Thraxen

I think that there should be the freedom for their to be full realism, but it would probably have more off an impact if it were subdued, or at least not completely in your face. When that happens, there's a chance that you'll just be taken out of it because you'll distance yourself from whatever is happening on screen.

The main thing is really that they aren't forced in to where they don't belong for no reason other than being PC or something. As long as they fit their own backstory and their surroundings, it shouldn't really matter. Luckily, Obsidian tend to do this kind of thing pretty well, so I'm not too worried.

Never massively liked durability on stuff if it goes down stupidly quickly. New Vegas did it alright with the durability not affecting effectiveness until it's under 50%, but it'd be better if there was some way to keep your weapons in a decent condition without having to splurge a load of money on a blacksmith. Maybe if you don't clean/sharpen your weapons, they lose durability much quicker?

Sometimes failing miserably can make a success the next time all the better. Of course, you'd need the first scenario where you fail to not be incredibly depressing and make you not want to play again. On top that, there's always the sacrifice victory, which has a few different outcomes depending on what you've actually sacrificed. (Yourself, your party, your relationship etc.)

If I remember correctly, most of them had about two or three lines of backstory, but they occasionally commented on stuff around you when you brought them along. The combat dialogue was pretty funny too. It's just a shame that so many of them had unfinished storylines. Sulik never found his sister, Goris couldn't save the V13 Deathclaws.

Well, some well known games that have had this problem in my own experience: Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 1, Fallout 3 (not sure about fallout 2 - I seem to recall it wasn't such an issue?), Mass Effect 1 & 2 (3 had some interesting ideas in this regard). You could make money scarce - and I believe that it a part of the solution - and you could make high barter skills necessary but then the issue you would face is that not all players would focus on barter skills and so would need more money. But money is scarce so you would need to make purchasable items not necessary so that players who don't barter aren't at an unfair disadvantage. But if purchasable items aren't important, then why buy them? Then you've got the problem of what to spend your money on - so you end up stockpiling it and hey presto, rich as sin again. I think you're going to have money, you need viable money sinks. As I understand it, that was sort of the idea behind health and mana potions in the first place but it was crude, not very effective but never really got developed. @Thraxen, you and I appear to be in accord I think. Rewards for investing money should not be more money - just compounding the issue. It should not be better equipment either, making fights easier as, if fights aren't balanced for that then fighting is too easy and boring, so you are punished not rewarded, or if fights ARE balanced, then if you don't have the funds then you are stuck. It should be something tangible for the player. So, new content seems like a good alternative. I like your expedition idea. Similar to Dragon Age's dwarf plot but in a far more involving and practical way. The more things you invest in could alter the course of the expedition Exactly. I suppose you could liken it to a choose your own adventure type scenario, if you don't have the right equipment or personnel, you'll have to try and figure out another to get past and obstacle, likely costing you some items or guards along the way. If you run out of guards and then you get attacked by bandits or raiders, you'll probably have to abandoned the expedition and escape instead of fighting against impossible odds. Of course, more equipment and men would cost more, so it could be a real dilemma: try and expedition with low funds to try and get some good stuff earlier on, with a higher risk, or wait until you're able to prepare better and therefore more likely to succeed.

If you want to make a topic about how Bioware can't make games and Eternity should be as unlike them as possible, why not do that. Meanwhile, can we get back on topic here?

Sure. I have no problem with "Elite Guards" existing and having some presence in the game. I just want that presence to be consistent, throughout. Unless things start going **** up close to the end of the game, at which point it'd make sense to see more guards in general and more Elite guards all over a city.

Seems like a cloak would be useful in a lot of situations, if you knew how to use it. Make yourself harder to see if you're trying to sneak somewhere, help you defend yourself a little better in combat (like how Batman could stun an enemy in the Arkham games by covering them with his cape) or just make the enemy have trouble hitting you because the cloak obscures where your body is. Oh, are we going the the "Cloaks have a hood, Capes don't" method of describing each one? Or Are Cloaks just anything can be wrapped completely around you, whilst capes can only go over your should or back?

If you're encountering a fellow adventurer (or whathaveyou) over the course of the game several times then, sure, I'd agree. But it makes no sense for, say, a typical town guard of the setting to be more skilled by leaps and bounds by the end of the game just because the main character has levelled. That's not authentic -- it just reinforces that you're playing a game. I also feel it's pretty daft if "Elite Guards" suddenly start appearing in places where previously a standard guard would have sufficed, for no reason other than the fact the game knows you're a higher level, now. Maybe no Elite Guards appearing in the place of the regular ones as you level, but if they're present from the start of the game (assuming we're talking town guards here) either guarding the more important areas of a city or if there's just a couple of them patrolling around the market or something. It would, in my opinion, make the game seem a lot more real.

Well, not really. They're still party-based RPGs and this topic is all about companion interactions, so they are some of the most contemporary examples that we can look at. Granted, they aren't amazing games (especially 2), but to ignore them completely and not even try to learn from what they did wrong just seems a little stubborn.

Definitely needs to be something to spend money on other than equipment. Otherwise, by the end of the game there's either way too much inflation and you can't afford anything without a huge grind, or you've saved up so much that spending it is a complete non-issue, like you said. Maybe there could be a way to invest in the land surrounding your home (if we get one), renting out the land for people to work on. Possibly unlocking some new quests in the process. We could even fund some kind of expedition to ancient ruins, giving a new area to explore with the chance of some great loot, but it'd cost a bomb and you'd need to prepare for it pretty well (hiring guards, researchers etc.) But basically, make sure that there's a reason to spend money that's not just an extra +3% critical chance on a slightly better belt, make the reward of saving the money be more gameplay, not just easier gameplay.

You know that insulting people because they like something that you don't isn't really the best way to put your point across, right? The DA games were only brought up to provide examples which can be improved. Regardless, can we try to get back on topic somewhat?

What if you have a low Intelligence and your journal becomes a mess of misspelled words, with crossing out over everything and little pictures in all the borders relating to what happened in that particular quest. Maybe you could even start off with just basic stick figures, but the more quests you do, the better the drawings get until you're pretty much doing murals in the borders. If you're pursuing a romance (if they're included) there could even be a page full of "PC + Love Interest" hearts.

I want to see characters interact with each other during important events. Taking an example from DA2 *spoilers*: When Anders blows up the Chantry and all the party members pretty much stand around and voice their feelings on the matter one at a time. Pretty much listing off if/why they'll be coming with you or not. They hardly ever talk to each other or discuss between themselves about it, because apparently your character is the centre of the entire universe and only your opinion matters. This all happens right in front of the still burning Chantry too. I'm not even sure if they checked for survivors. Basically, I'd like to see companions be able to influence each other, as well as be influenced by the PC. It'd certainly make them seem a lot more real.

Maybe you can rest in a camp, but if you have a healer in your party then it can help speed up the healing of any serious injuries. Otherwise natural healing would take several months if you're too cheap to afford any healer at all.

Didn't Dragon Age 2 *attempt* that? I must confess, I'd like to see it actually done well, with a city that feels alive. Something that, when you're in it, you don't feel like the centre of everything and more like just another cog in the wheel. Oh, I'd love to see it have something resembling the Shades too.

I think romance should differ from party member to party member. Someone might like you more for what you do in a fight (or avoiding one), whereas another character would like it if you get to know them more. That said, you're right. I'd like to care about the characters even if I don't care to get inside their underoos.

I just want to see a character like Hammer from Fable 2, but just decked out in full plate or somesuch.

I liked the into in Mount & Blade. There were so many options with so many different combinations. You got to choose your heritage, childhood, teenage years and current profession all in a neat little setup. Everything affected your stats, but not to a huge degree. You could still mold your character into whatever you wanted, so it pretty much just gave you a nice boost to what you wanted from a gameplay perspective, but you weren't punished for going for strictly roleplay choices. Also, I enjoyed the descriptions of each option.

Depending on who we'll be interacting with in the game, it might make more sense to go with the separate meters for morality and reputation. Fallout 2 had that system, I think. One meter for Fame and one for Karma. You could still make just as much of an impact on anyone regardless of how good, bad or neutral you were (although certain people would react differently depending on karma, slavers for example). However, I think it might be better if you don't have any kind of notification for what your morality is, outside of how other people react to you and your decisions. It'd make you less likely to just try and max out your morality without thinking about your choices and it might be fun to think you're doing the right thing, with your party members agreeing with you. Then you realise that those guys are unmitigated bastards and you've just accidentally accepted an assassination contract on a nun. Curse these assassins and their flowery, foppish language! Or, what if you DO see a morality slider, but it's based on your perception of your morality and not on what other people think of you. You could think that you're some kind of holy crusader, righting wrongs but then you get to a fairly large town and the guards show up and try to arrest you because you've been murdering people who were just getting into disputes over whose field was whose and wiping out villages of kobolds and goblins who were little more than minor nuisances. At this point your character's view of his own morality starts plummeting wildly and he decides to fight his way past the guards, slaughtering them all and sending him squarely down a path of merciless bloodshed as he tries to justify his actions to the world. No, wait, that's a little too heavy for me, let's not do that. The guards just take your favourite sword off you instead.

Depending on who we'll be interacting with in the game, it might make more sense to go with the separate meters for morality and reputation. Fallout 2 had that system, I think. One meter for Fame and one for Karma. You could still make just as much of an impact on anyone regardless of how good, bad or neutral you were (although certain people would react differently depending on karma, slavers for example). However, I think it might be better if you don't have any kind of notification for what your morality is, outside of how other people react to you and your decisions. It'd make you less likely to just try and max out your morality without thinking about your choices and it might be fun to think you're doing the right thing, with your party members agreeing with you. Then you realise that those guys are unmitigated bastards and you've just accidentally accepted an assassination contract on a nun. Curse these assassins and their flowery, foppish language!

It certainly doesn't stop you from reloading, but it allows you more of an option to play without reloading. Whenever I think of this issue, I'm reminded of the early parts of Baldurs Gate 1 (and in particular, that one stupid wolf to the north of your starting position after the prologue). You really had no choice but to reload after almost every death, because of how exponential deaths would be (after minsc died, everyone was in for a hard time), and how you couldn't really afford to keep getting those resurrection spells because [Frequency of death]*[Cost of Resurrection] > [value of loot earned in the amount of time it'd take for one of your party members to die]. And so you get into the habit of always reloading, and get stuck in it. In Dragon Age, I remember continuing on a lot, even after really racking up the injuries, because while they made things harder, forging on ahead seemed less inconvenient than reloading and playing a section all over again. Sure, there's the option of savescumming to get the absolute best possible outcome, but why bother? Not that Dragon Age is the model we should be looking towards. I like those games (especially the first one) made death too inconsequential. It was only when I was being most careless, in the longest marathon dungeons, that the injuries started to rack up enough to really matter. I like the DA:O method of party members going down and coming back up injured, but the injuries never really seemed to be that major and they were so trivial to heal. Maybe a system like that, but with bigger penalties for injuries (e.g. Broken arm - can't use that arm to fight with, for example) and if you're able to say, splint the damage it still gives a penalty (you can use the arm, but only do 25% damage with a weapon/shields are much less effective/bow have an huge chance to miss or do less damage) until you can find a healer and properly fix the damage. Then if someone gets too injured, say after accumulating three injuries, regardless of whether you've treated them or not they can't fight or do much of anything until you get them fixed up.