PrimeJunta

Dark fantasy is really hard to do well, though. Most of the time it just turns into dork fantasy. (See: Origins, Dragon Age.)

I would very much like to see sexism, racism, and all other flavors of human iniquity in societies in P:E. It would add a lot of depth to the setting. However, doing it well means a hell of a lot of work, as they'd have to write most dialogs in two versions to reflect this, and ideally entire plot branches that only happen if the player is male or female. Never even mind the intra-party chatter. Given that, I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if they did do it.

Franz Kafka. We need an adventure where you wake up to discover you've been polymorphed into a giant cluckroach. And another one where you need to find your way out of a giant labyrinthine bureaucracy where everybody keeps calling you 'K' and makes you fill out forms in triplicate. Also, Edit: I hereby formally submit the giant labyrinthine bureaucracy adventure as a proposal for a level in The Endless Paths.

Mm. I lived in a city with limited electricity and barely any streetlights (Kathmandu, 1987) for a year, and it was pretty damn dark at night. People don't light lamps just for the hell of it, and then they use the bare minimum, if they have to use a fuel. It was pretty exciting actually, trying to find your way around after dark...

I like the way it works in NetHack.

J.E. Sawyer has said that he's a total history nerd. I don't think we need to worry on this score. (Another history buff here.)

I'll be saving manically instead. Unless playing on Trial of Iron.

It's more likely that torches will be "obsoleted" at higher levels as more convenient magic becomes available, methinks. But yeah, lots of mechanics you could play with once lighting is involved. I for one would enjoy that sort of thing.

Total pitch blackness could be frustrating, yes, if there was no automap to keep track of where you've been. I'm pretty sure they're aware of these kinds of issues though, having done a few games of this type. However, I would expect torches and other carried light sources to serve some gameplay function if they're going to the trouble of putting them in, and not be there just for the pretties. My crystal ball is showing a cavern rendered in deep shades of bluish-gray, with a pool of flickering golden light surrounding the party's torch-bearer. Beyond the torchlight, shadows move...

Can you imaging walking around talking to people to find out if they have anything interesting to say? How boring and tedious and time-consuming! Wouldn't it be much more convenient if they had, like, a ! hovering above them so you'd know who to talk to? And hey, even better, they could mark the quest objective on the map and put a little arrow on the screen so you could go straight there without having to waste all that time exploring! Even more convenient, and you'd be even more certain of missing nothing! Anyway, from the interview linked above, it appears torches and other light sources are already in, so presumably also darkness. So looks like you'll be disappointed on this point at least. You can always wait until someone mods darkness out, naturally, or mods the loot-highlighting-key in (if that's not already there).

It would make him easier to see, silly.

You may also be underestimating the amount of work that goes into the simplest of demos. Where I work we have a sprint demo every month; just deciding what to demo and making sure everything's there to demo takes a non-trivial amount of time. (Worth it, though.) If I had to make a video of it and plop it on YouTube every week, I don't know how I'd manage to get any actual coding done.

Can't believe nobody's mentioned Fritz Leiber yet. Kids these days. Swashbuckling barbarians, mad priests, deadly spellcasters ruling underground kingdoms, suave dueling rogues, gods playing dice with the lives of mortals... what's not to like?

Doesn't sound hard at all, desaturating or otherwise playing with the color isn't any more difficult in principle than playing with the brightness. It would certainly look good.

Why not just use whatever weapon mechanics are already in? Treat the torch as a one-handed flaming club -2 with a timeout. You could wield it with your off-hand instead of a shield, or with your main hand as a weapon (see Rings, Lord of, encounter on Weathertop.) What torches do imply is a dynamic lighting system. That's a lot more than torches: it means modifiers to skills depending on light levels, creatures that function better in the dark or by daylight, and all manner of other fun stuff. If that's in, torches and other light sources are an obvious part of it. I think that woudl be cool, although by no means indispensable, of course. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff they could do instead.

Back in pre-Unreal Engine days, 2.5D was used to mean an engine like DOOM's, Wolfenstein's, Duke Nukem 3D's, or Marathon's. They cut a few corners with the arithmetic, which meant that the vertical axis was restricted: when you pointed the camera up or down (if the engine allowed it at all, DOOM and Wolfenstein didn't), verticals remained perfectly vertical on the screen, without perspective distortion. Like so: Compare -- here the verticals are perspective-distorted as they would in a photo of the same space in real life:

But I wouldn't! Going over what I said, I can understand why you got that impression. In actual fact I can't recall a single instance of really bad gameplay mechanics stopping me from playing a game that had exceptional story and structure (PS:T is a case in point -- I wouldn't have been able to play it at all without a strategy guide, but it's nevertheless one of my all-time favorite games). This doesn't mean I don't care about gameplay. Of course I do. I would have enjoyed PS:T more if it had a workable rogue option with content you'd encounter only playing as a rogue; at the very least, I would've replayed it. What strikes me as weird about your position is that you appear to be making a virtue of the weaknesses of these games -- BG2 and PS:T are shining examples of really crappy game design in some areas, and these appear to be precisely the areas that you want to see replicated in P:E. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding you like you're clearly misunderstanding me. So that's why I'd prefer they just did it one way and did it right, and focused on putting lots of in-game options instead. Put another way, I think it's rather unlikely that someone would not play a game just because he's not able to switch off friendly fire, or whatever. Strikes me as unlikely. I certainly wouldn't. I honestly don't care if friendly fire is in or not, nor any individual gameplay feature. I do care that whatever is in there hangs together well, is coherent, understandable, internally consistent and consistent with the lore of the gameworld, and not a total PITA to manage. Other than that, I'm cool with or without friendly fire, TB or RTwP, frequent dying, not dying at all, or anything in between. Edit: If they approach this by making a nice, balanced system and then allowing some back-door to switch things on or off or, for example, mod it, by all means. Just as long as they make it clear how they intend it to be played, and leave potentially unbalancing options with a big disclaimer "proceed at your own risk."

Then how come mainstream games are usually designed with the minimum of metagame options? Hell, Angry Birds doesn't even have difficulty levels. While we cannot doubt that gameplay options take time to implement and balance, we can very well doubt that more options will make the game appeal to "a broader audience". Will any RPG fans skip over this game because you can't turn off friendly fire, if it has a gripping story and solid mechanics? I'd say no. Apparently they would. That's a bit of a funny way to bolster your point, since I'm the one arguing for fewer metagame options here. In other words, either you're not understanding a word of what I'm saying, or you're intentionally distorting it. Either way, this conversation is starting to feel like a waste of time. :out:

Is that so? In what way or ways, specifically? Correct. Wrong. Correct. However, I'm fairly confident that it will meet my expectations. Exactly! It makes no sense at all! I would be a very silly person indeed if I thought what you think I think. I won't! Yeah, I would prefer the developers spending time on stuff I like rather than stuff I don't care about. Shocking, isn't it?

Of course not, silly. But I would prefer that the devs focus their resources on in-game options rather than metagame options, even if that means the metagame features do some things contrary to my personal preferences. And if it turned out that the devs' vision was drastically different from my expectations, then yeah, I'd rather not play the game at all. How about you? Would you prefer a game with a metric fluckton of toggles in the "Options" screen, but with wildly out-of-balance gameplay, with some classes either grossly overpowered or borderline unplayable, depending on how you set those toggles? What indeed.

Um....duh It would prevent us from saving and reloading to get the best result. Uh, optional. As in, something you can switch on or off. If you don't want it, switch it off, and save/reload to your heart's content. Also, no offense, but you might want to go over this thread because most of what you're saying has already been addressed. Hormalakh even pointed out that the whole point is moot, since the functional equivalent is already in -- just play in Ironman mode and save-scum (in the roguelike sense, i.e., back up that single save.)

Of course not. I would simply not play that game. For example, I didn't finish Arcanum, Gothic 3, or Oblivion, and didn't even buy Skyrim for that precise reason. I didn't care for what they were trying to do. Nor does it offend me the least bit that lots and lots of people do like them. I certainly don't. However, I do care about my single-player experience. When I crack open a new game and look at the settings, I have no clue how they may affect the game balance. If I can throw the entire class system out of whack by unchecking a single checkbox -- "friendly fire," say -- then, in my opinion, the devs have screwed up. Don't get me wrong, I love options as much as the next guy -- but I prefer my options to be in-game rather than metagame. Options I like: * Class options: fighter/ranger/rogue/paladin/cipher/sorcerer/wizard/monk/cleric/barbarian/kensai/elementalist/necromancer/demonologist/theurge/duelist/scout/... * Character build options: attack/defense/buff/debuff/damage/... * Story options: favor this faction/that faction/the other faction/take this path/that path/the other path/save these guys/those guys/the other guys... * Solution options: fight your way in/sneak your way in/teleport your way in/find a way through the sewers to get in/bribe your way in/bluff your way in I'm much less interested in metagame options, even for things that cater to my personal foibles (e.g. ironman mode or other ways of making savegame abuse more difficult). Put another way, during the kickstarter, I got much more excited about the Cipher class, the stronghold, the Endless Paths, and the Big Big City than Ironman and those other modes that I can't even remember for now. Put another way, for me, the gameplay is the vessel that holds the actual game. I've enjoyed NetHack's mechanics just as much as those in The Witcher 2. I really don't give a **** about the specifics as long as it's well done, well balanced, and carries the story. Most importantly, I'd much, much rather see the devs put their effort into balancing out and refining a system that has lots and lots of choice in-game, even if it means reducing the metagame options. (And yes, Virginia, it does -- metagame options that affect gameplay elements do directly impact the effort needed to get the in-game options in balance. It is a real trade-off.) Of course not, silly. But just because BG2 had a poorly balanced class system, does it mean every other game has to have one too? (Yeah, I played a kensai/mage. Whee!)

I've certainly been thinking of a hard toggle all along. Making it switchable mid-game would dilute the effectiveness a great deal. Same as being able to change difficulty level on the fly. I don't like that much either.

Really? I thought that was common knowledge. If you have a tendency to eat too much candy, it's way easier not to buy a bag than to stop halfway through. Us humans work that way. Maybe it's different in Poland.

For the same reason a giant 'win!' button in the middle of the screen is a bad idea.