Alexjh

It seems kind of strange to me that you'd simultaniously be advocating a low-magic setting and then giving those as examples. While I'm very much for unique powers, most of those are a bit over powered and lacking in subtlty... I do like the idea of a weapon that removes senses, if not all of them, but if it was used against your party I like the idea of being hit and suddenly while a certain character is elected the entire gameplay part of the screen is blurred so you can't see what's going on, or suddenly it just reduces the volume of the game to being muffled while on that character.

While I think that there is certainly room to expand the locking skill into something more nuanced, I think it would make more sense to have situations where it works in tandem with more broad skills to produced a more nuanced result. Enemies in the next locked room and you want to prepare for your assault by opening the door without alarming them? Combine lockpick with the move silently skill. Suspended over a deathtrap locked in a padlocked straightjacket? Make it check an escape artist skill. A lock is of a particular ancient design no longer used? Check Knowledge: Ancient History too for a bonus. No need to make the lockpick skill itself too convoluted.

I've been toying with how I'd go about making a spell system that let you customise spells to do all sorts of whacky things, but I'm not entirely convinced this is the game to do it in, not that it wouldn't be fun here, but to do that concept justice it'd need a lot of room to breath as a mechanic, and I don't really think that it justifies the time it would take to do such a thing properly.

I think the strange arguement here is the idea that people who want co-op somehow don't want a good single player campaign. For me this misses the point, while I agree that single player is the priority, I want both. I don't even care if the multiplayer is unbalanced, just stick in the most rudimentary of shoddy have-to-know your friends IP address kind of multiplayer with the minimal amount of concessions required to make the thing work and as soon as I'd finished my solo campaign I'd probably be back and buy my girlfriend a copy to playthrough in coop. I know this isn't going to happen before the inevitable chiming in on that. That doesn't prevent wishful thinking. Milath: It's not a "social gaming trend from most games these days" if you are duplicating a thing from a 15 year old game and 3 out of 4 of its followups that this game is ostensiably a successor to.

I think the thing here where people are bandying around the word archaic is that there is a difference between something being technologically archaic and something being actually archaic. I could paint a picture using my wacom, or I can paint a picture using my oil paints. The former is a technology that is a couple of decades old, the latter is over half a millenia old. What this doesn't mean is that my digital painting will be modern or prettier than the oil painting purely on virtue of being a modern technology. I can use really oldfashioned techniques with the wacom painting and very contemporary ones with the oils, or vise versa, and modern oils have improved in versatility since their original creation. Realistically, 2D prerendered has the potential to have far higher detail in it than is economically viable for 3D to do anyway. You have to bear in mind that modelling and texturing is a slower process than painting for detail AND it has to work to constraints, hence why Eternity is using modelled scenes and then painting over them for details. Which isn't to say 3D games can't be pretty, but, if I can even just making a game-suitable 3D scene of my field of view and a painting of the same thing, the 3D version wouldn't be able to afford, say, the texture on my camera strap, the slight bits where the veneer has been chipped off a corner of my desk, the dust patterns and paint splatters on my monitor stand and so on. You could do it in 3D sure, but it wouldn't be a worthwhile investment of time or resources to carefully do these things over, say, an afternoon when a few brushstrokes would achieve the same thing in a painting which uses less system resources to load.

The thing is here that if you want this mechanic there needs to be reasons why a)it doesn't overlap with weapon proficiencies and b) why you'd implement this rather than just having a fairly shallow curve for loot power, which has never been that much of an IE issue anyway. Even IWD2 which had the biggest level range of any of those games, the difference between a generic sword and, say, cera sumat the secret ultimate paladin sword is that the latter can breach defenses 5 points better, and does extra damage to evil duee to being blessed by a deity. We aren't talking the difference between weapons in ARPGs which make no logical sense.

While I like the idea of this in theory, in practice you are designing an anti-mechanic at its most basic level. Finding increasingly powerful loot is one of the core mechanics of the genre/IE games, so making a mechanic that flatout counters that seems counter productive. But I do like the idea of the player developing a weapon affinity with one specific weapon, but I'd suggest ways to integrate it a little into the existing model would probably make sense than having to choose the dedication model or the upgrade model. I'd also say that the idea that any person can dedicate themselves to any weapon to the level of being able to defeat any foe is a bit dubious. I can buy that someone might grab a pitchfork that just really worked for that person and being able to dispatch a bandit encampment with it, or even an evil wizard or a giant. But taking that pitchfork that is just so perfect for you and trying to dispatch a dragon or an iron golem with it is just a bit daft. What I'd suggest as a compromise is that for those who have the highest level of weapon specialisation it unlocks a set of abilities: lets say you focus in longswords, at this point any longsword you find has, say, a 1/100 chance of just being perfectly intune with the player - you could represent this by the same system of identifying magic items but with a different colour. An "in tune" (insert better name here) weapon then gains stacking to hit bonuses, defensive bonuses etc, and even could gain the ability to hit magical foes that technically it shouldn't be able to. It'd only be in tune with a specific character (although concievably, two characters could be chance be intune with the same weapon). The trick here is that you can find other weapons you are intune with (in theory) I'd also add that I'd like to include a some of "weapon achievement" system, whereby killing certain foes (bosses) or a certain number of foes will dramatically increase the value of the weapon and in soem cases, the power of it. If you have a fairly average sword and then kill a great dragon or an otherworldly horror with it, saving a city or town or whatever, then that sword clearly should be worth mode than an identical sword that didn't do that. Similarly, if you kill an intensely magical being, like said dragon, eldritch horror, lich-emporer, god or demi god or whatever, chances are that'd do something to a sword. There might even be cases where surviving a certain spell from a certain boss actually empowers a weapon. It might cause interestign effects, sometimes magical, sometimes psychological - if you kill 200 goblins with one spear, chances are that goblins will automatically run from anyone wielding that weapon, and/or some sort of soul energy it has absorbed from all the kills it has made gives it a 1/5 chance of insta-killing any goblins it hits. In the case of those extra effects, I'd again make it a bit chance based as otherwise you risk people farming for them.

I would honestly like a sort of "star" format - a free roaming Athakala-esque central city with quests outside it being more linear or branching linear. While people may hark praises of Baldur's Gate I honestly much prefer the Icewind Dale outside areas as it means things can be scripted to be a little more polished in terms of content. Which isn't t say that if you want to get from the city to the Castle of Lord Plotpoint you have to go in linear procession one area to another with no choices, alternate routes are fine, but the point being I'd really like them to have nice clean progression in them so that the things you encounter on the way can be more clearly scripted and designed for interest rather than the BG1 method which had a lot of the generic country areas boiling down to being British Bulldog with weapons.

Your post did not display logic, and the straws were grasped by your own fingertips. Here's the logic that you're missing: It's irrelevant how many other versions there are without DRM. If DRM isn't needed somewhere, then that's called "good news." Here's another bit of logic which slipped by you: you don't speak for people who use Steam, and to say that people who use Steam don't care about DRM is, honestly, idiocy, and complete arrogance. And yet you managed to cower from my actual point and didn't even attempt to address it. Good job. Here's another point you won't be able to address since you haven't been around since the beginning nor paid attention: It was a big deal when Obsidian ended up in union with GOG because many users on this forum and on KS begged Obsidian to do so. Originally they were only going to do Steam (and the backer discs). GOG carries only DRM-free games. I'll put the two logic points together for you so you'll understand: People specifically asked for a GOG version equating that with DRM-free. When Obsidian and GOG finally made the announcement, it was all over Twitter and mentioned in a number of articles. It wouldn't make sense to offer two types on Steam and another on GOG when DRM is part of the reputed business model for both; actually adding a DRM-free version or whatever on Steam would potentially dilute business from GOG and that would be bad for their agreement with Obsidian, and frankly insulting to the entire effort to get the DRM-free GOG version in the first place. So again, why shouldn't someone against DRM NOT get the GOG version? Why would anyone using the steam version not want the game to work without steam running? Issue here is, as an isolated thing that exists in a bubble of its own, I imagine people don't care. As a thing which takes effort away from other things when there is an alternative that completely negates the problem already in existance, it looks like a waste of time.

I suspect that motion capture is fairly unlikely for P:E unless Obsidian have their own inhouse motion capture studio: as I understand it mo-cap is a pretty expensive process and P:Es budget is pretty small by modern standards. It's not impossible, but given the size of the characters on the screen I'm thinking it's not especially probable. That's not to say however that havign reference footage of you using weapons might not be beneficial, but I wouldn't rely on accurate weapon usage - one of the reasons weapons in games aren't realistic is that they get enhanced for both dramaticness and easy readability when looking at a screen.

As I don't really have the slightest issue with Steam as DRM, is the issue that the client is running or the fact it's connected to the net that is the sticking point here? If the latter, you could just go into offline mode surely?

I'm fairly sure I recall this being confirmed somewhere already...

That's the kind of stuff I meant by low magic, which I'd consider to be anything of +1 or lower, anything that enhances skills or anything that offers minor resistances, gives out light, returning enhancements on throwing weapons, mild poisoning effects and so on. Major magic being things like high + scores, ability to cast spells or use powers, attribute bonuses, major elemental damage, vampiric, wounding, bonus vs specific enemies, damage type immunities, spell resistance and so on. That's kind of stuff, generally speaking, shouldn't turn up u til the second half of the game. I'd also add I'd beentirely open to the Dungeon Siege 1 model of startingthe game at a 'sub-weapons level' as that was afeature I really liked about that - starting in just your normal clothes with some gardening implements gave bigger scope to the adventure instead of immediately kitting yourself out in combat stuff, the contrast made you feel like you'd come further. If you were doing that I'd happily endorse shifting the point where you get magic stuff back because then you still have clear character development in a way I don't feel is adequetly served by a weapon quality mechanic.

Hell no. HELL NO. HELL NO! I don't want to ever...EVER see that again. If I can fit all my party memebrs iwth magical items (regardless if low or high, but it's especially bad if all is high) then that is not hte setting I will enjoy. I always found it stupid that anyone cna come across that many legendary magic items. Heck, in some games I always wonderd how come peopel can't detect me from half a continent away, given how much magic energy I must be radiating. If there's such things as magic detectors, they would overload. No, I want for regular items to have their use even at the end of the game. Feels more real. And gives weapons character. That masterwork longsword I found in BG1 and used for the whole game means more to me than all the +5 swords in the world. Weapons are made legendary by the people who wield them. OK, just to start, I want to clarify that I mean that those percentages are what you have accumulated, not the percentages of what you are finding, which WOULD be in scale with Diablo, what I'm suggesting is basically trying to be in line with the Icewind Dales, which, personally I consider vastly superior games to BG1. YouI have to also remember that BG1 had an artificial system of keeping low level weapons worthwhile for longer due to the whole iron problem thing. Magic items should be semi-rare sure, no more than a couple per area that are worthwhile relative to your characters level and when in shops the really good stuff should always be overpriced and be a strain to purchase without bankrupting yourself, certainly not the Diablo model of every 3rd guy has something. The problem with a low loot systems in relation to classic inventories is that out of all the classic slots; weapon, shield, armour, helmet, ammo, 2x ring, gloves, boots, neck, cloak, only the first 5 of those have any regular function that works when the item is non magical except in fairly specific circumstances like disguises. If you are advocating low loot you are basically saying that you fully expect to have those slots empty for most of the game which kind of defeats the point in having them, there should ideally be something to put in all of them by about a 3rd the way through the game, even if it's just say, a cloak made from some magically cold resistant animal or boots rubbed with special silencing oils to aid with stealth. Realistically, I'd personally prefer it if generic +whatever items were hardly ever ideal - the best stuff should always be the custom storied items with some more exotic benefits to them.

Implying something without showing it just won't cut it. Why would every merchant have tons of gold to buy everything off of you? Even if you do find a plate +5, why would you sell it and not use it? Would the local merchant even want to buy it? Just how many magical items are lingering around? For one, I'd like to see magical items rare. As in BG1 rare. I don't want to see every single slot of every party member having magical items. The economy as it is is broken. Why not? That's how reality works - you don't know intimatly all the real world mechanics of everything - they just exist and you assume that people who is more an expert in that field that yourself keeps things running over. The thing you should be considering here is that equiptment gathering is a form of progression, and non magical equiptment only goes so far without it being effectively magical anyway. As a rule of thumb I'd say that if you divide items into non-magic, low-end magic and high magic it works something like as follows: Start of the game: All non-magic At 5-10% of the game: Low end magic starts trickling in, 90% of your stuff is still non magical At 25% of the game: 50% of your stuff is low-magic At 50% 90% of your stuff is low magic, 10% non magic, high-magic starts to trickle in At 75% of the game 50/50 on low and high magic At the end of the game almost everything you have should be high end magic. As for the point of the +5 plate, that is a matter of character choice, you might have something better, you might already have some, you might not have anyone who needs it, you might just need the money. As I said earlier, compare it in scope to modern electronics: say you have a really good laptop, but then win a second laptop in a raffle. If that laptop is exactly equivical to your current one and no one in your friends/family(party) needs it, then you mayas well sell it. If its better than your current one, then you'd use it, if its worse but still modern enough to have a decent value then you take it to a shop that buys things second hand and you make a bit of money off it. The key point is that you are saying "the economy is broken", but you aren't really giving me any reason why anyone should care that it is. Realism doesn't have merit just because it's realistic - if you are saying "the game should be more realistic, because that would make it more fun/challenging/engaging" that's one thing, but you aren't explaining that if that is your view, and just making something more realistic isn't a worthwhile aim in itself. The removing the becoming rich element is one option, but I don't think that's a good way to resolve that problem, being rich is another form of player progression, what you need to do is maintain the promise of there being things that are worth spending all that money on into the late game, so while you are still rich, you are not rich to the point where you can buy anything.

Voice acting is one of those things that after a certain point you get diminishing returns on. If you start with having all your companions voiced, thats reasonable enough. If you then have the most important non-companion NPCs voiced, thats fairly sensible. If you have all the major bosses voiced, thats also good. Realistically, that probably amounts to 8 characters, 10ish characters and 15ish characters respectively. So a total of 33 characters for the sake of arguement. Some can be doubled up and have voice actors do various characters to save a bit of money, but after that it really is diminishing returns. Having say, all the sub bosses voiced might be one option say, but equally you could spend that money elsewhere in production, and it gets to the point where you are saying, which of these would you rather have: a) All the merchants voiced b) An extra interesting dungeon c) 10 new monster types d) Some extra bits of music e) An extra interesting sidequest Personally, of those, the merchants being voiced would rank the lowest because it doesn't expand the world in any meaningful way. Not to say I'm fundementally against merchants being voiced, but the returns on that as a feature are virtually nil compared to the others.

To be fair, that wasn't ever really an issue in the IE games, a fighter could easily go with a sword and shield for more defense, dual wielding, two handed etc, and each had their plusses and minuses. Besides, weapon damage DOES make a lot of sense, it's a bit daft to say that if you stabbed someone in exactly the same place with a) a flick-knife and b) a greatsword that their damage would be the same. That doesn't mean that the flickknife has no meirt - its easier to wield quickly, can be concealled, used in confined spaces etc, but to say it does the same damage as a huge great blade doesn't make sense.

The problem is that there are only 2 ways to really get around that entirely: 1) Make the game easy 2) Restrict saving somehow Outside of those two, there is no real way to avoid the problem entirely because that's just how some people play it. In regards to disease, I kind of see it as just one tactical problem, if you are fighting say, the P:E equivelant of a carrion crawler, odds are getting bitten by something that sticks its face in dead bodies all day is going to be a bad thing to bite you. So the trick here is that players should vary their tactics to avoid getting bitten: keep at range, use heavy armour etc. This should be flagged up before hand, say, a companions goes "careful, these guys have all kinds of diseases, dont let them bite you" and then if you don'y follow that advice, or don't have an alternative, then you aren't really playing the game tactically.

In terms of duration, generally speaking, I'd actually rather force the player to make some sort of saving throw against it until they managed to bypass the symptoms unless they were manually cured, this then simulates some characters being more resilient than others. I'd also prefer it if different diseases had different cures, so it was more of an effort to avoid it and requires a bit more tactics than just stocking up on generic "cure disease" potions, and calling it a day. Sure you could have a cure disiese potion that covered a couple of low end problems, but for medium to late game diseases you'd probably want increasingly expensive and rare cures to match increasingly rare diseases.

This is a bit tricky, I can see several factors here: I don't like systems where a character is prevented from using a weapon due to lacking some requirements, I'm perfectly happy to have characters not able to use an item well as this is reflective of real life and allows the player to make their own mistakes. I could go pick up a halberd or a handgun or some nunchuks in real life and I'd be able to vaguely use them, that doesn't mean I'd be competant with them by any stretch of the imagination. So generally speaking that should apply across all species, but there are two exceptions: Racial ergonomics: The thing here is that as humans, we design objects to suit out own form, and therefore, if there was a species existed that was similar but differently proportioned to our own, then they would have different ergonomics. So for instance, a human might have made himself a double ended weapon of some sort, perhaps just a staff with some heavy weights on each end, and that works for a human or elf or whatever fine. Hand that same weapon to a smaller species like Dwarf or Orlan and suddenly you get problems, while the staff was in proportion to human height, now its about 2 foot over the top of the dwarfs head and so requires proportionally more skill to wield. Equally though, with a lower centre of gravity, a dwarf is probably more stable on their feet than a human, so they can have some really beefy custom axe and hammer heads that would be harder for a human to weild than a human set of axes or hammers. Racial Magic: I think this is a funny one, and kind of also applies to class based magic. My inclination would be that there are probably two forms of this: a fairly common race-locked magic, so, an enchanted elven bow which makes elves able to shoot faster and more accuratly could be wielded by a human or godlike or whatever, but, the magic just wouldn't activate for them and its just a normal non magical weapon in their hands. Though you could of course include in the game somewhere a "magical unlocker" who charges ridiculous prices to open up enchantments on weapons. The second would be far rarer, weapons that physically will not be wielded by somethign other than their makers. But it wouldn't necessarily be races, but using a vaguely sword in the stone like setup so that only one who is worthy/meets certain criteria can use it, but there sould probably only be a handful of them as that would be a more complex enchantment. A slight variation that could be fun though: weapons which do work fully for any race, but not on certain opponents. So a canny Dwarven weaponsmaster who sells a lot of stuff could enchant his weapons so they won't work on Dwarves so they won't use those weapons to hurt any of his own kind. This is obviously a problem if you are facing legitimatly baddy dwarves, but still could be fun nontheless when the player realises.

The only thing I particularly have against the whole "female dwarves have beards" thing is the fact it stems from a fairly half hearted excuse to explain why you never saw female dwarves in early fantasy. I'd kind of preferred they did something interesting with it that reflects that they arent just a type of human, they are their own thing: so either going to some unusual sexual dimorphism (perhaps females are rarer, but they are actually bigger than the males), or that when they are wearing something that hides their shape there is nothing facially that registers as female about a female dwarf. Seeing that we've already seen a female dwarf who looks decidedly female I think we can rule those out, but I would like to see something intresting done with this for preference.

The issue is to some degree, gameplay requires such a character, there is a reason that most western RPGs have avfairly neutral first character to join your cause; they need to have you with someone on your team who will be able to stick with you until you gather more of your team so have to play well with all PCs. Hence Atton, Alistair, Aveline, Elgar, Kaiden, Carth and so on. Their function is partially to keep the player alive until the plot is more in full swing.

Personally, I tend to prefer magic weapons which are magic because of their backstory in the world rather than just that they were made of some eccentric component. Icewind Dale is very good for this, as a lot of the magic weapons have a story about a previous or original owner that makes them badass rather than just 'was made from a part of a badass monster. Not that I'm against that, but they should be in the minority because they can be replicated by another guy with say, a Gorgan head, relative to the backstory of things like a bow used to fire a girl transformed into an arrow to freedom, a weapon wielded by a guy on whose watch prisoners escaped who spent his entire life recapturing them or a throwing axe made by an incompetent weaponsmith enchanted so it hits with the handle (all of which are from Icewind dale)

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad. Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit. Not really, the most ludicrous thing about them is the idea they'd be separate or call themselves the Thieves/Assassins or some such. I think the key here is to move a little more towards the idea of organized crime as in the real world, where fairly little actual robbing goes on and the actual moneys come in through protection rackets, smuggling and bribing officials etc. Still plenty of room for an upcoming warrior to be an enforcer but a bit more realistic in tone and a bit darker and subtler in nature compared to "muahahah you must go steal Old Man Wilsons Diamonds!"

For me it depends on the game - Personally I find Bethesda's ever item is a thing you can grab approach to be one of the appeals of those games. That isn't to say that I'd want the same feature in an IE style game like p:e as I wouldn't, but, it fits the tone of Skyrim to be able to grab every single thing. If anything Skyrim etc don't go far enough - the thing they are missing is real interactivity between those items - the ability to throw and push normal items and for them to react differently depending on both what you throw them at and what they are. Throw a cast iron cooking pot at a guard should knock someone unconscious, throw a salmon steak on the floor and a bad guy might slip on it. Some potions might be flammable, some might extinguish fire, some might cause people to wheeze and so on. As I say, not for P:e but different games should do different things.