Jarmo

Yes and no. I'd like there to be incompatible companions and this possibly resulting in a fight or murder. Irreconcilable.. no. Not if the PC has ungodly charisma, speaking skills and authority. And rolls well. You should be able to convince them it's for the best to save the world first and then it's time to duel. But if PC is a dumb buttface jarjarbinks with arguments of "mesa being friends" then no. And if the PC is a jerk wildcard, he might get two paladins dueling over the choice of breakfast cerials. --- .. you can afford to lose 3 out of eight anyway, and if you lose more you can recruit/create placeholders at the adventureland.

But an rpg is not a movie. It is essentially a "chooce your own adventure" and if you want to break apart aspects of it, they're essentially minigames. Exploration minigame, puzzle minigame, combat minigame, discussion minigame, stronghold minigame, romance minigame. I don't want an rpg where this glorious auteur has thought up the awesome plot you take upon, your romantic love story and the choices you make, and then railroads you all the way down until the most awesome ending. That can work just fine in a shooter or semi-rpg like titan quest or IWD. But if it's an RPG I want to play a role and make the choices.

Fallout 2 ?

NWN, because thanks to the mod tools and community, there's more content to it than all other rpg's put together.

I think you're right about that being the difference. Sort of. But then, what are the stories about and what are the narrative themes? And I guess you'd agree with me as well, in principle. Sort of. From my viewpoint, the story and it's telling is maybe a 50-50 split between the story and what the player decides the story is. Of it's a good rpg story, I don't see it as DM's (or developers) job to tell the story, but to lay the groundwork for the player to choose it. In crpg it's impossible to allow the full freedom of tabletop, but it should be the goal, and the goal shouldn't be to emulate a movie with action scenes. So was PST a story of how nameless one was in search of his name, did this and that with a help of a bunch of people and then found his destiny? Was BG2 a story of how the protagonist seeks out the antagonist while overcoming many difficulties with a help of a bunch of people? Or were the stories about the bunch of people overcoming the said difficulties, the main plot being merely the background for it? If you see the main story as being central, party interaction being an added extra to liven things up, I'd guess you'll more easily object to the romances. And if you see the story being about the people in the story, the main plot being there to give background and motivation, you'd accept romances more easily. I'm not opposed to companions being unromanceable, if they are that, but I'm opposed to not giving my character a chance to try if that'd be what he'd want to do. And I'd like a good reason for "no", if the party leader, being smartest, most powerful, most charismatic and most important person they know is interested in them. I'm also opposed to adding companions to meet the "romanceable black, furry female" slot. Or making everybody bend every which way. They should have characters and standards, and if you don't meet them, it's probably no go. And it shouldn't be "a goal" set by the game to try and achieve. If you manage to booze up and seduce the maiden priestess, I wouldn't expect her to get combat bonuses for it. Maybe she'd break up inside and be less effective, deciding to leave the group before long. Maybe if you'd become her trusted companion instead, she'd draw strength from your friendship and then get the said combat bonuses. -- scheissers, long post

What I'd like to have, would be DA:O like story and presentation with gameplay from ToEE. Or NWN with graphics update. I'm not really hoping for that though since Eternity won't be anything of the sort. I'll be happy as long as there's a good story and enjoyable gameplay, or even one of those.

I'd like if I could use other party members to speak, else you'd pretty much need a high cha high int character to get the "best" conversations. Not DA:O where you need a high herba skill in conversation to heal a damn elven pony, keep trying and failing while your party's superhealer just sniggers down back. But with variations out of your control, the barbarians could go directly to whoever carries the biggest weapon, the mages would talk to a mage first, some would approach the highest charisma female... And companions could butt in, more or less helpfully. You'd be bluffing your way into the brigand camp, when the stoned monk would go "whoa man, is it time to kill that red fox dude already?"

Or if it's technically possible, make the forum display just the 1st frame. Humanoids avatar is not what I had in mind btw, it's not a mooning pedobear or something liable to cause epilepsy. Wouldn't have made the post if all there was, was forum appropriate limited animations.

Those are just examples from the internets btw, not from this forum because I don't want to point fingers, or bother going through every avatar.

Also, largely due to this thread, another question/suggestion popped to my mind.

Just because of reasons.

Could you put a general ban on the likes of these? Beacuse they're mostly just distracting and annoying. There are a few good ones I wouldn't mind, but I'm always advocating throwing the baby out, bathwater or no.

First, let me present the most awesome romance from DM of the Rings. (two pages worth) Probably doesnt sway anyone (since it's so crpg and awful), but I'm with Aragorn here. Let me roleplay my character the way I want. Then, as it was said before, not all movies & books are love stories or include romances. Most do though, even most of the good ones (although your mileage will vary by your movie preferences). (At least, most of the goody adventure movie adventurers have a love interest of some sort or another.) And there's a reason for that, but I'm not sure even the movie makers know what it is. And mostly it's not about full frontal nudity and long hot sex scenes. It's actually most awkward in the family-proof films when there's this hot babe that's totally interested in the hero, but the hero just avoids the whole thing without a valid cause. I prefered it so when I was 10, but not anymore. -- And I prefer doing it badly or briefly over not at all. (in RL as well) If the sword maiden is really married to her sword and unpersuadable, then that's that and my rogue will just value her companionship and visit the brothel instead. Just don't tell me I have to roleplay an eunuch or a celibat every time, because that's more fun. Because it's not.

Ummm... why not start straight from MotB then? You get the XP to build your character and there's an item strip in the beginning anyway.

I got into the habit with NWN fan modules, which I knew I'd play only once. If I'd play a wizard, I'd build the character normally, but then bump up strength so I don't need to run back and forth so much. If I'd play a fighter, I'd probably boost char and int so I could manage the discussions as well. In a party based games, there's usually no need to cheat as you can have different specialists, no need to cheat in ToEE or IWD (unless I want something special) but NWN singleplayer is... well a single character.

Ego stroking, like you wouldn't like to be a powerful wizard, heroic fighter, shadowy thief, a far more important figure for the world than you are now. It's roleplaying, generally people want to achieve things and feel good about achieving them, there's story and there's puzzles, but in the end it's all about ego stroking.

Wasn't my all time favorite, but I liked it anyway. NWN2:MotB did pretty much the same thing, probably not giving you what you wanted and seeked, but you got what you got. FFVII I played a few years ago, but couldn't kill sephiroth on my first attempt and didn't feel like trying again.

Well no huge surprise but I kind of agree with him. Only that I'd actually love someone to make me a medieval combat simulation, where every wound would be terrifying! Gangrene, amputations and all the lovelies. And I wouldn't mind finding a good crpg with some nice harem anime thrown in. Probably wouldn't make a great game with the two combined, but it'd be an interesting one for sure.

Yeah, a bunch of codes for me thank you please. Kotor (or was it only in kotor2) did this nicely, enable console, do the cheats and after that your further saves would have a red "cheat" written on top of the save picture. And that's something I just had to live with, after doing the first clean run of each.

I particularly like endings that go all white. Lots of action, then something, Kapow! Whack! something, enter the final lair of the end boss... then cue in the ending of Space Odyssey 2001. A bit of talk, maybe a revelation, a whole bunch of metaphysical and philosophical nonsense. Roll in the credits and leave me with a what the... did just happen. A bunch of games have taken a lead from this direction, some have pulled it off better and some worse.

It's nothing of the sort though, but you can feel that way if you like. Going higher than intended in the last mad rush and now realizing you just can't, is not all cool and swell, but heck of a long distance away from a fraud. For my part, yeah. I'm kind of thinking I should/could have gone one higher, and if the 4.0 would have been missed by a bit I'd be feeling real bad I didn't. As it is, I still pledged pretty nicely... but still kind of think I'd maybe... and I could have gone higher... but... dunno..

Well I wouldn't like to create a situation where developers spend one day in a week writing status reports. Doing meetings on what can be shared at what point, going all crazy trying to think of something worth writing about. On the other hand, from personal experience, trying to sum up what you've been doing after a month/months of working can be hell. Much easier to just do reports whenever you get something done that's worth mentioning, or whenever you'd feel like asking for opinions. Definitely wouldn't like a situation where they'd be all itching to tell something real neat and cool, but can't since the last update was just 2 weeks ago and the community doesn't want too frequent updates. So.. whatever seems to work for the developers, I'd certainly want to hear whats going on every now and then. My own preference though, would be brief weeklies and a bigger one maybe quarterly.

Yeah, this is exactly what the proposed system should prevent and good riddance. Minmaxing exp gains is not fun. No, I'm just wondering and was maybe misleading by not quoting your earlier post (and quoting PsychoBlonde's post I wasn't intending to refer to) If you feel the first example forces or compels players to minmax experience, so much you'd feel it's good to block the possibility through game design. The why wouldn't you feel the inclusion of Undersigil (being a voluntary non-plot side area) to similarly force or compel you to plow through it to gain the extra XP you wouldn't get through other means? Or did you? Feel the Undersigil was compelling and wiped out everything there before continuing with the plot. Or is it because the area works as the developers intended, while they probably wouldn't have intended you to both talk to, and then kill the dragon? If so, I can understand your point of view, but I'd still advocate player choice to override writers intentions. Do stuff, get XP for stuff done. -- Edit. I'm really not trying to argue over this or change your mind. Just interested.

Sadly, story driven games are not usually made for these people. It's like buying PS:T and spending all playtime grinding Undersigil. So why was it there to begin with, if not as a place where you can go and grind your character? I assume (and only that since I just peeked down there and then came straight back and continued with the story) it's exactly a place where you can go and grind XP. Did it unbalance the game if combat oriented players had a place to earn more XP? Did you feel compelled to kill everything down there for extra XP? If not, then why would you feel compelled to kill everything in Eternity, if minmaxing is possible. No hair off my back if the game is full of extra XP to be had and minmax possibilities aplenty, if it's not assumed I have to take them all.

There's the problem that turn based gives you much more control than real time with pause. So if they are both options, and the game is balanced for one, it's going to be either dead easy or damn hard with the other. Temple of EE is my favourite in terms of combat system. (Or maybe NWN is, a bit different styles)