Tsuga C

To the OP: My guess is that as the Obsidian crew contains a number of folks who contributed to Planescape: Torment, they're going to do quite a bit of writing for this game that will be in various books and scrolls your party will find. Read them religiously and you'll know everything you need to know to get by in the world. Skip them and you'll be in for some nasty surprises. The same advice goes for talking to NPCs. Wring them dry of information and you won't have much to worry about. Skip over their conversations and you'll miss a significant portion of the game, quests and technical information (e.g. use alchemical silver weapons against lycanthropes) included.

We already have enough playable races. Save the others for opponents.

Bring on a mix of the two so as to reflect the reality of armor--deflection and absorbtion of kinetic energy. Some armors, obviously, are better than others at one or both and the armor class system needs to reflect that well enough within the game world so as to justify the added cost of superior armor.

That foolish folks powergame themselves into boredom with a cRPG and then post their contempt for the "lack of challenge" offered by the game must make the developers want to slap the little dweebs silly. Honestly, kids, if you're looking to boost your self-esteem, try accomplishing something worthwhile in the real world instead of seeking a virtual b00bjob or peniz extension via Project: Eternity. Note to developers: if you allow for multi-classing, please avoid front-loading any of the classes (e.g. D&D 3.X rangers with dual-wielding at level 1). Let 'em all ramp up gradually so as to eliminate the "one-and-done" syndrome so favored by the powergamers.

First and last names are just dandy. I dislike voiced protagonists and want the NPCs to actually use the name of my PC when referring to him or her. If I'm taking the time to christen my character with a good name, I certainly want to see it come up on a semi-regular basis.

I like the level of detail, but the style is redolent of "kewl d00d" syndrome, a disease of artists trying to appeal to the 8-12 year-old male demographic. A lich, a demon prince, or an arch devil might be able to pull off this look successfully, but it's too stylized for me to accept it as something that our PC might wear.

I wouldn't mind having a number of backgrounds from which to choose in order to facilitate more specificity in the scenarios we encounter throughout the course of the game a la Dragon Age: Origins, but if this is the route chosen I want to see it come into play more often. Having a background doesn't mean all that much if it doesn't mean all that much within the game, does it? So long as we're given ample opportunity to define our character via roleplaying, though, I'd probably prefer the tabula rasa option. One doesn't have to think very long to come up with a dozen character concepts that might not fit into anything but the most generic of background stories, after all.

NWN1 was nice that way; swapping inventory between your PC and a companion or between two companions was simple and efficient.

We should choose our starting gear from a basic list of options appropriate for the class in question, but there needs to be a monetary limit imposed upon our Level 1 character. Sure, your fighter might want that two-handed sword, but he might have to settle for studded leather armor in order to afford it. A fighter with a similar starting purse might opt for a short sword, shield, and chainmail hauberk. Even if there's a very good background reason (son/daughter of nobility), I'm none too keen on letting Level 1 characters deck themselves out with all the level-appropriate gear they desire.

No, people need to stop trying to force culturally incompatible things together. If Obsidian is going for a Euro-centric feel, then ninja, samurai, and shaolin monks are simply out of place at best and jarringly inappropriate at worst. In a location that's the crossroads of a huge land mass (think Constantinople) with far-flung empires and disparate cultures, maybe they could shoehorn in a dash of Asian flavor, but they'd have to do it with great care. I don't want to see katanas and shuriken for sale just to satisfy the Asian fan-boi crowd.

I don't need 1,001 nameless, faceless NPCs wandering around the two big cities of P:E, but I am interested in seeing some level of activity. They're supposed to be cities of the living, not mausoleums. As a practical matter, how are our rogues supposed to practice their pickpocketing if there are next to no pockets to pick, hmm? I've seen some reasonable cities done in amateur NWN1 modules, so I'd be genuinely shocked if Obsidian gave us two large cities one could shoot a cannon-load of grapeshot through without hitting many people.

Yes, indeed, Reflir--'tis I come to haunt a new forum now that BioWare has undeniably degenerated into EAWare. I don't know of anyone from the OffTopic II, III, or IV on these forums, but Sylvius the Mad, Tigranes, Volourn, and a couple of others I'm having trouble remembering at the moment are active here. It's good to see you still enjoying cRPGs.

Druids accept their station in life as an element of the natural world and seek coexistance, not dominance, with their natural surroundings. Clerics of conventional deities are the ones seeking dominance over wildlife and flora. The druid desires understanding of natural cycles and processes. Along the path from initiate to druid they learn techniques to, in fact, assert dominance over untamed flora and fauna, but they're not interested in doing so for the sake of power or self-aggrandizement. Rather, druids gather knowledge of the primeval world to better enable themselves and others to work with it rather than trying to beat it into submission. Conventional clerics want to walk on the water or marshall a flood to drown the army of an opposed deity, but druids would rather understand the cycle of cloud, rain, river, groundwater, and evaporation to help tribal groups coax crops from the earth and pasture their livestock. If they need to drown an army along the way, well, what must be done must be done, but it's not their primary purpose in life. They're part of the natural world, not a hammer beating it into a useful tool.

I'm all for disarming, tripping, bull rushing, etc., but the silly stuff like "monkey grip" needs to go by the wayside. That stuff always made me roll my eyes and I'd much rather not have to deal with it in P:E. Sure, I wouldn't have to use it, but there might be times where I'd be seriously outclassed by opponents employing such preposterous munchkin nonsense. It'd get very old, very quickly. Yes, this is a fantasy game, but it's one for adults so let's limit just how far we stretch the credulity of the players. Dual wielding two-handed swords or polearms?

As per previous games, it can always be thought of as hiding away in your backpack when the fur starts to fly.

Reloading a muzzleloader of whatever ignition system takes a while and I can't imagine doing it while someone is trying to take my head off with an axe or a sabre. Veteran shooters can load, prime, and fire a muzzleloader twice per minute, good ones thrice, and highly skilled and practiced ones can squeeze four shots into one minute...barely. As such, I think you're probably right that selecting the proper time to employ firearms will be crucial to our success in combat.

Fetch quests are de facto unavoidable without investing huge amounts of time in crafting alternate forms of quests to provide possible courses of action for our protagonists. As LadyCrimson said above, if they're done well I'm not going to mind them at all. Done poorly, I'll be shutting off the computer and reading a book.

Both or neither. Either it solidly has both or it isn't worth playing.

Give it a rest, ladies and gentlemen--deities are in. They'll be very much in the mold of the Greek and Norse pantheons in that they are active within the world and tend to involve themselves at cross-purposes to other deities. If you select a cleric (and I certainly will at some point), then you should anticipate getting caught up sooner or later in the machinations of your patron deity as it tries to advance its cause and thwart other opposed deities. This will make for a richer field of possibilities within the world.

I'll be curious to see whether or not the wheel locks cease working under wet conditions and whether or not the metallurgy of the era is good enough to prevent the firearms from blowing up once in a while. Both would tend to put a damper on the aspiring fusiliers around here.

Get over your phobia. You're playing a video game, not taking a stroll through a tropical rainforest or jungle. The creepy-crawlies aren't going to jump off the screen and scuttle down your shirt, so just take a deep breath and repeat the mantra, "It's only a game, it's only a game, it's only a game." Bring on the spiders, centipedes, mantids, scorpions, beetles, ants, and other arthropods!

I wasn't aware of the inclusion of a pet of some sort for the $50-and-up tiers. This is good news as that means I'm in for a bonus. As this is a cRPG, the species of the critter isn't as important as the relative level of interactivity and usefulness of the pet in question. Why is it following you around? What does it expect of you? Does it's dialogue/interactions with you grow as the game goes along? Can we teach it a number of tricks/behaviors? Also, will the presence of the "pet" preclude the use of a familiar or animal companion (F/AC)? I always used F/ACs when playing a class that had them as an available feature and as a DM I encouraged players to use them as it gave me a way to convey information or give the party a nudge in the right direction without breaking the 4th wall by having to speak as myself. F/ACs having superior senses to those of mortal adventurers (particularly scent) was often useful in steering the party in the right direction instead of letting them stumble around for an hour of game time trying to find the [ ______ ], clues about which they'd blown past in a rush earlier in the gaming session. Silly players...

I'd be highly irate as the whole point of Kickstarter was to eliminate the meddling suits populating the publishing houses who've turned their backs on cRPGs that focus on roleplaying instead of hack 'n' slash. I want full, meaty expansion packs, not Day-1 DLC and other dribs and drabs of dreck. Yeah, I'm looking right at you, EAWare.

It doesn't matter all that much to me. I'd rather that they spend their zots on more attack and defense animations for things like disarming and tripping opponents, hooking a shield with a weapon, or doing a "bull rush" and knocking someone over, though.