teknoman2

it's not divine magic, it's natural magic like that of the druids

only xp rewards should be the same regardless of method used. you are asked to get rid of the dragon that lives near the town. if you can kill him, you can get crafting materials plus his hoard and the reward from the mayor. also your reputaion with the humans goes up but the dragons hate you if you can make him leave peacefully you get the mayor's money and you get a reputation as a dragon friend, making future dealings with dragons easier. also your reputation with the humans increases if you can't do either, but enlist the help of some giants, they kill the dragon, they get his hoard, you get the materials, the mayor's reward and a better reputation with the giants and the humans. since it wasnt you who killed him, you lose no standings with the dragons if the dragon wants the town obliterated and you choose to help him do it instead of making him leave, you loot the town, get rewarded by the dragon, get big reputation bonus with the dragons and lose a lot with the humans in all of the above cases, when the quest ends you get 10k xp see how easy it is to vary the results without having to change the xp gained?

im fine with any of it, as long as it is sensible however there are some points to consider for these options having a startup shop with items you cant afford would be a bit ridiculous. the list is not a bad idea, but it's not much different from the preset gear, since you will obviously choose stuff that fit your class and no starting equipment... how will you fight your first enemies if you are naked so you can get some basic gear?

rangers in IE games had 2 free points in 2 weapon fighting style, and that made them good dps material (especialy the archer, if used in BG1 through the trilogy mod could solo the entire game), when the fighter was more of a tank

this is what you do to useless companions

this is how it should be. different xp for different approach brings us back to the senseless and endless debate about combat xp or various xp gains by various menial actions or not. to balance the game, the same goal should give the same xp reward regardless of the way you completed it. the variations would consist of losing or gaining fame and standing, getting or missing loot, how hard it was to do it, maybe long term consequences for choosing this or that method and so on

since you get a base of operations in he form of a house or stronghold, you could asign the inactive companions to do stuff for you, rendering them unavailable for some time and getting them the xp they dont get by not being with you. another method would be to have the option to pass a character's share of xp to another. so when my party completes a quest, and the members are lv10, 9, 9, 10, 8, 5, you can give the share that would go to the 2 lv10 members (your character maybe one of them) to the lv5 so he can get 3x xp and get to lv6 or even 7 faster

if they make indeed BG style portraits for the game, i hope they make many and most importantly many that are not used for npc's. i really did not like the fact in BG that all the portraits you could choose from, were used for some npc and he would get another portrait if you had used his as yours. they should have an selection of portraits npcs do not use, from which to choose your character's

i was *that* close to vote antarctica just for fun... well there are science bases down there and they probably have internet too so it may be possible to vote it for real

You can't keep a company the size of Obsidian running on projects the size of Eternity. Eternity is not New Vegas. It's not going to bring in $300 million. To "go independent , they'd have to fire a LOT of people. Hence the : "the second they'd be sure that they can sustain the company that way." This won't happen anytime soon; we'll see how PE fares and how big Kickstarter grows though. And by the way, Obsidian got only a very small portion out of these (alleged) $300 million. usualy the publisher covers the cost of production by paying for hardware, software, salaries, and so on. if the game sells well or if some term of contract is met, the developer gets a bonus that is all in all pretty insignificant in comparison to the money the publisher gets by the sales. and of course, the developer gets no % per sale, unless specifically cited in the contract. its something like this i have a construction company and someone asks me to make a skyscraper. i start work, i get the materials, the workers, the machinery and withing 2 years i complete my work. as the work progresses, i present the bills and receipts to the owner and he pays the building expenses and the worker's salaries. once the job is done, i get my pay and go home. i have no claim to the profit from renting the building because i built it... it doesnt belong to me, unless the owner has signed a contract that says otherwise.

I read your ideas, but I was honestly confused. Did you want layers so that when your character wears a helmet, it would unlock tahat layer in your portrait or were you talking strictly about changing colors and the like for a single image? I feel that a image editor sort of isn't worth the trouble for devs because one could always do that in photoshop and reimport the portrait. when you make the 3D model of your character in a game you get to choose from various hair styles, colors, face types and so on, combine them and create your avatar. what he means, is they can implement something like that in a 2D image fashion. so you have 10 faces, 15 hair styles, 5 hair colors and 8 clothe types, all made in 2D BG style for your portrait. you can combine them any way you want to make a custom portrait for your character however i still think the best solution is to make a character in 3D and then take a picture of him and use it as a portrait... EVE style for those who know, with maybe a an effect added to make it look hand drawn

torment had the most RP of all games in the list on its gameplay, and i'm hoping for something similar on that part. if at that you add some of the sickness of bloodlines, and some of the really mature themes and hard choices with unpredictable consequences from the witcher it would be perfect

i voted them all, cause i dont mind at all.

they say there is a theocratic country somewhere so i suppose being of a different religion in that country could make you less than welcome

if the game sells a lot after release, all profit from the sales goes to obsidian directly. so they will not have need for a publisher to make a sequel, they will have the funds and maybe they can make another ks to fill the financial gaps if there are any. besides, a sequel would cost significantly less, since the game engine, the ruleset, the art, the lore etc are already there.

all in all this is a very tricky matter. you play cards with the local gambler. you can just play on, win or lose, or save before each round and load if you lose. the only way to prevent you from using the save-load trick, is to not allow you to save. this could be done by using an autosave only function, if you play on hardcore where you save automatically when you quit and cant load, or if (and its my personal favorite) you are not allowed to save manually more than once every few minutes. let's say that there is a 10 minute restriction on saving. that means that you cant save manually for 10 minutes since you last saved or loaded a game (autosaves keep working normally). so you save and you play cards. the match lasts 30s, you lose and reload. you play again and win in 30s. you have to either keep playing without saving, go do something else for the next 9:30 or just wait there for the time to pass. 10min is not much to replay if you lose, yet is much to just wait around doing nothing until you can save again

not if all the enemies are at max possible level from the start too. the first time you started in lv1 and the first quest was to kill lv1 rats. you finished on lv10 with the final boss being at lv13 in ng+ you start at lv10, with first quest to kill lv10 rats and the final boss is lv 20 with you at lv15

usualy im for quality, but if quality means a single well written quest in the entire game then it gets a bit boring. so i prefer a ballance of 60-70%quality and 40-30% quantity

im for it, as long as the plus, is available only on ultra hardcore mode. you start with your party as it was at the end of the last game, but the game will be at max difficulty with save and exit only, which will be deleted upon defeat

well since the xp will be awarded for doing quests, for finding an clearing secret dungeons, for defeating bosses, for surviving through a certain death encounter and so on, you wont be able to just grind xp, but you can just get the finite number of xp the devs have made available. so at some point there simply wont be any more xp to have in the game and that's the cap. and that is of course preferable to having a total of 200k available to be gained, but your character cant get any more than 150k

i used the ranger as an example. some classes could get to 15 or just 5 for all i care with 160k xp, the point is that there were barely a few k more that what the cap allowed in the game and based on your play style you may not ever get them... and even with the cap off they would not make any difference for most classes

i dont really mind, but if they add sheathing its better.

there are some photo booths that have the option to turn your photo into a color sketch picture. they could implement something similar to make instant BG style portraits out of 3D models

that cap allowed a ranger to reach lv8. if you have the trilogy mod that removes the xp limit, the ranger may get to lv9 but it takes a lot of work to find every little bit of xp in the game. so cap or no cap, you usually could not get past lv8 for lack of xp in the game

well since you only get xp for completing quests and other objectives, its not really necessary to have a cap. there will be a finite number of xp in the game and the max level is when you get all of it. at least that's how i would do it. of course, if you get to lv 10 and have a companion at lv 2 join your party, it will be hard to get him to a high level if you keep sharing the xp, so in that case a "give up my share of xp" switch or a level cap should be available in order to let the companion grow faster i voted no cause im generally against the idea of caps, but i dont really mind either way if it is implemented in a way that makes sense