rjshae

So... a mummy is basically a fampyr whose bacterial decay has been halted through a secret chemical preservation process?

Thank you for the update, it was an enjoyable read. Perhaps monsters that can disguise themselves as children; appearing as slightly odd looking, raggamuffin pickpockets during the day but swarming flesh eaters at night. (Piles of fish guts will typically sate them, supplemented by the occasional drunken human wandering down the wrong alley).

Yep. Might will be useful for instantaneous/point target damage effects (Flaming Arrow); Intellect for cumulative/area damage effects (Acid Mist). Fireball will benefit from both.

Posted yesterday: Extended Gameplay Trailer #1 - "Welcome to the Prison"

I see the UFOlogy quasi-religion has contaminated the Science channel now. I was really hoping those guys on SC would raise the bar a bit, ... but no. Watch folks as we just make up cr*p for hours at a time! Grrr...

Hopefully that means that the form will simply apply various modifiers and special abilities to the caster's base form, thereby making it scalable. I'm curious to know if there will be a spider form...

The best part of NWN2 is the toolset; there are scads of player-made downloadable modules you can play, including good quality implementations of Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate.

Agreed. Great post I don't believe that the current state-of-the-art interaction mechanics allow for improved implementations of relationships. You'd need a strong AI backbone that has creative elements and is able to simulate realistic responses. That would require budget for AI coder plus hiring a good romance writer and possibly additional testers. The developers would need to cut other elements of the game in order to fund that content. Hence, this is not a good idea for the current game. It would be better to try this in an AAA effort. It seems to me better writing, more dialogue options and avoiding making every character romanceable by either gender would go a long way towards improvement without adding absurd costs related to AI development. Also I believe this kind of game would be the right one to do it, as AAA voiceover has a high cost, making fully voiced high budget games less likely to attempt it. Possibly. Possibly not. But it's always a trade-off, and would still cost some amount of budget to implement. I like to think that a DLC is a better means to implement romance--the players who want the romance option could then pay for it, and the forecast added budget can be used to hire a skilled writer.

Agreed. Great post I don't believe that the current state-of-the-art interaction mechanics allow for improved implementations of relationships. You'd need a strong AI backbone that has creative elements and is able to simulate realistic responses. That would require budget for AI coder plus hiring a good romance writer and possibly additional testers. The developers would need to cut other elements of the game in order to fund that content. Hence, this is not a good idea for the current game. It would be better to try this in an AAA effort.

If you check the Kickstarter page, the $25 contribution level says, "This price is only available for those who help fund before the game is released!" That means the digital download price should start at more than $25 on release. It'll then presumably decline as the demand drops.

Tip of the hat, sir.

It might be interesting to mod in a romantic thread exclusively through past lives and the concept of soul rebirth. Perhaps you find unique articles that are energetically linked to a previous existences when you met and partnered your cosmically linked spiritual mate? These mods could be hidden as easter eggs throughout the game, telling a story unto itself.

mmmm..the Chinese and they have done it before. What is my present for answering the question? Hacking computers to spy on people? North Korea, Britain, Russia, France, Iran, Syria, ... to name but a few.

To make your characters more meaningful, one of them should die. Permanently. To make your choices matter, the character that dies should be determined by your previous decisions.

I think you need consistency in behavior and background, plausible character flaws, and some redeeming characteristics.

That'll be extremely hard to setup though.And can cause the bad side-effect a player needs to do everything. Also, it would probably slow down progression since with a cap they can be more lenient and allow players to pass levels quicker, since they will be stopped at the cap of content, while in your system there's no way to balance the game like that, it needs to go slower not to exceed the mass. I can't see it work in practice... I believe you're wrong. All they need to do is make it feasible to reach level 12, but tally up the XP totals so they are less than the amount needed to reach level 13.

DA2 was more enjoyable and a better cRPG than ME2.

Another candidate for contributions by the modding community...

Okay, so that would seem to be almost equivalent to Exxon closing down one of its hundreds of subsidiaries and moving some of the employees to another subsidiary. Not exactly unusual behavior.

These aren't anything close to analogous behaviors. Irrational Games is a small, privately held company that is not beholden to stockholders or a board of directors and does not have a huge amount of physical assets.

Here's a nice illustration along the same lines as the cat form: the "human Deer".

They could create an "Attire" reputation, with the two extremes being armored or casual. Depending on which one you are wearing, you change your faction rating. This would then get a different reaction from certain individuals. Potentially there could be shades of grey--light armor would lie closer to the casual faction than would field plate, for example. Or there could be a more general "Violent nature" reputation, with your current armor and armaments shifting your faction somewhat.

Well the easy answer is: this is a fantasy setting so the purpose was unique. But, in trying to rationalize it, perhaps the original reason for constructing the walls no longer exists and the interior buildings were added later, then abandoned? It would be intriguing to find some almost completely ruined structures inside the curtain wall, implying a violent past when the stronghold was invested, captured, and the interior structures razed.

No, you have a level's worth of wiggle room. There's no need for a hard-coded cap if you keep the maximum possible total below the amount for the next level.