Zephyr Falcon

I voted for both mainly because of my unending love for Icewind Dale 2 - that game had only a player created party. And I loved it! That said it shifted the feel of the game to a more tactical and strategic one. That's far from a bad thing. It proved how challenging the game is and how much proper party creation and ability use is. On the other hand Obsidian is no making IWD3, they are going for a Baldurs Gate style game. And that is a desicion I support 100%. And I have the fullest confidence in OE delivering unique and deep characters as our companions. But I worry that leaving the option of multiple character creation out of the game would be detremental to modding, sequels and "spin-offs".

Toolkit, Toolkit, Toolkit! It's a must have for the infinitly expandable genre of RPGs. Supporting the modding community pays off a hundred times over. Just look at the Nexus websites for Fallout, TES, DA:O etc. And let's not forget good old NWN 1&2... Plus I'm really interested to see 2D artists expanding the backgrounds.

Yes, avoiding the overlong-non-skipable intro part before the free exploration part is very important to make the replay less frustrating. New Vegas did it best I think. The intro was very quickly over, gave you the main points and pointed you to an optional "training" for first time players. Even DA:O didn't solve the problem, but rather pushed the tedious part (Osligath, searching the woods, defending the tower) behind the Origin story. I'd rather have a super short intro segment, followed by free exploration as early as possible and more reactions regarding to my background.

One way to limit the power of mages without taking away their usefulness is a system where they have to switch from one active spell to the the next but only one (or a few) can be used at one time. It kinda becomes resting, but only for mages and could have a logical ingame explaination. The tactical implication would be to pick the right spell before the combat. And if you want powerful spell-combinations your wizard has to spend half the combat "switching" from one spell to the next.

On the topic of in-game currencies and unrealistic inflation issues. 1. Games are supposed to be fun to play The first duty of games is to be fun to play. Everything else comes later. This definition of "fun" also includes things being scary "fun", tragically moving "fun" etc. 2. Reality isn't fun Reality is often boring, tedious, mildly annoying etc. In that sense very work of fiction is some form of escapism. Reality does have some pretty darn awesome and exciting stuff - but the gaps between them are quite big. 3. Being poor isn't fun In reality, I don't have to explain. In a game, yes it's fun to start out with next to nothing and work your way up. But that's point 4. 4. Improvement is fun Getting better at stuff is fun. Leveling up is fun. Being able to do and get better stuff is fun. It's also very satisfying to look back and say "I started with nothing" 5. Rewards are fun Games have to have reward mechanism like xp, items, gold. Games without them or with too little are less fun than others. Some games just have a high score meter, but that also is a reward mechanism. When adding 1. thru 5. together, I don't think we'll get a RPG with a realistic money system any time soon. Maybe someone will create one build on an underlying, detailed, dynamic simulation of a world. But certainly not this one. I don't want to sound glum or pessimistic - good game design can mitigate the problem and strengthen the illusion of a real game world. I'd also like to delay the problem as long as possible. I think increasing the cost of items and money sinks are the way to go. How about having to pay your followers. That would be realistic. And it would scale with the increased loot. Even if every companion only takes 1/10th of the loot that would reduce the loot overall by 50%. Now if you want to be really ingenious - show us how the companions spend their cash. That could be so hilarious! The other great money sink is a player stronghold (like Crossroads Keep in NWN2), it would partially be beneficial, partially just vanity. If they go with a more political setting - go for bribing officials, buying influence and supporting armies. Maybe also spend money on research ("Hey, scholar find out where the legendary dungeon of blablabla is!") and development (a.k.a. crafting) On the topic of in-game currencies and unrealistic inflation issues. 1. Games are supposed to be fun to play The first duty of games is to be fun to play. Everything else comes later. This definition of "fun" also includes things being scary "fun", tragically moving "fun" etc. 2. Reality isn't fun Reality is often boring, tedious, mildly annoying etc. In that sense very work of fiction is some form of escapism. Reality does have some pretty darn awesome and exciting stuff - but the gaps between them are quite big. 3. Being poor isn't fun In reality, I don't have to explain. In a game, yes it's fun to start out with next to nothing and work your way up. But that's point 4. 4. Improvement is fun Getting better at stuff is fun. Leveling up is fun. Being able to do and get better stuff is fun. It's also very satisfying to look back and say "I started with nothing" 5. Rewards are fun Games have to have reward mechanism like xp, items, gold. Games without them or with too little are less fun than others. Some games just have a high score meter, but that also is a reward mechanism. When adding 1. thru 5. together, I don't think we'll get a RPG with a realistic money system any time soon. Maybe someone will create one build on an underlying, detailed, dynamic simulation of a world. But certainly not this one. I don't want to sound glum or pessimistic - good game design can mitigate the problem and strengthen the illusion of a real game world. I'd also like to delay the problem as long as possible. I think increasing the cost of items and money sinks are the way to go. How about having to pay your followers. That would be realistic. And it would scale with the increased loot. Even if every companion only takes 1/10th of the loot that would reduce the loot overall by 50%. Now if you want to be really ingenious - show us how the companions spend their cash. That could be so hilarious! The other great money sink is a player stronghold (like Crossroads Keep in NWN2), it would partially be beneficial, partially just vanity. If they go with a more political setting - go for bribing officials, buying influence and supporting armies. Maybe also spend money on research ("Hey, scholar find out where the legendary dungeon of blablabla is!") and development (a.k.a. crafting)

Hooray for the Update! Now the best thing about the update (for me at least) is the confirmation that we'll get to have a party of 6. I'm really sick of those 3 or 4 people parties the console-ported games gave us. Plus it's instant nostalgia for me to have 5 NPC companions. The main plot hook is something I do like. It's not the dreaded "You are the CHOSEN ONE!", instead it sounds more like "I was at wrong place at the wrong time" - which gives way to a more haunted or reluctant protagonist. The races and sub-races are what I expected and hoped for. I can't really emphasize with all the hate Elves and Dwarves get around here. I'm not tired of tropes, I'm tired of clichés. There's nothing wrong with a dwarves as such, but if we get a beer-drinking, gold-loving, grumpy, elf-hating, battle-axe swinging dwarven fighter - it's a cliché. But this won't happen anyway because the writers at Obsidian are already tired of those clichés. We'll probably get a female dwarven wizard with an elven girlfriend. But when it comes to less commonly used races I'm all for the Tiefling-like races they mentioned. And personally I'd like to see some beastmen done properly - i.e. not cannon fodder. But don't do minotaurs, they've been done before, go for gnolls or goatmen.

In BG1 and IWD 1&2 (before you got raise dead) the death of a party member was an instant reload for me. In those games I constantly saved and reloaded quite frequently. And I liked it because every death was my fault! I used a wrong tactic, didn't use any buffs, had to weak a party or just tried to slay a dragon. Now the worst thing about the various "Raise Dead" Spells in D&D and so on is that it's implications are never properly explored. How would you live if death held no fear? If you knew with absolute certainty that there's an afterlive? PS:T did explore that issue in depth, in fact you could argue that the whole game was about that question. The mechanic in NWN2: SoZ or DA:O is build to avoid super-frequent reloading or super-cheap resurrections (and their implications). So I'm perfectly happy with an old-school way of doing things (quicksave - quickload), since I can't think of a good solution.

I would like a BG2 style map, i.e. the interesting locations pop up as you learn about them. I don't really expect them to build a whole and complete world. In BG2 the world didn't seem small and was also very much filled with interesting and beatiful sights. In that game I always assumed there was more beyond the screen I could see, but also that the stuff beyond was less interesting/important. But I would like to see skill use implemented on the travel map. Allowing you to travel faster (if time is of any importance in the game) cheaper (living of the land) or avoiding enemies.