PrimeJunta

Objection! DA did not have good storytelling. Well, not much, anyway. The dwarven noble origin was good, I admit, as were a couple of the Orzammar quests. The rest was dullsville.

@Stun, you do realize that you're talking about accounting values only? If you make the base value 10 and apply a 1-point bonus for every attribute point over 10 and a 1-point penalty for every point below 10, you'll end up with a range from 1 to 18. This is exactly the same thing as making the base value 0 and applying a 1-point bonus for every attribute point. I.e., you can get the spread to exactly where you want by adjusting the base value and bonus per point. If you think it's aesthetically more pleasing to drag the zero point up, that won't affect the gameplay at all.

That, and the combat needs to be de-clusterhugged, and needs more feedback. The AI is also very rough and way too exploitable. These need fixing first. After that and your list, there's B-priority stuff like a cleaner, more consistent UI, better inventory, and what have you. None of these are what I'd call scary-looking things. The only question is how long they'll take to fix. Of course, that won't mean that the hardcore cult of the Anti-Sawyer will be happy, but then I doubt they'd ever be, short of seeing him tarred, feathered, and run out of Obsidian on a rail. Edit: @Gladius no it doesn't. There's a perfectly good combat system underneath the bugs and half-implemented features. It just needs to be dug out.

Helm. I think they'll blame Helm. Edit: (I know I would.)

@IndiraLightfoot re the classes, I'm not hugely worried about even that. All the classes work right now, relatively simple balancing issues aside. They are committed to the expansion and want to make a sequel, which means they'll be supporting this for a while. Adding depth to the classes is a pretty simple thing to do post-release, and if they keep a brisk schedule about it we'll see them get better even as we explore them.

"Wackadoodle bottlecap currency?"

I would miss Helm. Every forum needs a benchmark for negativity. I'd rate Caladian's message just above at about 115 millihelms.

Also impressed by FO:NV although I've yet to finish it, I always get sidetracked and forget about Mr. House and his pressing concerns. It is a really cool game, with perhaps the best-executed "living" gameworld yet. As to MotB, minor niggles like the wonky camera aside, my only problem with it is that it's epic-level DnD. The pyrotechnics are way over the top, it's just a little bit silly to find a +7 scythe at a village vendor's and mounds of earth with Boots of Hardiness and what have you all over the place. It would have been sooooo much more enjoyable in the DnD sweet spot, say between levels 5 and 18. Getting that first ninth-level spell is awesome, but they kind of lose the magic when you have three guys in the party with a full battery of them. But everything else about it, yeah. Some of the best and most varied encounters in any DnD cRPG, really cool setting, really cool characters, really cool curse, the most horrifyingly cool evil playthrough, brilliant thematic coherence, brilliant atmosphere, the works. Don't know what a game would look like if it merged in FO:NV's factions, but I bet that would be pretty cool too. Although I'm sure something would be lost, too; a lot of MotB's greatness comes from the relatively tight narrative which would be a good deal harder to execute in FO:NV style. But if anyone can do that, it's Obsidian. I think their vision of P:E is pretty close to what you're hoping for too; the only open question is how close they'll be able to get. Personally I'm already convinced this is going to be a great game. Whether it'll turn out great "but" or just plain great remains to be seen. Getting a bit impatient about the next beta build here too; keen to see how the combat is shaping up. I'm fairly certain they'll get that at least sorted to a reasonable level; whether they'll manage to add enough pizzazz and variety to the classes is another matter. (As to the UI, if something has to be deprioritized I'd rather have it be that; if the combat is fun and the classes are varied, I can deal with a somewhat clunky UI. It's not so bad even now that it wants to make me tear out my hair, which is already better than some.)

Good thing you at least are taking this so stoically, @Helm.

I'm sure it would be possible to make a fun game like that, but it would not be this one.

@Mayama I read that as just general nerves while waiting for the next build that should be here Any Minute Now and make everything all better. Upcoming: Exhilaration about the things that have been improved, followed by disappointment about the things that haven't, followed by another round of doom, gloom, and butthurt. Rinse and repeat until release, and beyond. And for those with eyes to see, a pretty cool game in the making.

Been tried. Does not work very well. BG1 had timed companion quests. Fallout had a timed first phase of the main quest. Most people didn't really think they were drastic improvements; instead, they just led to massive metagaming (e.g. be careful NOT to recruit party members until you've finished the quests for the ones you have.) Also, to do that everywhere would require a LOT more scripting, and the experience would not be a lot of fun; you'd have to metagame the bejeezus out of it or simply lose quests. To make it really work you'd need to go full Dwarf Fortress and have a procedurally generated world which dynamically creates and expires quests for you.

What's so funny, @UpgrayDD? That is his stated intent. How well he is succeeding is another matter entirely. (ATM not that well, but we'll see how it goes once additional talents are in.)

Given that the current saves tend to be broken in various ghastly ways, yes, I think that's a safe guess.

I think the scouting thing must be bugs or half-implemented features. I read the "how to play" post and it clearly talks about per-character stealth. It had bloody well better be.

That's not the argument though. The argument is that unlimited resting trivializes per-rest abilities, in DnD based games, spells. DnD was never intended to have per-encounter spells, but that's effectively what it gets in a cRPG with unlimited resting. One consequence is the way casters eclipse non-casters at high levels. You can always make a game more difficult to make up for that of course. Making things tougher is easy: just raise everything, hit points, attack rolls, saving throws, numbers of enemies, and so on.

The annoyance for having to walk back to the inn is a pretty good motivator to develop better tactics IMO. Not like just hitting the R which isn't much of a motivator at all.

Meh, I think it's fine as it is if the ratio is just tuned somewhat. Adding that kind of curve to it would make it less intuitive. Maimed characters are supposed to be fragile.

Why not a cRPG based on Twilight? For the promancers, of course. Keep them occupied for ages...

Hu? Have you actually tried playing the beta badly, e.g. select all and zerg rush? You will be killed dead. Also, that's not what Josh said. Josh said his goal is "no bad builds." That is not the same thing at all as "no bad way to play." Ideally, we'll be able to make all kinds of creative builds and then experiment with them to find out what's the best way to play them. (Ideally. This is currently not the case, except to a certain extent with some particular classes. We will see how it shapes up as more talents are added.)

Trying out different classes and trying to find the best way to play a game is now degenerate. Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up.

You can also backstab with polearms in ToEE. Give your rogue a glaive, cast Enlarge Person on her, and she becomes remarkably lethal.

I only really have two items on my list: branching story--however it's been achieved--and rich character creation. There are a few games I've replayed that don't have either, but that's because they just hang together so exquisitely that I couldn't point to any particular feature that makes them so. Re P:E, it's too early to tell. As it is, there's IMO more or less as much variety in character creation as there was in BG1 or either IWD, although probably not as much as in BG2. I thought the fact that there were several ways to resolve most of the quests was extremely promising; many of them also felt like they would have repercussions down the road. I thought the overall rhythm of the beta was quite OK actually. I didn't to-and-from from the inn much at all; I kipped there when I was in town anyway, e.g. reporting back from the ogre cave. Nor did I think the wilderness map was all that small; the main issue with that is that run speed is too fast which makes it feel smaller than it is.

Re the stubbornness, I think a certain amount is to be expected simply because they're on a tight schedule and budget. They'll fix the obviously broken stuff first, then decide what's the biggest problem ATM, fix that, and repeat until it's time to release. I believe Josh and Feargus are pretty dead set on the Winter 2014 target, which very likely means some fairly significant stuff will be left un-addressed. They won't risk a NWN2 debacle I think, but some fairly rough edges are likely. OTOH I'm pretty sure they're going to be patching this for a quite a while, what with the expansion and all. So I think all this feedback is going to be useful even if not everything they'd want to adjust makes it into the initial release.