Karkarov

It would absolutely no sense for me not to have the option to flee combat. It should never be forced (unless for story purposes, and then rarely I hope) but the player shouldn't be forced to die just because they made a tactical error or tried an encounter/area they weren't quite ready for yet.

Thanks for admitting my post is correct. Again, other than mages (maybe clerics, but clerics in DA are mages...) every class in DA has more options in combat, more detail to the build, and a greater range of abilities to choose from. Here is an icewind dale fighter gameplay simulation... "Click fighter.... click enemy I want it to attack.... wait for enemy to die or my fighters hp to go down.... use hp potion.... enemy falls down." Rinse wash repeat. If you consider that "fun" or deep I redirect you to the "rose colored glasses" portion of my post. You didn't like DA combat but not because the combat sucked. You didn't like it because you felt it was too easy and there was too much of it. To a lesser extent you didn't say it but there were too many set piece fights and not enough chance to "set up" your team. To be more specific those are not design flaws they are "execution" flaws. The overall gameplay and combat design was good, Bioware just didn't properly execute it. You also clearly went AOE heavy, but nothing stops you from only using one or no mages. Unlike Baldur's gate not having a mage is actually viable. Yet another point in favor of the DA combat system.

I just hope they got for more facial detail and go the route of letting us see the characters faces sometimes. Seriously, doing a solid character model is not that hard, or expensive, these days. There is no excuse to skimp on the quality of the character models.

So says the guy who just used multiple paragraphs to respond to one sentence. That said you are right for the most part. You will have to trust me that I left a lot out of the OP. I am what you would call a "methodical person". I could jot down a book report on why I am writing this post if I really wanted to. Obviously I don't though, which is probably best for everyone. Either way I appreciate that you get the gist of it all.

Right but all that boils down to "action". Making an impassioned speech to the leader of a faction whom you are good friends with relies on a number of things but most important is... the fact that you are already friends. Meaning this diplomacy you are using is only possible BECAUSE of previous actions you took. Also it is still very low risk, worst case scenario he says "Nope." Why would that then reasonably stop you from bribing the guard, going for a jail break, paying someone else to effect the jail break, or just brute force killing your way to the guys freedom? It wouldn't. It is just now you probably look more suspicious if the prisoner does end up breaking out.

I REALLY don't get why everyone is claiming Aumana are beast people even now. Look at the concept art.... They are just humans who are more muscular, have slightly pointed ears, and have stronger features. They really look more like real life New Zealanders than they do anything from Thundercats or " insert generic fantasy game here". If I had to compare them to any actual D&D race it would be Half Orcs. EDIT: To throw this out there I will admit there are some kind of weird markings on them, but you can't tell what they are from those pics. They could be tattoos or other tribal markings for all we know.

Eh maybe. Talk is cheap as they say, you should be based on your actions in and of themselves for the most part. Talk is just a very easy low risk form of action after all. If you say "I will save the orphans!" then do it, well that really shouldn't factor in. If you say "I will save the orhpans!" then you fail, or worse, purposefully botch it then if anything your reputation loss should be worse. But if they don't bake that in through some means I will live. The "Planscape" method was considerably too specific. We don't need five different versions of "Yes I will do it."

Indeed, unfortunately the OP is the concise version

Yes and Yes. Old games are old, the thing is today many of us have played newer games that not only "look" better but have better gameplay and are easier to simply sit down and play too. You can say whatever you want about Dragon Age 2, and I agree it is a par game, but if you boil it down to pure gameplay versus gameplay I think you are insane if you try to argue any of the infinity engine games are more fun to play. They are clunkier, slower, have terrible UI's, and don't have near as many options for characters to use with the exception of casters. Also I will say this. Very very few people are immune to the rose colored glasses effect. I loved the original thundercats cartoon when I was a kid. As an adult you would have to pay me to even think about watching it.

I think a lot of you are missing the mark. Again I would point out at the end of the post I state in no uncertain terms that this would be unlikely to be included in PE. I wouldn't even exactly recommend it considering this type of detail in character creation has to be a core concept of the game from day one to really work. Clearly PE is past day one. Just to be clear this is less about "scores" (as in not at all) and more about immersion, creating a character you want, and making the game react to that character in a way that is logical and reasonable. There would be no "right" answers. Being attractive would not be better than being ugly by default. It would only change how certain characters reacted to you. For every character that likes you for being a hotty there would be a character who would look at you and think pampered pretty boy pansy. None of the answers would lock you out of any skills, story quests, classes, etc. The worst thing you might lose is some side quests, and maybe some romance options. But again, this would happen no matter how you answered. Also class, race, sex, stats, even starting "skills" are all done before you even start with the "questions". These questions have nothing to do with what class you are, what perks you get, or anything else. All they determine is your Base "comeliness" your base "style" and base "perception/alignment" (call it something other than alignment if you want, it really doesn't matter). The two based on appearance would also be locked in for the entire game when done, only gear and possibly specific buffs would effect them from there on out. The other two would obviously both change based on choices you made in game. Once you meet an important NPC, like say King Puppylover, you get a base reaction score with him based on all these things. However, now that you have created that original base score it is now purely changed based on how you act towards him. The system is neither a high end simulation (no one is generating random dialog or on the fly quests, if Bob the NPC never had a quest he will not suddenly give you one no matter how much he likes you), nor is it all that complex in the long term. It just requires more detail in the writing of npcs, possibly more work done on multiple starter areas, and for the game to basically be built around the idea from day one. Lastly the questions again are 100% based on class, race, and potentially sex to a limited extent. They would not be "random" in any way.

The reason I say hidden is because of basically one thing. There are people who play games not to ... play them, but to "game the game" or go after achievements and treat the game they are playing as some sort of weird trophy item. Then there are also people who for whatever reason hate alignment, probably because they only ever see it done wrong. Ultimately the idea is about allowing the player to create the character they want, giving the game a way of reacting to that character in a "reasonable" way, making npc's slightly more "real", and just helping to immerse you in a game without forcing you to be "Shepard". Sometimes knowing these things are there though can get in the way of that and make you think I need to score XYZ instead of just making you focus on being the character you want. At least for some players.

Actually it is no where near that complex as your first paragraph seems to suggest. In math terms it is more like "this character won't enter romance with someone who isn't at least a 60 on a 0-100 score on this meter and a 10-40 on this one. Also they have to be male and any race other than dwarf or gnome. If you aren't in those ranges or are a dwarf or gnome those text options simply never show up. The point is a character generation system that gives the game data it can use to make the world in and of itself treat your character in a more "specific" way. This isn't over simulation, it is a simple checks and balances where at key moments a NPC will do stuff like have an extra dialog or say Nashkel instead of Bereghost. Or Edwin will not join your party cause you are a super nice guy and he is an evil jerk wad, but will later cause you started going evil half way through the game.

Uh maybe? If I find a rare sword with a storied past that can light on fire if a key word is spoken I don't mind needing to take it to a lore master to learn it's true name or how to make it catch fire. That said I should not need to identify or consult blacksmiths, alchemists, or other npcs every time I run into something that is nothing more than a longsword made of mithril with a minor enchantment, or a healing potion with an extra ingredient to give it extra kick. If it isn't a truly unique, rare, or unusual effect or power my party should be smart enough on their own cognition to figure it out.

Ok so I have been thinking about this a long time. I wanted to wait to post for a number of reasons, some to do with wanting the board to dilute down to only the serious forum visitors, others because I wanted to wait until it was all fleshed out and maybe some other threads had touched on things. So what is the post/topic about exactly? Namely Character Creation, more specifically how many games do it wrong. Secondly it is about Alignment, how many games do it wrong, why it matters and should be in game, how to do it right, how it relates to character creation, and lastly how it should effect npc interactions in a fairly simple way. Lastly it is about "romance" but more specifically NPC relationships in general. Before you proceed I am warning you now. This post.... it will be long. First before I go into anything we need to touch on the idea of "Comeliness". Specifically the idea of a statistical number representing how attractive your character is. For a number of reasons I think this is important to good RPG's of all types and should exist in P:E. No it should not be a simple "stat" derived from your other character statistics. You might wonder "Kark why does this matter and why the heck are you mentioning it at all?" For a couple reasons. First, I don't know about you, but in the real world it is my experience that appearance not only forms a large portion of a persons first impression but it can also be deceiving. For believable and immersive NPC interactions you need to make certain inroads to allow for a partially realistic approach. Part of that is making NPC's react based on things that make sense and are logical. Example: How many times have you been wandering through the woods, follow a road, and get ambushed by some bandits who demand a toll be paid? Isn't it kinda silly that they don't bother noticing you are armed to the teeth? You have dude wearing archmage robes with a staff pulsing with power behind you but they don't care? It takes you out of the game because there are no rules to account for your appearance. "But Kark WAIT! Wouldn't simply having them do a level check count too?" Well yeah.... but I did say appearances can be deceiving right? Who is to say your current mode of dress or appearance is an accurate representation of your power? Forton looks like a psycho crack head but I bet he could beat the crap out of an average bandit. Here comes Zaotaichi the Blind Masseuse who kills people like it is going out of style. By looks he is just some blind dude with a cane in shabby clothing. Sure he could kill you easy, but he doesn't "look" like he could. So we can agree appearance is important to NPC interaction. Whether you are trying to woo the Baroness into the bedroom, intimidate a thug, smooth talk your way to discounted good from a merchant, or inspire a group of town guards with a speech as the goblins attack appearance can have an effect on this. A large part of that is "Comeliness". After all the Baroness is not going to get it on with someone who looks like they took a hoof to the face then got chewed on afterwards. Likewise though is the veteran town guard sergeant going to relate to a pretty boy Adonis as well as he would a guy who looks like he could be found at the pub? So this isn't a one way street. Beauty is after all in the eyes of the beholder. So this is important to relationships with NPCS for a number of reasons because it can help form an initial reaction as well as a guidepost for certain entry requirements for relationships if they are in game. Of course gear and such can also have an effect on this. You can hate the games all you want but titles like Saint's Row and Fable for example are actually pretty good at this and serve as great examples of how gear should effect NPC reactions. So you need two "measures" for appearance. 1: Comeliness. 2: Gear or clothing. Combine them and you have a general idea of what your character looks like and how people will react at first glance. This is nice because it also gives a valid excuse for those who like the idea of "town clothes". So clothing is pretty obvious. How do you get a "Comeliness" score if it isn't just a stat (which it shouldn't be)? Thus we enter..... Character Creation. Blank slate characters SUCK. Don't get me wrong, I love the new Fallout games like New Vegas. I put over 200 hours in Skyrim. For me though they are not "blank slate" games because regardless of whether the game realizes it or works with it or not I create my own backstory for these characters. Just like I did in Icewind Dale, just like I do in Baldur's Gate with the caveat that Imoen is my friend "maybe" and Gorion raised me. How do you avoid the blank slate but still leave the character up to the player. Well you take a dash of Mount and Blade, a pinch of Ultima, a sprinkle of sweet roll crumbs Morrowind, a peppering of the old 16 bit original Ogre Battle game, melt it all down, and pour it all over a cake made from the character creator options in Dragon Age Origins. Meaning... You do more than just say "Yhat sex are you? What race? What's your Class? What are your skills/special powers? GO!" You start with the basic stuff like male or female and what race. Then you pick your class. Heck let's even roll our stats now. Then you get to the part that matters. What subrace are you? Meaning are you a Elf from those woods to the east? Or are you one of those Elves who live in that swamp to the north? Make a social class be chosen, what did you do for fun as a kid, so when you got older did you take up a job or go to some school, ever have a important someone, yada yada yada. You ask a specific series of questions that pin down (in general) where you grew up, what your status was socially, why that was your status (did you get solid into slavery or was your parents a merchant etc), how were you raised, what did you choose to do when you became a adult, and so on. This gives a general framework for your character. NPC's can now make comments about your accent, you can be given flavor text about how you visited a place once, basically the game has a set of general info that it can use to more immerse you in the game while allowing you to have actual control of who and what you want to be. You could (but don't have to) even use this to determine what sort of starting scenario your character plays out ala Dragon Age Origins just better. Depending on how far you want to take it these answers could even effect your stats in slight ways or your options come actual character customization. Third we go into the morality spiel. Maybe you aren't the Avatar and I am not a Gypsy in some wagon but this is important anyway. Once we get to the point where "you are an adult and you found yourself at X point" part of the questionnaire we redirect and put the player in a scenario based on previous answers. Now you get the morality questions that range through different topics and scenarios. Straight forward right? Lastly we finally get to actually customize our character maybe with facial models, body type, hair style, skin, eye, and hair color, yada yada. Whats neat is the options you have right now are based on your race, your sex, and the choices you made leading to this point. You might get stuck with a scar on your right eye no matter what because of how you answered the questions. So on so forth. In the end we are done and the character is created. Why did it have to be that complex, well I am glad you asked, because it diluted down into what I call the "Big 4". They are.... 1: Comeliness: Little did you know while customizing your character look in the background you are being assigned a score on how attractive you are based on the options you chose. Go figure that a ratty afro is not as sexy as long flowing full hair like Fabio. 2: Style: Simply put how intimidating/crude you appear versus how stylish and debonaire you are. That scar on your right eye may not actually make you uglier, but it certainly makes you look a lot scarier and brutish. So a guy with a low score is Sarevok on a bad day while a high scorer is James Bond. 3: Perception: This is primarily scored by the first half of the questions you got asked. It is in a nutshell how society in general sees your character. Are you a law abiding member of the upper social graces or a dirty roguish thug with no respect for authority? This is broken into two sub categories. Society and Morality. Society being the Law versus Chaos dichotomy and Morality being plain old good versus evil. 4: Alignment: Guess what this is? It is exactly the same as Perception, except instead of it being what society "thinks" of you it is the cold hard reality of your character. Society may have looked at you as a lawless scum of low morals for stealing food from the castle kitchens, but in reality you did it to feed your starving friend who would have died to illness without food. So while you might not respect laws, it is not to the degree society likely thinks, and while society considers theft evil, you did it for a moral reason. Get where I am going with this? The most important thing is that all four of these "stats" are 100% hidden. You simply don't see them or know they are being created. Thus character creation is about making the character you want, while giving the game the tools to understand and work around that character in an immersive way. Why do you need two separate "alignment" stats? Because one is what people will think of you the first time you meet, when coupled with appearance you get a base starter "reaction score". IE: How much does this character like me? As you interact with that character the "Perception" score is slowly over time changed by the "Alignment" score. They no longer base their opinion on what they "hear" it is now based on what they "saw". Lastly, and probably the most important, these things tie into important NPC interactions in a key way. Like I said, why would the Baroness hop in bed with a ugly dude? This can effect everything from what NPC's will refuse to join you as companions, to who will be romance-able (sorry Jaheira and Viconia now have different preferences instead of just wanting to get with you cause you are the main character and a dude), how major story npcs will relate to you (turns out the leader of the thieves guild was a better friend than the King), and it may even effect the story itself in some ways. The whole point is it allows for "blank slate" design in that you can be any character you want, while also creating a system that allows the game itself to react to that character in a reasonable and believable way. End result is NPC's that feel more real, a character that is unique to the player, and a story and world that you care more about. Will this make it into PE? Probably not. Will you write in exactly detail how you could do all this? I don't have all week so probably not again though I could go into some detail if I had to. I am posting this because I want to share my thoughts on these issues and how they can be addressed and done right, that's all. Feel free to share thoughts and or flame as you feel needed.

No. I am not Gary Stue, even if I am the main character of the game the universe does not revolve around me and I should be plenty capable of making mistakes or dealing with NPC's who just won't go my way on things. NPC's classes should be chosen based on history, personality, and all that. But it should be the class the NPC choose, not the one the game choose to make that NPC fit better with my character.

Uh you are right about the sound though they added new sound files themselves. Your opinion of the intro movie is an opinion. As for the portraits you are flat out wrong. They do work, it is just the "manual" does not give the correct directions. Also the new portraits are fine and it is pretty insulting to the artist who made them to insinuate they are photo shopped ice wind dale pics when they flat out aren't. Your only valid complaint is the gui. It does in fact stink. Not having custom sound files has never been a big deal to me personally so take that for what it is.

1: Depends on the NPC, depends on the situation leading to their death. No offense to NPC's or anything but sometimes I play a character who may not be too .... worried about going the extra mile to save a dude. Other times the character may be important to the plot or even the way I have decided to go with my character so maybe I will reload. It just depends. 2: Sure they should have quests and plots relating to NPC deaths. But only for MAJOR NPC's that are central to the plot or became extremely close to the main character either through friendship or a relationship.

Take your tree to the next level and go with what I suggested in the main thread. "Land Mass as God". One big tree isn't god, it is the whole forest! That and it might be out to get you....

"Heya! It's me Imoen! .... What? Why are ya looking at me that way? Fine I guess I will go clean the stables even though I'm smarter than you!"

There was a legitimate story reason why she has those stats. Open the spoiler if you wish for the answer. Yeah but that isn't much of an excuse when you consider that your own character can roll a 8, 8, 18, 16, 14 12.

Well that's a good thing because you really should have no clue what is going on if all you saw is that episode. Not sure why Osvir linked it instead of just discussing it. That said you are wrong about quite a few things but I can see why you make those assumptions. First this is not about some bad ass with a huge sword who saves the world. The world in this manga's story is basically.... screwed. The bad guys won, they won before the protagonist was even born. He literally never had a chance, at all. One of the over riding themes of the story is that "fate" is not governed by man (in the traditional sense) and that humans might not even have control over their own thoughts, feelings, or lives. That quite possibly there is a "master plan" or group of superior beings you never really see that have all the real control and people only have the "illusion" of free will. There is also a often not known over riding entity that only shows up (at least to this point) in the manga one time that is referred as being something equivalent to the "god of pure evil". It is literally just an entity of pure instinct and drive that controls the entire world and it's power is literally fed by the ideas and motivations of humanity as a whole. The implication being "god" is a bad guy but he is only a bad guy because people are. That and every "deity" or super powered being in the show (even the dude with no face and his brain hanging out) actually were originally humans who ascended to higher power through sacrifice. Which is basically what is happening in this episode with the main antagonist of the series Griffith who becomes the god Femto. The main character on the other hand is literally referred to as "the Struggler" at many points because his "fate" was to die in this episode but he survived. He can not "win", he even once fought one of these deities you see in this episode in it's regular avatar form and barely survived the fight despite killing it. Bear in mind it's "avatar" form is like 10% of their actual power, so against the real thing he would have been a dead man walking. So his goal is not "to save the world" it can't be saved as the whole philosophy of the show is the world is screwed BECAUSE man is evil. His goal is purely revenge against his once best friend (this evolves as the story goes along) and to heal the woman he is in love with who gets turned into a psycho/vegetable by the events of this episode. I don't really want to go further into it than that. Let's just say this show has a lot of philosophy backing it and Nietzsche probably would have loved it because it is about as Nihilistic as it can get. It can definitely apply to PE in many different ways.

Okay so after considering it.... Diety concepts.... I think it would be nice to see one of two, or both of these types of deities. 1: The deity as the "land". Be it a mountain worshiped by dwarves that is sentient, an elven forest with living trees and a sense of will power, or a massive natural cave where followers go to worship that is actually the buried "body" of the god itself I think this sort of thing can be cool and lead to some neat gameplay options. 2: The slightly more cliche but still cool god of many faces. Be it a ultra powerful god whose enemies split into pieces each becoming a lesser and independent being, a deity who became so at odds with themselves they had to "create" an offshoot of their own identity, or perhaps a more interesting take a deity that split into different beings due to a division that happened with their own worshipers each moving their faith in a different direction. Also I think it would be cool to see something similar to what you get in the Malazan novels. For example in those books there was one god that was sundered by it's own worshipers because they wanted to steal his power. The result turned him into this massive sky blackening swarm of locusts, bees, flies, and other insects. Each one was no smarter than a normal insect but they had a sort of hive mind and could always communicate with each other meaning if one fly found food the other 10 million insects in the swarm would bee line there. imagine a giant, mobile, flying, inexhaustible, creeping doom that never stopped. That's what this dude was.

Hahahaha yeah I am a roll whore myself. I am playing a fighter that ended up with 18/97, 18, 18, 12, 13, 12. Yeah you can call me a twinky in this one aspect

Yeah this is my fear. No offense to you guys here but a lot of people who seem to play these games and got excited for this uh..... Don't really bother with modern games anymore it seems like. This sort of stuff is literally par for the course with any modern game release on PC. Heck Nvidia puts out new drivers monthly (sometimes faster) these days and I have personally updated 4 times in the last 3 months. Many may also make the mistake of not doing a "clean" install when they do it. Heck I had to run 4 different redistribution files to get Borderlands 2 to finish patching on release day through Steam. This doesn't mean the game is buggy, a POS, or made poorly. This is literally just how it is now with PC gaming. You have to keep your stuff updated and I suspect many complaints I see on their official forums are from people who just don't game on PC anymore and don't understand this stuff.

Well, frankly no recent launch of a game was without problems. Dragon Age had delivery problems (at least in my country), same for Two Worlds 2. World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2 and Age of Conan had bad launchs, not to speak of Diablo 3... The same will happen to Project Eternity. One of many reasons to own a phyisical copy of your game is you generally will not have to deal with bogged down servers. Diablo 3 is of course an exception. Well once I finally got the thing patched I could play with no issue. Other than the fact that it is blatantly missing some graphics options, the ui is too large, and I am not sure I like the ui colors... It is a better version of the game. The fact that the fog of war renders cleanly with a nice appearance and you can now zoom in or out to get the game looking exactly how you want really helps.