Jarmo

I'm on the edge about this. Yes, adds realism and ambience stuff. Yes, it'd be cool to spy someone who goes here and there. But in a few recent games it's been done (fallout NV) it was actually pretty annoying. Need to find this somebody? Well he's walking around somewhere around the city, good luck with that. Guess it'd be reasonable to find him in his home, but he only comes in at 9pm and locks the door right away. To do it right, you'd need all kinds of mechanisms. Knocking on doors, banging and yelling on doors. Asking people "have you seen xx?". Sending notes requesting a meeting. Waiting around with "pass time until xx is seen" triggers. Would be nice, possibly. Not sure if it'd be worth the effort, much depends on how much time we're going to be spending hanging about in the cities. What kind of quests will be in the game.

Though. If you don't get XP from the random encounters and if the opponents are not loot bags, basically just giving you some crude clubs or some giant rats teeth, and you risk getting injuries that are not easily healed, doesn't that then make it undesirable to rest in some random dungeon corridor? Thus, almost like in IE but better?

Couple of things. Yeah, chaotic evil characters playing it clever should get the best rewards. Playing it greedy should get most cash, otherwise greedy players pretend to be noble. Yeah, logical rewards. Not only meaning saving a princess should net a big honkin' sack of gold and pearls, but also helping an old lady across the street shouldn't be rewarded with 4000 gp. (not even if 4000gp would seem level appropriate reward for 20th level characters)

I quite almost like the way it's done in Mount & Blade, you have some foodstuffs in storage and they are consumed as time passes. No bother as long as you keep decent stock. In PE terms, it'd just be stuff in the bigger inventory, basically meaning resting or otherwise spending time costs an amount of money, no matter whether you rest in an inn or use your own foodstores.

Word going on sounds great in principle, but in practice players are amazingly hostile to time limits and need to rush. I know the Fallout 1 time limit wasn't anything like severe, but still lead to players abandoning or not even trying out the game. I kind of liked it, but still felt anxious while the clock was ticking and liked playing a great deal better with the timer out of the way. Likewise, Mask of the Betrayer, I pretty much hated the hunger/craving stuff the first time I played it. I'm of opinion of timers and world moving on, fitting open world sandbox games much better and story on rails games much worse. Guess PE will be a bit of this and a bit of that, so timed events and quests might work at times and in special instances, but not as a general rule.

Resting at inn and such. - costs money Resting in an assumedly safe campsite, maybe in a dungeon in a room with locked door. - uses up an iron ration or other foodstuff, which costs money and (at higher difficulty level?) has weight. Resting in unsafe area - uses up an iron ration or other foodstuff, possibly get attacked, depending on safety level of the area (and difficulty level?). Weight and cost of rations would be a balancing act. Too much and players will just be forced to travel back and forth to the city, which would be bad. Even a minor cost would still serve as an incentive to press on a bit further. Maybe gulp a healing potion and/or use bandages rather than just sleep it off.

Yes. That's why there are normal and ladyfit t-shirts.

The basic idea of your capability also affecting peoples opinion, if I got that right, is a good one. But I'd think it'd be simpler to just use character level as that one axis, on assumption that word gets around.

that's what the update said, yes. No, the update said there's godlike amongst all the races. Not that we can make a player character of any races godlike. Just like in NWN2, you still couldn't make a planetouched dwarf, or anything.

So... can we make an Elven-Godlike or Amaua-Godlike character?

I thought it was a great touch. In the shows context, it was obvious it was not a functional armor but a gesture and a decoration to boost morale of the crowds and the women of the court.

I can live with the UI, but I'd love if horses knew not to run headfirst into a tree, or if they didn't come to dead stop from full gallop when running into a friendly unit or a tiny twig of a tree. Feels all too much like bumper cars sometimes. Red Dead Redemption had pretty good horses, but I'd guess RDR's horse budget was bigger than all of Mount & Blade franchise combined.

It's this and that and there's going to be hard time for the now struggling companies. Movie studios have faced the same problem multiple times, failed megabudget films sinking or almost sinking the whole studio. There's always calling for small budget productions with fine plots and acting and stuff. But at the same time, the real big money comes from big (succesful) productions. You just can't give the sense of wonder or push the boundaries with 5 or 10 yrs old visuals. Woody Allen can maybe make a film with couple of millions and a profit double the size of the budget. But you need something like James Cameron and Avatar to end up 500 millions in the black. That's what the studios want and what the large audience wants. Now I'm fine with Mount & Blade, love it and play the heck out of it. But I'd love it that much more if the graphics and animations were better.

Oh this is what I was about earlier, about 1400 posts and eleven threads ago. Game of Thrones brilliance. Cersei in "armor". Brienne, an actual warrior woman in actual armor. Now... obviously Cerseis armor is inferior as such, but it's probably made by more skiller craftsmen and worth more. Being a queens armor, if it was in PE, it'd probably be filled with protective magics. Maybe not as good as the "real thing", but maybe it'd deflect spells better, have healing properties or whatever. I'd like to see both. Ceremonial decorative armors and better protecting ones. By no means should they have the same stats, but the worse one might not be all horrible. Obviously it'd be all best if one had a complete actual working armor imbued with all the magic protections...

About atmosphere, and aesthetics. It sort of has to carry through to characters and plot somewhat, and also partly comes from the characters and plot. Take some old Clint Eastwood westerns. The plot was often shoddy and the characters caricatures. But the dusty world full of shady characters, where life isn't worth much, carried them through. The overall feeling of the dusty western magic is largely what Red Dead Redemption has. The plot is very good in Rockstar standards, but pretty darn shoddy otherwise. The characters likewise. I'd say what people remember from it 10 yrs from now, is how darn neat it was to ride around the plains.

Just joking. Mostly joking. Not entirely serious. She's an ok gal, had her in the party the first time I played BG's, all the way through 1 to finish. Didnt try romancing her though, on a second playthrough just a few months back, I did actually find her confessions of warm friendship to come pretty soon after the start of BG2. Mainly dumped her because I wanted Viconia in the party this time around, no aerie either. BTW, the second playthrough was a lot better in terms of character interaction. I went with gut feeling and ended up in a mess with companions dropping out of party in disgust and even killing other companions.

Can't make out the helmet design, but overall the design looks like it'll be getting the coveted Armour & weapon designs - a plea - Seal of Approval.

Loving the Armor & Weapons overall look. Slightly exaggerated weapon sizes, but still on completely other level of realism than we usually see. Much as already mentioned, but still awesome to see with me own yes. ... are those secondary quick-swap weapons on their backs? Visibly visible! Because that's a brilliant touch! Overall, looking way better than I dared to hope.

Cold hearted messed up wench. She was already hitting on me 20 minutes into BG2, considering what just happened and found out in irenicus' dungeon, that's way too soon. Totally messed up crazy in the head. Had to dump her from the party for her own good...

"use weapons with long reach"

Yeah, best tactical combat I've ever. Looks like PE will be very similar in terms of general graphics style. 2D backgrounds with some animation effects, 3D characters. Right down to blue selection circles and stuff. But Icewind Dale and IWD2 had darn good tactical combat despite being rtwp, and combat didn't last forever either. Rtwp isn't necessarily imprecise hassle, though obviously wont give the same surgical precision of aiming the fireball yet one foot left, to get maximum effect without friendly fire, which isn't necessarily a bad thing either. Hopeful, we'll see...

.. so I ticked all the boxes. Because I like them all if they're well made. The ones I'd almost not tick, would be the looks or abilities, but heck. I like companions that can pull their weight and aren't completely revolting. NWN2, that space-cleric. Too much frogskin-cleavage, couldn't handle having her in the party. And if it's some cute little thing who's getting pulverized in every fight, that's both frustrating and makes me want to protect her by leaving her out of the party.

Almost nobody experiences the full game anyway. Visiting every location, talking every dialogue option with every character, peeping in every barrel. No big deal. If something was promised as a backer only reward, then immediately offering it to everybody else kind of rubs the wrong way. No big deal, but something I'd rather not see happening. Though. If in... say 8 years from now, when eternity trilogy is finished, there is an anniversary complete collection package, I'd be just fine and even expect such to include everything, including the backer exclusive rewards.

Anyway. If we assume a world with mounts and cart animals, horses or otherwise, I'd still say it's not practical to make them appear in-combat. Outside of combat, just standing about waving their tails and heads and generally looking alive, the effort to include mounts, carts, wagons, probably wouldn't be overly great and would liven up the environment. But in combat. Doing it properly, giving the necessary skills to use mounts, calculate proper attack/damage bonuses for charges, same bonuses on braced spears on footmen. I'd say not worth the effort if most of the game is going to be a dungeon crawl. Simplifying a little, giving the mounts to others but not players, wouldn't be a good idea even if it wouldn't be a huge effort. If a players see knights on horseback, the players want to ride horses and pierce hobgoblins with lances themselves. Saying no, it's not for you to ride horses, is a cause of frustration. End result being, the world is slightly more complete but the players are left unhappier for it. NWN and Elder Scrolls players wanted horses, saying "we want horses dammit". The developers caved in and complied, in NWN 1.69 and Oblivion you can ride horses, in both cases it's a useless and pretty stupid addition, the horses giving no gaming value.

Battle sizes have been a pretty depressing downhill ride. Can't remember for sure if Pools of Radiance actually had the biggest mobs, or if it just felt like that. Being overwhelmed by a horde of kobolds was pretty great anyway. While Skyrims lets assault the capital city with this army of ... 8 soldiers was not. I'm pretty sure it's more an AI (CPU) limitation than that of GPU. Total War can show a huge bunch of troops with high quality graphics, but the troops are basically graphics in 20 or so per side "thinking units" or unit groups. Even so, even considering the increased AI tasks, you'd think a modern computer can handle more brains than that of BG1 age. But that just doesn't seem to be the case. In any case, it seems to me PE developers are just not too interested in big battles with hordes of enemies, more with small tactical fights with interesting varied opponents. Which isn't wrong. Me, I'd rather face 65 orcs with varied equipment than a party of 2 orcs, 2 ogres, an ogre mage and a basilisk. But I can see how others would find plain orcs or bandits boring and the other fight more interesting and memorable.