Greensleeve

Wait, wait, wait. Has it been confirmed that these 'iconic' concept art characters are going to be our companions? If so, send a link. I thought they are just intended to be 'iconic' representatives of the classes, much like Torgar or Redgar or Lidda or whatever they're called in D&D. Just concept art to show of how a sort of typical member of the class would look, not actually our companions.

You should probably add Arcanum to that list. RPGs with great gameplay (cRPGs and a jRPG): Mass Effect 2 Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Final Fantasy: Tactics BioShock Deus Ex: Human Revolution Mount and Blade: Warband Fable II EDIT: Just saw that you wanted examples of good gameplay with sub-par story. In that case, everything but Kingdoms of Amalur, Mount and Blade and Fable 2 should probably go from the list. Now, I picked Gameplay in the poll, because great gameplay is truly important to a game. Without fun gameplay, I won't play the game for very long. I have less... strict standards for gameplay than others here, for example I liked the gameplay in KotOR II. Despite that, a story and the writing is what makes a game great. One of my favourite games of all time is Morrowind, and the gameplay was... lack-luster. Sure, spell creation was lots of fun, but the gameplay was clunky. It was the world and the lore that made it a great game. Same with the IE games. IWD2 had great gameplay, fantastic even. But the game is the weakest out of all the IE games because the story elements are below par. So in short, gameplay is what makes a game fun, it what is of prime importance to a game. But the story is what will make a game great.

Agreed. Something I quite liked about Dragon Age was the Fatigue mechanic. If it only mattered as well... The difference is In Dragon Age fatigue affected the abilities you could use. With this system it's more your general survivability in a fight / how many consecutive fights you can take. A good example is like, The Mountain vs The Red Viper in GRRM's A Storm of Swords Yeah, I agree. The problem was just that the fatigue didn't matter. You always regenerated to full stamina after a fight anyway, and you regenerated fast enough/had enough base stamina to get out of the encounter easily anyway. A system where heavier armour actually makes it take longer to get back up to full condition would be great, particularly in conjunction with some time-based quests, so that it actually matters. Otherwise, there's little point in having armour apply a penalty to stamina regeneration (outside of combat, that is). Haven't read A Song of Ice and Fire, so I'll just take your word for it.

Agreed. Something I quite liked about Dragon Age was the Fatigue mechanic. If it only mattered as well... Look at Arcanum. You have four physical attributed, four mental ones. You have the power stat, the nimble stat, the endurance stat, and the reaction stat. Strength is the physical power stat, intelligence is the mental one. Dexterity is the mental nimble stat, Perception is the mental one (agreed, connection is a bit tenuous). Constitution is the physical endurance stat, Willpower the mental one. Beauty is the physical reaction stat, Charisma is the mental one. Some similar system of 'pairing' stats, like you proposed could work quite well. Though I would like more than four stats, I confess.

I like the idea that good is something that will cost you something. It won't really just be a no-brainer choice. I'd like to see choices where you really have to think "Is the cost really worth doing the right thing?" without the cost being so high that no one will ever take the nice option, nor so low that its negligible. Playing good and playing bad are usually uninteresting in RPGs as they're usually just about picking a line of actions, then sticking to them, without the game changing much. I want to see situations where there is content you will not see unless you make a certain decision in a certain way. BioShock was pretty decent at making the choice interesting, because you had no idea what the costs for either choice were. You simply had to guess, and when it became apparent what the cost was, it was too late to re-load and pick the other choice.

Well, as I see it, health is not something determined in anyway by training, just by your fortitude/bodily strength. It doesn't matter how much you train sword fighting, a stab to the heart will be as lethal as it would be to someone who's never been in a fight before. Thus, health should probably only be determined by a bodily attribute, similar to Constitution. MAYBE, some classes should get a flat bonus on it simply by being part of that class, representing supernatural hardiness manifested by your soul. Essentially, health shouldn't really be something that changes over the adventurers career, unless her physical strength/hardiness changes. Stamina, however, is something that could, and should, be increased depending on class and some attribute. If you do a lot of physical fighting, you'll have greater stamina then someone who keeps back, firing a musket or shooting spells. As the adventurer becomes more and more experienced, gets into more and more fights, she should be able to fight for longer without becoming tired, and a blow that might knock the air out of a less experienced fighter will be turned into merely a glancing blow.

I agree with the stance "It doesn't really matter." What matters is that it is decently balanced, unlike 3.5. As long as we don't get situations where the main casters are more powerful/useful in solving basically any encounter, combat or not, than most other characters, I'm very happy with it all.

I don't really want this type of mode. If I want to replay the game again, I'll do so with a new concept/build, play differently. In some ways it'll still (hopefully) be a New Game+ as I'll know more stuff about the game, as a player. I'll be able to metagame a derive advantages from that. Import/Export is something that would be nice to have, so I suppose that in that regard, a New Game+ mode would be acceptable.

How do you deal with magical/spiritual classes in that scenario? It takes physical training to improve physical attributes. You don't become stronger and able to run farther, faster, by reading books. See Umberlin and KaineParker's responses. That's effectively what I had in mind.

Personally, I'd see Health be determined by level only, or maybe attribute only, regardless of class, whereas Stamina would be determined by Endurance/Constitution/etc. as well as Class.

This is actually one of my greatest worries about PE, that melee characters will simply not have much to do. Someone mentioned that the interesting aspect of a melee character was their positioning. I can, to a certain extent, agree to this, but it is very difficult to do this well in a RTWP system. In turn-based, yes, otherwise... Eh, not so much. So give melee characters something nice to do. Knockdowns, disarms, position control, sundering, called shots inflicting essentially de-buffs on your opponents etc. It does not (should not) have to involve deciding whether to use a thrust or a slash when attacking, nor should it require us to "twitch" activate counters, they should simply happen. So if I use my parry skill and I succeed, I should get an automatic counter-attack, not have to mash the button. Also very important to allow melee characters to be skilled at multiple ranges.

I think multi-classing is extremely important as a feature, unless they include crazy amounts of flexibility within each class. Unless we can add spell casting to fighters (or changes of equivalent weight), multi-classing is almost required. There are so many character concepts that hinge on being able to use, essentially, abilities from two classes, with lower proficiency than single-classed characters, that multi-classing is almost a must. A system along the lines of D&D is pretty good for that, or even better, Star Wars Saga. AD&D was pretty bad, but it worked in Baldur's Gate fairly well. You could make very playable fighter/mages and similar. Now, I believe that Obsidian will pull this off properly, I really do. If not through multi-classing, then through flexibility within the class, maybe similar to the Pathfinder archetype system. Actually, that might be a really good system to look at for flexibility within classes...

Yup, seems like the orlan is likely to be the fifth race. Not terribly excited about that, to be honest. I've never really liked any of the short races, so they could have done better by me. Though the elves seems to be pretty cool in this setting, and the god-like could be awesome.

I don't particularily care about how the coinage works. I think one level might be all that's needed. Weighty gold... In some modes, sure. But it's not something I want forced on me, and if it has weight, there needs to be a banking system. I would however like to see multiple currencies. I think Fallout:New Vegas did that very well. It was fun trading and the system was easy to use.

Either pure point-buy, or a mix of both. Maybe a bit like Daggerfall, where you roll for stats, but can add a few points to customize. Or remove from others for even more points. Being able to have truly terrible stats is something the system definitely should allow, even if it's just through backgrounds, like Arcanum did it.

Yeah, but the levels in Baldur's Gate didn't really feel significant, because all you got was some more hit points and better attack numbers. Or spells if you picked a magic-using class, which I usually didn't. Fallout had pretty good, significant levels. When you got a perk, that mattered. Morrowind had really nice, significant levels before reaching levels 20-30, depending on how you played. Personally, I would not want us to speculate on leveling rate with a sequel in mind. We want a complete game, a game that is in itself, essentially, a finished story. Which means that we should not want a system tailored towards letting us level up even more in a sequel. I would want a power progression roughly equal to that of Dragon Age: Origins, with more stuff to do. More abilities is good. I would rather see Obsidian err on the side of too many abilities than too few. But the power progression of DAO was good. You started out as a promising youngling, you ended as someone who is an important, very powerful individual, but still within the limits of human (or elven or whatever) power. So in short, level progression doesn't matter. Power progression does. Finally, separate XP tables for different classes is such an awful idea it's beyond me. NPCs do not have to level up all at once, but they should all follow the same table. I think most people are suggesting it out of nostalgia, but that's not a discussion for this thread.

I enjoy being able to loot what I see on enemies I kill. I understand that can unbalance the game if opponents have vastly better gear than you that you're still expected to kill, but... I hate seeing someone in a full plate, kill him and find out I can't take it. It's right there! Arcanum did this pretty well. On the other hand, I'd want somewhat randomized loot in containers. I don't want to be able to play through the game a few times and always find the same stuff in each container. That said, some items should be fixed. Some items should always be found where they are, no matter what. Baldur's Gate was a bit annoying on this point, as I always know where I get certain items. As for vendor trash... I like the idea of valuable items with fun little descriptions, like Gold Idols, or paintings, that serve no real use. Maybe give you a discount, maybe just a source of money. On the other hand, I don't want a load of useless things just to have things. There's no point in cluttering up the inventory with crap items that I just want to off-load. There needs to be a balance. I also like Indira's idea of seemingly banal items that are very useful, or just fun, at a later point in the game if you hang on to them.

I agree. It is important to allow the classes to act outside of their immediately available role. To allow for a rogue that's actually someone that goes toe-to-toe with his opponents and wins. Wizards that tank. Fighters that are specialised more towards leading ones allies into battle than being a master of the sword himself (damn, that really needs to be around. The Leader type of fighter!) etc. etc.

I think we sort of need both, considering we're going for a class system. I'd like a variety of classes, where choice actually do matter more than "Arcane/Divine/backstabber/non-caster." It was one of the greatest flaws of the last few editions of D&D, of the IE games, and most of the games produced cited in the Kickstarter hook. If you didn't play a caster, you had so little diversity in what you did in combat. You could change your position. You could change how much you power attack for. You could choose when to rage/activate some mode. Fallout at least allowed called shots. Anyway, that's a different matter. What's important for this topic, I feel, is attributes where your choices matter, large amount of options to allow us to customise our characters, mechanically, even if they belong to the same class, be it through skills, feats, or class abilities. Personally, I'm hoping for the viable and effective option of using both ranged and melee weapons.

Yeah, I think it's a rather bad idea to have critical hits inflict various statuses. I think a lot of those things (slowing, dazing, disarming, sundering, etc.) should be available to the characters to use at will, as called shots or similar, instead of having to rely on critical hits. Fighters become little else that door-stoppers without any real tactical abilities to them other than hitting hard or taking hard hits.