Arkeus

You do realize that people need to vote in all three categories, right? So we are forced to vote in 'If Yes'. Furthermore, The "should they be sexy" part is dumb as hell, as the wording is chosen in such a way that there is no middleground at all.

It's not about 'inferiority problems', it's that willfully taking an obviously inferior path never feels good. You might love Druids or dwarven fighters to the point that you will take them even if they are weak (i am that way with druids), but that doesn't mean that it's not annoying to willfully making your character weak. Especially if you like overcoming challenges. In that case, if you can beat the game with a weak char in the hardest difficulty, you'll feel something is wrong with the game, and if you can't, well, you may feel you need to use a stronger char.

[media=youtube] [/media]Here you go!

No it isn't. Because someone who wants to play a effective character that isn't cheese, e.g a semi-normal character that is of a preferred class, will always know that by picking, say, storm instead of haste, he is making his character much weaker, even if it make 'sense'. By "letting players what they want to do", you are basically saying Any players that doesn't meta-game will always know that he is purposefully making his character weak. And this is not something that most players like knowing, that they are making their characters weak.

I still see 13 levels...

I find it interesting that people don't want to have the game "restrict" them, but then go on saying that people should learn how to restrict themselves. This pretty much means that they know perfectly well that no one is going to restrict themselves, as, well, we want to be able to use the game possibilities fully. It's just not fun, to, say, decide we can't use fireball because it will destroy the enemy too quickly. Or not equip carsomyr. And so on. So, basically, we should be asking the devellopers to design the game with a baseline of "people are not going to restrict themselves". Now, it's obvious that most of us don't want the designers to restrict us either (Which is flat out weird, as the very point of a game is to restrict the player. No game exist that is not built on enforced restrictions). This means that encounters, magic and ability system should be designed in such a way that degenerate gameplay doesn't make the game degenerate.

The 'person' seeing his own soul as an external being is totally normal. Think about it: For most people, they grow up and becomes who they are with only minimal influences from their past lives. However, there is always a 'danger' of their soul emerging and their past lives overwriting their current life. This means that, for example, a young dwarf wife could, for example, believe she is a human king that died a couple of years ago and try to get back his wife, thus endangering a conflict both within the person but also in the lives of everyone around. In practicality, it's normal for people to be very, very worried about their souls.

I am pretty sure thye will only voice key scenes of main villains, if even that.

Except that all the characters equipments are quite realist. Caedun was the only one who had something that wasn't realist, really.

Are we going to have an update to the endless dungeon image when the the numbers of levels will be 'set'? That would be pretty cool.

It's the opposite, mate. The violent option has ALWAYS been more beneficial in any kind of CRPG. There isn't one CRPG where the nonviolent option was on average beneficial. Furthermore, you are still not understanding what they mean by objective-based and the goal of it. You are purely speaking of it in term of "violence" and "non-violence" when it's also in term of "helping the lizards or helping the guards" and so on. Basically, you are working on the premise that objective-based will mean that the nonviolent option will be easier and more enjoyable, when the devs went on record to say that there won't be "insta-win" dialogue options. The "diplomacy" options would be about learning more about the npcs as well as minor bonuses, not for insta-win and bypassing fights. What there is likely to be is 2/3 ways to resolve a quest, and all of them being roughly as hard as each others, and as time-consuming.

I recall Sawyer talking about objectives and sub-objectives, including a specfic example of a "kill that monster in the wild".

First, let me say this is the exact reason i never finished the dwarf roads- my characters were already level 25+ at the time, and "exp" was of no importantce whatsoever, and the whole thing was boring as hell. Now, then, here is the thing: You are continuing to ignore that a long-ass dungeon will be cut in many different parts, each giving exp. There won't ever be a "two hours of fighting without reward" because a°) the simple fact that the devs want objective-exp means they don't want such scenarios of long ass boring fights, and b°) you will get your exp. What you won't get is the exp for each different 'kills', but XP when, for example you have "taken care of the monster blocking the passage" or "taken care of the demon wanting your soul", and so on. You will still get that exp, man.

Not really. Alistair stays dead in DA2 if you killed him in DAO; Zevran reappearing in DA2 after being killed in DAO is a confirmed bug, he is not supposed to do so. Leliana is a confirmed retcon though. The 'default' is all three survives, though. Sure, you can import a game, but they all survive if you don't.

Well, Minsc was in BG1 Dyanheir's 'guard', and he wasn't badly done there, though the BG1 characters had less done on them than the BG2. In BG2, he was the only character without his own quest. What he had was a small character-arc with Aerie (but you need to take her...) as well as being generally awesome. You will note that Minsc being awesome only happens if there is no character arc with Aerie, and that he certainly isn't being broken by introducing a romance arc (after all he could have had one, his woman died so he obviously is ready for pickings like jaheira, right?).

It's hard choice, but I tend to agree here with Patrick - but it's really 'close call'. The more choices we have in the game - the better. Romance - is a type of choice, basically. But it should be done well, as other things in the game. Romances take away choices, though. If you are have a romance-able character as a companion, it means everything you do when you talk to him would be about romance, because that's how he will react. You cannot have a simple conversation without him/her coming into your character. Likewise, it also means a lot of character-type can't exist, or if the author try to do a certain character type but add romance, then it will destroy it. Let's give examples: +Jaheira: Jaheira was supposed to be a very much older Aunt-like character in BG1, who has been married for a while. Her husband dies, and she has a quest about her old masters (the harpers). She also becomes romance-able... and 99% person fo her character dies then. Also, saying you don't want to go out with her is the 'end' of talking to her (like saying you do want to, amusingly.) +Alistair: Alistair is the classic paladin companion, except he is a horny boy, and if you are too nice to him he WILL try to romance you- even if you are already with someone else, or whatever. He will take any and all comments that agrees with his way of thinking as "she is already dating me". And now, for controversy: +Avelline in DAII: People might say DAII is awful and so on, and it's clearly a action-rpg. But it did do some things right, and Avelline is clearly one of those. She is your big sister. Your character can try to flirt with her, and she will remain oblivious. She might even kiss you- as a good friend. In her case, the writers stuck to the characterisation, and it was awesome. Tll;dr: Having romanceable characters mean that you lose options when you use said characters, AND they usually end up being very badly done or destroyed by the romance.

You'll have rewards in terms of loot, story, and other stuff, and that's discounting actual exp rewards for sub-objectives. Not only that, but you shouldn't get a reward for a partly done thing. That's how life works, after all. There is a reason that objective-based is important, and that's pretty much the "we need the exp" attitude we have here: it means an enormous quantity of players won't even consider not doing the meta-game "let's have maximum exp" solution.

That depends on the design of the stealth system, obviously, but every stealth system I've ever seen designed has been faster and shallower than an equivalently well designed combat system. Stealth systems that are 'difficult' also generally involve reload spamming because in stealth games, detection ~ failure, and I find that design principle distasteful. Engine wise, isometric games are worse vessels for stealth games because of the overhead tactical view. I'm not saying that OE is incapable of designing a better stealth system. But I don't have faith in them doing so, while I do have faith in them designing a decent combat system because all they need to do is take what existed in the Infinity Engine games and port them. You are making the point for 'For' here- a lot of people won't do the stealth thing, and will just kill the enemies- and will get the exp regardless as they do the objective by killing the enemies. They'll still get the exp regardless, as killing the enemies will give it to them. Moreoever, the choices aren't 'stealth/diplomacy/combat', as the Devs were quite clear that diplomacy will almost never replace combat. The choices are going to be "help the peasants or help the kobolds" and so on. Having the exp for "objective" just means that stealth is no nerfed, not that combat is nerfed. Most players are going to enjoy the combat, so they won't see a need to "rush" by reloading dozens of times and ending up taking more time.

Anyone should be killable (Though some should be so hard to kill that it would be literal suicide), but if you kill a mainquest character your future "saves' will now have a tag saying you can't complete the game anymore.

It is more about playstyles than party make up. If a game gives you more than one way to finish a objective (as a proper rpg should, which is sadly rare nowadays), then it makes sense that there is no "one way" that is above all the others, at least in most cases- as havign a strictly better way make all the players who are trying to roleplay a different kind of character who would never agree to that way 'penalized' for this. Sadly, in a lot of games the 'true way' was diplomacy+ stealing + betrayal of what you just said for exp. The 'per objective' means that you wouldn't get more exp for that betrayal, and thus if you chose to betray them it would only be about roleplay, not about exp and meta-gaming. Of course, it would also mean the other ways won't be penalized for roleplaying their character.

The 'too overbloated' is the Xenoblade syndrome, where 99% of quests are 'fetchquests' and if you do even 20% of them you are 20 level too high compared to the map you are currently in. This means it makes for boring combat as well as boring quests, and you can very well find the pacing is bad. OTOH, this is because of bad quests as well as badly done balance.

If the combat is annoying and worthless, then yes it's good that you skip it.

WOOOHOOOOOOOOO! Crazy fun is had!

Funnily enough, a great many classic heroes in books are totally like that. There is something to be said about levelling up like a true rogue, and it should definitely be viable. Honestly, it should give a lot of exp to do all that stuff

Yeah, i am loving the talk of Goal-oriented exp. It sounds like a great way to encourage players to look at alternative ways of finishing quests without doing a meta-gaming "what gives the most exp" solution. There is in fact nothing that says you cannot grind while explorating and killing monsters, just that you are also "doing something" when killing the monsters. E.G: "killed a great many kobolds" and woohoo you get a "kobold hunter" feat as well as some exp, etc. It's just that goal-oriented is much, much better if you want to make actual role-play.