Jarmo

BG1, my experience, it was horrible in early levels, then got kind of a boring grind. When you get to the city, the story kicks in high gear and stuff is fun(ish) for a while, but then the endgame starts and it's a massive depressive grindfest until the end. But then you'll win, which is nice. Of the remaining ones. I highly recommend you try them out. I liked IWD2 better than IWD1, when I played them. Maybe because it's D&D 3.x and I like that better than 2.x. Afterwards though, IWD had a lot more memorable locations and situations and plot content. ToEE. Is a wonderful awesome tactical game, best D&D gameplay ever. And the only one that doesn't look like million years old. It looks.. well.. tempted to say better than NWN2. But the whole world and setting is old skool D&D Greyhawk, simplistic as can ever be. There's evil dudes doing evil, because that's their job, being evil. So they must be smashed, by good, or neutral, or evil. And that's the whole plot.

This yes! And is it becoming my trademark to make Fallout NV references in every post, but I really liked the simplified way this was done in the casinos. Check out bigger weapons when you enter, get them back automatically when returning. Depended on sneak skill there, but could work just as well with other restrictions. Oh, you've been dubbed a knight so a sword is fine. But still can't go to a cafeteria with a halberd. More back to the topic. Fate points would be fine IMO. Usually I make my own fate points/save points through save/reload, but a less cheaty way would work ok. Don't know the full concept, but can't see why they'd be a bad thing. Basically just introducing a way to lessen the impact of chance, which you'll otherwise adjust by reloading an older save.

Generally speaking, I like either way. In PE's case, discussing merits of class/classless/school system is a wasted effort. It's set in digital stone that PE is going to be a class-based system.

Don't take it too literally, I don't have a clue of the difference between variable and resource. Point was basically, it's not like the programmer goes "oh noes, I already drew eleventy billion yellow rings and now you want more colors?!"

Yah, slight exaggeration on both ends of the spectrum. It's not like they'd need to drop everything and rush to emergency color circles meeting. It's likely the required people will meet anyway during the development, on one week meeting or the other. Then it's a case of "oh, btw, can we make this selectable"? Likely the color is already a changeable variable, maybe CircCOL or something. I'm now just guessing the graphics guy doesn't design several different circle types, but just one that stretches to fit whatever size the creature is, then the circle takes a CircCOL depending on whether the creature is friendly, hostile, neutral or fleeing. Ideally, it's pretty trivial. Just put the CircCOL1, CircCOL2, CircCOL3 and CircCOL4, into options menu and let the player use the pre-existing color picker to replace them with whatever color, or just put the rgb-values right there for changing. Or there could be problems, it could be non-trivial for whatever silly programming reason. If it actually takes a day or two or actual programming time, then I'd say scrap the idea.

That would be a solution, but quite laborious one at that, requiring the writing of two versions of many/most lore books, trying to make sure the important bits are in both versions. In some settings, finding a readers digest versions of books could be hilarious. It's actually a strategy already used in many RPG's. Not in lore books, but conversations, where the wizened geezer is doing plot exposition and asks "do you want the long or short version". Anyway, I'm sticking with my view that it'd be optimal to dress up the books nice. With readable fonts, nice layouts, a sprinkle of pictures an diagrams, it's possible to keep my mind from wandering, and finger from click-click-clicking through the book. While that would no doubt be the more laborious solution, it'd be one where the labor is better spent. IMO.

This is a redicio ad absurbum argument since no game can possibly explain everything about a setting. Creating little or no lore makes a conventional setting shallow and mundane. Ergo, having meaningful lore adds depth. Adding more lore adds more depth, although I'll admit there's bound to be a point of diminishing returns. Some people will want to see more lore than others. Hence, you please the most people by accommodating the those who want a lot of lore. If you don't like all the lore, nobody is forcing you to read it. While I'm not disagreeing at least entirety of the point, I must point out you're now doing the same reductio. It's really not like people who want less wordy explanations are going to be happy with huge encyclopedic volumes, by cleverly only reading 10% of each book, or only reading every fifth volume or whatever. The solution would only serve those who either want the maximum amount of lorebooks, or no lorebooks at all. Now it might actually be the group in between is a tiny minority, but it might also be otherwise.

I might kind of want to turn the circles off, but probably would turn them right back after a while. If there were options to wiggle the colors about, I might try that as well. Real, real low on my things I care about list. But if it's a trivial thing to code in, like 15 minutes of work, I'd rather have the choices. Believe or not, how cluttered and full the options menu is, is even lower on my things I care about list. But if it's a case of *sigh*, fans want to change the circle colors, better scrap the plans for the elven city, because it's either or. Well then I'd kind of rather have more content than choices.

I actually kind of like achievements in many games, particularly if they're not completely moronic. (plenty of examples of achievements done bad mentioned already) I'd like them best if they had actual in game meaning as well, instead of just being patting in the back. (Which i don't mind either, as long as it's not completely condescending praise for a five year old "travelled 300m all by himself".) New Vegas had a mix of good and bad. Good with in game meaning such like whatever you got after killing a bunch of geckos, and afterwards you had a slight damage bonus against geckos because you'd had plenty of practice. Things like that. Now maybe if you'd kill 50 bandits, it's customary to get something like "bandit slayer" achievement. But if the rumor got around in game, folks would recognize you as bandit slayer, bandits would recognize you, that'd be a whole other thing.

Basically, you've got to buy 50 arrows or whatever, but, if you only fire 15 in a combat engagement, you might recover all of them. And if you fire 40, you might only recover 15, giving you 25 for the next engagement, instead of 50. Makes perfectly, tactically-deep sense to me. *shrug* I'd like that, if it was done automagically enough, without a hassle. And it could make some arrow recovery feats worthwhile, if you'd suddenly start recovering 50 and not 30 percent of those prescious magic arrows. And I see no problem carrying around 5 quivers with total 300 arrows, if the next guy lugs around a spare plate armor. But anyway, deep stash should alleviate some of the stress, if quiver refilling is at least semi-automatic. Say combat load of 90 arrows, but auto-replenished from the deep stash store of 4000 arrows between combats.

D&D or just D20 Well.. for one, it's not like I have tried every RPG out there though I have tried a good large chunk of CRPG's. So if Pathfinder is better, I wouldn't know. For two, I like the character building, especially in 3.x with with a bunch of feats to choose from, character classes to mix and match. I like the option of doing a stealth rogue, or swashbucklerish combat rogue/fighter, or hacks-with-axes rogue/barbarian, or rogue/priest or whatever. For three, It's a polished system in most any iteration, not without quirks, but clearly there's more thought put into D&D than most any CRPG ruleset. It's obvious 2.x was an improvement over base game and 3.0 an attempt to improve on that, 3.5 a further polish. It's a real solid base. For four, Temple of Elemental Evil. Because it's awesome. The so called plot is a load of turd, the setting is old style good vs evil boring bore, most (all?) quests are just bad. But the tactical combat is pure gold, simply brilliant. The learning curve and early game are soul crushingly hard. Exactly the kind of game I'd expect myself to hate, because I go for the stories, loved ToEE instead for some unknown reason. Maybe because it's also fair. Mage opponents don't autobuff 19 protections at the start of the fight or anything like that. Also stuff I dislike. The whole Vancian magic style, the save or die spell effects, the huge loads of hitpoints. Basically I like D&D on fighter type characters, at early enough levels so not everybody is a hulking hitpoint bag. What I'd like to see, would be a crpg where character progression is more skill and less hitpoints. So you could, at later levels, beat 12 swordsmen by yourself, not because you can survive 47 sword strikes, but because they just can't hit you.

But it's such a good word! Yeah, snippets. I tend to just make up a new word if I can't recall the correct one. And (murder) mysteries in games. Reminds me of BG2, played it through twice and both times got stuck, because I couldn't find the stairs down in tanners house. The second time I even knew what to look for and still failed, mistook the stairs for a pile of boxes or something. But that has nothing at all to do with lore so I should probably just edit away this random rambling. Wont, though.

Well... I'd like to like journal entries and codex chippets more than I do, but despite having played through both ME1 and DA:O a couple of times, I've probably skipped about half of codex entries, at least half. If they're so interesting and neat, why give them so little love as to force them into tiny notepad window and do them entirely plaintext? Boggles the mind, or would, as the answer is most likely the way the publisher doesn't give a crap, nor the product lead, so neither do I really. Elder Scrolls series tried to do a bit better, and did, kind of. The journals are at least large, they attempt to look like real books, there's clearly some effort in there. Too bad the fake handwriting font and paper texture attempts serve only to make them that much harder to read. So I don't read them much either. The best codex entries were in Fallout NV, the great khan wallpaintings of their battles against new reno families. Or the wall mural in Boomer base telling the boomer story (though that had spoken explanation as well). And that might illustrate something many historical journals and books have in common, and something codex entires and game journal books usually lack. Meaning pictures and presentation. It's only after Gutenberg that books got really dull, medieval books were full of illustrations, travel journals and such even more so. But at least give the books some love. Might sound a lot of work and diverting resources? But I've also heard concept artists and such don't really have much to do during the actual production stage. (Beside spending their enormous fees on whatever morbid way.) And even if it's diverting resources? Isn't doing background lore properly for a change a good enough target to divert at?

Whoa that's a long discussion. Which is to be expected. Felt like adding a few syllables myself. I basically agree with OP, though not as strongly. At the time BG1 was an amazing game, not anymore. It added many, many elements to RPG's we now take for granted and can't appreciate. And I disagree about D&D systems, 3.x in particular are great for CRPG. Well.. unless you play a spellcaster, but spellcasters suck. Always. And as a final note. Considering how badly BG1 has aged, it's amazing how Fallout 1 that came out the previous year, has maintained it's glory so much better. Must be the turn based thing that's so forgiving.

It'd make perfect sense to me for an archer to learn to use higher draw power when leveling up, probably requiring stronger bows at some intervals. A bow with 20 lbs draw is not a childrens toy but a lethal weapon, yet the strongest longbows were maybe up to 200 lbs! While that doesn't directly transfer to 10x more damage per arrow, it's not far off either. So in D&D terms, a beginning archer could do 1d6 damage and a competent (strong) veteran with mastercraft bow could do 10d6. And that's without magic. Couldn't be the exact same arrow though, a light arrow would break when used on a strong draw bow. But maybe that kind of stuff is better left unimplemented and simply assumed everybody uses the correct arrows? Though if arrows had weight, it'd be fun to have light ones for light bows and heavy arrows for heavy bows... Anyway, I quite like the Mount & Blade abstraction, where you have your quiver of arrows and while you can run out. the quiver is auto-replenished between encounters.

Bandits mistaking high level party for easy prey when partys visible equipment isn't plate and chain and greatswords? Works for me. Could even be used as a plot element, you need to "dress down" to draw out bandits and kill/catch them. Animals? Don't make me fight normal animals, at least not suicidal crazy animals. But if I have to fight them, let's assume there's several kinds of them. Crazed, scared types. Bear protecting it's cubs or such, stumble in, you're likely to get attacked, unless you have some calming presence or wildland lore skill that'll enable you to back out. Pack hunters. Wolves or lions or such. They'd normally know not to attack armed people, but if it's 15 of them and 4 of you, they might take the chance, especially if they're hungry enough. Even then, if you effortlessly splatter one, the rest will run. Ambush hunters. Leopards or such. Probably wont attack if you see them. Or if there's a party of you. But if you're alone or even separated from the party, they'd sneak close and rush. If the cat can't knock you down and gets a stab instead, it's going to run away, most likely. Anyhoo. If there's a lot of fighting animals, there really needs to be knockdown/grab/suppress things they do. Doesn't much work the normal way, of standing next to a wolf exchanging blows.

That's one thing yeah. I have a feeling the one (group?) writing the storyline and setting planned it to happen simultaneously or before FO1, then someone thought it'd be real clever and nice to refer to all the things that happened in FO1 and FO2 as history, and reintroduce or mention some characters. Which creates a strange time setting stretched some few centuries. Anyway. Then I kind of thought that if the date of the game is one of the biggest problems, and the date isn't even mentioned in the game itself, or can only be deduced from some random information combined with some info scraps from FO1 and FO2, is it really that big a deal? I mean, if they'd just announce the game was set 100 yrs after the war, it'd be a whole lot better? Decided to not stress about such things so much...

I'm probably still misunderstanding, but that sounds more like bad writing than an RPG. Like missions from RTS game (warcraft), defend town house, collect 2000 timber. Or missions from an action rpg like Fallout Tactics. I mean.. why do you have to take the mission of defending the town and killing the army of orcs? Just because that's what level 11 is about? What I'd expect would be more like being presented with a situation. There's a village that's about to be attacked by orcs. It might be a side mission and you could just go elsewhere, or it's a central mission and you have to go in. Then the question arises, why is this a central mission, what do I care about the town, why should I do something? The situation is cliche, but I still wouldn't to be presented by a mission of "kill the orcs or game over". An agreeable (and still cliche) situation would be where you need a an ancient prophecy book that's stored in village church. Then, from the top of my head, your options might be: 1. Help defend the village, get (to read?) the book as reward. 2. Help attack the village, get (to read?) the book as reward. 3. Sneak in to the village and steal the book. 4. Sneak in to the village and bargain to read the book, maybe in exchange for promising to defend the village. In 1. and 2. you might switch allegiance halfway through, or just beeline to the church and ignore the fight. In 3. and 4. you might decide to help to defend or attack the village, as suits your fancy. The crucial mission of getting the book would be accomplished either way. The side mission of defend or attack would not be crucial. 3. and 4. would be the pacifist choices, though without taking the 1st choice the "best good outcome" could not be reached. But lets another example. Your soul is being leeched by a demon, you have 3 days to live and the only way to cut the bond is to slay the demon. There's only one solution, kill the demon. Or maybe that's just the obvious solution? Maybe the demon would release you in exchange for something? Or maybe this time there is no pacifist option? But most of the time, you shouldn't just be presented with a clear cut mission where you have exactly one option to choose.

I just don't see any consequences shy of "You can't actually finish the game," or "the main story is crap." 1) You just skip around all the threats that can only be removed/affected via force, thereby not really having much of a story. It's like saying "Well, you can 'beat' the game." Like failing to get the water chip in time in Fallout 1. You COULD say that was the "anti-water chip run." But, really, you just lost the game. You played it for a time, and now it's over because you failed at something that's the whole point of the game's story. That's a pretty good example of what I was after actually. There's several ways to get the chip, the "best" and canon way to do it is to fight yourself to the stuff needed to fix the water pump, so you can take the chip without causing undue distress to the community. But the "pacifist" way is to talk your way past the supermutants and just steal the chip. Hooray, mission accomplished. The downside is you just doomed the community you took the chip from and helped to spread supermutant influence that much further. Might stretch someones definition of pacifist. But many things do.

Fourthly, characters that are motivated by greed or lust for power, but do not openly revel in their depravity. Ie, ready to do evil deeds when opportunity rises, as long as they believe they can get away with it and maintain their goody good appearance. Let's take an adventurer / rogue knight. When finding a merchant party harassed by bandits, he would rush to the aid of merchants in hope of fame and rewards. When finding a lone merchant in the woods, he'd have no problem doing the necessary murder and blaming bandits. Later when a reward is posted, he'd murder a convenient peasant, provide some personal items of the dead merchant as proof and claim the reward and fame. Maybe even give half of the reward to the grieving widow to further gain the good graces of the community, maybe the graces of the widow as well and the rest of the merchants fortunes through marriage.

I didn't like Old World Blues either, in fact none of the FO3 or NV DLC's I've played were particularly good. I do like the overall writing, both of missions and dialogue, much better in NV than in FO3. Not all the time and it's not like one was masterful and the other crap, FO3 had great stuff and NV had it's share of gringeworthy crap. Both games suffer from the cramped playing area, NV to greater extent. FO3 would require maybe 10x the scale and NV 100x to make the setting feasible, but then the whole a man and his dog walking through the wastes would be just a horrible time consuming experience. (And totally impossible to make as well, at least the way it's crafted now.) The trip from NV opening village to next town (nipton with powder gangers in the hotel and inhabitants holed up in casino) should take at least an hour of walking to make any sense. There should be a way bigger bunch of convicts out there (there's what, all of a dozen of them?) to make it reasonable for the soldiers to stay put. And the next military base is now about 500 meters away.. Anyway, with the shortened scale nonwithstanding, NV world makes a lot more sense. The weak and overstretched NCR covers most of the area, but doesn't have the manpower to actively do a lot of stuff, like clear areas of raiders or deathclaws. If you stop and think, most every location could exist where they are now and has some sort of reason of being there. FO3 has some of that and it's clear to me there was an amount of thinking made when the overall setting was planned. Brotherhood base and sphere of influence here, defendable rivet city or the walled up megaton village there. Supermutants, enclave and brotherhood engaged in a 3-way struggle (was the supermutants plan or what they were up to ever explained in any way btw?). But then the lower level of location planning stepped in and added plot locations like luxury tenpenny tower in the middle of nowhere or little lamplight, with a neverending magical supply of fresh children. And the whole main plot with it's painfully obvious good vs bad setting. But yea, loved them both nonetheless.

I'd hope PE enables going through the game without killing, and I hope there'd be dire consequences. - A mob of bandits threatens a village, you talk to individuals, get the information you came for and depart without getting involved, the village dies. - You need the sceptre of the vampire lord, you strike a deal to get the sceptre after fouling up the holy defenses in the nearby church. You get the sceptre, the head priests ends up undead. - You get ambushed by bandits, you buy your life with all gold and items you got.

As a fan of Fallout 1 and 2 who also had fun with FO: tactics, Fallout 3 was pretty awesome. Skulking about in the wasteland, seeing supermutants or a deathclaw in the distance, was intense. Oh the game had many beth trademark flaws, but exploring the wastes was involving and spooky, like in no FO before. New Vegas improved a lot of stuff, a lot! A batter game by far. But it was building on established ground. Having Bethesda make FO4 (with new next gen console engine), then give the engine to Obsidian for whatever FO setting, would be ideal. Maybe New Vegas 2, maybe simply a DLC os some sort. Whatever. Only I'd rather not the exact same NV setting with the same locations just 5 yrs in the future. Rather something completely not casino stuff. Because the whole 30's in the future sucked in FO2 already. --- Actually.. since everybody seems to want to make a game set 20yrs after the blast, that's what the next setting should be. Still finding pre-war stuff from shelves... in an abandoned shop 50 meters from a settlement.. after 200 years? Rather show the opening of the first vault a few decades after the war. Then the exploration would make all kinds of sense.

That works unless leaving the stuff cripples you financially. Suggesting the root cause is the mechanic where hauling loot is the wealth generation mechanic. Two (of the many) things I dislike. Adventurers main source of income: Selling bloodied trousers in town market. Adventurers main source of experience: Delivering inane messages and packages around the continent (Avatar mail service).

I would like though, to be less dependent on looting for cash. Maybe if you took every item for a band of brigands, you'd get 1000 bucks for the stuff, but full 10 grand as reward money. Normal RPG practice is the other way around, 1000 reward and 10K in loot, trivializing the original incentive to do stuff. Maybe then you'd still find it worthwhile to grab the brigand leaders masterwork sword and magic ring, but not the normal stuff.