gglorious

I wouldn't put this at the top of the list. I like games because of their writing, not because of who has a portrait and who doesn't. I mean, it's fine if the designers find that they have enough money, and this would really add more than other traits. But, I'd rather trade portraits for ALL non-essential characters away for the best writing this side of PS:T. I think it would be cool if it was found viable. Maybe this is even doable without much special design. I know NWN2 used the ingame faces as the portraits. I suppose a big question for a stretch goal is whether this could be used to raise more money for other functions. If this sparked enough people to change their mind, then it would be worth it. I'm not sure this is the trait people will salivate over.

I'd have to side with the anti-urgency folks: 1) Clocks are just another thing that can go wrong. So, as brought up: a complicated game can have multiple game events show up around the same time, and this can really screw with a clock. You may fail the timed quest because of some bad luck on when other events happened. You may end up feeling rushed. 2) Clocks create problems when they translate across playing styles. A large segment of game players will not like being timed or rushed or forced to allocate time in a way they don't want. Some flaws will inevitably exist because of the need for broad accessibility. 3) The idea of "oh, if you fail THAT timer, another quest is generated" may work somewhat, but it allocates the time and resources to create content to something that a lot of people may not benefit from. I mean, I'd rather have more unique content than quests that can break into other quests. I mean, I know the designers will make the decisions on what they consider really cool to do and that's fair, but out of a thousand possible cool ideas, this is not one I think really matters as much as all of the other things that could be done. 4) I'm not really feeling immersion. There is always an element of absurdity to any game played, so.... I don't see this as the straw that breaks the camel's back. I mean, the very structure of most game plots is something that is deconstructed a thousand times, and mapped out into ever so many tropes that it is hard to say that I feel they are incredibly real. I mean, the "rise from nothing to godhood" kind of story arc is absurd, but delightful. The dualism of "good vs evil"(broadly) doesn't map to any reality. The games that have romances often involve a female NPC just falling in love with your PC as you passively accept their advances.They are very good narratives though, but they're still good narratives even if story-gameplay segregation occurs in a few areas. It's worth consideration to try to avoid some of these problems, but I think the loss of immersion harms those desiring this a LOT LESS than failure to properly manage timers will hurt those who tend to fail like that. You're just reducing your immersion, but you're probably immersing just fine, otherwise you wouldn't be on this forum as you would have never taken an interest. They're getting frustrated at a loss of content/having to reload to get the content they may want more.

I don't like rivals from the beginning. That just seems too scripted in some sense, unless something is done with the backstory to really tie this in. Otherwise, why on earth would anybody really *care* about being your rival? I wouldn't mind the existence of rivals developing with the story though. So, you can have an opposing person/group also having their rise to power at the same time you are, but they're just on another side. The problem is that you don't want to kill them, but you don't want the conflict to be scripted too much where kills are stolen, AND you don't want to never encounter them directly. However, I think something could be workable and I definitely like the idea of enemies that you can relate to, and who have a similar power level. I don't think bad guys failing to kill the main character is a plot flaw though. It depends a lot on how it is done, but we should expect that any villainous enterprise is going to have to cut costs and take risks, and the PC is simply the person capable of overcoming those risks quite well. Sarevok wasn't just hunting your PC, he was also trying to take over the city of Baldur's Gate. He tried to hire mercenaries, but you were too effective, and he's not going to jump the gun when he's got a lot of other villainous tasks. Irenicus really didn't have a lot of allies to spare in the first place, and he didn't consider you a threat at all, so the problem is that you're a loose end that failed to resolve itself. And so on and so forth. Maybe the major villain should not be portrayed as being so omnipotent? So, instead of you being the only thing in the way of this extremely well organized plot, instead the plot has it's own problems and the villains are portrayed as having to struggle to keep it going on track. He may still win if you don't intervene, but he doesn't give off a sense of omnipotence so much as determination and cunning. In any case, in many ways I actually like the plot of DA2, where there was no overarching villain to fight, but rather a host of social problems and developments over time. Maybe a lot of people like the traditional grand narrative though of "big bad evil guy", but I really wouldn't mind this being stretched or deconstructed in a host of ways. Maybe even the idea of growth that you give, like the master villain is *not* as uber-powerful in the beginning(but still more powerful than your PCs) but is rising to power over the course of the narrative, and you are doing that as well. In any case, I'm probably digressing, but there are a lot of good ways to avoid the conventional villain, and I think those should be explored. (Maybe he is as powerful in relationship to you as Sarevok and Irenicus, but on some level he really likes your PC and would rather be friends, so he's handling you with kids gloves, etc)

I get the feeling that the original structure makes *some* sense, and that's mostly because the problem isn't that people couldn't create smart fighters and strong wizards, but rather that people specialize, and that the game designers want to avoid overpowered characters. I think the system described in update 7 could help a lot towards that though. I'd bet we'd still see weak wizards, but we'd probably now start seeing charismatic fighters. The big issue is whether they conceptualize combat stats in ways that suggest non-combat qualities. So, labels like "wisdom", "intelligence", "cunning" all create some problems.