IEfan

IDK dude. You were better of putting all on ranged weapons since shooting concentrated fire with them was like, well a machine gun in BG2. The tactics OP described above were really daily. There were no bad sactions from dropping shields so you could just quickly go to inventory on at least one hero, put shield or second weapon back on and attack the enemy - thus enemy concentrated on Tank (that is, if he was still alive after approaching the party) and everybody else just kept shooting until he was dead. You could abuse stuff like this since the scripting/pathfinding/enemies were slow and simple too (though realistically speaking, the enemy's action is logical - somebody is approachign with a melee weapon.) Alternatively, the guy enemy attacks just runs back and forth until the enemy is dead from missile fire. Same problems with IWD series as well. And by switching, I mean that you could just pick FROM inventory and put weapons back and forth during battle without much loses in time, you just had to be quick. There are no penalties for this switching ofc, unlike for armor which can't be put off or on during battles anymore.

No inventory tetris. IE system works fine. If the massive amount of load/weight carrying realism (full sets of platemails in inventor) bothers then implement that the world has discovered bag of holdings and that those automaticly extend the inventory weight limit over the limited STR limit. The holdings are expensive upgrades and are found from specific places. Maybe you can lose them through some events eg. inventory robbed or partially destroyed (never would happen though). Actually that/this kinda stinks a little but I honestly don't see atm how to compromise between usability and realism otherwise! Inventory SORTER for IE-type of system (under a button) would rule though! You could use it at will if you want to. (yes) @PsychoBlonde: The gembags were annoying in BG2, for scrolls and arrows (the 99 arrows is still a lot) are kinda fair-game since they were pr important in battle so you had to make a decision between inventory space and arrows/scrolls. The containers in general were a bother to use though, could really use some integrated/easy of use interface between container and inventory. Even NWN didn't get this right, too much clicking.

I honestly like the direction a LOT and i'm a pretty big BG-series fan. Seems like you guys got your stuff together / that you've given a lot of thought on what systems should realistically work and how to improve on old stuff. As for tieflings: they're pretty much elfs with otherworldy demonic or animal features and outer planar lore (anime catgirls shrieks in joy). also fixations to leather/dominatrix. maybe would work of better as an elf sub-race than to take a whole new race (wasn't this how it was in IWD or NWN2 anyways?) if implemented? Looks like i'm answering my question here, hah.

Honestly, GJ to OP for info gathering, the total picture gets clearer and bigger this way. EDIT Argh, there's a seperate Update 3 topic, nvmind.

Ultimately up to Sawyer IMO. Just don't write stuff just to strike egos (like you wrote in your blog rightfully), include homo/bi or WHATEVER if you see fit. Think the story, think how it buids the game/story and not the nerd conventions. Though i'm sure you know this already but you, just in case you forget what it's like to be a human/start making bad compromises!! Or think that all the CRPG fans are alike/aren't level-head on this. Whoa, i'm still wonderign if BG romances (or any) had Charisma restrictions/dependancy/requirements, would be kind of icky is there aren't any. get anyone you want, you are desirable etc

I actually though a similiar idea for my own idea of a RPG. It's a pretty cool idea. Your growth of characters are never exponential/could never overcome the enemies like DRASTICALLY by min-maxing all class conbos to hell... this of course would need a careful balancing of the class-race system but then again, that happens with any RP system anyways (go for it Tim). DD/ADD is horribly skewed in that 98% of combos are poor or outright piss, 1,7% works alright and last 0.3% are yber and godlike. Your exp could be gained from quests or maybe levels would be gained by clearing big storyline parts. Then again, people like adventure (me too) so it's not easy to stike out but certainly possible. And yeah, same reasons. No incentive to kill every creature on earth (or jesus, abuse the spell learning exp in BG2) then, actually poses dangers instead and thus anternative ways work equally well (as killing) (i mean who on earth kills everything that lives? isn't murder or war a scarring event etc etc... but no need to go over this here and now). stealth works better too as you can't grind any cheap monsters elsewhere to overcome the supposedly-tough by design - battle

Also, Idea: you could vary quests or random encounters by 1. having a pool of triggers that are randomed at the beginning of each game. SaGa series have apparently used this to great success, allowing great reability and unpredictability (you can't figure out the mechanics behind the game, making it a more immersive experience) 2. you can also have triggers that happen when you do something specifcially/walk over some spot in the world and that they either happen by A. Doing something specific, eg within time constraint - beating most of the bad guys really fast leads to assasins jumping out from shadows or the enemies retreating quickly to better positions with more advantages for them (= this wouldn't happen EVERY time). B. Randomly make the thing happen but in a way that Re-Loading won't make the rolling happen again. This way, some random encounters never happen, sometime you're suprised by new things (in different playthroughs)... actually, you can extend this to "bonus" material on actual quests: sometimes, that bandit camp that was easy for early levelers have this time around 2 Ogres to assits the bandits, making the battle really difficult. A BG1 styled expert mercenary quests at some locations could be randomed. Strange new people or events appear on different playthroughs. With randomed or not so obvious triggers, the battles could have suprising changes without destroying balance or feeding the players too much. 3. time triggers for quest or quest parts. many people didn't like That Big Time Trigger in fallout 1 (but imo they're babies) but extending this on some quests might be a necessity BUT the level of consiquence (and the post-consiquences of the quest) can be varied a lot. Perhaps bad endings can have minor consiquences, a slight guilt for player, maybe on some quests dire this-is-it ending... Perhaps the quests have time limits until after the "easy road" becomes inaccesible and you have (much?) harder time doing the quest then. Somebody in this forum suggested this. And what if "bad ending" leads to good things down to road, thus encouraging to stay with some endings and not immediately just RELOAD until you got your happy ending (with Persuading to everyone give their grandmas copper teeth to you like in NWN1, ahaha) with every friggin creature on earth. Example: Like you know, if you're told that **** MY DAUGHTER IS IN A DANGEROUS CAVE SHE MIGHT DIE SOON, you'd think that maybe you should hurry asap to that cave?? or kidnap or any other time-dependant scenario, that might hang on DAYS? and not go "yeah sure" and just finish that quest when you feel like 2 months later (BG2... im looking at you...). There's a quest like this in ADOM and while it's sad to see the puppy die, you take her dead body to her owner and you can also cheer her up and get some lawful points so the ending isn't YOUR HORRBLE GNOME GAME OVER but just an alternative ending among others? PROS OF TRIGGERS: + This would be all done that the most of good items and good dialogue is saved but you'll get new stuff in each playthrough. + Players will miss some of the "new game trigger"-content in their playthrough but are sure to meet them eventually. No-one is let out but you don't have to be a baby and scream at devs for not letting them see ALL the mysterious of the game RIGHT now. ! It can be coded to included tons anyways so that it NEVER randoms too little content. The core content and quests that are the most worthwhile ! if determined, triggers can persists despite reloading game. min-maxing every content is not possible & gamefaqs is needed if you just happen to bump into new varieties. Playing the game by living your decisions is encouraged. (it reminds me of the no-resting-in-dungeos - rule one person here mentioned in the "what mold do you want to break"). This won't ofc persist triggers that make the completing of the game IMPOSSIBLE - just extra flavour, suprises, content all around. ! Maybe if the player whilsts, there can be included a button for the lazies that will unlock more/all "new game trigger"-content? IDK i don't like the idea. !Hell, maybe the game could determine that once you have finished the game with THIS hero - you can start a new game with the information in hand and the game will reroll as long as certain percentage of new triggers are CERTAINLY turned ON, thus ensuring that you WILL see new stuff. You can repeat this again at the next playthrough - again, the game checks the pool for untriggered events. This way, a save that has completed gamethrough + that you can restart with completely new hero are sure to include new stuff and new people can just start their first playthrough and get randomed triggers. ! Allows DLC or sequels or add-ons to include new stuff that can't be possible included in this first game. I think we all agree that a finished game that sets out to do what the designers hope to do is all our goal right? No tons of compromises on essential things. CONS: Time taking and expensive to implement? Avellone et others know the truth on this. idk i could list more cons but i think the bottom line of the post is that i think everyone benefits from having to live with your decisions once in a while and not min-maxing your black-and-white uberkillers that are loved by everyone and everyone wants to have sex with your FF7 Buster Sword from Dragon Age. where's the adventure in this... though Avellone is right that you have to be careful not to do this on everything (thus restricting possible RPG elements by players) or that the game turns into Oblivion where throwing a stone in any direction inevitably leads to the stone hitting on a yet another random-generated dungeon... And i'm just brainstorming ideas, don't worry. Sorry for derail but i felt like this connects strongly on the ideas in eg Fallout on the wandering aspect, just taken a bit further for story too.

Baldur's Gate 1, yes yes yes. I want to roam, wonder and marvel at the suprises/the pretty things the nature offers, be astonished at the people or strange events in the way (anybody remember that bizarre woodsman who'se cow was attacked by 20 xvarts?? ahaha Those Were The Days). Get killed by wolves since we're so low-level and peasant-equipped for exploring (thus naturally limiting where you can explore) or running for your life or trying to get around the enemies without being spotted. You could combine this with Fallout-styled randomed/specific or attribute-trigger random encounters in places, both BG's were pretty limited in this (using random encounters for story or for introducin quests or giving new information to a quest (optional, you can decide how commont the encounter will be) and voila, we have a Weiner. :^B Whoops, sorry *wipes mouth* I started to foam a little. I really preferred this to eg. BG2 because you just KNEW that every area's function in the worldmap was just to hold a sign TRY TO OVERCOME ME!! HELL AWAITS!! and besides taking from immersion, it was kinda exhaustive and daunting, not to mention that the lot of supposedly lived areas just didn't have enough life in there besides the looming Big Quest. Yet in BG1, you might be suprised at WHERE you'll discover dungeons or even Big Quests, not always pointed out to player. That was amazing, too.

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It is what it is. The obvious, mentioned skill checks in NWN dialogue and alike were banal. I agree that the dialogue should rely on outcomes and relations. If it's too hard to implement then you might as well make whatever skill checks hidden and still have a good script, not the clear functionality of all dialogue in NWN 1. The PERSUADE choice in NWN 1 destroyed the immersion and dialogue so badly... Likewise, there WERE descriptions of people's appearances but they were hidden behind right-click -> description and were most of the time generic/not helpful in trying to predict background or intentions or anything (althrough you never needed to guess people's intentions due to bad script anyways). If description was more easily accesible, it means that you can see somebody a little further ahead (without them noticing you)... you can deduct that even if the guy is Neutral to you/non-hostile, you realize that guy is Bad News and try to find another way to the place behind him... the above tin-soldiers of BG give only so much information of intentions! I was thinking that there might be a way to increase the dialogue options but it might rely on a new type of alignment system... that your personality type or tendencies or your general personality description would pick whether you are direct, dispolite, temperament or whatever in dialogue. Sort of similiar system is the low-int heroes in Fallouts. This isn't as impossible as it sounds btw! Ofc some of the dialogue choices leads to somewhat similiar results despite differences in tone but how else do you describe the heroes/PC's "supposed" personality, unless you want to ditch alignment completely... besides, some personality types or attributes would lead to extra options. Like observer above would lead to hero taking mental notes on HOW people act in conversations, higher intelligence leads to quick and better logic detuctions (if somebody puts something and moves the hand closer to hero, hero has choice of "What did you just hide there"). Likewise, with either randomed or choosed "past" (thus personality traits) for PC, you will have stat modifiers and possible new abilites (i liked Arcanums idea a LOT for slight hero customization & RPG elements, also reminds me of IWD lizard-guy trait) for the PC/NPC's. PC can see his personality traits but cannot see other peoples personaity, thus the freedom for writing for NPC personalities and avoiding the cliche "CHAOTIC NEUTRAL, I AM DADA" or "LAWFUL EVIL, MUAHAHA" and likewise. Greyshades i saw in Kotor 2!! also like somebody said earlier somewhere - with grey shades/this, the strange polar opposite decisions of being mr.nice guy, then turning sides in the quest makes sense. (GAINED 2 CHAOTIC POINT! YOU ARE NOW "CHAOTIC MENACE"! YOU LOST YOUR CLASS!! whoops, time to go to church and donate 100 gold until i'm not fallen again...) So in a nutshell, personality traits would bring stat modifiers/skills/interesting customization while selecting the selection of tones and options for dialog to other people in the world. If there are Int Wis Char and whatever skills, they affect as well. You might see holes in this but think about that this should be POSSIBLE to implement and I don't think this has been done before + would work.

One of my friends said that he can't pledge since he can't have his linux version, the engineer uses linux solely. I told him if the money hit 2.2 it would happen... But i have to say that I really don't know the real numbers of who from linux would pay- i mean PLEDGE for this (within month). Can't the linux version be done after the game is out (once the starts to bring income to Obsidian)? I mean if they really are going to use the Onyx or whatever engine then maybe it will pay off to have a standard/template conversion to linux and Mac done at some point then (for possible sequels). I would imagine though that the Android version is the real hot potato though!

Man, there's a lot going on. You guys should pr quickly somehow arreange all this flow of information (or should had expected that the Kickstart thing WILL be pretty exhaustive on your part, there's been lot of reports like that from 'starters. If indie gamers can gather more than the 1,3 million just with their own audience-dedication tools/moves then absolutely why not you guys. Somebody else put that (what "fan" above commented) into better words in the Update section of Kickstarter. I'm not particulary demanding/crying for attention for developer to comment in everything but if i look this from the shifting consumer (gamer/kickstart supporter) and from Kickstart perspective, these are pretty important points (youtube-thanks might not be enough to communicate!!) : -Choose a Community Manager to answer and animate 'comments sections'. more than 900 comments and NO answer from Obsidian... seems like you don't want to talk to your supporters... Nina from Revolution Software's "Broken Sword-The Serpent's Curse" or Adrian from Black Forest Games' "Project Giana" are really active on the comments sections of their projects... Community is the the basis of kickstarter projects... if you don't feed us... we (the community) could retire many pledges (or stop ugrade existing pledges)... Look how inXile has animated the Wasteland 2 project, with frequents updates and 'comments answers' to backers questions. Even if most answers would be "we can't tell for now", it would be better than no answer at all (which make us feel like you don't even read comments) -Clarify if you will translate the game or not... Clearly, many pledges would be reduced if no translation is done. You should let the voice acting in english (many would prefer a good english acting than a poorly cheap localized dubbing) but please translate subtitles and interface to at least EFIGS (and if you can, go on for russian, polish and portuguese). Many people just won't play (and won't support) a full english game.

Hey Sawyer, It must be an insane rollercoaster over there, now that Kickstarter demands all the attention and planning for most part of the day. I was thinking of this. You guys are going to get lot of suggestions everywhere to specifics (party size topics music etc etc) now and

Some great ideas in this thread! Great minds think alike... I really love this stuff, personally. I agree. If you think of it, elves are just pretty-featured

Hello, I agree that some stretch goals should be revised and some included, somewhere in early and mid-point. If you don't know what people might want (in larger numbers), maybe put up or hire a new site (that doesn't crash/get crowded as easily as this) with polls on what people want etc? Idk just an idea. Here's some I figured out (that i think that would matter a lot to people, besides more sneak-peeks/info of the game i guess but that's up to dev's discretion - do they want to put up exciting info like eg Molyneux which they'll change into more fitting ideas ultimately during the developmenet? These gray shades of real-life CRPG dialogue... :-P). Maybe the devs are already aware of these... * While modding and such would please the core fans for sure, i think Multiplayer support might be a huge draw for early/mid-stretch goal, to both fans and to new players. 'Would sell my inner organs for this. Before this project, I was considering buying that new version of BG just because for the functioning Multiplayer support (and a lot of guys i know agree that MP on BG1 would really be "the wet dream") and I was getting some of my internet/real-life buddies on that too. There's just honestly nothing better than the cruel/steep-challenged world of BG1 when you're characters are this various goofy wimps/to-be heroes with low HP and armour and EVERYTHING against this new world that spreads everywhere - and this is what everyone I know has agreed on. * You should put as large language support as possible, the earlier as stretch goal the better!! I think you know this already but for South Europeans, East Europeans and even for places like Germany (not to mention Russia and the rest of the world) it's VERY important (since they translate and sub EVERYTHING indiscriminately). You have to weigh that on the possible profit vs possible piracy ofc. Just an idea: If those things get expensive, maybe get help for translating from fans? I've seen this working (internet community translating, ofc on couple of people's shoulders) before in all sorts of translation projects for old console games, there's capable fans and people out there who would be willing to help i guess. This is the age of community-supported arts, nothing is impossible. :-P * I wonder what you guys think of Tablet support? Does it fit the engine or the system? I mean there is the BG1 tablet version that got good ratings and idk how much that sold - that's something you need to dig yourselves. It might be a possible platform to consider if you want more pledgers to this or possible income post-release. I won't say anything of Mac/Linux support - it's unknown to me how many would pay for Mac/Linux version, maybe you guys could put somewhere (Kickstarter, start a new site quickly where you ask for interests through polls?) a "market inquiry"? IDK just throwing ideas. one of my friend wasn't going to pledge since there is no Linux version but that's just one person