rjshae

There's some quite respectable material and not a few pretty smart people on Wikipedia, including professional academics. (There's also some total a-holes, but that's another story.) You learn to judge the quality of articles; some are very good, even outstanding; others blow greasy pig's snouts.

They all seem like very make-able goals, so I'm not expecting that they will be cut because that would negatively impact their product reputation. They've also got some fiddle-room in how they implement the goals, so I'd expect the richness of the implementations may vary depending on the rate of progress. Here's hoping it goes very well...

There are copyright considerations. Better for Oblivion to lock up the rights first before announcing the name.

Barbarian's drunken master style. 'Nuff said.

If they do telepathy, they may need to add branches to virtually every conversation. I'm not sure that will happen, both because of the extra costs and the possibility of breaking plot threads that rely on NPC secrets. They may also need to add branches for any type of KOTOR-style subtle mind manipulations (these are not the droids you are looking for...).

how so? Assuming there is a finite amount of experience in the game. What do you add to a game when there are higher level characters?

Another skewed poll that is missing viable responses. What about abilities in the 1-100 range?

I'd like to suggest that catering to all posted goofy niche interests and parochial whims be made the $10 M stretch goal. With options to turn them on or off, of course.

Not having a level cap means more development costs. I'd be in favor of a temporary level cap that can be lifted as sequels become available.

Rather than a D&D-style bard, how about a class that blends music and entertainment with healing? They can heal the body and soul through their music, but their knowledge of physiology, toxins, alchemy, herbalism, and disease also makes them dangerous foes. Perhaps they use something equivalent to the asklepios as their symbol?

I'd like to see a dungeon that is self-sustaining. A "normal" dungeon or underdark should have an input of energy and an output of waste. Something must exist to maintain an active the dungeon or at some point it will all collapse on itself at the next earthquake. How does it get rid of fallen debris and prop up the structures? Maybe there's a vicious race of mole-humanoids that hate the light and are constantly working to build a vast network of robust tunnels and mine the world for its resources? A mega-dungeon of undead that exists just to consume living organisms would soon run out of targets. Would the undead then just stand around performing repetitive tasks? Some of them would need to be working to maintain the structure, which would imply at least motivation and some intelligence. Are the undead just types of worker bees that know just what to do, or is there a central controller that performs planning. Perpetually doomed to an underground existence, maybe this intelligence seeks to lure in fresh bodies to increase its army of corpses? Maybe it knows a way to transform the surface into a form where the sun is permanently hidden. A realm of utter darkness... bwahahaha...

Early on I think they mentioned that humans would come in different varieties. I took that to mean they would implement human races in a manner comparable to the Elder Scrolls series, which has Bretons, Imperial, Nord and Redguard. Not sure if they will implement multiple varieties of elves, dwarves, and godlike, but presumably they would.

I think 48 fps is what they are using for high frame rate 3D movies. Hopefully 60 will be more than good enough. Speaking of 3D, that computer display technology may be more prevalent in 2014, when this game is set to be released.

While I like FoW, I'd also like enemies to be allowed "shouts" that draw in other combatants within hearing range. One of the flaws of BG is that you could move forward in small increments and draw in only a subset of the combatants, allowing you to steadily whittle the enemy force down without exposing yourself to significant risk.

It's made of little bacteria called midichloria mitrochonrii. They surround us, penetrate us, and bind the universe together.

People don't count him cause he dies. If you could have kept him in your party all the way through, yeah, he'd be the rogue pick no doubt. Yes, Yoshimo was an enjoyable character. Hmm, I wonder what they will do with PE if the story requires that one of the companions gets killed off?

Yes, if they do reach the Adventure Hall level, then it's not a big leap to a co-op mode. But they would need the budget for it, which may not happen during the first release. Maybe they can do it as a post-release add-on, once the economics permit it?

Historically, Paladins where essentially knights, some of whom later became seekers of holy relics. They were lawful in the sense of being the champions of the king and were perceived as "good" because of their chivalric code. In this view they were not all that different from samurai. I don't think you need an alignment system in order to be able to model a character like this. But perhaps you need a system that modifies their soul-based powers depending on their ethical choices and loyalty.

Perhaps (evil?) rituals should be made available, which could be spells that involve drawing upon the souls of others. It takes longer to cast a soul ritual since the target is presumably at least somewhat resistant, but rituals can be much more powerful than a normal spell since they drain the entire soul rather than drawing upon a small amount of the caster's soul. The sacrificial soul would need to be helpless and it would require a special apparatus to drain the target's soul (such as a pentacle, unique materials, and a custom blade). Not normally for use by a kind-natured person, of course.

To me, during combat rogues are like spies, scouts, infiltrators, and fifth columnists in warfare. Their role is gather intel, disrupt the enemies logistics and lines of communication, and perform hit and run attacks. If the designers come up with a wounds system, then backstab could be done away with and, instead, attackers can be given a significantly increased chance of inflicting a wound during a sneak or rear attack. (If they have multiple attacks then they can inflict multiple wounds.) Rogues in particular should be able to treat a flank attack as a rear attack when an enemy is being melee attacked from another side (as they are experts in exploiting distraction). My $.02 worth.

An 'Engineer' was generally focused on building structures; I don't think they would necessarily be experts of firearms, bombs, alchemy. Maybe 'Tinker'? That would then include rogue-like specialities such as open lock and disable trap. Drakensang had a couple of profession classes that were adventure-focused: sapper and prospector.

Yes, they could do with fixing the first level vulnerability to house cats.

Broken souls must be like Limberger cheese; smells like stinky human feet.

Back in the BG series, experience growth was relatively slow and it felt like an accomplishment to reach a new level. Since then, D&D v3.5 rules came out and level up began to feel almost like a cheesy accomplishment that didn't require much effort. That has become the trend in modern games: leveling up after every few battles. I have to wonder how this will be handled in PE? It sounds like Obsidian wants to return to the style of the BG series, which would seems to entail a return to slower level progress. If they do allow a more rapid level up, I hope they tone down the power growth rate so that lower level monsters remain a challenge for longer periods. What do you think?

It wasn't just the Baldur's Gate series. In every party-based fantasy RPG I've played, I added the bard character for novelty but soon wanted to remove them. Bards just feel like a leaden weight. In Oblivion on the other hand, I really enjoyed playing a Bard because their versatility gave a lot of options for game play. To be worth picking up as a companion in PE, I think the designers need to do something to give them a little edge.