rjshae

The problem with having just a few skills is that it starts to feel like DA:O, which made the skill system feel very vanilla. If this approach is taken, I'd also like some means to tailor each of the handful of skills into particular sub-specialties. That is, you still get to spend points to increase selected skill ranks, but every few rank increases you get to select a focus for those skills. Take a Mechanics skill: that would give you skills with lockpicking, disabling traps, setting traps, repairing devices, and so forth. At, say, every two ranks, you could select a focus in one of those areas. Like +5% bonus in lockpicking padlocks, for example. At higher levels you would continue to improve in mechanics, but you could then also select a +5% in lockpicking doors. &c.

That does imply there may exist a multiverse of extra-dimensional planes. I wonder if it will be D&D-like or a different concept altogether?

I just want the politicians to scurry back in their holes so we can return to the normal flux level of disinformation. So, hooray for the election!

A shared swag bag would be okay, just as long as there is a combat penalty for accessing it. That inventory can represent the bags of goods that get dropped at the start of combat, so they wouldn't count against the weight restrictions for combat movement.

I'm really not seeing a problem with the vanilla good vs. evil (or law vs. chaos) trope as an underlying mechanism for an enjoyable game. It's quite possible to use that background and still include a lot of subtlety and complexity in the game.

How is it we all rallied around the idea of a new generation Baldur's Gate, then people just want to play house and buy a small business? I'm not very excited by this trend.

Mmm no. At the age of 60, your life expectancy would be more than nine years. not in the present day...obviously. In the time period in which the game is set e.g. renaissance period, furthermore its not my data to begin with, It was Hormalakh who said people of that time period lived until about 69, thus less than a decade. Nope, that's not it. Assume the expected life span is 69 given that you made it to 20. Once you reach the age of 60, your expected life span is more than 9 years. That's because the probability distribution is different for age of death given that you are age 60 compared to the distribution for your age of death when you are, say, age 20.

Mmm no. At the age of 60, your life expectancy would be more than nine years.

The demand for nudity mods will probably be lower than in many other games, as the isometric view (possibly with limited zoom) means that means that players will not really be...uhm...enjoying the view up close anyhow. It might actually be somewhat fun to allow nudity in the main game and have NPCs react accordingly. I mean it's not like you're going to be seeing much detail anyway, and the social responses would be entertaining. If there is more detail in the inventory paperdoll view, they can always add fig leaves.

Would love to see more attention paid to the rogue's scouting ability, including the ability to climb. At a minimum they could have climbable structures that allow a rogue to perform an area recon. A plus would be to ascend buildings to come in through the attic or travel across roof tops. Another fun ability would be infiltrating an enemy camp in preparation for the main assault ,and maybe committing some sabotage.

"Lolboobs" was, of course, a reference to her royal highness, the good Queen Lolboobs, who insisted that her +5 chainmail bikini armor of eye searing be forever preserved for posterity. Sadly, the much prized armor has since become lost. But work continues on a suitable simulator to render said suit with proper jiggle physics. I feel certain her highness would be proud. Feeling particularly silly today for some reason... must be from sniffing the political sewage.

I think the fact that they are professional game designers says a lot. We all have our own personal preferences in what we desire for a game, but they are the ones who will have access to the full picture and the experience to know what makes the most sense in terms of implementation. I trust them in the sense that I trust the plumber to fix the plumbing or a lawyer to understand the law (plus their record speaks for itself).

Perhaps the developers could include "accomplishments" that apply to mundane weapons, shields and armor? If you use a piece of gear repeatedly throughout a large stretch of a game, then that very familiarity with the item's idiosyncrasies could actually provide you with some interesting bonuses? Said benefits might not be as good as those from a superior item, but they'd be enough to make it worthwhile for you to stick with the familiar. The developers could even allow some customization of the item, giving it a name and allowing it to receive some unique enchantments that are specifically tied to your soul. Maybe they should give every piece of equipable gear an idiosyncrasy modifier? It could be zero for well-made gear made by a local craftsman, or negative for gear made by other races and cultures (and/or badly made gear). As you use the gear for a while, or have it adjusted by a craftsman, the negative modifier goes away... and eventually becomes a positive as you use it over the course of several class levels.

Yes I really, really hope they can fix path finding and make the path following algorithms look a little more plausible. I.e. more like following a cubic B-spline than a segmented line. I know it's a complicated problem when you include collision avoidance, but it would be very nice if they can pull it off.

They're just bits in a computer. I swat 'em like flies and save the pacifism for living creatures.

Snotty nobles that hold a handkerchief to their face as you approach and bid you begone because you're beneath their notice. A shifty-looking black market dealer standing in a shady, back corner area of the slums. Grumpy dwarves who like nothing better than drinking you under the table then bashing enemies with a battle axe. Bored, barely helpful guards who would rather have joined the army. Insane fanatics preaching at a street corner and actually being listened to seriously by a group of locals.

A feature I enjoyed from the BG series was the ability to overhear enemies that you could not yet see. That added a lot to the atmosphere, although some dampening and distortion from the dungeon acoustics would have been welcome as well. I'm replaying Fallout 3 right now, and the ability to overhear creatures I cannot yet see gives the game space an inhabited feel.

Yes the NWN2 updater is nice, but it's also reassuring that there is a downloadable patching system as an alternative. I've used the latter several times and it worked fine, but some stronger reassurances from the publisher would have been welcome.

I basically like being able to form a front line of hardened fighters and summoned creatures, then managing the ranged support: archery, healing, spell casting, sneak attacks, and so forth. The latter forms a type of reserve unit that I can target against specific threats or use to shore up weak areas of the front. To me that's the most interesting element of the fight. But then I'm an old board wargamer, so I enjoy making tactical adjustments and managing it as a small battlefield. Hence, I'd be interested in skills that allow the group to fight as a team, maintain a cohesive front, and perform special strikes against specific targets.

We've had this discussion before. Do a search on the threads and you'll find this isn't a universally welcomed option.

My understanding is that plate armor was particularly effective against slashing weapons such as the scimitar, but less so against impacting weapons such as the war hammer. Impacts would transmit their energy through the solid plate and hence needed to be absorbed by the padding underneath. This could perhaps be modeled by a bleeding wounds system: penetrating weapons inflict lower amounts of base damage but cause bleeding wounds that last for several combat rounds. Softer light armor can then be at least as good, if not better at absorbing impact damage as plate armor, but it is easier to penetrate this armor and cause bleeding wounds. Medium-type armor can represent a compromise between the two: decent armor that is good, but not excellent, at absorbing both penetrating and impact damage. Having separate classes of penetrating and impacting weapons results in a rock-paper-scissors system of weapons vs. armor. Using a fully-developed bleeding wounds system gives the player an additional factor to be concerned about during combat. The player can sweat bullets as the stamina of the wounded front line fighter continues to drop for an uncertain number of rounds, making healing that character more of a priority. The wounded fighter may need to switch to defensive mode for several rounds while waiting for the healing magic to come.

The DA:O camp sites were actually a pretty decent idea. A little variety would have been good though.

Another biased poll with answers deliberately worded to skew the responses. Meh.

^^^^ Fair enough. But to implement a realistic age system in a RPG you'd normally have to use a point-based build like GURPS or Champions. That way you can balance out the decline in certain stats due to aging with an increase in skills from the greater experience. To do it in a D&D-type game you'd have to do something like transfer unused ability score points into some amount of additional skill points and higher caps on certain skills.

Let's see... half the number of animations in order to allow left handed weapon wielding? Which to choose? Hmm... Hard luck lefties. (<-- note the left-handed animation.)