Jarmo

Spice up the norm by adding something. Standard castle dungeon, but the castle has partly collapsed and everything is at 20 degrees angle. Walkable, maybe one corner under water? Standard cave dungeon, but filled with luminescent mushrooms or crystals. Varied materials, the castle is made of granite/timberwood/bone/skulls/flesh. Not a castle, but a luxury mansion, hotel, apartment building. -- Also, instead of 20 degrees, flip the whole thing upside down or 90 degrees, maybe for some elemental plane or dream sequence or something.

Yea, reducing the power draw is the thing to go for. The wattages have kept on rising to absurd high in the past years, despite the power/watt getting better, the actual power draw has just climbed. AMD 7xxx series is a move to the right direction, pretty decent GPU (7750) without a need for auxiliary power. Seems nvidia 6xx series is also slightly less hungry than 5xx, so maybe the overall trend is reducing the power draw. Now if only AMD could get their act together in the CPU department as well... --- PS. I sidegraded from ATI 4870 to AMD 7770, might be tiny bit more powerful as well, but the main thing is the reduced power, which means reduced heat, which means reduced fan noise, which means my rig is now pretty quiet overall. The darn CPU still gobbles up 125W, I'd be happy to swap to something drawing 75W or less. (Intel would provide, but I'm not going there)

Actually.... I don't know. KotOR 2 was pretty neat about it. Once the companion comes along, you get to level him/her up to the standard player -1 level (or hit the level up automatically button). If the silly companions are your level when you get them -rule is in place, then this'd be pretty much the way I'd like it to be handled. BG and BG2 were kind of worse, the characters still level up the moment you get them, but you have no influence on that, but do get to choose on the following levelups. On the other hand, if you get Yummi-shimo the master swordsman into your party, it's pretty stupid if you level him up as a spearman instead. But then, maybe you like him as a character and need a spearman, and the suggested default skillset would still be available. I'd also be just fine with companions doing their own thing, taking no input from you as how to spend their skill points.

KotOR 1 and 2 both had good tutorials. Escape from attacked starship in 1 and repair Ebon Hawk in 2. Both gave you most of the basics. Peragus wasn't tutorial anymore, any more than the 1st planet in KotOR 1. (Both games took their sweet damn time before handing you a lightsaber.) NWN1 and 2 both had good enough tutorials, like KotOR2 the one in NWN2 was skippable. Something between 15 and 30 minutes is fine. Skippable is best. Separate is fine as well. Though, I think it's a safe bet Eternity will begin with the event, and I doubt that'll be something you can just skip. Might be a short sequence after the beginning, or something.

Indo-Iranian sounds about right, looks way way later than Sarmatian/Saka. My guess would be 16th century, something like the Mughal empire. edit: Google says it's Sind - 18th century. Wasn't THAT far off then. ;P Hah! That late? The general design didn't change much in 2000 years, it seems. Reminds me of this. Took a bit of effort to find the picture. Turkmen soldiers in late 19th century. They didn't fare so well this time, but I'd wager it's more to do with having way outdated rifles than with the armor design.

This. I tend to play RPG's (well, all good games actually) for pretty long stretchs at a time. When the going is not intense, I prefer a more laidback position to being crouched over the keyboard. KotOR was excellent, being able to run about and doing most everything using only one hand on the mouse. Also because when I played KotOR the first time, I had had nervous injury on my left hand and had to make do with only the right. Surprisingly many games are totally unplayable unless you have both hands available. I think I also played NWN 1-handed. Understandable with keyboard + mouse shooters, but no hurry rpg's should really be able to do better.

Then again, when mongols pulled the western knights away from the infantry and then just retreated ahead all the while peppering the knights with arrows, the knights probably felt it's all very unfair, unsportsmanlike and gamey. Especially when the mongols would then much later when the knights were dead tired, turn around and make them completely dead. Then proceeding to kill the infantry as well. Also very unfairly as the infantry had few ranged weapons and no way to reach the horsemen. Annoying strategies, but usable on occasion. If the enemy is slower and has no ranged weapons, there's no reason to not use the easy way out. If an arrow from a distance pulls the worgs in first and the slower orcs follow behind, should be workable to first deal with one group and the rest later. As long as not everybody goes the exact same speed and the enemies are not blind to their friends getting hit 4 feet away, it should all work out. And most intelligent enemies should have some kind of ranged capability. If only a couple of darts.... or ..rocks picked from the ground? Would that be possible.

No overarching limit. FO1 limit was *easy* and it still annoyed me to no end. Clock is ticking and you have no way to know how much you still need to accomplish. But I'd like occasional timed sidequest and wouldn't mind at all if even the main quest would suddenly go into high gear, like Oh... crap! RUN, RUN!! We need to go there NOW! Waste not a single second!!! That's not the point to decide to go see if you can't fill up your mushroom collection or anything. Time to act is time to act, ready or not. But those moments should be temporary and pass, and when there's no immediate need to rush somewhere, you should know there's no immediate need to rush somewhere. If there's a quest of "my barn is on fire", that should be timed. Can't wait till next week with that.

Anyone - certainly, me - nah. But I'd like if when you're a fighter and pool skills on muskets, your class reads "musketeer", or a "swashbuckler" if your rogue invests in 1-h sword skills..

Now they only need to double up the resolution (or quadruple or whatever), cut the weight by about 80% and I have the tablet I want for reading e-comics. Oh, and the content producers also need to start delivering stuff at superhigh resolutions.

I'd guess most, though not all, are just fine there being impractical "just for the looks" armor on some types. Nazgul and Sauron don't even have real bodies under the gear so the usual restrictions don't apply, impractically heavy or spiky armor is also fine if the fella is the armor (golem), or is a zombie who doesn't really mind occasionally stabbing himself in the face. Even if it's some dragon priest spiky doomplate, and the priest doesn't expect to ever fight in it or rise his arms too much, all is fine. If the dragon priestesses like to go about in glued-on boobguards and skimpy chain bikini, it's fine by me. Just don't expect to grab the nazgul helmet or armor and fight effectively in it. Or get any protection from the priestesses tassels of evil. The dragon priest doomplate might give decent spell protection, good damage reduction, but -5 to attack, dexterity and movement. My take. Let there be variety. But variety in armor people wear, not variety in how the armor works. Heavy is heavy, skimpy is skimpy, spiky and impractical is spiky and impractical.

As long as the sword doesn't come along in the package that's not half bad medium armor. If armor comes as a full set instead of being split between leg/arm/shoulder/nether/whatehver that'd be a pretty neat breastplate.

this is a very good point. The first few levels really are pretty dull combat-wise because of a lack of abilities and spells. I really hope we don't go through most of the game that way. Almost totally on the other side here. I tend to enjoy the game the best when most opponents can be dropped by a single arrow and you need to be real careful with a few bandits. At 10+ levels the battles start degenerating into light and magic shows with whole lot of suff going on, but almost impossible to enjoy for all the sfx. But then I've never really enjoyed playing wizards or other spellcasters, fighters, rogues, monks and such for me. Though I often do enjoy playing a summoner, but I'd guess that's because I don't need to control the summons myself and can just hang back.

Not as crappy but it's there, much more like the one in FO:NV. On high level, bandits will still be bandits, mostly wearing leather and iron. The boss might have steel plate and the necromancers and such would have a better wand or something. But the bandits will be more skilled and deadly, the tombs filled with higher level zombies. Not as in your face, but annoying anyway. Hope there'll be an Overhaulf for skyrim as well one day.

Holy smoke !!! You gave up on Gothic 2, you clearly didn't realize the unspoken RPG rule. European countries (or those near Europe) must always love and support the Gothic series. Only Americans are allowed to dislike the Gothic series I loved what I read of it and had I played on my more merciful era, I'd probably have loved it. I'd like to love it. But these days I have the kind of brain herpes where I just can't stand games with godawfully bad character animation. Low res graphics are fine, but not bad animation.

The most annoying games are always the ones that are good enough that you'll spend a hundred hours on them, but still hate the stupid things they do much of the time. I've hated the idiotic diplomacy and battle setups of Total War series for many hundreds of hours, hated the leveling crap of Oblivion for 50 hours (but then found Ooscuros Overhoul and the other leveling stopper that mended the game a lot). Didn't hate Risen at all (just disliked it and gave up 1hr into the game) or Gothic 2 (gave up after 2.5 minutes). That's not nearly enough time to build a good hate...

But this does bring up the thought of crafting as a team. So if you have an alchemist and a herbalist, they could team up to brew potions neither of them could do alone? Or armorer + enchanter, working together could enchant the sword while it's being cast, make the forge work better and craft the sword in such a fashion it's more receptible to enchantments? It's often been a production line type thing, where one character does his bit and passes the item to the next one. But I don't remember ever seeing a setup where 2 (or more) professionals take part at the same time.

Nevermind flashy instantaneous stuff, though I'd rather tone those down as well, but please no long duration discoballs with *tlinglinglingling ling lingg pinggpoing linglingklingkling* going on. Fine to show protection fields and such when they're cast, and then when they actually do their thing (like deflect spell). Rather not show something like gauntlets of ogre power or berserker rage at all. DA:O was very bad with this. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I did wonder why my fighter is dripping some red goo. Turns out it was the... dunno, something like power attack activated or something. Thankfully there was a mod to disable those.

Only possible objection I can think of would be if the party banter is voiced and directed to other party members. Cadegund going "goddamn forton, put a shirt on you damn stoner hippie" but even then it'd just be omitting the names from spoken audio. I wouldn't particularly miss the feature or use in any case, but it's such a small thing to code and might be fun for some. - Actually I can think of another thing, Someones name might be important in some way that'll turn out later. "Hey *furrybabe* this forest is also known as Sagani Forest, do you come from around here?"

This much at least and I'd actually prefer the models had backpacks as well. Though not all 8 packs they'll probably be carrying...

I disagree completely with the whole mindset. Arbitrary rules and limitations are something I just hate in rpg systems "I'm a master swordsman, but don't know at all how to fight with a katana. Oh gee, seems I'm not even able to hold it in my hands" Death to arbitrary rules no matter how badly that breaks up the balance and tactics, there will be new balance and tactics in the end. I'm all for utility belt quick-slot potions actually, but I'd like to carry an extra gallon jug of cureall in the backpack to refill the tiny vials later.

I'm tempted to say they learned how to make good, interesting games. But I'd really like to somehow get into Morrowind, there just *has* to be good stuff in there somewhere. Played for many hours years ago, didn't see anything worth doing or getting into for. Went for NWN instead. Much more enjoyable. The second time maybe a year ago was a brief one, the flap flap flapflapflapflap attack animations were so stupid I just couldn't stand it. Can you make a successful mage (like in skyrim) or sneak bow thief (like in Oblivion)? Might be doable if I could just completely avoid close combat alltogether? Loved Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3 and NV. After Skyrim I can see how there was neat stuff in Oblivion that's no longer in Skyrim and have to assume the same goes with Morrowind and Oblivion. So I kind of see why Morrowind would seem to have most stuff in it and would like to experience it all.

What I really hate is when the developers clearly have decided the enemy is clever and charismatic and cool and awesome. You just know million miles before that whatevery you're doing is not going to catch him by surprise or work, you'll just get some stupid ass cutscene where he'll give this awesome speech and then walk away. Without you getting any chance whatsoever to stop him and then you're dropped down the hatch or something. Repeat a couple a times. In the end battle he's shooting awesome death rays and has billion hit points and invulnerability. You're fighting as a team, he's alone and you still have to chug down bucketfuls of potions and cheats before winning. Because he's so cool and charismatic and the devs like him much better than you and your stupid weak character.

The example of scaling done badly. And replacing with monsters was no better. Early game the meadow next to the city would be mostly empty, then there'd be occasional wolves, then it'd be filled with crazy mountain bears and at late game stocked brim full of all kinds of demons.

2.x Dual classing was intensely stupid what with the lockdown period where the character totally forgets everything and then *ping* remembers everything again. Crazy overpowered as well, basically getting a couple of levels of the first class "for free" as far as total XP goes. Multiclassing was a throwback to 1.x demi-human race as class system. I basically liked it, but it was all broken as well. Totally overpowered in the early game 10th level fighter vs 9th level fighter/mage and totally underpowered in late game 40th level wizard vs 20th level fighter/mage. 3.x system is the best I've come across as yet, with freedom to build your own thing, but not without it's faults. Basically it works, but why is 1st level of thief 1500XP for one character and 45 000XP for a higher level character? Obviously if the levels were of fixed XP, there'd be no reason for high level character to just grab a bunch of extra proficiencys for practically no cost. Can't say what kind of multiclass system would work out the best, but I sort of feel a classless system with skill trees would be the best thing overall.