The Guilty Party

Also note that in BG1, characters you meet later in the game tend to be more powerful/equivalent to your level, so that you can swap them in without too much difficulty. Picking up a level 1 fighter when you're all level 6 is punishing and not particularly enjoyable. I guess I consider the party members more as characters than tactical decisions. I'd rather be free to experience the story and interactions I want to, rather than sacrifice it for strictly game-rule purposes.

I did play BG2, and it sucks when Imoen comes into the party significantly weaker than everyone else, if you spent lots of time building up money and power. The AD&D 2nd ed system doesn't really exhibit this problem as much though, because past a certain level, you aren't really getting that much more powerful (except for Mages).

If you reward a particular path/choice more than a different one, most players are going to choose it, and will feel 'punished' for trying to play the game as they want to (i.e., role-playing, which is in theory the whole point). So overall, rewards should be mostly equivalent for different paths that achieve the same thing. That doesn't mean there isn't room for variation. If you take your smelly, noisy dwarf on the stealth mission, or your crude elf on your diplomacy mission, maybe you don't get the Big Success and you get worse rewards. Which is fair enough. But if you successfully steal what you need to steal and aren't caught, or successfully charm away the same item with your winning diplomacy skills, I don't see why they shouldn't get the same reward.

I disagree. Having to bring every character to level them up either results in aimless, pointless grinding to bring someone up to speed or it effectively creates a situation where you pick a party and you're stuck with them for pretty much the whole game. I much, much prefer the approach of 'I am going on a journey/mission/quest/whatever. This one happens to be a dungeon delve/forest walk/rescue-the-prince. What party members would be good at it? What party members would actually care about it, story-wise?' Who's to say that the characters you leave behind aren't training/going on mini-quests themselves, to keep their skills sharp?

I would like a game where the 'optimal path' is not all the good choices. Not just 'equal, but different'. But goodness meaning actual sacrifice of in-game advantages. To an extent.

3d models can be nice (I thought they fit well in Dragon Age), but for a game like this, I feel 2d portraits can be made to match the art-style of the world better.

I enjoyed Alpha Protocol and its conversations, so you know. Disagree. Although why you're worrying about this in a text-based game, I have no idea.

Statue, boss, pfft. I want to be able to explore it, from the inside.

I like the thought of a slowly growing party. Baldur's Gate did a good job of it, in that they quickly gave you a bunch of people, but they weren't going to last, so you had to pick and choose and effectively you only got half of your Real Party fleshed out, if that. And by not going to last, I mean they'd kill each other, so you have help to get you through the beginning, but you didn't just have the optimal party handed to you.

Potions are just another lever for developers to balance combat and tasks. New Vegas had potions (stimpacks and magazines, effectively) and they were powerful in normal mode and not as powerful in hardcore mode. I don't see why they'd do things worse this time around.

If all the enemies are unconscious, then you win, it's over. Obsidian has made more than zero games, I am sure they are aware that being forced to manually go around and stab a dozen unconscious goblins is not fun times.

Eh, I don't know. I like to play role playing games, not inventory games. Inasmuch as limits on my inventory force me to make interesting decisions, that's fine. But realism for realism's sake, or tedium in the name of balance... it's just not particularly fun for me.

Congrats! But shouldn't 77,667 backers mean 15 levels of dungeon?

I second this. Nothing special. Just usual internet and I think this thread is overreacting. Everybody had fun, nobody got hurt... oh, except OP here. There's nothing wrong with pointing out that people are sometimes horrible little ****. Saying 'That's fine, it's the internet' doesn't help things. Not that this whole thread is going to change anything in a large way, but I'd rather see people saying 'I hate how other people abuse anonymity to try to ruin other people's fun' than not.

So what's the problem? Any game you play, any story you read, any movie you watch, those are snapshots stories of a particular period in some other world, if you want to look at it that way. Unless you are planning on hundreds of years of sequels, it doesn't really matter.

Mm, I don't think steampunk means what you think it means if you feel Fallout is steampunk, but yes. From all indications that I've seen, this world is low-to-mid fantasy with light technology. Not an 19th century steam-powered technomagic land.

You could always see your character close-up on the character screen, possibly. If up-close zooming wasn't possible.

In addition to what has already been said about no one suggesting to remove rewards for combat oriented tasks in general (where does this idea even come from?), I find it funny how you talk about not wanting to discuss degenerate cases and then go on and suggest a degenerate case of your own: hours long grindfest that adds nothing to the game. How is "something is good because it makes ****ty parts of the game marginally less ****ty" a good argument? Fine, then a better example is wilderness exploration in Baldur's Gate - no objectives involved but your own curiosity and desire for adventure, with exp and loot from slain monsters / cleared dungeons being the only rewards for doing so. How do you script combat objectives into exploration without making it feel artificial and rail roaded? Well, if you get experience for exploring or finding Interesting Locations, then there you go. Or there's a bounty on gnome-ears. Or there are people you meet in the wilderness that supply quests, items, interesting interaction, etc. Maybe there are trails you find that people with Survivalist skills can track and find dens of bandits. There's many, many ways to make wilderness exploration interesting and useful as a game mechanic. The fact that you can't come up with them doesn't mean they don't exist.

I like the idea that it gets harder as you go deeper into it, and you keep coming back to it for new expeditions. Not sure I want a super-ultra difficulty dungeon though. Those just tend towards tedium.

A mild amount of level scaling can create a game that has more interesting battles more often. Because you are more likely to enter an area in the right level-range to get combats that are rewarding to win instead of painful, impossible, or just tedious busywork. But there should be limits, otherwise you end up with Oblivion stupidity and no feeling of progression at all. Skyrim does level scaling, but it does it more or less right. I can go places as a weakling and get slaughtered. And then go back much later and steamroll it. But most of the time, I get a decent challenge. Something like that would be fine. Insisting there be *no* level scaling at all, not even a 15-25% window of monster strengthening/weakening seems pedantic.

Honestly, this feature would be totally cool. But unless they're just overflowing with free time, I'd rather see them make more story, more locations, more monsters. And this feature seems like it'd be tricky to get right.

I agree, in general. I don't mind a bit of flash, but swords that people might actually hold, armor that might actually protect you from a pointed stick, and helms that don't get caught on every tree branch you walk under would be nice.

Honestly, I can't stand the NWN2 (i.e., the D&D 3rd ed) character creation system. They're hours and hours of planning before you even hit level 2 so that everything fits together just right, and then there's no choices at all, just picking the next wildly unjustifiable feat/class/skill to fit your build. If I never again have to play a Bard/Fighter/Red Dragon/Herald of Whatever, I'll be happy. That said, I love creating and customizing characters. I just think that things like, say, prestige classes, shouldn't be something that you have to meet special stat checks for. They'd make much, much more sense and be a lot more fun if they were something you had to pass a story check for. You want to be a Neverwinter Nine? Then you should probably make game choices that support the lords of neverwinter. Want to be a Travelling Bard class? Go on a city-chasing hunt to track down the most famous current bard. That way you don't have to wonder if you screwed up your skillpoints on level 3, you get to build the characters you want (sensible or not), and it's integrated into the world.

To those worried about player-created content, there was a 'within reason' clause in the tiers that let you design things. And if it were you, would you really shell out $1000 or more just to put in a weak joke? There's only about 200 people they have to deal with, odds are they are the folks that are crazy enthusiastic and want to make something cool.

Honestly, I don't get why you'd want to just indiscriminately kill and make quests impossible to finish, but as long as there's some sort of (conifigurable?) warning, then go nuts. Although the more I think about it, the less appealing it is. It seems designed to confuse/frustrate/annoy people who don't actually want to accidentally throw away hours of effort because they accidentally clipped some quest-critical NPC with a fireball. And on the upside, it ... doesn't really create an interesting game unless the game is programmed to be able to handle the death of critical NPCs. Which if so, then ok.