TimB99

My wishlist (which is huge, but I can dream, can't I? ): 1) Non-traditional class-stuff I've said it a few times before, but I'd like to see more customization when it comes to abilities/skill distributions with regards to 'classes', à la skyrim. That is: Instead of just having 'mage', 'fighter', 'rogue', etc as classes, have these be merely initial skill allocations instead of being rigid classes where there is no way to step outside of them, so to say. My question would always be 'but what if I want to be part archer and part mage?'. A way around this would be to have classes be templates, so to say, that you can adapt to your own wishes (the classes becoming more like backgrounds or 'professions' instead of rigid "you are destined to pick locks when you are a rogue, or cast spells when you are a mage", these being only SOME of the options, along with any kind of permutation that you'd like, as a ROLE PLAYING GAME player) Related: if you DO choose to have these more rigid classes, then I'd at least like to also have an option to have an 'undefined' class in which you can allocate relevant stats and abilities yourself. 2) 'Time sensitive' quests and parallel missions Again, I've said it before in another thread, but I'd like to see quests that are in a sense time-sensitive. 'A village is under attack! Go save it!' MainStoryline says. 'Sure!' You say, 'but only after finishing these 8 side-quests first!' Aaaand well crap.. The villain didn't wait around for you to go to the village, and has already destroyed it. Now what do we do to find more about his master plan? Similarly, this could make for an interesting possibility in which there are 2 or 3 missions available, but you can only choose one, as the other ones will expire after this one mission. They could each yield different results and could have different consequences in the over-all plot (one would be an infiltration mission and give you important intel, for example, whereas another would be to save a town, gaining allies and a reputation). 3) Non-traditional questing Instead of having each step of the way/plot conveniently highlighted in your quest journal, why not have the player search for intel, or even set up an intel network in order to advance the plot? Why not have the game go 'alright, now you have no more clues and leads to follow; what now?' Why not have a gameplay mechanic in which you have to pro-actively search for leads instead of them being fed to you? Relatedly, why not have a portion in the game where you can find or trace no more leads, at all? And you'd have to wait for a while, or go to sleep, or whatever, and then have some kind of unforeseen event occurring. This could even be neatly tied in with point 2) above: if you decided to save the village in favor of the infiltration mission, you wouldn't have gotten the intel regarding the next step of villain's master plan, and therefore wouldn't be able to stop the unforeseen event, but you would be forced to wait until it happened. 4) Tactics Dragon Age: Origins-style tactics. Perhaps expanded. And awesomeness. That is all. 5) On morality meters and consequences I say NO to morality meters! I say yes to behind-the-scenes, non-visible companion affection meters. I say yes to CONSEQUENCES to actions instead of +5 Light Side points, with these consequences preferably happening in a spread out way to later in the story so that the "I don't like this outcome, QUICK LOAD!" scenarios right after a conversation or a choice can be avoided. And by these consequences I'd prefer not to have the bioware-consequences of "Oh, so you chose to do X at the end of Mass Effect 2? Let's acknowledge it with one line of dialogue while railroading you all the way anyways!" And sure, consequences can be small (saving a child, then later meeting up with her parents who are very grateful and let you stay for dinner) or big (balance of power shift in a politically/ideologically conflicted organization or city resulting in you getting allies for the Final Battle), but they should be there. 6) Interesting or at the least intuitive/intelligent conversation/action-options PLEASE do have interesting options. Don't just 'save the wounded enemy' vs 'let him die'. But give us the option to do something with that option as well (this ties in to the concequences point as well), rather than just 'I choose to do this for the light side points'. We could save him and take him to camp, only to torture him for info later, or send in the cutie to extract information more subtly, or to just do nothing, yielding us no info at all (see? consequences! ) 7) Relevancy to quests Whether it is a save-the-world story or a more personal story, let's at the very least have relevancy to side quests/story archs. And of course, there should be quests that cater more to one kind of player than another ('please save my brother' vs 'go steal something'), and are more fluff-kinds of quests to spice up the world, make it more believable, and add RolePlaying value, but why would I go around the world saving everyone from their problems? I have no time for that! I'm on a personal quest. Why would I want to save the Elvish people from being enslaved? Besides, I'm just one man, what could I possibly d- ... wait, did you say you would support me in the Final Battle of Awesomeness? Sure, I'll help you! (see? ) And for the love of RPGod, no 'could you kill 6 wolves and gather their pelts for me' type of quests, please?' (again, if anything, make that relevant to the plot) Mature themes and interesting setting And that includes companions and the like. Also, bonus points for Eldritch Reality stuff. Plus, with one of the main themes apparently being 'Soul', this could make for a greatly engaging, interesting, emotional story. MAKE US PROUD OBSIDIAN!! :'( I HAVE FAITH IN YOU!! JM2C, - Tim

Is there a stretchgoal planned in which we can donate via paypal? (no seriously, any idea when I can finally donate? )

The enemies that I personally find most interesting are basically those enemies that will have you think, change or adopt a tactic for that enemy specifically. This incorporates the idea of enemies with special powers of course (melee+freeze/stun? --> kite; healer? --> focus fire; etc), but the main idea is that if an enemy makes you think 'well crap, how am I gonna beat this guy efficiently?' makes for a good enemy imo.

Agreed. I love pausing. But at the same time I'd want things to be so accessible and intuitive that if I wanted to, I wouldn't have to pause at all. There's no pause button in real life, so pausing in game, especially in the flow and hectic nature of combat just seems so artificial and, at worst, sometimes even immersion breaking to me. While it's fun to have things go absolutely optimally, but that's just not how things work, and to me, unpredictability, sub-optimal solutions, and adaptability in combat are things that make a game more interesting and engaging. So, for example @ Sensuki: while disrupting mirror image is optimal, doesn't it just turn up the adrenaline and the 'oh crap!'-factor more if the mirror image is successful and a whole new dimension of combat is introduced? Or, on the other hand, wouldn't you just throw up your hands in joy if, in the turmoil of combat, you manage to do it on time in the real-time flow yourself, or having your companions tactic-it on their own and seeing your well planned out tactics succeed? Oh, and the hate doesn't seem to be that bad... If there at all... Here's some lovin' for all you civilized folks: <3 Shows what I know ;p

Don't know if it's been mentioned already, but I'm not sure I would like to see classes (in the traditional sense, that is) at all... I've commented in another thread about Skyrim's skill system, and that, to me, felt like it had much more options for customizing (and therefore ROLEPLAYING). Basically how Skyrim's skill system works, for anyone who doesn't know, is as such: you DO NOT have a class, but EVERYONE would have EVERY SINGLE skill that was in the game instead (one-handed weaponry, destructive magic, archery, heavy armor,etc), which you could advance in rank/experience levels by DOING stuff with it. So if you used destructive magic a lot, you would 'level up' in destructive magic, and therefore you would end up as a 'mage, prestige class destructorzorz', if you liked the destruction magic so much that it became your standard play-style, so to say. The traditional 'Classes' could therefore be implemented simply by assigning some starting ranks in say unarmed combat (for a monk), magic (for a mage), archery (for an archer), one-handed weaponry and shields (for a fighter), for example, and 'leveling up' as you develop, choose, and engage in your preferred gameplay style of unarmed martial arts, magic, archery and one-handed weaponry and shields, respectively. But on the other hand, if you feel like becoming some sort of spell-sword, you could choose to advance in magic AND swordsmanship at the same time, for example, instead of waiting for some prestige class to unlock at level 10. Looking at it this way, traditional classes could be seen as simply the initial main skill-selecitons, and the more exotic classes are actually a way of working AROUND the class system to give people more options of roleplaying the things they'd ACTUALLY want to play. Again, think the spellsword: I bet it was created because people didn't JUST want to be a mage OR a fighter, but a combination of both. So why not just go all the way and just go with the classless skill-based system. Example: what if I want to be, instead of a magic/fighter combo, a magic/archer combo? Or a archer/alchemist combo? Traditional classes would then have to account for EVERY possible combination a player would want (which they often do, resulting in an absolutely RIDICULOUS amount of classes; or they could choose not to, of course, but that would go against the fundamental idea of the ROLE PLAYING GAME in which you could CHOOSE your own identity. So, if it were up to me, I would honestly have Project Eternity adopt that system in favor of the classical 'this is your class, these X things are all you can do well... have fun!' ideas. JM2C... Thoughts? - Tim

Moving aside all the wonderful and awsome questions of 'how does one deal when living with differing cultures?' and 'what's the nature of good/evil?' for a minute, I personally was thinking more about an exploration of identity, with a recurring motif/theme of the story apparently being 'soul' and all.. What makes a person a person? <-- insert psychological conditions and illnesses here (what about psychopaths? how does an autistic person see the world? etc etc) What makes a person good/evil? <-- insert nature-of-morality and attached ideas here How much of a person, or what part of a person is even 'him/herself', and to what degree do the other parts impact on your behavior and identity? <-- insert themes on primal nature, nature vs nurture, and all the cultural clashing here I've been playing with the idea of a 'mental vampire' who eats people's minds/souls, all these new identities blending, and him becoming confused or otherwise afflicted as he starts forgetting who he originally was himself and start asking the question 'who am I?', perhaps eventually going insane; how does one deal with these kinds of problems? On a related note: I always wondered what would happen to one's mind when one becomes 'locked in' (or in fantasy terms: fate-worse-than-death scenarios such as Eldritch Abomination stuff, imprisoned for over 4000 years, etc etc). In case of the locked in patient stuff: Imagine being trapped inside your own body, it literally becoming a prison for you mind, while being conscious, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't move, you can't talk, you can't even signal to the outside world that 'you' are still there. How would you deal with that condition? Would you fantasize? Philosophize? Would you go and live in some sort of self-constructed fantasy-land or would you sleep (and dream) all day, and if so, how would that impact you if you were to get un-locked in again? Would you even realize which world is 'the real world' after getting un-locked in? What about when you'd get bored with that? How would your mind be after a year? What about after 20 years? Would you have great insight about the human condition? Or would you have gone utterly droolingly insane? On a related note: Anyone played The Darkness II? Who else thought the whole psychological institution storyline was the most interesting thing of the entire game? I'm quite bummed the writers hadn't done more with it... JM2C... Thoughts? - Tim

So I was thinking about this just now. A commenter (Starwars, in the 'spell cutscene' thread http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60646-spell-cut-scenes/) said that "I hope something Project Eternity will do is to have as little interruptions to the gameplay as possible. No cutscenes or other things that constantly takes away control from the player." This made me think. Although I love making chess-like tactics, I also love relatively simple ways of doing combat. As in: the pause button may be there, but if given the choice, I'd rather not use it if I could deal with the combat on-the-fly, to really be involved in-the-moment rather than being the floating observer in the sky pausing the action, thinking about my next move for half an hour, before ordering everyone perfectly (I exaggerate, but still...). So I was wondering about whether or not it is possible to cater to both these play-styles, and if so, if that would be favored by most people. My first thought: Dragon Age Origins had this great mechanic of tactics where you could assign several orders to people that they would do if their trigger-conditions were met (example: if ally's health under 25%, do uber awesome heal, or: if 4 enemies in close proximity of each other, do the freezing area-of-effect spell to freeze them). That way you could issue your strategic orders without stopping the action with a pause and keeping the flow going. Plus, it added believability: characters were able to act relatively intelligently and independently from the player. Then I got round to thinking about SWTOR and its combat interface: skills are bound to the hotkeys of 1 through 0 and has a highly customizable interface so that data and skills could be accessed without much trouble. But then again, if there really ARE going to be parties with 4 through 6 (if I remember correctly this was mentioned somewhere?) members, then that would become quite the challenge to control without breaking the flow by pausing.. (though the aforementioned tactics could be interesting for the exact same reason). So... Thoughts/opinions on this subject? - Tim

Am I the only one who actually likes Skyrim's way of handling leveling up and experience and such much more? To me it made much more sense to have X number of skills, and each skill could be advanced in depending on what you did with them in-game. How would talking your way out of some situation earn you experience or even a level up, that could then yield you the awesome sword slash of doom skill? On that similar note: I actually liked the no-classes mechanic. It made your character much more customizable, and really felt like you did your own thing (which is what an RPG should be all about, I'd say, up to a certain point, of course). Plus, I'm not even sure I like the 'only 1000 exp points until I level up' kind of stuff.. Again, to me, the Skyrim idea of "I've practiced in skill X to the extent/duration Y such that I can control it much better than I could at first, and I can now learn new tricks for it" more than "Hey! I just killed a rat which made me gain enough EXP that I am now better in every aspect HOORAY!" (and of course I exaggerate, but still...) JM2C, - Tim

As long as there are no morality meters, I'm fine with 'good' and 'evil' choices, as long as they can pan out differently depending on what you do. You can have different motivations for different choices, and well thought-out choices may not even be good/evil depending on your motivation. E.g. giving beggars money (light side?) in order to build up your intel network (well, isn't that dark side-ish manipulative?), killing an assassin (dark side?) so that they won't pose a threat later on (protecting those you love? Isn't that light side?). Choices shouldn't just be about the +10 Dark Side points. They should be about the consequences. Ergo, no morality meters, because what I do in-game may not even be meant as "I'm a good person, so I'm gonna take the good choice" vs "I'm an evil person, so I'm gonna take the evil choice" (and let's not even talk about the obsessive compulsive I-want-100%-dark-side-just-because, or even worse: because this item magically feels whether I have "75% dark side points" (whatever that 75% DSP even is)... But perhaps the motivations are rather, for example, "I have a moral code not to kill unarmed people who surrendered" or "he could be of use later" vs "I better kill him so he doesn't try anything funny later on" or even "You asked for it, mate... Shouldn't have attacked me...". The former is in-game and is forced on the player, whereas the latter is out-of-game and should be what the ROLE PLAYING GAME is all about. In short: motivation for choices should not be determined in-game through the 'morality' meter, but is role-played inside the head of the player (hence the term RPG), and the consequences of those choices should be the One-Thing that matters most in-game (whether they pan out well for the player or not, whatever the intention might have been). Examples: Oh no! An ambush by assassins! You kill them all, and the final assassin surrenders. He begs you to let him go. - Light Side: you let him go... And you find him later in the story in some pub where he happily tries to shake your hand, thanking you over and over... Before stabbing you with a poisoned knife... Seems like he learnt he could manipulate you through your kindness... - Dark Side: you kill him... After which the Evil League of Assassins stops chasing you. Apparently their client has lied about you and your abilities and didn't pay the League enough for this kind of job, and has been killed himself as his lies has caused the deaths of X of their assassins. Oh no! The village you're at has just been burnt down. There is one enemy soldier still alive. - Light Side: you let him live... Only to find him being dragged off by the authorities later. - Light Side: you let him live and take care for him in your camp... At night, he slips away afraid of what you - his enemy - will do to him, and you never see or hear of him again. - Light Side: you let him live and take care for him in your camp... While sending your Cutie Companion to be all nice and cute, while subtly trying to extract information out of him. You learn of the next step of the Evil Plan of Evil. - Dark Side: you torture him and find out more about your rival's Evil Plan of Evil. - Dark Side: you kill him and find out nothing... You'll have to find some other way to learn of the Evil Plan... JM2C, -Tim

A repost from an earlier response of mine, just to throw in my ideas for discussion: I honestly don't want a morality system. I don't want a good/evil dichotomy... I just want actions and consequences. You choose to lie to a person? I want to see them start to distrust you when they find out. You choose to kill some important NPC? I want a companion of yours to try and talk to you about it later during rest. Do you treat someone like $#iT? I want them to confront you about it. Do you act like the complete opposite than companion Y? Have them come up to you and talk you out of some action you're about to take, or convert you to their way of thinking, or even leaving you when they just can't take it anymore, or even attack you when $#iT really hits the fan. You treat everyone well? "light side points for you!!!" Sure... Until you stab them in the back and your true, manipulative nature comes to light. If there's to be a score-counter, there should be an affection-counter. BUT I'd rather have that one behind-the-scenes like in the Walking Dead series, where you can disable the story-hints, and where you therefore don't know whom is pleased or displeased with how you conduct yourself until you got to see their reactions and the consequences of that gain/loss of affection, rather than the Dragon Age/SWTOR system of "HURRAH!! +10 for companion X". As for the rest, why not just allow several basic, intuitive choices (think let live/kill) that have no good or bad points attached, but turn out to be that way through possibly cumulative action-consequence relationships, depending on how you decide to *play* the game further? JM2C, -Tim

I honestly don't want a morality system. I don't want a good/evil dichotomy... I just want actions and consequences. You choose to lie to a person? I want to see them start to distrust you when they find out. You choose to kill some important NPC? I want a companion of yours to try and talk to you about it later during rest. Do you treat someone like ****e? I want them to confront you about it. Do you act like the complete opposite than companion Y? Have them come up to you and talk you out of some action you're about to take, or convert you to their way of thinking, or even leaving you when they just can't take it anymore, or even attack you when **** really hits the fan. You treat everyone well? "light side points for you!!!" Sure... Until you stab them in the back and your true, manipulative nature comes to light. If there's to be a score-counter to your actions, there should be an affection-counter. BUT I'd rather have that one behind-the-scenes like in the Walking Dead series, where you can disable the story-hints, and where you therefore don't know whom is pleased or displeased with how you conduct yourself until you got to see their reactions and the consequences of that gain/loss of affection, rather than the Dragon Age/SWTOR system of "HURRAH!! +10 for companion X". As for the rest, why not just allow several basic, intuitive choices (think let live/kill) that have no good or bad points attached, but turn out to be that way through possibly cumulative action-consequence relationships, depending on how you decide to *play* the game further? JM2C, -Tim

As long as the romances have something to them, and they add something, ANYTHING, to the main plot (e.g. they trust you enough to give sensitive info, or charge in to save you when you're about to be sacrificed making your escape easier, or ANYTHING else), instead of it being meaningless fluff, then I'm fine with it. Heck, if there are going to be complex themes in PE, then why not incorporate/intertwine romance in it as well? I like the idea of exploring moral questions with romance or camaraderie as was commented earlier.. ->> this, pretty much: That being said, as long as the romances stay as far away from the bioware/hollywood romances of 'omg, you helped me through some traumatic experience in my personal plotline and chose the flirt option 2 times', it's an improvement... JM2C, -Tim

That would be awesome... How great would it be to have the game try to play subtle tricks on you? To have conversations with companions or other NPCs that may or may not end badly (i.e. you potentially killing them), only to find out later that said conversation didn't really happen, and you just killed (or thought about killing) a good friend... Or say in a conversation you want to pick option 1, only to find that the game just won't let you... Your character just can't say it.. The option/link is unresponsive, and after a second or two the description of the option changes to 'no, I just can't do/say that...' or 'no, I won't let you', in the signature text-color of the soul that possessed you some time ago that you almost forgot about. (and then **** hits the fan, of course) Yep.. Sounds cool.. I like mental condition and insanity.. -Tim

Ohh.. That IS interesting.. Imagine it.. After one mission, you just have no idea what to do anymore. So you go ask people in-game for intel. You get some pointers, but nothing concrete. Your companions make comments about being sleepy, and at some point you decide to go to sleep (perhaps in-transit towards some other location on the map). Then suddenly, there's news in the newspaper/rumours in the street that some major city is destroyed (or whatever). BAM! There's your lead, and damn did the stakes just get raised a bunch. How's that for urgency? ;p -Tim

I would heavily support mod tools that can change pretty much every piece of the game (with restrictions, of course... It would be silly to mod the game into an FPS). I mean... Look at Freespace 2 Open. IT'S STILL ALIVE! And after so many years people are STILL patching up the original game with high res graphics, are even making total-conversion mods to tell stories in for example the star wars or battlestar galactica world, and they are even creating their own stories and settings. They've even made a side-scrolling shooter out of it. Look at Amnesia and what people have done with it. Look at the Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 editors. Amazing things can come from mod tools. In short: Mod tools == AWESOME. And I support Awesome. -Tim

Oh YES! I'm all in favor of the possibility to kill companions. The ability to do so at any time would make the option even more interesting when a potentially major conflict has come up.. Think: Disagreeing about drinking tea? Option to kill? That's just silly... You insulted my sister? Option to kill? That's just silly... We uncover that this companion could be a major threat? Oh crap... Is THIS the time to kill him then? Or should I keep him alive still? (add some drama if said companion is teh awesome) I imagine that would be interesting. If played well, these 'oh crap, should I? should I not?' moments could be awesome (and unprecedented in gaming history, I would imagine, though I could be wrong... I haven't played every single game in existence). Though, again, I would like some consequences attached.. Killing a major story character that is a companion shouldn't go unpunished/unrewarded (but then I'm assuming that companion characters aren't random strangers you meet on the street that have nothing at all to do with the story or that aren't connected to the world whatsoever). As in: if the character indeed HAD evil plans, and you DIDN'T kill him, why not make the plans come to fruition, potentially having minor/major impact on the main story? On the other hand, if you killed a good companion over tea, then why not have his family come after you for revenge, kidnapping and killing a member of YOUR family (add drama if said family member is you sister and is in your party). Ohh.. Even thinking about it makes my head explode with awesome.. Possibility for great gaming? Hell yeah! OBISIDIAN!!??? PLEASE MAKE US LURVE YOU -Tim

EDIT!!! Oh wait.. And here I was thinking it'd be about the game itself.. O_o silly me.. DISREGARD THIS POST if you mind reading about the game-matter instead of the digital comic-style lore exposition thingies is SWTOR (that's what you were proposing, right? OP? O_o... As long as they're connected, episodic, like the AWESOME Walking Dead series (which you should check out, dear persons-who-haven't-seen/played-it-yet), I'm all okay with it. It seems to me that episodes can be a great way to section a story into coherent parts, in which possibly different story foci or even gameplay mechanics can take the forefront (though I'd argue that if they are integrated into the main-game and accessible only to the persons who choose to take these paths/routes, think Deus Ex's stealth/assault/social way of getting through missions, then I'd be find with it as well). Perhaps this could be a great way to deal with time-skips in order to tell a story that's more spread out over time... But now I'm just brainstorming... Anywhoo.. To summarize ... Episodic == potentially awesome, and I'd be all for that... -Tim

This was originally a response to the thread of "Urgency: please have it" (link: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60235-urgency-please-have-it/), but it went into a whole 'nother direction, so I choose to make a topic of my own to potentially discuss it. So keep that in mind as it starts out with the 'urgency' topic and then moves on. Mmk? :D Honestly, I like urgency. I somewhat loathed Skyrim (for example) for not being urgent: you're the chosen one, you have to save a world from impending doom. So if I choose instead to join 10.000 guilds and do even more 'find my lost jewelry' quests, why hasn't doom impended yet? What did the evil dragon of evil do all day? Sit on his arse? Some doombringer... So urgency would be a 'must' for me, if the story lends to it, which I very much support (as opposed to 'here, go play in this sandbox world!')... On a related note: consequences when you're not urgent could potentially be very interesting, and if they choose to not railroad/script the consequences (i.e. make the consequences specific to the missed quest, for example, instead of making it an unchanging part of the main plot), or instant-game-over it, could lend to a lot of replayability. E.g.: Well crap! The village you were supposed to go to, to save from the Evil Bastard, has vanished from the map (apparently he did his Evil Bastardly job well without waiting for you to show up to thwart him) because you loitered around too long somewhere else... Incidentally, you weren't around to find out the next step in his master plan. Now how do we further the plot? What's his next step? How do we find out the next step of his master plan? How cool would that be? It could potentially involve a whole new gameplay mechanic of chasing down leads and investigating, setting up an intel network across several cities, etc etc. This could make the possibility of parallel missions interesting as well: instead of the Mass Effect 2 style of 'here are 9 missions you can do in any order you like! With no consequences if you choose 1 instead of the other, YAY!', you can have 2 or 3 missions that can happen at the same time, but you can only choose to chase down 1 lead, choose to do 1 mission (which you may or may not find out after the mission is over; as in: hmmm, let's do the investigatory mission first before going to the village where Evil Bastard has been spotted --> Well crap, apparently the Evil Bastard destroyed the village, but at least I found a piece of vital information that might come in handy later, or that unlocks some other important mission; and vice versa, of course: let's go save the village --> you have saved the village, but at the expense of some vital piece of info). Again, it leads to replayability. That could take a lot of work, granted, but hey, that's what additional stretch goals, or possibly mods, can be for, right? ;p (no offense to game makers if that comment is just plain wrong, though... O_o) So... Ideas? -Tim