fire Dragon be immune to fire. But don't let's be crazy.

I don't mind inventory tetris, but I would like the ability to stack identical items. The Baldur's Gate thing where SINGLE GEMS took up as much space as an ENTIRE SUIT OF PLATE ARMOR was ridiculous. Please don't have 300 kinds of gems/nonmagical jewelry and let us stack em all/put them in bags. Ammunition in particular should have ENORMOUS stacks.

One thing I'd like to see in this game is the ability to have both ranged and melee attacks on any character class. But let's not have the situation from Baldur's Gate where using a bow meant: Faster attacks Doing more damage (and possibly hitting more often as well) Taking less damage The ability to concentrate damage on the Really Dangerous Dude you wanted to go down PRONTO Kiting around melee mobs with stupid gobs of health that did stupid gobs of damage until they keeled over from sheer exhaustion Maybe even cheesing out aggro distance Compared to pretty much every other weapon type in Baldur's Gate, the bow was HUGELY superior in EVERY respect, until quite late in the game when you started getting items to let your melee fighters a.) not take so much freakin damage and b.) make like 500000 attacks a minute and c.) actually close with the monsters in a reasonable period of time. (Not to mention the casters with Protection From Normal Missiles.) Also, groups of mobs with bows (bandits) would DESTROY your party all out of proportion of how physically tough they were. Please, let's not have this again. Let's have melee characters that can close reasonably well, do good damage, have decent defenses, and actually TAKE SOME HITS. I'm all for bows. Just not as the be-all, end-all of combat up until level 7.

If by "hardcore" do you mean party members getting zapped into nonexistence by single spells against which the only defense/fix is that one item you find in that one place that costs like 1/3 of your available early-game cash - - - oh, and you have areas where like the monsters spam this spell 30+ times before you can kill them? NO. Tough fights are fine. I'm even okay with various instant-kill mechanics. Entire areas full of mobs that do nothing but spam instant-death (or ridiculous levels of mass damage a la that guy at the end of Baldur's Gate with those fireball arrows) and the only way you can win is by putting a bow on every character and cheesing out the aggro mechanics? LET'S GIVE THAT A MISS.

I'd like to see classes that combine features from the "traditional" classes. How about: Guardian (Tank + Party Buffs + heals over time) Earthwalker (Summoner + Debuffer + largest single-target heals) Arcanist (AOE damage + locks/traps) Skirmisher (Single target combat damage + single target debuffs + single target crowd control) Dreamer (Mass crowd control + Damage over time + instant-death) Ambusher (fast movement + stealth + fastest attacks)

I find Achievements can be interesting if they're odd enough. Remember what they did in Arcanum? Those were pretty cool. (If you haven't played Arcanum, basically you acquired titles for doing some odd things like running around naked in town.) However, they should *definitely* have a way to turn off the notifications for people who hate them.

I'd rather have distinct buttons for (most) of the actions . . . if there are two context points very close together you usually wind up doing what you didn't want to do.

Well, I don't think we have to worry TOO much about the interface being designed for a game controller instead of keyboard/and/mouse since they aren't releasing it (Thank goodness) for the Xbox or Playstation or Wii. It's not that I'm opposed to those platforms, I just think that trying to shoehorn every conceivable type of game into every conceivable type of platform is really limiting and/or schizophrenia-producing.

Baldur's Gate had a pretty good interface. Not great, but pretty good. However, I'd like to submit a few suggestions for possible improvements/new directions. 1. Let us pick what menu bar goes where, and also resize 'em if possible. There are a lot of new monitor sizes and shapes and the layout that works well on one type of screen is not the layout that works well on other types of screens. 2. Let us have a single hotbar where we can put abilities from ALL of our party members, so instead of always having to select that companion, figure out where the ability we want is on their bar, then click that ability, we can just, boom, click the ability right on the, um, the consolidation hotbar. Heck, you could make extra slots on the Consolidation Hotbar be, like, a reward of some kind. 3. Try to minimize required clicks as much as possible. It is much, much, MUCH faster to rapidly cycle through and/or choose abilities with the keyboard than clicking icons on the screen with the mouse. With Baldur's Gate, for instance, in order to cast a spell that wasn't in one of your "quickspell" slots (and you got VERY few of these if you were a multi-classed caster, maybe even ZERO), you had to click on the cast spell icon to bring up the menu, then click on the spell, then click where you wanted to target it. Pause-and-play is great but that doesn't mean I want to have to pause *every time* I want to cast a spell or use an ability just because it takes me 15 seconds to do all the clicking. 4. Formation moving--instead of having each companion path to the endpoint of their move and take whatever wonkus route to get there the pathing algorithm decides, have them try to *stay in formation* with whatever character is the "main character" of that formation, and all move together. What's the point of having these formations if by the time your party gets halfway across the screen they're completely out of order again? Designing the actual areas with this in mind would be really, really stellar, as well. Everybody remember those horrible narrow-corridor dungeons in Baldur's Gate? Remember having to move your companions one. at. a. time. to navigate the halls? Wouldin't it be AWESOME if you DIDNT HAVE TO DO THAT?!?! YES.

Guys, your characters are going to be TINY. Like this: You will probably not be able to see any "outlandish" details on weapons. They will be less than an inch long, if that.

I pretty much agree with this--I'd like to have complex choices, but I'd prefer dialog not breakdown like this: 1. Ghandi and Mother Teresa Lovechild 2. Bland Man from Blandistan 3. BITCH WHERE'S MY MONEY 4. Puppy kicking and baby eating It's not the good/evil options that I object to so much as the idea that good vs. evil breaks down to "save the baby" vs. "eat the baby". That being said, I'm also not a huge fan of choices that break down to things like "which one of these people do I feed into the chipper shredder so that the other two can live?" That's not a difficult choice. That's a *stupid* choice. Granted . . . I could see having a couple of situations like that come up (infrequently), if you make a series of bad or confused decisions because running up against the Chipper Shredder Roulette is a great way to startle people into THINKING about this stuff, particularly if they come back through that situation on a later playthrough and discover, ZOMG, I could have AVOIDED all that?!?!?! And, lastly, I'd like to have tons of decisions that don't just come down to picking one dialog option over another. It's an IMPORTANT decision if you, say, decide to go clear out the side rooms or charge straight to the end boss. It's an important decision if you take the time to disarm the traps. It's important if you decide to investigate around and get more info rather than just taking the first person you talk to at their word. These things should have story effects even though they aren't the kinds of decisions you make by clicking a particular line of dialog over another. Bioware in particular has pretty much abandoned those kinds of decisions, so it feels like the gameplay and story are locked in different rooms.

I'd like to be able to play my character as being an outrageous flirt/tease among other options, and it'd be nice to have NPCs that respond romantically. But developing ANY kind of relationship dynamic with various NPC's would be great, whether they regard you as a friend, comrade-in-arms, rival, protector, source of advice, child who needs advice, obligation, brother-in-law, wingman, idiot who won't go away, trusted confidant . . .

Folks, keep in mind your character is probably going to be TINY. As in, an inch high OR LESS. You will probably not be able to customize makeup because the makeup won't even take up an entire pixel. This is not a third-person over the shoulder game where you can zoom in and examine the moles on your character's neck. This is going to be a game like Baldur's Gate. I'd like it if we can zoom in, but even then you're probably going to be looking at a 3" model instead of a 1" model. Only the largest features are going to be visible AT ALL.

I, personally, would not mind if they dictate to us completely who is available when. You can get tons more interesting conversations and planned events when you know what characters are in the party--and it makes the game more interesting if your party makeup is constantly changing.

DDO has a *plethora* of active and mode tactical stuff for non-mages. I'll list out some of them: Stunning Blow Trip Sunder Assassinate Feint Block Smite Diplomacy Intimidate They don't have to be "mystical" abilities to be active things you can do that produce results other than "I chip away at the health bar until it's all gone". A lot of those are great for dealing with enemy casters--you're not casting if you're flat on your butt or stunned. I'd like to see viable party makeups that contain NO spellcasters. Or ALL spellcasters.

Or, they could just do what they did in Arcanum, and you have no control over what abilities your companions take as they level. They're their own person, and if they want to be a dedicated healer, that's dang well what they're going to be. Your personal main character can be whatever you want but the NPC companions will have definite strengths and weaknesses. I also think it would be cool for NPC companions to have unique background traits/abilities.

I would definitely prefer something like Arcanum or Fallout to yet another Fighter/Mage/Rogue Tank/Healer/DPS split.

You do realize that this game is going to be isometric overhead/angled perspective so view distance is going to be static--based on your resolution and screen aspect. Also the character models are going to be SMALL and you may or may not be able to zoom to see them any closer up. 4 party members is plenty if you have 3 classes to choose from. I'd rather have many more distinctive character types in this game and 6 party members a la Baldur's Gate/Planescape.

Keep in mind that with the Infinity engine the visible armor on your character is probably going to be small enough that you won't be able to see if your female mage has her boobs hanging out or not. I'd like to see design elements along the lines of visible cloaks and hoods (and not just for mages). I kind of liked the customizable colors the way they were done in BG, I'd just like a wider selection of colors. But don't get too caught up on your avatar's looks, they're probably going to be pretty tiny. I liked a lot of the armor on the female Monk in Diablo III though, and perhaps we'll get a Zoom option so we can see the Tiny People close up. Maybe it'll even Zoom for conversations.