[Randomness and non-combat skills]

Short of complete simulation, which is really not feasible, I believe that randomness is the best way.

 

It's a matter of opinion or belief whether or not luck plays a part in real-world interactions and skills, but it is an observable fact that things do not always go precisely the same way every time you try them. One could juggle four balls in the same pattern at three different times in the day, their agility not having changed, and their skill presumably not having changed in that short an amount of time. One of those times they might do it flawlessly, one of those times they might drop the balls. The randomness accounts for hundreds of little factors that it would be extremely tedious to take into account in a game -- many of which are things that it is somewhere between very difficult and effectively impossible to discern.

 

Also, beyond that and personally, I find it more interesting to have a chance of failure at things that my character might be expected to succeed at, and a chance of success at things they might not be expected to succeed at -- to a point, of course.

 

The problem often manifested when your stats were good enough for you to succeed, but low enough to frequently fail. Since a huge difference between a Pen and Paper RPG and a CRPG is the ability to save and reload, this often made for an unfortunate meta-game, where you memorise a dialogue tree, and save/reload until you get it right, and you pass the right skill checks. Is it cheating? Yeah, kind of. But most games I've played completely lacks an incentive for accepting a bad roll of the dice. There are ways around it, but while a bit of randomness in combat makes it less predictable and more fun, I think it's a mistake in non-combat situations.

 

The failure is in itself the incentive. I accept the poor roll because I do not want my characters to always succeed, and often, it is just as interesting to fail as it is to succeed. If I for some reason do not feel like accepting failure, I can reload and try again. I don't enjoy cheating in that fashion, but if I did, why should it bother somebody else? It surely does not bother me that other people do it. The way I play the game has no effect on the way they play the game, and vice versa.

[Killing all NPCs]

I feel that all NPCs as well as other PCs should be theoretically killable. Some of them, surely, I would expect to be too powerful to kill for at least the majority of the game, but I think it's best if you are able to try. Not only do I like having the option to attempt to kill any NPC that I feel my character would attempt to kill, but I also enjoy the possibility of friendly fire. It makes me think more carefully about aiming spells and such in crowded areas, and I dislike the artificial way it feels to me if you drop a fireball in a crowded room but only the enemies are injured.

 

I do think that being warned if the NPC you just killed is critical to the main plot is nice and could save some frustration down the road. I don't see any downsides to the warning, since if it's your tenth time playing through the game and you just really want to kill that guy, you already know what's going to happen and you can just ignore the warning.

[Automatic regeneration of hit points during combat]

What made the Stamina/Health system so well designed in Darklands was that they were actually your Attributes in Endurance and Strength.

 

The Attributes were used for a variety of mechanics, such as encumbrance, weapon requirements and the like. It was a system in which getting hurt meant more than decreasing numbers, it also affected your ability to be effective. There were several levels of encumbrance, reducing your Agility and your Attack Speed, while Strength modified your ability to wield weapons effectively (like in Fallout).

 

The end result was a system that was able to accurately simulate the effects of getting injured and/or fatigued without having having to create additional systems (ala Dragon Age's crappy injury system). The beauty of it was in how everything was interrelated and how well it was geared towards simulation. That's why regeneration works. Because Health/Stamina are more than just numbers, the influence those stats carry goes far beyond whether a character is alive, unconscious, or dead. Over time, you regained Endurance and Strength. You healed from injuries and from fatigue. As you regained Strength and Endurance, the burdens of carrying your equipment were not as debilitating. Your ability to wield weapons with the same force as before your injuries returned. MicroProse knew exactly what the **** they were doing when they made Darklands.

 

I certainly hope that Josh Sawyer puts the same kind of thought into the systems of Project Eternity as the ones that were in Darklands. But if there's a developer outside the original team who I'd trust to get it done, it would be Sawyer.

 

But for those of you who are potting it as "instant regen" or "health jr." or "streamlining" or some such nonsense, I suggest you actually play and understand the game he references as inspiration before you make such off the mark statements.

 

This makes me really wish that I had played Darklands back when I still had a computer that would've run it natively, or that I could get it to work on my current one. I must try that again, someday. Tangent aside, if even half of that complexity ends up making it in, I'll be quite happy. That sounds awesome.

[What kind of dialog mechanic you want?]

If it should ever become possible, I would like to be able to simply write in the response my character would have. As at this point that is clearly not an option, the Planescape: Torment (and other Infinity Engine games) dialog mechanic remains my favourite, and I expect it will continue to do so for a good long time.

 

The one thing that I want most more than anything else in a dialog mechanic is that I am not told that a certain choice is because of my really high skill. I do not want to know that because my mechanical skill or my speech skill or my science skill has given me an option I wouldn't otherwise get.

 

This would be great. I don't have a problem just ignoring any [persuade] or [lore] tag on a dialogue option, but I like it best when it is not said where the extra dialogue options come from, or that you wouldn't be getting them if you didn't meet some requirement.

[Secondary Weapon Functions]

I think it would be cool if this sort of thing were taken into account at least in some fashion. My personal preference is always more towards passive bonuses, be it from selecting feats/perks (or the equivalent thereof) to take advantage of more of the weapon's functionality as you level up or from having the advantages of the weapon built into its stats.

 

A few more active actions could be interesting as well though, such as the knockdowns you mention. And, despite my general preference for a lack of activated abilities, if we do have those in the game this is the kind of thing I would most like to see them be.

[Melee combat in IE type of games]

You are of course entitled to your preferences, but I think most people found IE handling of melee combat pretty boring. In fact, if you go to various forum posts around the internet advising people on what classes/kits to play in IE games, you will almost always see recommendations for playing magic based or hybrid ones and warnings to stay away from pure fighters. There is just nothing fun about running to the fore and clicking on the target and forgetting about that character. Within the context of isometric tactical combat, it seems like the only way to remedy this is to give fighters their own set of active abilities, so just like magic casters, they can select something specific to use based on the situation. The more reactive/speed based stuff is more controversial, but I did not mean it to be twitch based, but rather something that requires tighter control than the typical spell casting approach, to differentiate between the two, but as I said, it's just one way to do it, other people might have better ways.

 

True, and if I go to many forums about the internet I'll also find people saying that they find playing a fighter to be dull in various incarnations of AD&D -- I disagree there, too. I do also like playing magic-based characters, but I like different things for them, and I don't like the mechanics to be very similar between combat and magic. I won't make any claim as to who is right or who isn't, except that everyone is, because it's entirely a question of preference. I do know several people who agree with me, so I know that I'm not completely alone in my opinion. I don't know how common it is.

 

There is certainly some middle ground, and I have played and enjoyed games where fighters have activated abilities (though there have also been some of those where said abilities annoy me frequently). So long as the abilities in question are not things that I expect that a competent fighter will be doing of their own accord all the time, I might actually like a few. Knockdowns, called shots, and anything that affects more than one opponent at once are some examples of things that I wouldn't mind having as activated abilities and might even like. Choosing different guards and getting different advantages from them before a fight might be interesting, or even a few unusual strikes that require timing. I'm not opposed to having options for fighting types, just to having those options be (to me) the equivalent of picking out exactly the words and gestures that a magic user must use for a spell -- I wouldn't want to do that either, and would assume they should just automatically do it. I know many people don't see it as the same thing, but to me it is much the same.

[Is there a point where a game is too big?]

Hard to say. I have never yet encountered a game that I found to be too big or too long. If I don't find everything in a game on the first playthrough, why, that's just more interesting things to turn up on future playthroughs. So long as the plot isn't one that seems terribly urgent the entire way through, I also see nothing wrong with some meandering and wandering away from the plot here and there.

[Anyone else happy there is no 'Raise Dead'-like spell?]

I'm mostly neutral on it, but more happy than anything else. I don't mind spells like Raise Dead or Resurrection when they have consequences, but often in games they have no consequences beyond the price and they at times end up making some events seem odd. I also will often play through games with a personal rule not to use them at all anyhow.

 

I intend to always play with the death option enabled, so my opinion of the maimed thing is simply that it's nice that it's there for people who don't want their party members to die.

[Melee combat in IE type of games]

I actually like having the fighters just auto-attack, and fighters are one of my favourite classes. I play them a lot. Probably my single most played class, in fact.

 

See, the thing is, I tend to be sort of picky about what they can do if it isn't auto-attacking. I do like it if there are some extra, unusual things that they can do on activation, things that you wouldn't want to do in every situation (especially at higher levels), but I don't want to be having to pick which cut to use at what time and which parry to use, when to dodge or sidestep, or that sort of thing. It's just... eh, I'm trying to think how to explain.

 

Parrying and dodging is mostly reflexive and automatic. Choosing where to strike isn't something you spend time thinking about, either -- you just see an opening and you go for it. To have a fully realistic combat system where you control everything a fighter does, you would have to be able to choose exactly what they do and see exactly what the enemy is doing, and particularly in an isometric game I just don't see that working. And honestly, if I want to do that, I'll find someone to spar with or play a different genre of game -- because at that point, it doesn't feel so much like "what is my character going to do now" but "what do I do now", whereas just telling the fighter to attack it feels to me as though I'm making the decision "who does my character want to attack now" and that's all good.

 

What I would like would be to be able to choose the sorts of things that the fighter is good at, feats or perks or weapon ranks, and then just assume that they know what they're doing and see it reflected in the THAC0 and the hit points dealt (or equivalent). I like to spend a lot more time configuring how the fighter fights on level up and such, but spend not all that much time deciding what they do during the fight beyond where to position them and what weapons to use in that fight.

 

General sorts of fighting styles (the aggressive/defensive et cetera) sounds like something that could work pretty well, though.

[Are you for or against gaining experience points only for completing objectives?]

The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me.

 

There may be other ways to award the player for killing large quantities of enemies.

 

For example, there was a small detail that I really liked about the original Diablo (first game in the series). When you encounter an enemy of a certain type for the first time, you don't know anything about it. You mouse over it, and it just diplays the enemy's name. After killing a few of these enemies, you get some basic information like average hit points. By killing more of them, you eventually learn their resistances and weaknesses (i.e. vulnerable to fire, resists cold). Finally, after killing dozens of them, you get their full stats on mouse over. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in Project Eternity.

 

Maybe it becomes easier to get critical hits on enemies you've killed many times before.

 

Both those things would be pretty neat, I think. So, yeah, basically as long as it doesn't seem as if you learn nothing at all from defeating oppponents unless they were part of a quest it won't feel odd to me.

[Automatic regeneration of hit points during combat]

I hate regenerating health, but regenerating stamina is fine with me even if mechanically it's similar, and I like the stamina/health thing. Stamina does regenerate pretty quickly after a fight in my experience, although not really during it -- nothing I've seen makes it clear whether it will also regenerate during a fight, and I would find that a little bit iffy (although if it's a very slow sort of regeneration, it'll almost certainly be overcome by being struck, and that would be okay with me). So, all in all, I like this so far!

 

I find stamina and then health to be far closer to how things actually work than just health. It doesn't take all that many times to be successfully hit and injured before you're out of a fight and down, but fighting tends to wear people down rather quickly, as does being struck (even if doesn't injure you significantly).

 

Action is faster than reaction. Even if the energy required to move both the sword and the shield are the same, and the shield only has to move in a marginal direction compared to the swing of the sword, it takes far more combat training to properly shield yourself from the blow. You need a proper stance, a strong reaction speed, good training, and the strength to weather the blow. Blocking or deflecting a weapon is magnitudes more difficult than you might think. Try to block or deflect a punch, and you'll see what I mean. Granted, punches move faster than swords, but it's still difficult. Exhausting. And if the person's using a knife? Forget trying to block that. You'll probably be skewered. It's just too fast.

 

Indeed. Although proper stance and good training are also things you need for attacking, I agree that defending properly is more difficult. And it's not just standing stock still and moving only the shield or weapon if you're parrying with a weapon either -- you also want to avoid the attack at least to some extent in case your block doesn't work completely. I'd say defending is at least as draining as attacking, probably more so. In short, I agree with this.

[Are you for or against gaining experience points only for completing objectives?]

I voted against, because I find that -- of the various games I've played where either system is used -- I prefer kill-based experience. However, I'm hardly fanatical about it, and I expect that I'll be happy enough with it however it ends up panning out (I don't mind getting all the XP at the end of a campaign in a pen-and-paper game, so certainly the delayed aspect of it I wouldn't mind). Most of the games using encounter-based experience systems that I've played have probably not been the best examples of the system, so I'm certainly willing to give it a chance. Still, my preference is towards kill-based systems.

 

I suppose, partly, this may be because I've never really been tempted to game the system with kill-based experience. I don't go kill anything my characters wouldn't want to be killing anyhow, and I'm perfectly fine with it if I lose out on some XP because that's not what that particular party would do. So, I don't really see that either way would change how many creatures most people would go around killing.

 

Objective-based experience systems tend to feel odd to me for much the same reason that the CR system does: I would think that you would always gain some skill and experience from killing creatures, even though the small amount of it might not mean very much after a while. The idea of killing, say, ten goblins and not having learned anything at all from the experience is strange to me. That said, I also like quest XP and XP from things like learning spells and disarming traps and picking locks, it just seems that only quest XP is odd. Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly what this would be.

 

In any case, the method of gaining experience points isn't particularly important to me in the grand scheme of things. It's not one of the most important things about a game to me, and it certainly doesn't make the difference between a game being enjoyable and not being enjoyable. I'm sure it'll be enjoyable either way.

[Replaying Neverwinter Nights 2...]

I keep meaning to play through Mask of the Betrayer, but the camera annoyances keep getting to me, and I feel as though I ought to replay Neverwinter Nights 2 before I do it. Perhaps I'll finally start that replay in the next day or two. I also keep meaning to play through the whole Fallout series, but alas, I haven't the time for it right now -- hopefully soon.

 

I've fairly recently replayed both Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II, but I've been feeling the urge to play them both again in the last few days. If only I had more free time, I would be doing so.

 

Oh I know, Obsidian gave me some of my fondest video game memories. I did watch a video of the game opening once, and had a rather shallow "That's who the main character is?! EW!" reaction to the Nameless One. Now that I'm older and wiser I won't be so foolish, but I do always get a bit thrown when an RPG doesn't let me fully create the character I'm supposed to be RP'ing.

 

So do I. Planescape: Torment thus far remains the only RPG I've played where you can't fully create the character that I've liked, and is also one of my favourite games. For me, at least, it's just good enough that I don't find myself minding that in its case -- although it does mean that I don't replay it anywhere near as often as I do most of my other favourite games.

[How should the UI look?]

I would like to see more UIs like from Inquisitor, personally this one:

 

 

Like UIs which are very individual, in this screen especially health/mana/stamina bar.

 

That's a pretty cool one (though I still stand by my preference of the Baldur's Gate style). My problem with the thinner UIs isn't specifically that they are thin, but rather that I feel they are lacking in character -- I think this is a good example of something that doesn't take up particularly much space, but is still interesting and thematically appropriate.

[Riddles]

I am quite fond of riddles, and I think it would be nice to see a few here and there (particularly in side quests and such).

[STATS (strength, endurance, intelligence, etc.)]

I believe all stats should have at least some possible utility to everyone, although not necessarily something that everyone would want to use equally much. I don't, however, believe that they should all be extremely useful or essential to everyone -- I don't think it should be completely crippling to have a low strength or a low wisdom, for example. I also prefer that stats be mostly fixed after character creation.

 

Different species having different maximums to their stats is something I like, although not all that large of a difference (+1, maybe +2, assuming a 3-18 distribution). I voted for classes requiring minimum stats as something of a reflex, but after thinking it through, I suppose I don't care as much about that. If somebody wants to play a very physically weak or sickly fighter or a clumsy thief, I suppose that's not really a problem. Could be interesting, if not very effective.

[I'm not Evil I'm just thorough... well OK maybe I'm a little evil]

I like being able to kill all the NPCs. I don't believe I've ever actually tried to kill them all in any game, but I enjoy the possibility of friendly fire, and there have been many times where I've killed various NPCs for character reasons (whether my character just didn't like them or they got in the way). If NPCs are unkillable, it also often prevents the possibility of sneaking up on them and performing a surprise attack, if you already know that they are somebody you want to kill.

 

I do, however, like in Morrowind that it warns you if you kill off a quest important character, since it would be fairly frustrating to get very far in the game on your first playthrough and then suddenly realise that this guy you bumped off weeks ago because you thought he needed to go was actually quest important and you have to reload from before you snuffed him.

[Minimizing Save scumming. Or is it too much of a hassle?]

Honestly, I really don't see why this is an issue given that there is no multiplayer. I could see worrying about such a thing in a multiplayer game; but even if somebody exploits all possible loopholes wildly and vengefully in a singleplayer game, it doesn't affect anybody but them. If that's how they want to play the game, well, I don't have a problem with that since it isn't affecting me. If I don't want to play the game that way (I don't), I simply won't.

 

I like being able to save often and in different slots, particularly when the saved games are nameable (which I hope they will be). Partly for my own, perhaps slightly odd reasons (I like naming them odd or interesting things, and I like looking back over the whole list of them once I'm done playing through the game for that time); partly so that I can go back and load up a game to see what the party I had going was like at the particular time; and partly, the first time through a game, just in case I manage to screw up irrecoverably enough somewhere down the road that I need to reload a particular save.

 

There's already going to be the one-save-only mode, and beyond that, it seems fairly obvious to me that it's much easier to simply not save if you don't think you should be allowed to save than it is to save if the game doesn't allow you to but you would like to. You can always put limits on yourself using a feature such as saving if that's how you enjoy playing the game, but it's much harder to remove those limits if it isn't.

[Movement speed....]

I find the walking speed in both Baldur's Gate II and the Icewind Dale games to be perfectly acceptable, although I do find it to be a bit aggravatingly slow in Baldur's Gate (particularly when just coming from playing one of the other games).

 

The walk/run toggle in Planescape: Torment was nice to have, though. I ended up having it on run almost all the time because I found the walk speed to be more in line with Baldur's Gate than the other two, but there were still a few times I used the walk speed. I'd prefer if the ability to run didn't recharge, although I do admit it might make more sense if it did -- one can't keep running all over the place forever, after all.

[One backer's thoughts]

Neverwinter Nights had them in all dialogues, but that was a fairly different UI and dialogue interface. Personally, I'm fine not seeing the portrait most of the time. It's neat to see it for the major NPCs, but if they don't have them, that's also okay by me.

 

The main problem with NWN was that they just.... Reused the same portraits over and over and over again. They gave you a nice selection at the start of the game (unlike BG where you could pretty much only choose from ones that already belonged to companion NPCs and the start tutorial summons, meaning you were probably going to run into 1 person with your portrait during the whole game), but no matter what you chosein NWN (unless you went for a custom one) you'd almost certainly see your characters portrait used more than once during the game. I found that annoying and preferred only important characters to have portraits.

 

Yeah, I agree. I do prefer only the important characters to have them, but Neverwinter Nights is an example of a game where everybody had them (which I intended as a negative example of why it's not necessarily a good thing, but looking back on what I wrote, I didn't actually make that at all clear). I myself almost always end up using a custom portrait if the option is available, so I never did run into the "this guy looks like my character!" problem, but I'd rather just imagine most of the characters than have the same portrait for a whole bunch of villagers.

[Feature Request: Changeable Portraits]

I expect that having multiple versions by different artists would be rather expensive, although of course whether it would be prohibitively so would depend on how much the artists in question charge and all.

 

If it would prohibitively expensive to create multiple portraits for each companion (or if funds are simply better spent on something else), would it be feasible to implement this feature but not the additional portraits (so that we can add custom portraits and be able to switch between them in-game)? The IE games allowed portrait additions and overrides, and this doesn't seem as if it would be much more complex... ?

 

Thoughts?

 

This sounds like a good idea to me. Custom portraits in general are definitely something I'm very much hoping for, because even a fairly wide range of default portraits runs out after multiple playthroughs (I don't like using the same portrait for more than one character if I can help it). Also, being able to create or find a portrait that does look how you want your character to look if none of the default ones do is part of what is great about having portraits. And, certainly, I can see reasons that you would want to switch in the middle of the game, too. I know I've done that a few times in Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate.

[One backer's thoughts]

I actually like the grid inventory and having to mouse over or right-click the inventory items to see what they are. I'd call Neverwinter Nights' inventory more of slot tetris, since the items are of varying sizes there.

 

The conversation thing is interesting, but I'm not sure it would work all that well in this type of game -- but if it would, eh, it makes sense that some wouldn't want to talk in a crowded area and what (although I'd say that a remote forest or ruin is probably more private than many inns). I've never been keen on romances, so I've no comment on that.

 

Baldur's Gate II has small portraits in the dialogue for the important NPCs (Bodhi, Irenicus, the recruitable ones, that sort). Neverwinter Nights had them in all dialogues, but that was a fairly different UI and dialogue interface. Personally, I'm fine not seeing the portrait most of the time. It's neat to see it for the major NPCs, but if they don't have them, that's also okay by me.

 

As to six, going for historical accuracy would actually get you more weapons than seen in many games -- people tend to focus on the longbows and various sword types, but there are quite a wide array of other weapons that had historical usage in a similar time period (although not always in the same locale or the exact same time). Axes, maces and other bludgeoning weapons, quarterstaffs, picks, a fairly wide variety of polearms, daggers, crossbows, and various throwing weapons were all in use in Europe during the middle ages, for instance, and when you add in weapons commonly found in other areas it's definitely quite a variety.

And they certainly don't all require the same skills to use, or have the same effects (bludgeoning weapons and picks are significantly more effective against plate than swords, for instance). So, I'm all for historical accuracy of arms and armour. One thing I'd personally really like to see is shields being useful, both for defending and for shield bashes and beating weapons aside.

 

Crafting... yeah, that's part of the reason I've never been too keen on crafting (another part being that I often find the requirements for it a bit annoying). I basically agree with this one, though.

 

So you want to tell the character to move, and then assume that they'll attack anything that comes near them? I thought that if you left the party AI on it would take care of that in the Infinity Engine games, but honestly, I usually leave that off so I probably am misremembering that.

 

I don't mind having to mouse over the clock and I might find the number always being there annoying, but I expect I don't really care between the two methods, or wouldn't once I got used to it.

 

Search function for the journal seems reasonable and useful. It may well be odd of me that I sort of enjoy paging through the journal to figure out old quests that I haven't taken care of yet, but that's clearly something that wouldn't have to be used (even I admit that can get frustrating).

[How should the UI look?]

I still really like the UIs of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I prefer Baldur's Gate's to Baldur's Gate II's, in fact, which I suppose may be somewhat unusual. I like the solid framing. I do also like those of Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale II, however.

 

Dragon Age: Origins did have a fairly good compromise between old and new UI designs, I thought, but I still prefer the older ones. I prefer not having multiple windows on the screen at one time, because I find it a bit annoying - I usually won't do it even if it's an option, and I do like the windows to be individually large.

 

As to the mini-map, I don't think it's necessary in an isometric RPG, and so would just be cluttered. I do like having them in 3d ones, because then I have some trouble finding the way without it, but you already see as much of the area in an isometric RPG as you often do to the minimap, so in my opinion that would mostly be taking up space.

[Bows: Limited ammo?]

I prefer limited ammunition. It does tend to make an actual difference to cost when buying supplies earlier on, so you have to balance the need for arrows or bullets with the need for other supplies, and it can make for some interesting on-the-fly tactical decisions (you didn't bring quite enough arrows, now what?).

 

Also, I do think that each quiverfull of arrows should take up a reasonable amount of inventory space (I do mean reasonable here -- not as much as larger items like armour, but as much as smaller weapons). If you try to carry something like five hundred arrows around with you, you're going to get rather burdened down.

 

I even think it would be nice if merchants don't sell an unlimited supply of base ammunition, so you could buy out all the merchants in the area and have to come up with back-up plan not involving ammunition for a while.

[Character Death]

I could see, on easy mode, having the whole only being knocked out thing. It is, after all, easier that way.

 

I would very much like actual character death to be an option. I don't really have much of a care about resurrection/no resurrection; resurrection certainly doesn't work for all settings, and I've no idea if it would for this one, but if it does I have no problem with it - although I do prefer if it comes with a cost (be it -1 constitution and system shock chance or something entirely else). It's less impactful if the cost is only in gold, I think, but it still works. I also like the "chunking" that could happen in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale if the character took far too much damage, or from some spells, where the character would just be completely removed with no chance of resurrection.

 

While I wouldn't play through the first time in this way, I do like to have playthroughs of the game where I create a new character every time somebody dies, and clearly that doesn't work when nobody can actually die. Even if I'm making use of resurrecting and even reloading, I still prefer that the possibility of death is looming there somewhere in the background.