rjshae

I really enjoy music, but I'm not an expert on it. Please could somebody explain what the benefit is of using live instrumentation? Thank you.

Yeah, you think they should, but they really more than often don't. And they are coupled with arrogance and shortsightendness. Note that it is very easy to misread the intent of somebody's written message; you're overlaying your own emotional context and social filters on top of what they put down. What you are reading as arrogance and shortsightedness may be something else entirely. Digital diplomacy is a difficult skill to master; I know I'm still working on it.

Plus they'll keep your lap warm on those cold stormy nights on the moors. Just don't ever try crossing a body of water.

Yes, another poll with biased and missing responses. It's certain to generate the results you want to see.

Is that what happens when you drop a gelatinous cube in the town well? Just curious.

Yes, many games don't perform cleanup of quest items very well. Drakensang just put them under a separate tab, safely out of the way. It was nice; plus you had a ready place to check them.

Ah, emotional churn. Ad hominem attacks are just a resort for people who can't properly critique the message. It's best just to politely ignore them.

Yes, me too. I'm sure they'd have done much better without the PE competition. But if they fail, there's no reason they can't go back to the drawing board and come up with a better design and sales pitch.

"Less is more," as artists like to say. It's a bit like a TV show or a movie in that sense; too many characters reduce the amount of character development they can perform on each individual.

Too late. That's how we got the mega-dungeon, player house, paladins, bards, and stronghold. I only hope they listened to the pet flying monkey idea.

I can live without a playable bestial race; that can be covered by druids. As a recruitable ally though, it might be fun. [staffs] Yes, ideally each weapon should have its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. It all depends on how detailed the designers want to make the combat system. [Non-magic weapons] Maybe. The designers could include some enemies that are impervious to general magic buffs. But in general items should be worth what you pay for them. [Drinking] Is there a role for leisure activities within a RPG? Perhaps in a MMORPG. With a single player game I'm hard pressed to come up with anything besides communicating with NPCs.

Poor Chris. Will he ever live it down?

Nearly everybody should have really bad teeth, so they wouldn't smile much. Remember the young woman (Valentina Vargas) in the conclusion of The Name of the Rose? She was at least plausibly attractive in that setting: a dirty faced, uneducated peasant woman with poor teeth.

I really liked the ability to create party formations and to re-order the party. Was it ToEE that allowed you to build your own custom party formations? Something like that would be nice because most of the formation options were less than optimal.

Listening to a crow caw all game... shudder.

I'm not seeing a problem. If we start excluding people who disagree with a concept, then it becomes a degenerate discussion. (Like the Bush White House... 'member that? ) It's up to the people who like the idea to adapt to the disagreement; either by ignoring it or by attempting to find a useful compromise.

I thought it was done reasonably well. The fact that things changed over time is just adjustment to the market conditions. Locking yourself into a rigid, detailed plan ahead of time can leave you unable to adapt. My main concern was that listening to too much mixed input from us, the contributors, can result in a incoherent mess. Yes there were good ideas presented, but too many of the loudest voices wanted features that the majority might not enjoy. But I'm sure the designers will put together a fine game experience.

To make the dungeon a more mysterious feel, the designers could do away with the notion of making it a vertical pancake stack and turn it into a branching structure; much like termite tunnels, with the levels separated by passages, caverns, ledges, and so forth. It can become a mini-underdark and take advantage of various natural features. Perhaps that is why the dungeon was built there in the first place, because there was a pre-existing cavern system. Most of the work they did to was expand and improve the natural features, saving much time and labor.

The occasional beautiful cavern or magnificent hidden stone edifice can add a lot to underground areas. Some clear pools with pale white fish, underground streams, crevasses crossed by narrow spans, narrow winding ledges, mysterious buried ruins from a long lost culture, colorful glowing fungus, magical light sources; there's many ways to add color and feeling to an underground space.

This "idea" is just a non-starter. People aren't going to want to spend a half hour of game time just trekking to the surface.

I wouldn't mind seeing a race-specific family member. Maybe a sibling living nearby, with a background and profession appropriate to the culture. You could come and visit them from time to time for a bit of juicy gossip or a minor quest.

If only to reduce the tendency toward quickloads, some percentage of the time I'd actually like to see an interesting positive event happen right after you fail at something. Like a side-quest that you wouldn't otherwise receive.

The Dragon community has a special team for hunting down false pretenders, so be careful what you wish for.

Somebody needs a hankie.

For variety they could give rings primary and secondary powers; with two ring slots for primary only powers and two for secondary only. But I'm fine with just having two ring slots. In the end, it's all about game balance.