Tsuga C

Let Obsidian decide, but I'm in favor of minimal scaling. In D&D terms, an encounter designed to be appropriate for a 2nd level party should scale up or down a single level so as to work for levels 1-3. It should not attempt to scale up for a 7th level party. Keep it in blocks of three (e.g. 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, etc.) and things should work out just fine.

Bring on the authenticity of period-type musical instruments. They add a great deal to the ambience. Think of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle in The Two Towers. It was highly evocative and moving.

Give it a rest, you leg dancing horn-dogs.

I don't understand the puerile fixation with being able to kill everything in sight. Loosing a fireball in the town square and toasting 3 dozen people accomplishes precisely nothing unless, of course, you're laying siege to the town in question. Then it should be allowed, but not under normal circumstances. If I'm attacked by ruffians and accidentally flash-fry 3 dozen people who were caught in the blast zone, I'd expect to have to submit myself to the authorities or flee the town. Unless I have a high charisma and/or high reputation, I expect that in the former case (submit) I'd be jailed and in both cases I'd lose any sidequests or clues to the main quest from that town. This would probably break the game and end it, so what's the point? Stick with the knock-outs and be done with it.

So long as the possibiliy of them was very slight, critical misses that expose you to an attack of opportunity or lower your armor class for the very next attack against you might be acceptable, but I woudn't want to take the concept too far. Introducing too much chance into melee detracts from the experience by obviating wise choices made by the player in building, equipping, and tactically deploying a party.

Companions might be NPCs, but not all NPCs are companions. The fellow selling baked goods, the lumberjack fearful of dryads or a pack of wargs, a civic guard with a clue regarding one of the quests, the shifty character down by the docks from whom you can buy illicit traps and poisons--all of these generic in-world folks and others like them are prime choices for being protrayed by backers. I'm sure that Obsidian is more than capable of working the mega-buck donors into the game in a way that won't be unduly jarring. And I say more power to them. After all, who wouldn't want to be an NPC in a superb cRPG?

I respect what BioWare did in the late '90s and early to mid-'00s, but after they sold themselves to EA... Well, let's just say that there's a clearcut reason I'm more active here than I am over there.

As the first class I usually play in a cRPG is a druid, I've faced this unpalatable scenario more times than I care to remember. I've never gotten any satisfaction out of killing simple animals that are, bizarrely, always suicidally hostile.

I'm generally for the practice of awarding XP for completing objectives. This lets the party go about their business as they see fit and doesn't force the player into needless killing sprees for the sake of leveling up. If extra XP are awarded for particularly difficult or clever options chosen by the player, so much the better. But I don't want to have to take my party out head hunting for fear of not being high enough level in time to face down a particular opponent I'm supposed to be tracking down.

Subtle, dark, satirical, and maybe one or two quirky individuals who are lighter and brighter in mood. I'm not in favor of limiting it to every X number of quests, but it needs to be appropriate for the situation and characters in question. And I'm not in favor of breaking the 4th wall in actual gameplay. Humor directed at me (the player, not my avatar) during a loading screen is fine, but I don't want it during the actual in-world adventure.

Everything works except the great helm. You'd end up with crushed cervical vertabrae and/or a 26" neck size if you wore that thing for any length of time unless the horns and frill weighed next to nothing. They'd be fine for ceremonial or parade gear, but not for an active adventurer.

This sounds appealing. I'd rather not have everything handed to me on a silver platter. Picking up information from overhearing people and then, usually after greasing their palms, picking their brains for information is a good way to encourage interactions with NPCs. Finding a random, odd widget and taking it to a scholar of some sort to open up a quest also sounds better than reading about quests 1-7 on a billboard located in the town square.

With all due respect, if you're truly astonished by the response methinks you seriously underestimated the number of consumers still hungry for quality roleplaying in cRPGs. <-----Why do I always use a lowercase "c", you ask? Because I've always held that the best cRPG is one that most closely emulates a well-designed Pen and Paper session of [insert your favorite roleplaying game]. Too many developers become fixated upon the "video" aspect--ultra hig-def/high-polygon, kewl 'sploshuns, physics cards, etc.--and neglect storyline, character development, and interperson relationships. We're putting our money where our mouthes are because we believe that you're better than that by a long shot. Planescape comes to mind in support of this. And...you're welcome!

I selected the $65 tier as I'm not satisfied unless I have physical media in my grubby little paws.

There's no doubt that Obsidian will include a significant number of encounters that, though confrontational, cannot be resolved via combat. This is for the good as the same ol', same ol', hack 'n' slash gets--*yawn*--quite stale if it's not broken up by other sorts of encounters. Stealth, trickery, political manuvering, divine intervention--all these and more should have a welcome place at the table. Furthermore, not all scenarios need be winnable, period. A journey in which every obstacle can be overcome and, through meticulous planning and resource gathering, every adversary defeated is more fantastical than flaming swords and flying carpets. I have no problem with the idea of having the concept of opportunity cost come into play and limit our ability to pull together the necessary resources to defeat all 7 challenges in Chapter 2. Everyone can complete 4; most can complete 5; a few fanatics can complete 6; but no one can complete all 7 challenges because of limitations imposed by the world in which we are adventuring. Granted, this shouldn't happen too often, but having it happen at all will keep us on our toes and encourage wise play. And, of course, I have no problem with one or two encounters being impossible to win at all, things best avoided by the wise and guaranteed to crush the foolish. Reference my thread on "Unwinnable Encounters". Let there be clear hints, markers, lore in books, and wise council from trustworthy NPCs to dissuade the foolish. Give the players a blatantly obvious scenario (party of 6 vs. 2 battalions of gnolls) that make it perfectly clear that this is an encounter to avoid or to run from post haste, but include one or two of them, please.

Most welcome news, indeed!

Regardless of final form, the UI needs to minimize the amount of screen space devoted to it. I don't want to have to constantly toggle the thing on and off in order to understand what's happening on the rest of the screen.

This sums things up for me as well. *tips hat*

Hmm, if a full toolset isn't in the offering, then I'd like to suggest that players be offered a version of the Adventurer's Hall so that we may play around with creating, customizing, and equipping characters. If I want a set of white and red studded leather armor and the game doesn't offer that particular combination, I'd like to be able to create it in a limited version of the toolset in order to fulfill my character concept. Naturally, this would include assigning magical enhancements and powers to the arms and panoplies to compliment the look I'm going for with that particular character. The first run through the game I'll do it blind, but in subsequent ones I'd like to be able to play with different character concepts freely and this would be immensely helpful.

Hmm, 89 yeas of some sort vs. 79 nays thus far. I'm quite pleased as I figured there'd be a lot more fragile egos and short-tempered keyboard smashers / screen punchers unable to deal with a sobriety check to their vicarious, fantastical powertrip.

I'll be spending all of my time zoomed out to keep an eye on the entire battlefield. The only time I anticipate zooming in is if one of my party has been disarmed and I need to click on their weapon so they can pick it up. This being the case, I'm not sure that an ultra-high resolution for the background is all that necessary. Spend the zots on more animations.

Only in Detroit.

Wheel locks actually--more primative and less reliable than flintlocks.

As I'm an incorrigible pack rat, I'd prefer Bags of Holding. If that's too much to ask, then, yes, I'm all for pack animals. It wouldn't break the game not to have them, but they would be nice to have if you decided to assemble a party of wizards and rogues. In D&D terms, d4 and d6 characters aren't all that physically imposing and can't be expected to lug around the loot from an extended dungeon crawl without devolving into a highly repetitive and boring series of trips back and forth to the nearest town with a decent merchant. I don't need them to fight or sing and dance, but I do expect them to help with the drudge work.

I'm not terribly enamored with having the absolute latest and greatest in 3-D models/rigs for the ambulatory creatures in the game. P:E is, after all, an isometric game. We might be able to zoom in and out somewhat but this isn't going to be a 1st Person game in which a lower level of detail is going to be glaringly obvious or detrimental to our gaming experience. I say allocate the zots elsewhere.