Elerond

In PE mage would probably win, because if I am understood correctly full plate has high DT and daggers have poor armor penetration. Although that fighter probably has high deflection and mage will have hard time to hit him with anything else than grazes, so at the end it will probably will come to see which character build has better abilities/spells to do damage.

Well I give you a simple recipe to gimp a character in PE which I think should be possible: Make one attribute very strong, but don't take any feats/abilities depending on this ability. Another recipe: Give your character all feats and abilities good for two-wepon fighting but because he was disgusted about all the blood spraying on himself he uses a bow now. Another recipe: Maximize attributes and abilites for your monk being a first-class spell fighter, but the only spell he learns because of his peaceful agenda is 'Create Food'. Naturally I'm speculating here, but it would be really surprising if none of this worked. From what I understand, things like chance to hit/damage/deflection/defense etc. raise each level just because you're a fighter. So making such choices doesn't outright gimp you, it just makes you less effective. They gimp you if they make you so much less effective that you lose most of the fights against same level opponents just because your character isn't effective enough.

In PE could make fighter that has stats that you metioned or you could also make fighter that has: STR: 10 DEX: 11 CON: 10 INT: 18 WIS: 10 CHR: 13 And it would be as viable build as one you made. Of course there would be challenges where your build would be better and others where my build is better, but overall they both are as viable builds.

When we speak about UIs, more streamlined is better, because in streamlining you remove unnecessary components, which actually make using UI more complex and harder to learn. Of course there is always risk of over simplification when you streamline, which means that you remove elements that actually make using the UI easier and faster. So UI desing is finding that right balance between simplicity and showing too much. Of course there is need to optimize ammount of redundant movement and clicks and make content to be easily read and so on. And of course you also need UI to have good user experience addition to good usability. UI that is fun to use and rises wow effects in users are nearly always rated better than ui that are just very useable, even if its usablity is actually lower. So well balanced UI is the best option to go.

Fallout New Vegas isn't very good comparison as it was open world game, used different and more buggy engine.

It is difficult to say which game has best companions. I liked companions in BG and BG2, but those games had some what poor companion interaction method (timed conversations) which caused you to miss sometimes that interaction with you companions. PS:T had much better interaction method and even better interaction with the companions and in my opinion they where also much more intresting characters. MEs had very nice companion they in that sense that I liked to interact with them but in most cases that was more because of acting and animation than quality of writing, which was also at least decend if not good, but it in my opinion BGs and PS:T had better writing for companions, but that is probably because they didn't need to be cinematic in the interaction sequence. DA:O has good writing and acting for the companions, which is why it is bummer that I found them to be mostly unintresting character for my taste, otherwise I would probably say that it has best companions. Jade Empire has good and bad character with deced acting, but it falls short in every segment when you comparare it to other games. DA2 has more intresting character and even better acting than DA:O, but their writing especially in interactions with main character is some what flawed which is reason why I would drop it behind DA:O and MEs. Neverwinter Nights has very generic feel in it's companion charactes, but it's expansion packs has very intresting and well writen characters and same goes for Neverwinter Nights 2, but campaings where they are in are also shorter than in other games which make them harder to compare, but companions in Mask of the Betrayer and Hordes of the Underdark are very good. Kotor has good many good companions but it also has some most annoying companions that I needed to suffer through the game, which is why I would rank them high, but not in the top or near the top. Kotor II has also very well writen and acted companions, but it too has some companions that I didn't like so much. And its character interaction falls some what in parts in the end game. Fallout 1 and 2 both have funny companions that I really enjoyed, but they aren't mostly very deep characters, which works fine in those games, but still don't make them best made companions . Fallout New Vegas has nice companions but because of nature of the game they don't feel that important than what companions in other games feel. I liked companions in The Dark Eye: Drakensang too, but they overall I don't like them as much as I like companions in other games. River of Time has little better character but I still like companions in other games better. So there is several RPGs which I think have good companions and if need to choose which I really like most, I would choose PS:T because I like their philosophical writing and how they make me to think more than companions in other games and how they make fun of the typical rpg clichés.

Started to play Sacred 2 after four years pause, after I bought it again as part of humble bundle, I like it much more than I like Diablo 3 or any new hack&slash rpgs.

In computer games D&D has been anything but well balanced.

The torture you describe is the torture you hear about and see in the movies. What armies and militias around the world use is much more severe then that. As for the rapes you describe, well that goes in to the realm of torture (torture can include raping too). That is just you twisting my words, you know very well what I meant. The simple fact is if you look at them rationally, murder and torture are far worse then rape. If you look crimes rationally you need always context in which crimes where comited to say that something is worse than other. It is just arrogance say otherwise.

Are you joking? Do you know what torture is? Most rape is just nonconsensual intercourse, where sometimes the sex organs can be bruised. Torture causes people to lose various parts of their bodies. So no they are not comparable. Who said anything about self defense. I don't think that anywhere in this whole thread there was a mention of it. Why stop there, let's torture people to learn any information we need. Not just pedophiles. regular rapist too, we mustn't forget the pesky terrorist, and while we are at it, why not torture anyone that is accused of anything until they confess. Sound familiar? Yes I know what torture is, but do you? Torture can be anything from causing sleep deprivation (what most torture is today at least) to removing limps and organs from person. Rape can be only taking person freedom of choice away to causing great bodily harm by using iron rod, for example, to rape someone (Indian bus gang rape case). Even lightest form of rape and torture can cause severe psychological harm and in worst case the lead in painful death. You didn't exclude any killings in your orginal post, which was reason why I gave context where I see that killing another person is more acceptable than raping someone. And questions were to show that order which is worst and which is lightest crime changes depending on context where crimes are commited.

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here? Well, raping one person is lesser than me murdering 500 people or worse just from a numbers point of view. Most people would agree that Pol Pot is a worse human being than a rapist. But is raping million people lesser crime than murdering 500 people? Because you can also do raping in massive scale it is not only for murder and torture.

How they are worse? And aren't torture and rape even somewhat comparable as one is physical or/and mental abuse and second is physical and mental abuse? And rape can easily leave you with broken body and mind, and even lead to your death. And is killing in self-defence worse crime than rape, as you did kill someone? And is torturing information from sadistic phedofile kidnapper, worse crime than said phedofile raping his/her victims?

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here? Slavery, one of the popular evil choices, implies a certain amount of rape -- even when the slave isn't explicitly sold into prostitution, they're likely to be taken advantage of if they're attractive. And even if raping one's slaves is illegal, enforcing such laws is difficult at best, and when it's a slave's word against a free person, the slave's got pretty much no chance. Genocide as well, unless maybe the species is completely non-humanoid. It's hard to imagine someone brainwashed into treating a certain class of people as objects not taking advantage of their victims before slaughtering them, for the dead tell no tales. And yet, because these consequences are abstracted away... I'm sure you all know that old saw. "One is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." But in other note when slavery was legal, rape was not (although definition what is rape has changed also during the time, but in this thread people have been talking about act that has been seen as rape through most of the history). And through history discriminate against and even killing person different religions and cultures (even genociding them) has seen as acceptable and even legal thing to do, but raping your fellow citizen was not. And is use of rape as weapon of war any less bad than killing people? Because both things can destroy civilizations and terrorize people in submission.

In what sense it is any lesser crime than any other mentioned here?

And chance get bigger if you go against opponets above of your level. But this will probably only occur if you go off the critical path. Remove "chance"? Absolutely. It will have no impact on tactics as far as I can see. That is probably true that on critical path enemies will be about on your level. Lowering chance's impact, as there is still chance to miss, graze, hit and criticaly hit, so chance is not fully removed, but it will have less effect in the game. And when you sum this with other combat changes like engagement zones and disengagement attacks and etc. you will need to change your typical tactics from IE games and you also need to know how combat abilities in every class works so that you can actually be effective in the combat. Or so it looks to me that this will be the case, but of course this is only speculation from my part based on released information.

And chance get bigger if you go against opponets above of your level. In my opinion proposed system is very intriguing as it lowers luck's impact in the combat and forces player use more complex tactics and have actual knowledge how things work in the combat.

They made a Kickstarter which specifically mentioned Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment, what else did we have to go off? As I said previously I don't think "IE-like" means isometric graphics alone, graphics are completely cosmetic. To me it mean more so than so rule system. Because I don't think that NWN or NWN2 are IE like games even though they use D&D as their rule system. Because they have very different atmosphere because of their graphichs style. And here is quote from Kickstarter where Obsidian mentions IE games.

Screenshot looks nice, although characters, especially in chamber, look floating over the floor instead of standing on it. But I think that with bit stronger and more adjusted shadows will make it much harder to notice (and I think that it would also help if characters would look like they are moving). I love how colorful and detailed scene itself is and character models and equipment look fabulous. Excelent update as always.

Killable npc don't make world less static if world don't react people dying. So if you don't have resources to make world react to civilian slaughter you probably should not make it be possible in the game, because then there is at least some logic how game world works and reacts. Meaning less slaughter that don't have any impact in the world is in my opinion much worse than npc that don't die, because unkillable characters only take away player's choice in somethings (which isn't ideal in rpgs but reality but sad reality where we live), where world that don't react your actions is just dull and usually also very unbelievable.

Making killable npc to unkillable is so trivial operation that you can't even say it takes coding time as you can do it with bool variable and simple check function. And modern game engines features with all their fancy ready-made character system usually have such feature and much more variety giving systems already build in. But it will take lots of writing time to make world to react you random innocent villagers killings and without such reactions your immersion would probably break as well, even with ability to kill innocents, as it would feel quite hollow if game world don't react any way in your psychotic rampage. I think it would be nice if all npc can die in the game especially because of accidentaly thrown fireball and then world (at least faction which land you are) would see you as psychotic murderer and will send mercenaries to kill you and refuse let you in their cities, which would cause you sneak in. But as PE don't have huge ammount of extra resources to spent, so I am willing to sacrifice it, as it is thing that I rarelly did in old rpgs were it was some what possible, to get more reactivity and content in those playthrough styles that I most likelly will actually use to get through the game.

I think that would cause some problems as that would mean that everything would be thrown in the stash, which you can only access in safe places.

I hope Obsidian doesn't sacrifice their artistic integrity to please a damn ratings board. slap an 18+ rating on it, call it obscene if you must. Steam sells all the Postal games, I don't see why they would censor P:E. Anyway, I do hope that the evil extremes discussed here are extremes in the game, because it's not going to be the tone of my playthrough. In EU it is usually easy as we have our PEGI 18+ raiting (or somewhat similar raiting system in use) that allows about all non-illegal stuff to be included, but in USA and Canada it is more complex issue because of ESRB's M (Mature 17+) and A (adults only 18+) and how retailers attitude towards them (as many refuses to sell AO rated stuff) in those markets. Although it is usually sex that brings AO raiting for the games in ESRB rating system, which means that games can be have very brutal and violence in them if they don't have 'strong sexual content'. And Australia is always it's own case. And there is of course rest of the world also be considered .

This is already a niche market, mass market is call of duty/mass effect level. There are people who would pick those options and there is more of them then you think. To add on that, there are people who wouldn't pick those options but would like the game more for their inclusion. I mean for pete's sake, in bioshock the main character sold his infant daughter (not even the worst thing in the game) and the whole world loved the game. There is difference in including thing in the story and make thing as player choice.

Such acts needs reactivity from the game, which means that writer resources need to be sacrificed to make them work and as I don't see that I would enjoy such choices and reactivity in the game, therefore I am against adding such thing in the game as those writing resources could and in my opinion should be spend to write such options that I would enjoy to use.

Being Childkiller in Fallout made you character pariah in eyes of world and (nearly) everyone wanted to kill you, which made games somewhat unplayable if you did such act. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Childkiller And they did realized that that tomach kicking picture was too offensive