BasaltineBadger

Except for limited resources. Few pages of dialogue won't consume much of the resources.

Lightning Warrior Raidy is the only RPG with satisfying failure I know.

Not realistic at all. This is fantasy so world should be full of spectacular phenomena like talking mushrooms and exploding trees. I'm pretty tired with grim and gritty realistic fantasy that looks almost exactly like our world except nations are fictional some people shoot fire from their hands (and are of course hated/prosecuted by religious organisations) and some have pointy ears.

So this is what you are getting at. I personally think that the romances should be there because people usually like them and there is no reason to exclude them.

The most popular options would probably be "add romances" and "remove romances". Not necessarily in that order.

So anti-romance crowd is satisfied with romance subplot they can't avoid or affect in any way as long if there is no option of player being involved? This makes absolutely no sense.

You right. You are a bigot and you have a derogatory view on gay relationships, how did you word it .."yuck". Tell me something, what would people think if you said " I hope this game doesn't have African American people in it, its so controversial" ? Discrimination is discrimination, and you can try to say its your opinion as if it that makes it right but it doesn't. It's a fantasy game, African Americans are the last thing I would expect. Humans? SPOILER ALERT: Africans are a type of human. Most fantasy worlds don't fave either Africa or America, hence they can't have Afroamericans. That't the joke. You could say the same about almost every sidequest. RPG usually have many sub-plots besides the main plot, there is nothing weird about that. Also romances are practically no different than every other bit of companion-centered dialogue, if you want to remove them you could remove every dialogue between the MC and companions that's not about the main plot.

You right. You are a bigot and you have a derogatory view on gay relationships, how did you word it .."yuck". Tell me something, what would people think if you said " I hope this game doesn't have African American people in it, its so controversial" ? Discrimination is discrimination, and you can try to say its your opinion as if it that makes it right but it doesn't. It's a fantasy game, African Americans are the last thing I would expect.

My idea for defending allies is to give fighter some defense mode that would establish Zone of Control around him. Fighter would gain ability to deal automatic stronger attack to every character that tries to enter or leave ZoC (like in ToEE) and every attack made from ZoC against an ally who is in ZoC would make fighter cover ally and take attack on himself. As for combat abilities, fighters and rogues should get more movement options like ability to jump through enemies or running which would sacrifice their defense abilities for higher mobility.

The same reason why they make every other dialogues, because there are people who like to read them. I personally don't like diplomatic approach in RPGs because it's usually skipping combat by clicking right dialogues, but that doesn't mean that they should remove it. Romances has the same right to be in the game as every other line of dialogue. There is nothing homophobic about he's statement, he just said how people will react according to him. He didn't even talk about homosexuals in his post.

First of all, they could get different bonuses. You give 4 romancable characters, 2 male and 2 female and they each give different bonus. Same with races. Second of all, RPGs aren't hardcore enough for people to min-max their stats so much. Every non-casual player would beat the game without the romance/race bonus even if there was no equivalent just like he can beat the game by not doing every quest or by not playing the most powerful possible build.

That would add even more complications because it would rely on the sex of the PC. So if you had one female companion that was romancable if your character is male, that would mean Obsidian would need to make a male counterpart to that NPC (if your character was female) with dialogue altered to how a male talks, that's because the player gets to choose the sex of their PC. And that's not even taking into account if you wanted to have a gay character, which would mean adding a gay/straight affliation in the character creation screen. Do you realize how stupid that is? Do you realize how much pointless work scripters would need to make a system like that work, just so you can chat up an elf maiden or burly dwarf man? Not to mention how immersion-breaking having modern moral systems in medieval settings is (there were no gay people in the middle-ages, not because they didn't exist but because the concept was so culturally reviled that you'd probably end up burnt at the stake unless you were like the richest noble in the land). You'll also notice that I said PC (Playable Character) a few times when I could have said just "Player", because romances are really crossing the line into simulation, ie it's about the person behind the screen, not your character in the game I don't see how adding stat increases and other bonuses for romancing certain NPCs would lead to that. When elf character gets some bonuses because of his relationships it doesn't mean that a dwarf character needs to get the exact same bonus in by being a dwarf. @ CrosmandoBut the same could be said about everything else in the game. Romances are only extra dialogues but there are also locations you might not like that drains resources from your favorite element, I don't know why should we cut romances instead of every sewer and warehouse location, because I'm sure people enjoy romances more than sewers and warehouses .

Just make one-use items expensive and actually usable. Potions are almost always almost never useful because you can replace their effects with spell and magical arrows/bombs and stuff are either cheap as dirt or not wort their price (possibly both). An expensive but affordable special arrows that one-hit kill certain monster type would make certain seemingly impossible areas possible. Expensive elixir that gives high boos to your charisma or lock-picking skill that could be used in a pinch. And just limit the gold you give the player. People in NV started offering ludicrous rewards way too soon.

@Kilroy_Was_Here That's the part of the problem. People shouldn't have to guess or use deduction to know what do the goals even mean. When Planetary Annihilation added their goals they've said "metal planets" which was pretty self-explanatory, not "another type of planets".

I liked how MoTB handled romances. Some light flirting + slide about MC + romancable character staying together in the future. Bioware with their "final battle is coming tomorrow and neither of us wants to die as a virgin so..." is far from perfect.

In my opinions stretch goals are pretty boring and uninspired, and they suffer greatly because of lack of more specified information. This is just boring, and doesn't effect the imagination in any way. People look at it and just think "ah, there is going to be more content in the game". The problem is that the new race could be something if find boring lazy (half-elves, gnomes) or exciting (some bug people). It would be much better if cards were revealed up-front. For example if the goal stated that cat people would be added, everyone who likes cat people in their RPGs would be more likely to support Eternity if he's not sure if he should. Same problem as race. Sound just like yet another location, and pretty boring. Some info about related quests, customization or anything that makes it wort the time would be nice, but right now I can't see it standing on it's own as a separate stretch goal. Same problem as race. It's too little to get people excited. People could get excited over "mysterious mansion storyline" or "island region with a pirate faction" or "wasteland region with magical mutants" but not over just some random region. Only effects minority of the players, but it's OK i guess. The only goal that works for me, because it's easier to imagine what will anther Obsidian companion be like than it is to imagine what will another region, fraction, race be like. Probably because people are pretty similar no matter which setting they are in.