Alexjh

In regards to including that stuff - if you did want to, the simple solution is to have a part of two of the game where somebody has decked out all their guards in utterly impractical ceremonial stuff because the guards are there to look impressive rather than be actual legitimate defenses. It'd of course be statted out to an appropriate level of uselessness, but that way you let people use and wear stupid things and let natural selection run its course...

For a start, there was no need whatsoever for rudeness, regardless of the content of what you are actually saying it makes you come off as patronising and immature. Secondly, the discussion being had wasn't "should PE have multiplayer" it was "is multiplayer inherantly detrimental to a games development / is multiplayer a worthwhile inclusion" which isn't the same thing at all. I've known since Adam's Icewind Dale 2 playthrough where I've got direct from him that there would be no co-op, which is a slight disappointment for me, but fine and I see and understand the reasons behind it. However, that does not negate a discussion of multiplayer from being valid or interesting for those who choose to get themselves involved. If you don't find it valid or interesting don't get involved. Also don't make assumptions about what people do or do not know, I may not be a programmer myself, but I have worked with them on various bits and bobs and know full well that things aren't produced by magic. Additionally, the strong implication is that you haven't actually played the IE multiplayer to which I was refering, which basically renders your oppinions on whether it represents a fun playstyle or not redundant. Go grab some friends and actually play through Icewind Dale of Baldurs Gate and then come back and have this discussion. I'm also seriously doubting you have accurate statistics about who does and doesn't play them in co-op, what with them being IP address based rather than managed by a specific host. Just checked on Gameranger though and theres at least 16 co-op campaigns of IE games going on right this second, which isn't bad for a batch of games which are at the youngest, over a decade old. Which isn't to say that you aren't necessarily right, but more that as far as I can tell you are just making up numbers to match your vision of things. But as I said I accept that focusing on single player is more important to Obsidian right now which is entirely understandable, my point is purely that as something to potentially add back into the franchise later, either as a patch to PE or an inclusion in an expansion or later game it is far from without merit. I'd honestly be happy if they left in an undebugged version of it in the code for modders to tidy up later. But in summary, if you aren't interested in a subject don't reply and if you do reply, do so politely.

Errr.... given that the first is a bad writing problem, the second I hadn't even noticed as an issue, the third a structural choice rather than ommission and the fourth some weird art direction splurge, I fail to see how otherwise engaged level designers and programmers could have caused them? The ME trilogy hadn't exactly suffered from an abundance of bad writing prior to introducing MP. Yes, I know correlation does not imply causation, but it's hardly the only game where, once MP was introduced, the quality in other areas suffers. Writing the plot, like EVERYTHING ELSE in a game is a function of resource allocation. Say the budget for a game is $100 just to make up a number. Now say that you have to add in MP and Kinect into that game, still have the same timeline, and the same budget. Maybe that means that the budget to deliver the original stuff planned for is $80 instead of $100. Money is a fungible resource. Opportunity Cost with regards to economics. Put another way, the more you try and do, the less likely to do EVERYTHING well. Bad writing is more likely to happen the more features you try and add into a game. Since MP is a feature I don't like and won't use, adding it in makes it more likely that the features I DO like and use won't be as good. A functioning journal system UPDATES. Mass Effect 3's did not. You got quests just by randomly walking by people talking about things. You could find things, but the journal wouldn't update you with a reminder of where that thing was supposed to be delivered to. Basically, you got a journal entry when a quest was assigned, BUT NOTHING ELSE. The third being a structural choice is, again, a issue with resource allocation. You have a limited budget to use when creating a game. You can spend it in certain places and in certain ways. For me, interesting an fun sidequests are MANDATORY for a truly great RPG. Those that don't have it don't meet the criteria to me. Things like coop are not mandatory for a good RPG. The fourth item was the fact that the designers and programmers didn't actually MAKE Tali's face. They looked around on the Internet, found a stock photo, and then photoshopped it a bit. It would be like using the picture that came with a frame you bought at the department store. Tali was a character that a great many people were looking forward to getting a true romance scene with and they totally mailed that in. Which brings me back to my assertion that certain elements show poorly decided upon priorities for games. When you're skimping on areas like good writing, side quests and character development to put in motion control and multiplayer you're skimping on the things that truly make an RPG great. Well you can't blame the ending on that - they were going to write an ending no matter what, it's just the one they wrote was bad. Hearing a supposed version of the story behind that I basically heard the lead writer locked himself away and refused to let anyone see it until it was handed in. If anything that means it's because they weren't using the money they did have for such a thing appropriatly. Honestly, strucutrally I consider sidequests entirely optional - and narratively it made sense in ME3, Shepherd is meant to be saving the universe, he/she doesn't have time to be stopping to stopping to extract Krogan cats from space trees. The narrative of the story was basically a race against time to defeat the reapers which to my mind suited a very linear main quest far more so than the format of ME1 or ME2. You also have to bear in mind the structural format of ME3 relying on choices from the previous two games. If ME 1 had only 10 important choices in the game and ME 2 only had 10, thats 100 potential scenario changes to ME3 that each have to be accounted for separatly. The result being that ME3 has a LOAD of content that you only see a fraction of on any one playthrough - this is what will have eaten the time from the creative side of production (whose gaffes/choices all these but the journal are) more so than the kinect or multiplayer. I think you are also making the mistake here of assuming that a game studio functions as some sort of weird hive entity that works with one single mind - yes the Tali thing and the ending thing particular were creative bumbles, but they were both done as such that I suspect had the option been there others in the studio would have done them differently. This isn't to say that they shouldn't have been caught and fixed (they should) but I don't put the blame on Bioware as an entire studio compared to whoever made those specific choices, and whoever knew about them but didn't call them up on it. The cost of some constructive criticism on writing and one piece of concept art in no way = cost of implementing multiplayer. As for the journal, I honestly didn't notice any problems at all at the time, though I don't use journals that much. Not to say it wasn't broken, but again, theoretically that should be a fairly minor thing (importing over previously working journal system from ME1 or ME" if nothign else surely?)

Errr.... given that the first is a bad writing problem, the second I hadn't even noticed as an issue, the third a structural choice rather than ommission and the fourth some weird art direction splurge, I fail to see how otherwise engaged level designers and programmers could have caused them?

To each their own I guess.... Though I really do recommend you at least try out some IE co-op at least once, makes for a whole new experience of playing the same great games. The Icewind Dales are probably the best choice as you dont have to worry about player choices.

It actually isn't. Arguing about whether or not the developers have already decided on the matter would be pointless. Arguing (or, in this case, discussing) multiplayer and its effects when implemented in cRPGs (such as P:E) is actually quite non-pointless. Also, developers possess the incredible ability to change their minds due to various factors, so the possibility of multiplayer still making its way into P:E in some form isn't entirely gone, especially if it's a decision due to resource limitations and time constraints. For what it's worth... I agree with this, which is one of the biggest reasons that I mentioned the feature to begin with. I'll be very upset if it gets added in. I don't buy the whole "MP is optional" argument. Like a lot of primarily single player gamers, adding this will make me MUCH less excited about this game. My experience is that MP is tacked on or shoved into games that don't need it and don't benefit from it often these days at the behest of publishers who don't understand the schisms between SP and MP gamer archetypes. Really? You do know that every Infinity Engine game except Planescape had co-op right? I can understand you being indifferent to it, but actively notably measurably less excited?

This is not entirely a topic a topic so much as a monologue, so apologies in advance, but it's just in response to the latest wave of threads we've had. Essentially it boils down to this: really, as long as it captures the spirit of the games it is the self proclaimed successor to, Obsidian should feel free to put in any mechanic, any trope, any monster type, any class or any whatever. My sole requirement is that whatever it is, it's done well, and given the great amount of enjoyment I've had from Obsidian games in the past I've no reason to think otherwise. The are two real ends to this that have both cropped up: first the end where people say I don't want "trope x" in my game. This is neglecting a little that arguably Medieval fantasy is probably by far the most trope heavy genre to begin with, being that the entire thing basically stands precariously on the back of probably about five authors or so at most. While there is certainly a very strong arguement that we need some fresh blood in the game content wise, this is neglecting two things. Firstly if something became a trope or recurring concept it's because it's something that clicks with people. This isn't to say that we should shove every trope in wholesale just because, as clearly we shouldn't, which brings me vaguely to my second point, which if you go and say "I categorically don't want (say) Dragons" in the game (which out of interest I don't see anyone saying despite them being by far one of the most overused fantasy tropes of all) this is missing the point that you don't have to play any concept straight. In essense, by saying "no dragons" you aren't just preventing generic fire breathing giant sized boss battle #7, you are also preventing any analysis of that, any interesting new twists on that, any deconstruction of that. The medieval fantasy genre does need to develop and stretch its wings a bit, I don't think anyone is denying that, but I don't think the way to do that is to fundementally cut itself free from all its old trappings in one go - there needs to be some self examining of what it has, regardless of how hamfisted certain things have been done by others in the past. It's not (necessarily) a question of "oh Dwarves are so boring, leave them out", but more a question of "why are dwarves boring? how can we make them interesting, nuanced and memorable?" At the opposite end of the spectrum to that though are the comments along the line of "we should make thing Y more like real life". This is a slightly different question - and one without such a concrete response, and I'm mainly using this to summarise the views I've expressed in other threads that all appear to be running along the same themes, namely, are you wanting to change this thing to make it more like real life or are you wanting to change things to actually make them better? I think there are two mistakes in the former assumption - firstly that realistic = fun - it certainly can do, but it isn't by any means a surefire thing. Secondly, the assumption that your personal value of fun is the same as everyone elses. Here I'm personally inclined to stick to design conservatism and say "people backed an Infinity Engine successor, this was how those games did it, and thus presumably enjoyed the balance of those games, what is it about those mechanics that I feel the need to fix?" If the only answer is that it's not realistic enough, then the mechanics are quite possibly fine. Which isn't to say that you might not want to insert additional optional mechanics to accomodate those people who do want a different experience, or that all IE mechanics are somehow sacred (they aren't) but realism isn't an end unto itself in a creative medium unless that's the kind of experience you are trying to go for. I'm sure for instance there are people in this world who would love the opportunity to fill out beaurocratic Gnomish tax return forms, but I hope we can agree that unfortunatly those wishes will have to go unfullfilled for now for the good of the rest of us. So in conclusion, while I think P:E will certainly have many things about it which are brilliantly original concepts, ingenious mechanics and most importantly just be full of new things which make it fun game, I think it's a mistake for some people to want to be so offhanded in wanting to cut ties from the IE games that PE is effectively a successor and homage to. Sure cut them where needed, and don't copy "word for word" but don't neglect the lessons learnt from them either, or assume just because an idea isn't original it can't be made interesting or explored in new ways. Again apologies for the essay, hope it isn't too tedious!

New account and therefore only have four more confirmed posts for the day so I can only continue the discussion for so long but... I would disagree that the single player experience is exactly the same with friends as without. There ARE games that I enjoy playing with other people. There are activities that I enjoy playing with other people. It's kind of hard to play poker by yourself for example, or basketball. Both among my favorite things to do with others. But would you say watching a movie or reading a book with other people is the same thing as doing those things solo? Or are you less immersed in the story, distracted from the narrative, etc.? There's a reason why talking is frowned upon in movie theaters. To clarrify myself here, I love playing IE games both solo AND co-op. I've completed both Icewind Dales and Baldur's Gate 2 solo and then gone back later to play them through with various friends, and then back again to solo and so on. As these, and by extension, Project: Eternity are squad based tactical combat games they lend themselves quite naturally to co-operative multiplayer. There is no extra game content for multiplayer, it is exactly the same story and mechanics and areas as the single player, but it adds a whole different dimension when you have to call out to your friend over chat to get them to deal with that wizard whose summoning at you or when you manage to sneak attack that big warrior who is about to kill your friends character. Sure, it does generally adversely effect how you intake the story, but, the tradeoff is a whole new way of playing the same game where you have to rely on someone else to have your back. Exact same content, but very different experience.

I'm guessing you never played any of the Infinity Engine games in co-op then? Didn't detract from single player in the slightest as it was literally exactly the same as the single player except control of the party was split between 2 or more people. Nothing purpose built, just the entirely optional ability to play the same exact story with friends. But you are in luck, as multiplayer has been confirmed in its absense.

This. When I started playing Arcanum recently, I didn't know whether to laugh or smash my head into the wall when, in the wreckage of a crashed zeppelin, a middle aged man in a dapper business suit starts talking about how you're the chosen one and you must defeat the great evil one, then some robed monk type guy comes along and immediately proclaims you are the prophecized reincarnation of the great elven mage-prophet (I should have seen the writing on the wall that Arcanum was really a magic/fantasy game and the tech thing was just a red herring.) Stick with it, Arcanum doesn't play out that trope quite how you'd expect, nor the "dark lord" one for that matter.....

On the subject of where the best loot comes from, if you stick to the model of the IE games this is based on I don't see that as a problem. Rarely was the best loot found dead on generic enemies, on average I'd suggest your 3 main sources of high end loot were boss battles, treasure chests and shops - unlike Diablo games there is never really a point where you'd be getting the best stuff (read: the most valuable stuff ) in a standard fight. Probably 50% of opponents drop nothing except potions, ammunition, small amounts of gold and things like gems and non magical jewellery. So, while it is worthwhile to loot these guys its far from necessary from a loot perspective....

I don't think you necessarily need such a thing in a CRPG - the merit of it in a turn based tabletop game is clear because its a more chess like experience, so setting up you character to be reactive when something happens is a useful thing, but in a game where everything is happening simultaniously, it might be better to just have optional AI settings for party members you aren't directly controlling at the time, or indeed, just manually get a character to do whatever it is needs done - something you can't really do in tabletop games.

For me it depends on context, if you don't have any pressing matters on a schedule then there is no reason why you couldn't take time to do that (see: the Mass Effect 2 End scenario) if thats how you want to play the game. I don't think theres really any point in developers trying to get into the mindset of "NO! YOU ARE PLAYING IT WRONG!" - if a player wants to take what you refer to as the inpatient route (which I actually consider the opposite - it takes more patience to strip all dungeons of everything than to just pick up the good stuff as you go) then they shouldn't be penalised for prefering that (entirely valid) playstyle. If you want to keep pacing on certain events that's fine, but on average it should be up for the player to decide what is the way they want to do things. EDIT: I'm all for random encounters while crossing bwteen playable maps, within moderation - perhaps even increased with encumberance as you are then a more tempting looking prize for robbers.

What do you mean by "going back and forth"? Almost every scenario in IE games is completable without having to go on a shopping trip except when quests lead you to town, and its certainly completable without multiple looting trips to get every single item - once outside the start of the game you are realistically at a point where you have to pick and choose what you can carry to get the greatest return for your full inventory / carrying capacity. That's entirely your perogative if you want to be constantly doing round trips to town to sell up, you are not in any way forced to do so, indeed, I'd say in most of the games you could probably get away with under 5 of so shop visits if you really wanted to. Besides, at least some of the IE games do have diminishing returns on identical objects I seem to recall, so its not as if this is a new thing.

I think we are getting perhaps a little convoluted here with some of these arguements, realisitcally in whatever system there was, there are 4 aspects to consider, which have precedence. =1) Is it easy to understand? =1) Is it fun? 3) Does it provide a reasonable level of challenge? (Optional) 4) Does it resemble real world economics? Honestly, for me personally, getting first two right is mandatory and all efforts should be focused on that to begin with, 3) is fairly optional and 4) is completely optional and both must be done in such a way as to not damage (and for preference, enhance) 1 and 2. Which isn't to say that they shouldn't be included, but they certainly shouldn't be included if you are putting realism over fun. Weight for currency I always consider fundementally terrible, and if any of you have ever played Daggerfall you'll know why - it doesn't add realism, it adds annoyance - even in the real world if you were a fabulously wealthy merchant you wouldn't literally walk over to the guy selling houses with your pockets laden down with coins and manually hand them over yourself, and if you don't do that you are basically encumbered or forced to be constantly going to the bank, both of which are chores rather than actions of merit. As for the 3 potions example, you are missing the opposite side of supply and demmand. If you go into the apothacary every day for a week and buy out his stock of potions every day, that merchant is going to go "hmm, maybe I should stock more potions if they are always selling out" and it'll basically carry on rising until either a) his supplier cannot produce them any faster or b) you stop buying all his potions out. In the latters case thats the point at which they are stabilised or in the case of the former that basically comes off as being a bit arbitary. If you were really that set on stock limitation you could introduce an order based mechanic where you order in, say 100 arrows, the day before because they don't have them in stock, pay at the time and pick them up the next day. That way you allow infinite purchases without meaning the shop owner risks blowing all their money on 5000 potions of barkskin only for you to never go back and buy any more, ruining him. But yes, really, I think the thing you are skipping over is that the IE loot systems were fun, and whatever you do to them, thats the thing you need to hold on to.

Why do we have to have gear exclusivity = price though? We know that souls play a key factor in Project Eternity. Consider instead a system there where base gear may be more or less powerful, but magic augmentations are the result of soulbinding - instilling properties by tying a part of your own essence to the equipment. This could prevent it from being used by others in the future, requiring a difficult dis-enchanting or crafting process to make it usable again (and removing the magic properties in the process). There are any number of interesting lore reasons one can come up with to justify these sorts of mechanics and the entire game would benefit from them, because it'd take Project Eternity beyond generic fantasy into a realm that is not typically explored in RPGs. Project Eternity is supposed to have a big non-combat skill focus based on what Obsidian has said, as well as multiple quest resolutions. At a certain point that means you have to discard the adventurer motif anyway in favor of something that makes practical sense. All I'm suggesting is that the economic system of the game reflect that as well. While I actually quite like that in theory (its a good solid justification for doing it) that only really works as far as magical items are concerned - if you are going adventuring down, amoung other things, 10+ levelled mega dungeons, you'll probably be picking up all sorts of trinkets as you go. You can certainly say that magic is more valuable than generic treasure, but the point of treasure if it's not valuable. The problem with that particular mechanic is then you'd presumably have to "retune" every magical weapon you looted before you could use it properly. While I can see ways around it (you can just use it until it naturally retunes itself, or pay someone for instant retuning) this is beginning to get a bit convoluted and detrimental to the core fun of looting bad guys for treasure and other cool things. If you only had it on specific high level items it might be a worthwhile mechanic but that doesn't really fix the problem you are trying to address. For me, the BG2 and the IWD games hit about the right level of treasure yield, I think all thats missing from that is some context as to what your wealth actually means to an average guy in the street. Make it clear that even if you have a million gold by the end of your adventure, while certainly a lifechanging amount, thats nothing like the money of the leader of a successful trading company or a king. My interpretation of the non-combat skill focus was that it would still be be used in the general service of the adventuring aspect of the game, but be an alternative to the "I run in and hit it with my axe" approach rather than necessarily a route into alternate fields of work. This is a game thats a spiritul successor to five games and four expansion packs worth of games fundementally about adventuring, so the liklihood of discarding that concept during the course of the game seems pretty slender. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a game where you have made enough profits from your adventuring to half way through the game to decide to throw in the towel and use your loot profit to start up a bakery business, but I don't think this is necessarily the game to be doing it in.

I don't mind that i vague principle, but if you do it wrong you end up with the problem of the Elder Scrolls games where you are walkin around with items on you that no one in the entire country can afford to buy off you and are worth 50x what they'd give which means that you are basically injecting frustration into a perfectly decent looting mechanic for no particular gain. Really, for most people, if you walk into a shop, that shop has way more income than you do, but perhaps including ecnomics of if you sell too many +3 swords, the price drops right out of the +3 sword market and future sales of such an item would be negligible. A +3 flaming sword would still have value, but mainly for the flaming part rather than the +3 This wouldn't apply to consumables which I would suggest would have to have a different economy of their own, possibly just a randomly generated supply/demand rating to fake an economy.

While I understand your reasoning, I think the best you can really do is imply a more complex economy rather than actually having it accessible to you. The problem is that gear power tends to = gear exclusivity = gear cost. You can't really have a situation where finding a +5 platemail is a rare thing but then shops aren't interested in buying it off you, because at that point why isn't +5 platemail cheap and in every shop? If its a rare thing people will want it and thus people will be willing to spend more money on it. If +5 platemail is rare commodity then surely people want it? Even if it was a situation where +6 Platemail was the current in thing for an and coming guys to have, people who werent quite as rich would be happy to buy old castoff +5 suits because its better than that +2 they bought a few years back. The trick here is to put equiptment in about the same range of relative cost as electronic gizmos are here - it may be a big investment to buy that flaming axe/ipad, but its not the sort of money that buys a house. As for that other stuff, I have to say I'm not a fan of that kind of mechanic - the basic issue being that your job isn't a manual construction worker or a spice merchant or a corporate spy, your job is an adventurer. Which isn't to say that I don't think you can't have a little bit of that thrown in, an adventurer isn't going to ignore a new gold seam he found down the goblin mines out of principle or if you've been hired to transport some spice from city A to city B, but really, if you are a well to do adventurer, if you want to be doing these things on a fulltime basis, you are going to employ other people to do these things for you and then sell them on, you wouldn't be going down your own mine with a pickaxe hacking out chunks of ore any more than a real world mine owner.

This is a bit of a difficult issue to guage, because everyone has different tastes in people and thus everyone has different tastes in companion characters. Looking at the Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian back catalogue I'm not sure I can ever see a pattern within my own choices: I'd place the likes of Minsc, Mazzy, Keldorn, Annah, Tali, Okku, Wrex, Sand, Garrus, Wildflower, Aveline, Varric and the Mabari as some of my favourites. In contrast the characters I don't really care for are a bit easier to categorise: they tend to be the explicitly evil ones (not to be confused with nasty ones) but I really don't like the "muahahah aren't I so evil" sort of characters some games present - that evil ranger in NWN2 or various characters from BG fall here. I also don't care for ones which feel really plot imposed - that githzerai lady from NWN2 just didn't interest me whatsoever, and I found it annoying that she or Jerro suddenly had to take up a party slot. As a rule though the voice acting makes a huge difference - I wanted to like Neeshka for instance as she had a fairly sad character arc, but her voice was just quite grating. Give her a less shrill voice and she'd be much better. If you are going to have an annoying character their voice needs to have the gravitas to pull the player back...

The thing is though, that reality doesn't work in self contained bubbles of reputation in the same way as a game has to. A game will tend to measure incremental changes through every single action you do but that doesn't really work like that except for people you know personally. If you know someone by reputation or loosely, chances are you only know that person by a very short list of things. To pick a real world example off the top of my head, to a layperson, someone like Lady Gaga would be summed up as famous singer, eccentric fashion obsessed, had a meat dress. This is of course a vast simplification, but I honestly don't know (and am not interested in knowing) some convoluted oppinion which includes small changes of oppionions from that time she helped an old lady across the road or if she once cheated on her boyfriend or whatever. If I knew her personally those might matter, but to a general outsider it wouldn't. So, what I would propose would be the game has two or three layers of reputation. An personal layer which would track specific characters oppinions. A reputation layer which tracks oppinions within specific factions. A fame layer which tracks thigns that everyone hears about. Ambient is nested within reputation and reputation within fame. So, if you annoy the wizards guild and have a party member who is a member of said guild their oppinions will be altered, but the broader population of people won't be effected. Conversely, the layers can't effect those above them except in specific circumstances (annoy/please a ruler/leader and it might affect your reputation or even fame). Fame could only be achieved by specific acts that almost everyone would hear of, and wouldn't account for minor day to day things - slaying a dragon would give you fame, but rounding up a farmers goats would only give you personal points, or at best, a reputation bump in that village.

*sigh* Is it really that difficult to understand? Okay. Not that I owe any explanation to anyone here, but let's see. 1.) I like RPGs. I've played a lot of RPGs, and I generally enjoyed most of them. I like the old ones better because they usually have more solid rules and more interesting worlds, better characters and great customization options for my characters (not in the way they actually look, but in the way the game makes me imagine my characters). When I heard about P:E, I was completely freaking out. Obsidian is one of my favorite developers and now they're making an oldschool RPG. Couldn't get any better than that. 2.) Arcanum is probably my favorite RPG of all time (despite all its flaws). It is also one of the games that was used to advertise this Kickstarter. It is nothing like the IE games in many, many ways. Yes they said the feeling would be that of IE games. But clearly they change a lot of stuff. I don't see why "bad AI that you can't rely on" should be part of that "feeling" they mentioned, when clearly they tried to go a different route with Arcanum (even though they pretty much failed, but you can see the effort). I mean: You could (and many people do in that other thread) argue that a chance-to-miss system is one of the defining elements of an IE game. It's also one of the things that Josh Sawyer didn't want to implement in P:E because he felt that it had certain disadvantages. Clearly the "feeling" of an IE game is not a hard natural constant. For me IE games are about great stories in cool fantasy worlds with complex systems. And recreating that feeling has nothing to do with following all of their exact design choices to the letter. Also: Those old IE games, they didn't start out as "IE games" as a trademark of its own, they started out as projects that wanted to bring the D&D experience to your computer. In doing so they did some things differently than D&D did, for example allowing you to control the whole party and not just one member of it. That's not the typical D&D experience. Despite that, many people liked it, but I always wanted an experience that was closer to playing D&D: One player character in a large party that I don't control myself (at least as much as possible, because saying that the player is anything other than the leader of the party is pretty much impossible and, I think, not really desirable anyway). I disliked several things about the old classics and if they will be done in the same way in P:E, I'll dislike them again. So of course I'll try to raise awareness to the issue. Now please stop being so rude, nobody's taking your candy away. @Faerunner: NWN2 did a lot of things right, but I still found myself having to do a lot of micro-managing, for example if a certain character was able to craft certain items, but my main character wasn't - I would have to switch to that follower and create the item, and I'd constantly lose grasp on who can do what. There was also the problem that nobody ever used loot items by themselves even if e.g. Neeshka was the only one who could use that crossbow and it was vastly superior to her current one. Managing all that was, to me, very tiresome and not fun at all. The combat was pretty good though, yeah. (Certainly better than Dragon Age in that regard.) I think it was mostly outside of combat that managing my party became a chore. Just to cut down on all that though, while something like the HP system or the dodge system may be a major change to the design, what you propose here verges on turning it into an entirely different genre. At their most basic, the IE games are squad based tactical RPGs, by relinquishing control of the squad it becomes something else entirely. As I said in my previous post I don't have any problems with implementing both, but not having party management as an option would basically strip 90% of the tactics off the gameplay.

Realistically, I kind of see 3 core applications for an animal empathy skill: 1) A turn animals power - like turn undead but for animals - I always found the animal empathy skill a bit clunky but if you did it like Turn Undead where the animals either leave or, at higher levels, join your cause it'd be a bit more practical. 2) Gaining a companion: I'd quite like this to be a focus of ranger and or druid, but I'd actually want them to remain relevant in combat throughout the game - in a lore context, I'd suggest that the soul mechanic of this would be that you share your soul with the animal and the animal with you in such a way as both of you become stronger from it. This then justifies a wolf being able to be relevant while fighting, say, a dragon, because it's not exactly a normal wolf anymore. I'd personally say that one animal should be the normal, and at most, a high level ability to gain a second - by forcing the player to pick one animal it makes it more of a "personal" character rather than a powergaming mechanic. 3) Limited communication (not conversation though) in some circumstances being able to see into an animals mind for their memories might enable some quests to be opened up or clues to be found that a normal person would just walk right by. Unless theres some very specific reason for it I wouldn't want actual talking, but if readign a birds thoughts allows you to know where the giant lair is or who murdered that priest in the woods it could be a fun little benefit.

The "simple" solution to this to keep everyone happy would be to implement two of features we've already had in Bioware/Black Isle/Obsidian RPGs: To the problem of "don't want to micromanage a party all the time" have a togglable AI for NPCs with the ability to override it when you want or need, or run it entirely AI free. To the problem of "don't want to micromanage party levelling" include Neverwinter Nights "Recommended" button for levelling up. That way everyone is happy, but really in my mind, as this is an IE themed game, complete party control should be the standard option which you can then opt out of if thats how you feel, as that was the IE way.

I think a bit of differentiation needs to be made about "evil" characters because I find the concept to be less nuanced than it could be, similarly with good characters, there is never really one reason for dealign with a situation one way that is good or one way that is evil. To use an example, Imagine your character is handed a box of kittens by a peasant for completing a quest. You don't necessarily have any particular use for kittens but there are several optionals available: 1) Insist the Peasant keeps the Kittens, they are more useful to them than you 2) Keep the kittens and look after them 3) Give the kittens to a good home 4) Sell the kittens, but to good homes 5) Sell the kittens to a fur farm for lots of money 6) Stamp on the kittens. Now in broad strokes, 1-3 are the "good" options, 4 is a good but mercenary option and 5 and 6 are the "evil" option, but they aren't all equivical, and different characters should make different choices. The issue here is that while option 6 is certainly an evil option, its also basically a cruel to psychopathic one - it's evil, but the act has literally no "merit" as a choice other than being evil or somehow (to an evil character) "entertaining". If you are Damien McBlackheart the evil rogue, this might be something you would consider, but practicality would dictate for 99.9% of evil characters would pick the fur-farm option - simply, its more profitable to you but a lot of games seem to assume evil is the same as psychopathic. Furthermore, you might be evil and decide to pick any of the first 4, either because it might somehow grant you some leverage later, or even, that despite being a nasty piece of work you are fond of cats. Similarly with a good character, there is context involved - if you had Angela deLovely the virtuous wizard, she might in good conditions take options 1-3, but when she urgently needs to pay for portal use to the capital to stop an assassination she might take option 4 to raise the cash, she might even take option 5 if desperate and with no other options. The problem with the infinity engine model of gaming is that it doesn't really account for context or motivations - in any CRPG if you did option 5 you'd probably get evil reputation/alignment points, but in real life if you did it in such a way as to achieve something important and good (like the prior mentioned assassination attempt prevention), most people would think it was a shame and an unpleasant business, but wouldn't hold it against you. Except, perhaps, the peasant who would be horrified their poor kitties got made into a rug when he thought he'd given them to a good home.

I like Josh's revised version of the mechanic which includes a miss possibility as it allays my major problem with the idea (lack of support for dodge themed characters) while retaining the merits of the system he initially proposed. I actually kind of see this sort of mechanic as an extension of the armour type composition that day&do already had, but perhaps you could apply different properties to where in the ac your role landed you. If we just take dodge, shield/parry and armour as the three parts of ac for now (you have to work out how magic and misc even work before we open that can of worms) and they have precedence in that order. So a guy with 30 armour composed of ten points of each when he gets attacked by a roll of 5 that is considered tobevs his dodge, a rlll of 10 considered to be against his shield and a roll of 25 against his armour, each hvqing different properties. So, essentially a dodge would utterly negate health damage but have a higher stamina damage while a hit tor armour risks the highest chip damage with minimal stamina damage with shield/parry falling inbetween. You'd have to balance this properly of course but in this you then have a system where choosing between which forms of defense to focus in has specific implications.