RogueBurger

Why do people want to limit dialog options so much? It seems so counter-intuitive to me.

If you only care about the destination, not how you get there, sure. Though the consequences of earlier branches can come in to play later in the game. And it's possible for branches to be much more meaningful to the story than say the Hordes of the Underdark's "chose which order to do the mid-game quests, you won't have time for all of them" even if they do converge later. Another idea: branches don't need to be explicitly chosen at the branch point. Eg if you help someone early in the game, they might rescue you much later on so you get a chase the bad guy sequence instead of an escape from prison sequence (there could be multiple possible rescuers!), or a companion might or might not betray you at a certain point based on a whole lot of previous choices and interactions. It's still the illusion of choice. In 99% of games, you'll still end up at the same ultimate boss fight, or ultimate showdown, or final whatever, whether you companion betrays you or not. I want my choices to mean something in the game. If my companion betrays me, fights me, and dies, but has no major effect on the rest of the flow (other than, "oh, he's not here"), it feels completely pointless. If I do something in the game that would endanger the friendship of my companions, I want it to have earth-shattering ramifications. I want my choice to kill him off to have meaning in the game world. If it's just another 5 hour quest segment, and I'll go on to save the world whether he's alive or dead, the choice looses that much weight.

It's pretty much a tie for me between PST and BG2. I love the characterization in BG2, but I also really love the philosophical undertones of PST.

Conversations checks should be based on the characters being spoken to and your words and actions leading up to the conversation. If an NPC is naturally wary, anything that you say that could be construed as a lie or hiding something will make him less inclined to help you. If you help and NPC, he'll be more inclined to help you. If you've done nothing but kill people in the town, the good NPCs will not want to talk to you, but the more shady types will perk up. There should be no charisma or persuasion stat. It should all happen organically.

The whole point is that games DO NOT employ branching decisions regularly. They give the illusion of choice by giving maybe one or two real decisions near the end of the game and giving the illusion of choice the rest of the game. Most games will give you a choice, let you run a couple quests based on the choice, and then put you back down in the main flow exactly where'd you'd be if you'd chosen to do something else, plus or minus a morality point, or a companion, or something that is not related to the main flow. I'd love a branching plot like a illustrated above. But they don't exist for the reasons I've already provided. As such, given the two options left -- the illusion of choice and then a couple of endings based on the late-game decision, or a really well developed plot that doesn't rely on pretending to give choice -- I'd chose the latter.

There's no need for a major choice to be right at the beginning. I'd generally expect the early stages of the game to set up what comes later, and you can't make meaningful plot-related decisions till you've gotten far enough for your PC to have an idea what the plot is. I'd suggest a couple of choke points in the mid game with alternate paths between them, and real branching out at the end. And the usual level of choices and reactions to past choices within each section (so the choke points would play somewhat differently depending on how you get there). Eg 5 hours [ two 5 hour options ] 5 hours [ three 5 hour options ] 5 hours [ four 5 hour options ] as a simple example of 60 hours content in a 30 hour game. It could be broken up in a more complex manner, eg an endgame with three 3 hour options followed by two additional 2 hour options in each branch (for a total of six endings) Your example illustrates the exact problem I have with the system. It keeps merging back with itself. So those three big 5 hour events are ultimately meaningless because at the end of 5 hours you'll end up at the same place no matter what. If the choices are going to be real game-altering choices they need to permanently branch off. Like so: |--[5 hours]--| |--[5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| |--[5 hours]--| | | |--[5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| [5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| | | |--[5 hours]--| |--[5 hours]--| | |--[5 hours]--| |--[5 hours]--| |--[5 hours]--| Here we have a 20 hour game with 3 major game-changing events that only have two choices each for a total of 75 hours of game that needs to be developed. Every 5 hours you add to this game increases the development needed exponentially. Every extra choice you add to any game-changing event increases development exponentially. Every game-changing event that you add increases development exponentially. The moral of the story: you can't have very many real choices in a video game. The game will ultimately have to follow a limited number of predefined paths which may or may not offer you the illusion of choice. I would prefer that they got rid of the branching storyline all together and wrote one storyline that is amazing and long.

This topic made me think of something else that I dislike about most RPGs: 'racism.' Look at the real human race; we have brutes, we have amazing intellectuals, we have thousands of different cultures and religions. Why is every made-up fantasy race so pigeonholed into a specific stereotype? The nice orc, the brutish elf -- these are all rare exceptions in most settings. I'd love to see other races in Project Eternity that are just as wonderfully varied as the human race.

I don't feel like adding more top-tier talent would result in much net improvement considering that team already in place. I trust them completely as it is, and I wouldn't want any of them to compromise any of their ideas because there are too many people with a say at the top.

I'm not a big fan of non-humanoid races in a fantasy setting. If they can think up unique enough humanoid races that haven't been done yet, good for them, I'd love to see them; otherwise, I'm cool with the standard ones.

The thing is that Interplay/Bioware allowed those merchants and items to be modded in, so they ultimately were available to everyone. If Obsidian is willing to do that too, I'm more okay with it.

Co-op is not a new concept to game development. And budgeting is done before a project starts, regardless of whether it's crowd-funded or not. Any development team worth their salt should be completely able to budget out a feature like co-op to within a reasonable ballpark. How else would any co-op-inclusive game ever get funded?

I don't know if this is possible within Kickstarter itself, but I'd love to see stretch goals for things like co-op, mods, player houses, etc. priced out fully on their own. Then people can divide up what they want to pay among the things they want to see. If something does not reach 50% funding by two weeks, then you cut it and people have to redistribute their funds elsewhere. You continue pruning until you have only things that people have specifically decided to fund and are fully funded according to the budget you need to make it happen. That way, you no longer have to argue about whether some feature is worth it or not.

I really, really, really, really do not like turn-based games. I know some/many/some-indeterminate-number of people do like it, and I don't fault them. However, I'm a huge, huge fan of the IWD/BG/NWN pause mechanic. That's a big part of why I fell in love with those games, and when I freak out and jump up and down because someone is doing a modern game based off the old Infinity Engine games, it's partially because of that type of mechanic. So I have to no, please don't do turn-based combat. Please keep it as similar to the IE standard as possible.

I'd be happy if the game was shorter but more flexible. Instead of a 60 hour game where you do all the quests every time, how about a 30 hour game where half the content could be totally different depending on the choices you make? Because, unfortunately, splitting it in half only account for one major choice at the beginning. So while that might cover the two extremes of good and evil, what about plot-changing choices in the middle? If they are really plot-changing to their fullest extent, then each one of them would increase the development needed by another 50%. And if you already broke the game into two separate plotlines at the beginning, you'll need two different mid-game choices, with now four different plotlines going forward. There only way of getting around it is either giving the player the illusion of choice while not having the choices have as much effect (think of any game with good an evil paths that have the exact same chain of events, even if in each one you choose to be evil), or only having a couple choices and sticking to those. It my experience, the former is much more prevalent in RPGs and I'm somewhat bored by them. I'd love to see one or two plotlines developed much more fully. I think the games that best exemplify what I'd like to see are the Witcher games. I won't lie, those games are pretty much the only modern RPGs that compete with my love for the old Infinity Engine games.

I agree in principle. However, in an isometric game, I'm mostly concerned with being able to tell my characters apart at a glance. To that end, I'd like to see a lot of variance in armor style, color, and size. But, I do concur that it should all be at least somewhat realistic and practical looking.

Here's the problem I see. The more options we get, both in number and variance, the less those options will probably really matter to the overall plot. Why? Because there are finite resources available, and every meaningful choice increases the amount of development needed proportionate to the amount of meaning and weight that choice hopes to carry. Because of this, over years of playing RPGs, I've come to not really care about multiple ways of playing through storylines. I pretty much always end up playing through as the "canon" player, because that's usually the storyline that fits the best and is the most fleshed out. What I would like to see out of Obsidian is either they do put the time into fleshing out every single choice in the game and make them all meaningful and not just one more thing that get tallied for the finale, OR they only give us one storyline but make it the best storyline ever and instead of giving us choice in the story give us choices in our relationships with our companions. I'd be happy with either. What I don't want to see is a boxy plotline like Bioware's recent ones have been like (don't get me wrong, I love Bioware and I love their modern games, I just don't want this to be a modern Bioware game).

GIMME THREE-SPOUTED TEAPOTS, OBSIDIAN! OR ELSE!

I'd love to see a morale system that is tied into a morality system (e.g. an evil necromancer companion would not be pleased if we started helping orphans), however I do not want a morality system unless it's multidimensional and much, much more complicated than "a) good answer b) neutral answer c) evil answer". If it got rid of "good" and "evil" completely, and instead built each character's morality completely from scratch (so maybe the evil necromancer was an orphan himself, and if you put time into getting to know him you find that out, and then he can still be the evil guy that he is, but he might silently approve of you rescuing the orphans... just as a simple example). If each character has his or her own custom personality that dynamical reacts to your actions, I'll be one happy camper.

Well, with a linux version a possibility, Steam can't be the only source of the game. I would indeed love to see a DRM free version, and even more so I'd love to see you partner with GOG.com to release it there. They deserve a big game like this.

I'd like to see about 60 hours of gameplay in the vanilla game and have expansion hit down the road for a total of probably 100 hours of official gameplay. I think 100 hours in the base game is a bit too much to ask for, but anything less than 60 will make me sad.

I think more important than modding tools (which are important, don't get me wrong) is an open and easy to manipulate file and resource architecture. Modding NWN was so great and easy to do because every game file you'd ever need to access was at your fingertips.

I'm in the minority. I don't care about non-storyline lore. When I think back to a game like Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment, I don't remember and cherish any of the fluff. I remember the characters for who they were in the game and how the interacted with me. I remember the choices I had to make, and the outcomes arose. I find fluff to just get in the way.

I loved co-op in the Infinity Engine games and I think NWN followed with a great multiplayer system that tied beautifully into it's moddability. I really hope at least the structure makes its way into the game, even if there is no special multiplayer content.

I just want to say that even though I'm completely 100% behind the Kickstarter, and I've already pledged, I don't like the fact that you're giving away an exclusive in-game item (regardless of whether it affects balance). I don't like it when developers make parts of their game inaccessible a whole section of the community. I understand that you are trying to incentivize pledging, but I've always felt that sales incentives should neither touch the game itself nor be unobtainable after a certain time. I also understand that you can't exactly go back on what you've said you'd give people, so I would be happy if you at least promised not to offer any other exclusive in-game items for any other promotion. Again, I love the project and the spirit behind it, I just hope that you can stay as far away from modern gimmicks like that as possible.