eselle28

There's interesting story content at Levels 12 and 13 and some more with the big boss at Level 15, with an interesting battle at that level as well. I'm not particularly fond of dungeon crawls myself, but it's probably worth it to finish things off. Some of the lower levels are relatively small and don't take that much time to get through.

People are aware they can change NPC portraits, right? A few clicks of the mouse, and Xoti becomes Cadegund. Hell, if it's your sort of thing, you can make the entire party - including Eder - look like Cadegund.

I think the deeper companion relationships will do a lot to help add some opportunities for humor without turning the world itself into something overly silly. Both black humor and silly get-your-mind-off-this-stuff jokes are pretty common among real world people whose jobs take them into awful places. I think a good bit can be added into companion dialogue without seeming out of place. Plus, people who don't care for that sort of joking can have the option to respond with something along the lines of, "Get back to work, guys." Maybe that will even influence some companions' behavior or their perception of you, with some people appreciating a serious leader and others enjoying one who gets in on the jokes.

A female orlan or dwarf would be an interesting addition that provided some racial balance while reflecting races common in the Deadfire Archipelago. It sounds like dwarves, orlans, and aumaua are all common in the region. We'll be meeting two aumaua companions, one orlan one, and a dwarven sidekick. Another sidekick from one of those races might round things out a bit. I'm kind of opposed to sentient monster content, because I think that as with Ydwin, people will just become upset that the sidekick can't be a full-fledged companion. Sometimes the exotic stuff works better for me in expansion anyway. A priest of Berath (or Abydon, if allowed) / Goldpact Knight could be an interesting set of options for a religiously inclined character. Since the "subclasses" for those two classes have a philosophical component, I'd be interested in seeing some additional companion or sidekick options too. I also wouldn't mind seeing a more city-centered ranger or druid (or a character who offered both options), either.

At first I thought he was a jerk, what with all his talk of testing and refusal to answer too many questions. Then he called his goddess a whore and started confiding in me about his plans for his other staff, and I realized he was just a big sweetheart underneath it all.

I'm crossing my fingers that I like his personality, because those are two both classes I enjoy having in my party.

I picked the sidekicks, but you know, Eder probably wouldn't even mind. He'd just shrug and do it and then go off to play with Maia's bird (and probably get nipped in the process).

Fulvano quite explicitly runs into a sea monster at the end of his voyage as well. I can't imagine they'd have us retrace his steps without also letting us encounter the same creature. All of the quests in POE that hinted at mysterious monsters came with a payoff, and I imagine they know that to do otherwise would frustrate a lot of players.

I'm crossing my fingers for this. Any of Hylea/Gawain/Abydon would interest me. I've avoided playing a priest of Eothas because it seemed like it would be too close the the main storyline somehow, and the other current gods don't fit my playstyle terribly well. I enjoy several of the current paladin options, but it also seems like paladin orders can vary a great deal depending on region and culture. It seems like it would only make sense that Deadfire would have an order or two that wouldn't be seen elsewhere. Some sort of combination of piracy and paladins could be pretty interesting, perhaps a bit more freewheeling and more inclined to be self-employed than the Bleak Walkers.

It is easy to love Ydwin when other female companions are masculine ones. You haven't met three of these characters yet, including Ydwin! It's entirely possible that in her case, "pleasant" means that she's affably crude and that half her lines include belching. It's also entirely possible that Maia is a girly girl. And that's without getting into all sorts of complicated discussions about what "masculine" and "feminine" even mean. If you just mean that you find her character art more attractive, why not just say that? It's a perfectly fine reason to be interested in a character, especially since we know little about any of these companions, and all of them may change by the time the game is released.

I better not have to feed them candy. Imagine the possibilities, though. When you find a new captain who's superior to the one you have, you escort the old one to your friendly neighborhood animancer, who returns from his mysterious lab with some "candy" to feed to your crew. Okay, yeah, that's a little creepy even by POE standards.

She's from Raedceras. Oops! It has been awhile since I read her announcement, and I'd forgotten she was from Raedceras rather than the Dyrwood. Still, I think that connection with some lore that people already know comes across as less instantly sexy than reading someone comes from a mostly mysterious place like The White that Wends or The Living Lands. The depth and history and potential for character interaction comes across later.

Yeah, everyone's been caught on the Ydwin craze, but I fail to see the appeal. It seems a bit out of place to me. Xoti, on the other hand, looks like very well integrated with the main story, and her interactions with Edér are bound to be interesting. And yeah, that concept art makes her look really cool. So far Maia Rua and Xoti are the most interesting to me, but there's not enough information to decide that just yet. I think Xoti suffers in polls like these from hailing from the country we've just spent hundreds of hours exploring and from coming across as a bit of an everywoman. Being human probably doesn't help. I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up being very popular once the game is released for those same reasons. Characters who don't have extreme personalities can wear better over hundreds of hours than challenging ones, and I'm guessing her connection with the Dyrwood will lead to some interesting conversations. Edér, who seems like her mirror, isn't all that interesting if you try to describe him in a few sentences either, but it seems like he has his share of fans.

Even if we restrict it to games rather than all crowdfunded projects, Star Citizen would still be ahead. They did their initial crowdfunding campaign on two different websites, but the total of the two was $6.2 million.

The sidekicks weren't my favorite goal, but I've kind of come around to the idea. I suspect they'll give the game more freedom when it comes to the other seven or eight companions. Some people will be starting the game without the three companions from the first game, giving them fewer choices and possibly no choices besides either taking all four new companions or adding some adventurers to fill their party. I could see that creating some pressure to be conservative when it comes to companion personalities or closing off interesting relationship developments like a companion leaving the party. It seems like the sidekicks might ease some of that pressure and provide more freedom to be a bit polarizing when it comes to some companions. Also, as much as I like the idea of an eighth companion, I'm reminding myself that reading descriptions of characters hasn't been a perfect way of predicting if I'd like them in game. Right now Maia interests me the most because of her connection with Kana and a fondness for the bird ranger concept, but I think it's entirely possible she'll drive me nuts and that Rekke will charm me despite his lack of comprehensible dialogue.

Water Godlike would fit all of the setting, the general theme of godlike types (they could be connected to Ondra), and the character's appearance.

There are some interesting suggestings for age mechanics here, but I'd be perfectly happy if Project Eternity just refrained from forcing an age on the character. Given the "victim of circumstance" plot, it seems like keeping the plot age-neutral would be a realistic expectation. I didn't used to mind playing very young adventurers...when I was in my 20s and my characters were only a little bit younger than I was. Now that I'm in my 30s, I enjoy being able to come up with characters who are adult women, not young girls seeing the world for the first time. It's not that one is better or worse than the other, it's just something that's more interesting to me at the moment, perhaps because it's closer to my own experience or perhaps because I've played and read about so many young adventurers that other things now seem more original. As for fitting in with the leveling mechanics, I think there's plenty of room for a game to let players decide how much they want to make their roleplaying fit the mechanics. Some players won't feel comfortable making character who's still Level 1 in middle age, and they should be able to make appropriately young characters. Some others are fine ignoring the fact that their character doesn't fit the leveling mechanics very well as long as he doesn't keep running into NPCs who call him a child. Other players, like me, are happy to come up with backgrounds to accomodate them. Maybe my character was once very skilled but suffered a convenient head injury. Maybe my she's a grandmaster at needlework and childbearing (or blacksmithing and stall mucking), but hasn't had the opportunity to do anything very close to the class roles in the game. Maybe she's a magic user whose family never found her a proper teacher. The point is, if the game is already going to be quite open as far as the identity of the character is concerned, I don't see any reason to force the youth issue - especially since, as Uttuka rightly points out, there's no particular reason that people in a medieval world would be contemptuous of a young adventurer. A group of people carrying heavy weaponry is intimidating regardless of whether they're teenagers or greybeards.

I really like this concept, but I imagine the coding for it would be a nightmare. Maybe a few unique/artifact items could be coded to trigger a dialog with certain companions when acquired, hinting at them wanting to use it, and getting upset if refused. I also really like this, and it's far superior to the annoying gift-giving mechanic I've seen elsewhere. I can see it being difficult to implement on any sort of large scale, but it would be nice if an NPC noticed when I finally obtained some hard-to-find artifact and equipped it on his character.

Yeah, I'm the person who's fouling it all up for you because I want the option of being reluctant. Being forced to be an eager champion (or more likely at the beginning, a happy lackey) tends to make it hard for me to play my favorite character types. But one of the benefits of unvoiced dialogue is that there can be more response options, and I'm assuming there will be lines included both for proactive characters and ones who go around complaining, "Do I haaaaaaave to?"

The game would have to be designed around there being no tags though, otherwise it will end up like Skyrim when you turn off the quest compass. Yes, the dialogue would need to be written so that mistakes like the one I described are fairly rare, with the optional tags being a secondary source of information rather than the only way of telling which response was which. I don't think that's a bad thing. If something is really so profound that only a wise person could think of it or so amusing that only someone very charismatic could pull it off, it should seem a little out of the ordinary and shouldn't be easily mixed up with the mundane responses.

The problem isn't NPCs misunderstanding, because unless the scenario in question was designed so that a certain skill-based line was going to be misinterpreted, it's a case of just confusing players who thought they were taking one angle but it was actually a different one. This whole thing is proposing PE to have a dialogue system of misleading options like Mass Effect. One of the most common gripes about that series was that you were given sentences in the dialogue wheel that were WILDLY different from what Shepard actually said, and often gave different results from what was the implied intent of the initially presented dialogue options. i.e. You get a renegade choice that looks like you're just going to threaten or punch a guy, but instead you shoot him in the nuts and then stomp on his neck. That was the worst part of the Mass Effect games, but I think the situation's a bit different if you know what words will be said and the only possible difference is tone. People make mistakes based on tone and context all the time, and for some people, it livens things up to have a little bit of unpredictability. In my personal playthroughs, I might choose a dialogue option like this, thinking it's a calm, rational argument in favor of doing one's share: "Come on, Reluctant Villager, chip in your share to the local militia and let me move on. It's in your best interest, really. If everyone made excuses about paying their taxes, the village would be overrun by bandits by nightfall!" I'd normally expect Reluctant Villager to either sigh and agree or continue to refuse. However, if unknown to me that was an Intimidate option and the villager reacts by paying his taxes, slipping me an extra bribe, and begging me not to rob his home, I'm fine with not having seen the label. Maybe my tone was just fine, but the last couple of tax collectors the local lord sent through used those sorts of tactics, making the villagers easily intimidated. That being said, I understand that not everyone enjoys this. I'm fine with there being tags, as long as I have an option to turn them off.

I'd like to be able to take the loot my enemies were carrying when I killed them, so ordinary items (combat-related, no silly Elder Scrolls baskets) from ordinary humanoids, artificats from humanoid bosses, and crafting materials from animals and demons and monsters. I think that generally keeps the number of special items down enough that finding them feels special and exciting. It can further be reduced by not having any artifacts for sale in stores, or only having an extremely limited number of them for sale.

I'd like to see at least a few old tropes subverted, or at least avoided. I've never been a fan of the constantly-attacking wolves and bears in some fantasy worlds. Fine, if you go to sleep in the wilderness, a chance for a random encounter with a bear makes sense. But I'd rather see other critters used for insta-hostiles in the open world. There are enough mythological nasties to pick from for there to be other, more entertaining, substitutes. And while I'm fine with there being a "mook" species that's automatically hostile and a stock enemy, I wouldn't mine a game throwing in one side quest where you got to work with a member of that species or see the world from their point of view. Tropes I'd rather not see subverted include many of the combat-related ones. PS:T was refreshing considering all the other similar games that had been released recently, but given how long it's been since there was a IE-type game, I think people who like to play with long, pointy pieces of metal should get a good selection of weapons for their fighters and paladins.

I'm strongly opposed to this. 1. As others have mentioned, some people simply aren't that talented at this sort of game. If they want to buy PE for the story, I don't see why the game should punish them. 2. It all but ensures that a player's first playthrough will be the shortest and most boring playthrough. I know some people have an impulse to save the best for last, but that sort of design means that a lot of players will never end up seeing that extra content because they weren't that thrilled by the game the first time around. 3. It makes the game very inaccessible to new players. It's already somewhat so because its design will be unfamiliar to many people. But it's kind of a nail in the coffin if people can't even recommend it to their friends without mentioning that it doesn't get good until the third time through. 4. There are lots of other ways to enhance replayability: making the combat so fun people want to try it on a more challenging setting, allowing enough reactivity so that characters can make very different choices, making the game easily moddable so players can create their own content. Gating story content based on combat skill seems cheap in comparison. 5. Beyond all this, if someone likes the game but only feels like playing it once, I don't think that's a terrible result. I suspect most of this game's audience is over the age of 25, and some people's work and personal lives are going to limit their ability to constantly replay games. Other people just like to take the one tour through on their special characters. PE isn't an MMO, so I don't see why there would be a need to push people who don't really want to replay a game to do so. They paid the same upfront price, and I think they deserve to have their only playthrough be an amazing experience, not a shortened version of the story that people who have played several times get.

It seems like this one's easy enough to resolve - include tags and give players an option to turn them off. Personally, I prefer not playing with tags. If someone misunderstands me occasionally, I think that makes the world seem more realistic. It's not quite the same thing as a dialogue wheel where I selected a few words that sounded very neutral and ended up saying something cruel or threatening. If I've seen every word my character is going to say and people still take it the wrong way, I'm fine with playing it off as a social blunder. And stat-based conversation buttons definitely shouldn't be the easy win option. There should be cases where picking one of the other options could lead the guards to clear out some annoying enemies, or where another option might open up some additional and useful dialogue. I would also say that there should be at least one case where using the wrong kind of high stat dialogue fails. If you keep responding to a highly emotional, illogical person with rational, high intelligence dialogue, that shouldn't be as effective as using charm-based dialogue or even saying non-stat based but comforting things.