rjshae

...now just imagine that scene 20 pixels tall.

Dude, you're just digging yourself in deeper. Try taking the mental perspective of a female player.

That does have a certain cultural connotation, particularly if STDs don't communicate well between the different races. It may lead to some decadent cultures where the most desirable prostitutes are non-human. Long-lived elven consorts could develop their expertise into a political tool for manipulating short-lived and weak-willed humans. After 500 years, an elven Cipher consort may be a beautiful but very dangerous individual with a lot of influence.

Yeah, another skewed poll. I think women should be small, pixilated figures with barely discernible features in the game. But the text can paint just about any picture it wants in your mind short of soft porn. The only aspect that really matters here is whether figures can appear nude in the inventory/paper doll panels. I very much doubt that they will. But it would be good if they weren't overly prudish with granny panties and so forth.

If it's done in the medieval pattern, then a military stronghold is a right granted by the nobility, or earned through force of arms. It's not a house paid for by the owner.

For the really expensive stuff they could do away with most of the currency and just use barter, possibly combined with auctioning. The barter could be represented by a rare and precious type of object greatly desired by the most powerful individuals; such as a "Spirit Stone". If you want that +5 long sword, it'll cost you a basic sum just to get you in the trade, plus 20 Spirit Stones. These stones can be made too precious (and dangerous) for trade with normal merchants, so the natural tendency is to horde them (or go to a limited number of places to sell them for a heavy mark-down). If the stones can be made useful for other activities, like item crafting, the player will need to decide whether to use them up or horde them. Their very usefulness for powerful individuals is also what makes them hazardous to own. Using Spirit Stones as trade items for expensive gear allows the game's other currency requirements to be lowered.

^^^^ It's GURPS...

Gear repair in Fallout 3 and Oblivion was an interesting element of those FPS games. But I'm not sure that armor and weapon degradation wouldn't be just too much detail in a game of this scope. It's kind of like food and drink: you can more or less assume the party is taking care of it during their spare time. But perhaps it is something that can be added to the Expert mode?

I'm fine with the standard progression of treasure in D&D. It's an important part of the game experience and one of the more enjoyable elements of the PnP version.

Grappled!

Au contraire. Charts and data without a proper design is just wasted effort.

The whole thing sounds pretty fishy to me...

Doing otherwise would probably have taken a fair amount of coding effort: you've got to hide the benefits of the item from the player while still providing those benefits during combat. Otherwise, what is the point of having an Identify spell or a Lore skill? Perhaps they need a different mechanic than the old Identify magic item concept. Maybe magic has to be attuned to a person (or party) before its powers can be used? If it is not attuned, then perhaps it is liable to act in a mysterious manner with the benefits varying chaotically?

Another approach is fractals. I know they have fractal-based systems for generating terrain. Somebody must have done comparable work with fractal texture generation. That may be useful for generating consistent, non-repeating terrain patterns, such as grasslands or desert sand. Basically trading disk memory for CPU load. Fractal-based, non-repeating? I thought fractals were about a pattern repeating itself so it looks the same close up or far away. It's the way nature repeats itself, so it makes sense to have fractal patterns in tile systems of nature. Yes they are self-similar, but that doesn't mean they must produce identical, repeating patterns like tiles. For example, you can use fractal algorithms to generate any number of trees, no two of which are the same. But it's probably too much work to be worth implement anyway, unless there's a graphics library handy.

The main benefits of fly and levitate to a mage would be two-fold: to get beyond the reach of melee weapons and to move to places you can't reach as easily through ground movement. It should be possible to simulate either of these capabilities without building an elaborate flying simulator. Flying, for example, could be a point-to-point teleporter with a visual effect. Levitation moves the character slightly higher above their ground marker, accompanied by a visual effect, and adds melee immunity against those on the ground.

I have no idea, but I hope they don't use the borked up system they have in Neverwinter Nights 2. That game allowed a character to identify all but the most powerful magic item with just a single point in the Lore skill. That made it totally useless to spend skill points on Lore until you got to very high levels.

Another approach is fractals. I know they have fractal-based systems for generating terrain. Somebody must have done comparable work with fractal texture generation. That may be useful for generating consistent, non-repeating terrain patterns, such as grasslands or desert sand. Basically trading disk memory for CPU load.

Taking the crossword puzzle approach might help a little. If you knew the answer was 6 characters long, that would help avoid the situation of knowing the right answer but not typing in the right word.

They could perhaps solve the DR penetration issue by employing a non-symmetrical damage distribution scheme. In most games you have an equal chance of rolling the low damage score as the high damage score. But, in all likelihood, the high damage score should be more infrequent: you're targeting a smaller part of the opponent, so there's a smaller chance of hitting it. Example: Rather than rolling a 1d6 for damage, the system could roll, say, two 1d12 and choose the lowest score. 75% of the time the damage will be down in the 1-6 range, but a quarter of the time you'll get damage from 7-12. Hence, even if the opponent has a DR of 8, you'd still have a chance of causing at least some damage. There might be a better mechanism for implementing this, but the point is that a non-symmetrical distribution can be more representative of combat reality and it can allow even a small weapon to inflict damage to a heavily armored opponent.

^^^^ There is such a thing as too much information. Companies don't feed weekly reports to their stockholders. I don't think most of us contributed just so they could feed the forum discussions.

Haven't been to a real theater in several years. Can't stand those loud ads blasting at you for fifteen minutes straight. (Unfortunately I have really good hearing and I can't tune it out, even with earplugs.) Grumble, grumble, ... The last bluray I picked up that I really enjoyed was Outlander. It's a fun popcorn movie and I've watched it several times since.

Character development is all well and good, but half the fun of a D&D-style game is the cool magic items. I don't particularly want to make it to the end of the game fighting with a broom handle. I can, and have, played low magic games already. There's nothing special about that approach. Personally, I signed on for a Baldur's Gate experience; not a medieval western. The standard D&D item progression works fine for me. It doesn't overwhelm the player's own attributes, but it does allow you to take on tougher and more interesting opponents. My 2cp worth.

Quest markers may be a feature that belongs on the easy (Casual Gaming?) mode; something for people who want to speed through the exploration aspects and get directly to the meat of the game.

I understand your concerns, but I see a problem with your statement about what players want. Not every player is looking for the same features in a game; some of the elements that have you concerned are the same features that others find very appealing. Personally I'm taking a wait and see approach; I like a lot of what the developers have detailed thus far. Their general philosophy matches the type of experience I enjoyed in the IE games, but they are also adding in some gaming features that have been introduced since that time. Hopefully it will become an enjoyable blend.

Okay, so do you want a system where that decision takes 3 seconds to quickly assess, or 3 minutes to analyze in detail? (This being my point. )