PrimeJunta

I'm all for nigh-unbeatable secret optional battles. There's no multiplayer though so the second suggestion is kind of moot. That said, randomly generated quests sort of go against the grain of an IE-style game; one of the attractions of IE was that because content was so easy to place, designers could hand-craft everything and didn't have to rely on algorithmically generated anything. So the world felt... dunno, handmade, living, in a way a procedurally-generated one doesn't.

As far as I know, they haven't said yet. I guess the default assumption is that it'll be more like the IE games and NWN (your first example) than fully open-world like TES or Fallout. But who knows, they might surprise us.

Oh? I didn't expect that. I expected some basic similarities -- races, abilities, classes, progression through XP, and some sort of spell/skill/feat system, but that's about it. (Personally I wouldn't have been devastated even if they hadn't stuck to the formula even that much. I prefer classless and XP-less systems and don't much care for varied player races, for example.)

Interesting tangent, this. How does padded armor do against blunt force? Or, put another way, how thick would the padding have to be turn a life-threatening hammer blow into one that just knocked the wind out of you? How about a Kevlar vest?

Well then you really cannot into reading, as that's not what I've been saying at all. You'll find I'm arguing for more tactical complexity in another thread on this very forum, for example -- specifically, better and deeper rules covering movement in combat and the blocking thereof. I do agree with Ffordeson that the content made the IE games great, and the system to a much lesser extent, though. I'd go one further, actually -- I'd say the IE games were great despite the underlying system, not because of it. AD&D is frankly awful, and D&D 3 is decent for tabletop but a poor fit for a cRPG. The great strength of IE was that it made it easy for authors to create quality content for them. The systems themselves got the job done, barely, but no more than that. That does not mean I want less numbers in a cRPG. Quite the opposite, actually -- computers are really good at arithmetic and looking things up in tables, so IMO we should use more of them to add depth to the gameplay. Computers make it possible to manage depth and complexity than no PnP system could, easily. It would be silly not to take advantage of this. Whether all of those numbers need to be exposed to the player is a different matter. What do I want, then? I want an (1) isometric, (2) party-based cRPG with (3) deep and varied character development options, (4) tactically interesting combat, (5) a sprawling world with lots of stuff to do in it, (6) interesting companions, (7) compelling storylines, [8] complex rich, and interesting magic, and (9) mechanics good enough and complex enough to support the whole. And yeah, I will be disappointed if the mechanics turn out as bad (or poorly fitted to a cRPG) as D&D. Thus far, I have seen no indication that this is to be the case.

Don't you understand the meaning of the phrase "means to an end" either? I can explain it to you if you like.

Nitpick: cosa means "thing" (also matter, affair, business), not "cause." So Cosa Nostra is more like "Our Thing" or "Our Business." It's not like it has much of a "cause" as such anyway. Mafia-like groupings with causes are usually called "terrorist organizations" or "resistance movements," depending on which one we're talking about and who's asking... Edit: also mad props to JonVanCaneghem on the scavs' guild idea. Brilliant in-game way to solve the problem, without needing unexplained mechancis. Later you could even acquire a magic crystal ball that would let you phone them right from the dungeon, without even needing to drop by. "Yo. Another one clear. Here are the coordinates, come have a party..."

One thing that's annoyed me no end in all cRPG's I've played is how difficult it is to block enemy movement. At most you suffer an attack of opportunity when moving past someone, and what with the hit points to damage ratios we have, that's often a small price to pay. The upshot is that the most you can do is block a door, and that by packing several meat shields shoulder to shoulder in front of it. I would like to see combat mechanics that fixed this. Basically, you should not be able to move through an active enemy's zone of control at all. Then you could add things specifically to deal with this -- a short-duration stun effect that would allow you to pass the stunned enemy, a rogue special ability that would let you tumble through it, and so on. And I would like to see this worked into weapon mechanics. Reach and facing would become way more important. Two swordsmen facing two spearmen would be a standoff, but replace the swordsman with an acrobatic rogue who's able to tumble past the spearmen to get behind them, and the whole situation will change. This would make combat much more tactical. Positioning would matter. There would be such a thing as a defensive line. Getting behind one could swing the entire battle. It would be more RTS-y, yes, but IMO in a good way, and in a way that would enhance the entire game.

I detest inventory busywork. I do like being required to choose what I'm bringing with me. IMO the proposed system strikes a very nice balance between the two. The biggest weakness is that it's a "magical" mechanic with no in-game explanation, which means it does interfere with suspension of disbelief somewhat. But then again so does an inventory that lets you carry a half-dozen suits of plate mail and then have a feisty melee fight.

Loot is a reward. Health is a resource. These are qualitatively different things. That's what shops are for -- they allow you to convert loot into resources. The ability to rest anywhere makes it unnecessary to manage health and spell use strategically. You'll always be at full health with a full spellbook in every battle. That removes a pretty big and interesting strategic element from the game. A well-designed game should be designed in such a way that the most efficient way to play it should also be the most enjoyable way to play it. "Most enjoyable" is a matter of preference of course which leaves lots of room for legitimate differences. Some people don't like strategic resource management and want to be at full strength before every encounter, for example. That's a totally legit preference, and many games are specifically designed around that -- Dragon Age: Origins, to pick one. If you fall into that category, then naturally you're going to hate restricted resting, or things like the curse in MotB. So there's certainly room for disagreement about this mechanic. The discussion here about it has been almost completely worthless though; it's been all "hurr durr degenerashun" on the one hand and "bow be4 me, I iz hardkore, resting is teh girly" on the other. Still, most degenerate strategies are not enjoyable for most people. Which is why I find the hostility to the very idea of getting rid of them completely baffling. I wish the discussion was more about what kinds of gameplay you enjoy (or not), and which kinds of mechanics support (or restrict) those kinds of gameplay. We might actually get somewhere.

Yes, that's correct.

Not sure if it'll be infinite or merely very, very big. Either way, it'll be much bigger than your normal inventory. Not if the deep stash is infinite or very big -- big enough to hold all the salables from a couple of dungeons for example. My understanding is that your normal inventory is roughly as big as what we're used to; the deep stash is in addition to that. It's just a simple change in mechanics to make it a little less tedious for packrats to packrat, while retaining the strategic layer of inventory management. Sort of like the car trunk in Fallout 2, the storage locker at the inn in The Witcher, or the party chest in ... games that have the party chest, except that you can magically throw things in wherever you are, and it's always with you when in a shop, in addition to being available in camp. I don't know if there will be an ingame explanation for it. Personally I don't care; it's not like the inventory systems in the IE games were realistic or anything, what with being able to run around lugging multiple suits of plate armor and enough iron to equip a small army.

@Gfted1, close, but no cigar. The degenerate strategy the "deep stash" obsoletes is trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop in order to sell off the loot. The trekking back and forth is not needed because you can just plonk the stuff you intend to sell in the deep stash, and it'll be there when you get to the shop. Why not just remove carry limits altogether? Because this would completely remove inventory management (=the need to think about what you're bringing with you) from the game, and inventory management is a small but significant facet of strategic resource management. Same thing with resting mechanics -- the rest-spamming in NWN effectively made all spells per-encounter, and health regenerate fully between encounters, unless you intentionally handicapped yourself by making up an arbitrary code of conduct about resting. IMO having to manage resources like health and spells between encounters makes the game a lot more interesting. That's why I liked the curse in MotB so much -- it discouraged rest-spamming very effectively, which meant that you weren't just spamming meteor swarms in every encounter.

You're right, AGX-17. My concerns are probably overblown. Mods, please feel free to lock this thread.

Are you claiming that you have a better idea of what the relative difficulty of sneaking as opposed to fighting is going to be than the game's lead designer? Are you familiar with the concept of invincible ignorance, by any chance?

No doubt. As I said, though, I'm not too worried about the mechanics. I am a bit concerned about the writing aspect. This is going to be a big, sprawling world with two Big Big Cities to boot. How are they going to hook you into doing stuff in all of them, assuming the main quest isn't some kind of guided tour (which I hope it isn't?) How are they going to have the world unfold?

Source for (4) or GTFO. You keep whining about this worse than a Burgundy château, despite explicit statements from the devs that they do not intend to make stealth the easy way out.

Social democratic Scots leprechaun Sherlock cipher with a pistol. YEEEAH!

Yes, I'm a very kind person. Some people need tough love though. In this case, I'm teaching you a valuable life lesson about behavior. You thought you were making fun of my poor English. I repaid this with two kindnesses, first, educating you about an Internet idiom you didn't know about, and second, doing so in a tone that reflected your attempt at mockery right back at you. We'll have you fit to move out of your mom's basement yet, never fear.

As an afterthought, I quite liked the experience of exploring out-of-your-depth territory in Gothic 2 (and to an extent in Gothic 3). You knew there were critters there that would kill you dead in no time flat, so you had to be super-careful about not being spotted, and then run like hell if you were. Yet there were rewards for it, sometimes quite big ones. I seem to recall some sword on top of a pyramid for example... The point is the game didn't just have you innocently blunder into an area and then go "squish your ded lol." That's just dumb IMO.

Combat mechanics -> storytelling mechanics is how RPG systems in general have evolved, both tabletop and cRPG. I know my campaigns became a lot more fun for everybody when I picked up the original Star Wars rulebooks, which had pretty solid sections on "story mechanics" -- the notion of "script immunity" for example which is pretty crucial to most enjoyable PnP RPG experiences. Paranoia and Call of Cthulhu advanced things a lot too. It might be fun to do an old-school D&D dungeon crawl once, just as a reminder of where we came from, but I'd hate to go back to that as the core experience. You can have great RPG experiences with no combat at all, but combat without role-playing becomes mindless tedium. IMO natch.

I expected you to understand the meaning. If you hadn't come across the expression before, you'd recognize it the next time. Pointing it out to you explicitly is just a public service I do out of the kindness of my heart.

Re point 2: yes and no. Yes, it does feel wrong if everything in the world openly revolves around you; the "chosen savior" scenario is getting pretty old. But no, that doesn't preclude writing in hooks to pull you in. My "fix" would not be to make you the predestined arbiter among the crime families of New Reno, but rather to add better adventure hooks to pull you into their factional politics than "I'm looking for a job" or "I'm taking this briefcase from some derp I met in Vault City to some other derp here." Make me care IOW. The Witcher 2 did this really well; there were always reasons for you to do what you were doing; it wasn't just running errands for people for no reason. Re 3, Broken Hills is the easy one; Redding is the punishingly tough one. You really shouldn't go into the Wanamingo mines without combat armor. This was another stupid world-building mistake. They could've just placed Redding closer to NCR, and Broken Hills closer to Vault City, and made the Broken Hills quests start from Vault City or Gecko (logical, because uranium), and the Redding quests start from NCR (or mmmmaybe New Reno, near the end of the New Reno quests -- also logical because of the Jet connection). I wasn't advocating level scaling here (and in fact wouldn't use it for optional content at all.)

That's true. Original D&D had no noncombat mechanics at all, and the published modules were dungeon crawls or their aboveground equivalents. All this nonsense about characterization and factions and motivation and what have you has been put in later. I would find original D&D dungeon crawls pretty boring nowadays. I'm pretty amazed if someone finds it exciting after doing it for 40 years actually.

Helm can't into internets either, apparently. Edit: Fuuu, urbandictionary+PHPbb can't into query strings with spaces, escaped or not.