Ninjamestari

The theme of the game isn't very mature, all this soul stuff and rebirth and philosophy are escape mechanisms from reality. Even death has lost it's finality in Project Eternity, so no, mature themes definitely don't fit the setting very well. While rape, racism and sex are very real things, the world of project eternity is very very far away from reality. Project eternity ventures so far into the realm of the metaphysical that any attempts at realism are actually harmful for the game setting. Please no attempts at "maturity" (meaning the gritty side of reality in this context), it has already been thrown out of the window.

There are countless interesting villain types; a charismatic leader like Kane from C&C, a brutal embodiment of power like Darth Vader, a manipulative mastermind like Moebius in Soul Reaver, a political schemer like LaCroix in VTM:Bloodlines, an enigmatic gentleman like Dracula, a brilliant lunatic like Joker from Batman, and the list could go on and on. The important thing is that the Villain fits the world; VTM is all about scheming and backstabbing, power is a major theme in Star Wars and so on and so forth. Project eternity dabbles a lot in the realm of the metaphysical (I don't like this approach but it can be done), so a good villain has to fit that theme. So what we need is a mystical figure, an enigmatic fellow whose goals are not very obvious. Someone who talks in riddles and confuses the protagonist with difficult questions. Someone who is actively seeking the truth and meaning behind the world and definitely someone who has vast amounts of knowledge. To be a successful villain in a heavily metaphysical universe, the antagonist has to change the way the protagonist views and sees the world; open his eyes so to speak. I don't think I even have to mention that the villain needs to have an otherworldly presence.

I think the real question to ask is whether or not people want a completely combat focused game that offers little else, and nothing else really matters in the long run, or do we want a game that has multiple viable ways to progress besides combat. If the devs go for the former, then it automatically becomes necessary to balance the classes completely around combat. If latter, then it becomes necessary to balance them around all skills and abilities. If they choose the purely combat focused path, I know I won't be bothered to play the game.

Why should the game reward a player for playing a character that makes no sense whatsoever? Sure, you should be able to play an evil homicidal maniac, but why the hell should you be rewarded for it beyond what a normal character gets? Oh, yeah, you're not really roleplaying an evil homicidal maniac, you're power gaming. Exploring doesn't mean you have to kill every one of the monsters you encounter. There can be other ways to reward exploration, such as additional treasure and XP rewards for finding secrets. You might find additional side quests even, that let you get even more XP out of your exploring. No monster XP required, and you can play as a character who would rather avoid combat than spend his whole day killing monsters without feeling like you're being punished for wanting to make a non fighter character.

I hate giant bugs, I really do. The absolute maximum size is a bloodfly type monster (like the ones in the games of the Gothic series). Any dog sized or larger spider or ant or scorpion or whatever is just utterly ridiculous.

Instant death spells can be interesting if implemented properly, or a huge pile of aggravating bull**** if implemented poorly. Let the devs fool around with it and figure out what works.

Relationships are not a system. No to any systems regarding NPC relationships, just script them properly. No influence points, no "I agree with you" points, no "I love you" points, just let things progress naturally. No reputation points either, I'm damned sick of collecting freaking points for every freaking thing I want to do. I say no to points and retarded systems. Yes to innovative scripting.

Rewarding XP only for completing objectives allows the most flexibility when it comes to play style. Being punished for not being a fighter is just dumb, rewarding you for first sneaking and then letting you gain extra xp for killing the NPCs afterwards is retarded, as no one does that. The goals of the character should be the goals of the player; if the character's goal isn't to kill everyone, then the player shouldn't be rewarded for doing so.

Both feats and talent trees can lead to both an incredibly interesting game and a horrible disaster. Here is a situation where one system isn't inherently better than the other, it's the implementation that counts. Besides, you could easily do several kinds of mixes between the systems that might be interesting.

The easiest answer to this question is to not make too many companion characters and thus have no need for an arbitrary maximum party size. When it comes to companions, I think less is more, and I very much prefer to have a small number of interesting and properly fleshed out characters that interact with the player, other companions and even the world and it's NPC's. Maybe at some times they have their own stuff to do so that you can't have them for a particular mission? Maybe they develop feelings towards each other and not just towards the player character? If there is a romance and some kind of love triangle involved, should the player automatically be the object of desire? Maybe he has to compete against another character to win the attention of his/her love? Maybe there is a companion that doesn't really like you but follows you because of his/her friend has decided to stick with you? etc etc... That way you can think of lots of different scenarios with real consequences besides some crude and boring mechanical "you lost a companion, he takes x gold and y experience with him/her as he/she goes away while giving you the finger". But other than that there should also be a real reason for you to kick a particular companion out of your group, not just crude and boring mechanical "I've reached the maximum party size so I'll have to kick this companion in order to make room for the hot elf chick".

I think the properties of armor should mimic reality in some way. It's true that if you swing against a highly armored target with a sword, you'll be doing much less damage than against an unarmored opponent. However, if you strike an unprotected area you'll do just as much damage as if the opponent didn't wear anything but his clothes. A heavily armored opponent on the other hand has much less unprotected areas than lightly armored, so it's harder to hit one. An easy way to make this work would be the "damage reduction except against critical strikes", but with an added property that reduces the opponent's chance of getting those criticals through. One easy way to do this would be to have a percentile armor DR, like the system in WoW. Just make criticals ignore armor completely and reduce the critical strike chance by the same percentage damage is reduced. For example, a thug that has a sword that with all modifiers does 100 damage per swing and has a 10% chance to get a critical hit swings at a knight that has 40% armor damage reduction. The normal swing would do only 60 damage, a critical would do 200 damage, but his chance of getting that critical against the knight would be only 6%. Other defensive layers should also exist, such as maybe passive damage reduction that reduces all damage, including that from criticals, your chance to dodge which could also give you a chance to avoid a critical strike, turning it into a normal strike instead, and then ofc. your chance to parry and block with your weapon and shield.

I think the whole "reward" line of thinking is rather twisted. The game shouldn't reward the player for his choices; the choices should have consequences. Getting a 50 dollar good guy bonus for helping that old lady across the street every time is just ridiculous. Life isn't about getting rewarded for being a good boy, it's about making choices, picking the compromise that feels most appealing. The idea is to have the player be responsible for his actions; sometimes the "obvious good choice" might bring forth a disaster. Sometimes the "obvious evil choice" might prevent one. Having some magical daddy figure give you +5 good points is just retarded.

Both being good and being evil should have it's consequences and rewards, depending on the situation. Evil characters should get more selfish rewards, where good characters might make friends more easily. I once fooled around with the toolset of the original Neverwinter Nights, and came up with this idea for a scene, where you're investigating an evil cult with your two companions (which would be the only two companions available at that time). There would come a point inside the dungeon crawl where the companion characters would end up as prisoners to the evil cult, and you'd have to rescue them. Upon finding them the player would discover that they've been prepared for an evil magical ritual that would drain their life force to satisfy some evil god or something like that. There is a magical black orb on a pedestal in the middle of the room, which begins to drain life force from both of your companions. There are four choices available, do you: a) rescue companion no.1, sacrificing companion no.2? b) do the opposite and sacrifice companion no.1 instead? c) attack the orb in an attempt to save both of your companions? d) given that your character has learned of the ritual during the crawl or passes his spellcraft check, take control of the orb and steal the lives of both his companions, absorbing their essence for himself? Choices a) and b) would be pretty straightforward, picking option c) would be the ideal for the good character, but it would result in the orb turning on the PC, draining life from the player instead his/her companions causing the player to permanently lose 2 points of constitution, however both of your friends get to live another day. Picking option d) would result in the player character gaining a permanent +2 to his constitution from the absorbed life essence, but both his friends are lost forever due to his choice. This is a tricky situation, where every choice is a trade off. Sure a Paladin might happily save both his friends, but that -2 CON will make even the most good hearted characters think twice. Also, you'd have to be rather evil to even consider picking option d). Not all situations would have to be as dramatic as the one I described above, but the basic idea should remain. Any action, be it good, evil or neutral should have it's price if the choice is to be meaningful.

Gameplay or story? Neither can substitute for the lack of the other.

Way to kill the appeal of philosophy "Rarrrrr, I'm a philosopher! Tremble before my might!!" No, just no no no no no!!

Just get rid of spell levels completely and treat every spell individually. It's a lot more elegant solution, simpler, more flexible and a lot more interesting.

let the devs first come up with the companion characters, then they can add romance options for them if they fit with the character. No forced categories like "this is your male/female straight/gay romance option, he/she needs to have these qualities etc.", just create interesting characters and see where they lead us.

Do you have any idea how that would've messed up the whole story? Do you even begin to understand what the consequences for killing Meredith there and then would yield, not only for the main character but the developer team that has to create a whole new path for the story that goes in a completely different direction than what they originally intended. There is no way in hell you can justify that much extra work with such an insignificant grievance. Besides, from the character point of view attacking Meredith there would make no sense at all; Hawke wants to stay alive and wouldn't risk everything he's worked so hard for on a random impulse of utter stupidity. If you want a structured and comprehensive storyline, you're going to have to place restrictions to what the player can do in the shoes of the main character. You're a character in a fantasy world, not an omnipotent god who can kill anyone he likes and get away with it, and that should be represented in how the game handles things. Since crime/punishment as a random activity is so goddamn difficult to script and requires such a ridiculous amount of work hours, I'd rather the effort would be better focused on somewhere else. Don't let us kill friendly NPCs except in scripted situations. A well structured story is more important than the ability to kill anyone; a DM that lets you kill a story essential NPC on a random whim is just a bad DM, especially if he's trying to tell a story.

I agree with Mrakvampire, there's no need to experiment when there is a perfectly good system already in existence; it merely needs some fine tuning. The problem with every single character progression system in RPG's is the lack of fine tuning. The skill system of elder scrolls could've been magnificent, but it reeks because it wasn't executed properly. Anyone could see the flaws, but they just were ignored. D&D could be magnificent in a crpg, but it doesn't properly utilize the greater computing power, thus leaving simplified details (such as the way AC works) that were a necessity when playing with pen&paper, but only feel silly on computers. The Gothic series had a very simple yet functional character system, but it could have easily had a lot more depth making it actually interesting without sacrificing the simplicity that made it work. Overly complex skill-jungles like that path to exile horror just don't work. Take a simple basic concept like D&D (it already has a lot of depth), and expand/improve upon it. Trying to reinvent the wheel is just plain stupid.

More levels = more room for customization. It's not the level curve you should be worried about, it's the power curve. Level 15-20 can mean anything from a pig farmer with a stick to an immortal demigod depending on the system. Also, your power and levels should grow as you progress in the story; the optimal rate at which you gain levels would go somewhere along the lines of first KotOR in my book; a steady stream of new abilities that accurately represent your current standing in the game world. When you think about the leveling pace in terms of time played instead of in terms of story progression, you're on a very thin ice.

The only way to make that without going over the top is to start of with a beggar dressed in rags whose flimsy grip of the club he wields is more that of a child than a seasoned warrior. As the game progresses those rags slowly change first into leather, then into chain. That club might change into short sword, then into a long sword, and the combat animations could turn from flimsy hacking and poking into competent swinging. But absolutely no "turbo epic super action" - kinda moves or equipment, that crap makes me sick.

I don't think you should scale anything to the character's level. The whole point of levels is to make your character more powerful, if the world levels up with you then there's no point in having levels in the first place and you can dump the whole mechanic. A well done game will predict the level your character will be at a certain point in the game and will have challenging but doable encounters and dungeons to offer. If the bandit group that has a camp near that bridge consists of five members it consists of five members. Cutthroat Lenny, Bob the Butcher, Slippery Joe, Gary the Grey Wizard and Daring Dave. Why should they magically get the help from Stone-fist Steve who lives far away behind the mountains and doesn't even know the guys if the adventurer that happened to stop by just happens to have two more levels than the guys were expecting? Also, why should Gary the Grey Wizard suddenly be able to summon meteors from the sky? Just plan the encounters properly and there won't be any real problems. Trying to scale encounters just makes them feel more computer generated and kills the personality of the fight. Trying to scale individual enemies is an even worse idea.

No foot soldier has ever worn full plate due to it's weight. A foot soldier in full plate wouldn't even be able to get to the battlefield, let alone fight if he actually managed to get there. Full plate was exclusively worn by mounted Knights. In fact, I'd like to see huge fatigue penalties for wearing full plate, encouraging people to actually use those chain shirts and leather armor. It's not a game breaker, but I think it would be interesting to have to deal with the actual problems that wearing full plate causes.

Diversity and flexibility are the keywords here. Lots and lots of different feats, skills and other abilities..

There are a number of benefits from using a Mana based spellcasting, as it allows interesting spell concepts such as mana burn and mana stealing. Also, as an energy of the soul, mana makes much more sense than spell slots. To me a Mana based system enhances immersion. Spell slot system works great in pnp, but it just doesn't make any sense storywise. Mana system also allows you to have diversity in the way you regain your spellcasting ability, someone might have a spell that converts health into mana, some other caster might even be able to regenerate mana during combat (passive regeneration of health and mana should be available, but they should have a high cost to them, or at least they should be restricted to some special classes. Maybe there is a caster class that can regenerate mana, but has a very limited mana pool preventing them from casting the most powerful spells or something like that).