Hormalakh

eh still. I'm not saying its incredibly unreasonable or something, but I think they are a lot of good arguments against it as I like to think I've shown, and the only real argument you've brought up is that you think it would be cool. And it seems like your main objection to the current system, at least in your first post was just that the portraits don't usually match, which could be remedied fairly easily. No the issue I have against forcing my character to be 20 years old, is: 1-that it forces my character down a certain path with only a limited amount of backstory that he could have lived before starting his newest adventure 2-stop railroading my characters 3-it starts to look ridiculous that my level 1 elf is aged 150, and learning his first magic missle, whereas my level 9 human aged 21 knows fireball. Was the elf j***ing-off for the past 130 years? 4-stop railroading my characters 5-Portraits won't match up to ages. 6-seriously....stop railroading my characters. 7- It can bring in interesting game mechanics (see others' posts). 8- It's not too realistic. I didn't really see any arguments other than "this is how it's always been done" from you though.

Skyrim's the most amazing fantasy hiking-sim I've ever seen.

The lich from "The Order of the Stick" does evil literally for the laughs. I like him.

:D :D THANKS! One more week. I'll have to keep these shakes down somehow....perhaps it's time to play some OLD SCHOOL RPGS!

So I'm getting the shakes again... Any ideas when we're going to get another meaty update from the devs? It would be nice to know about how often we should be expecting these, but the surprises are also nice

So what you're telling me is that this is Vista V2.0? I remember the last time I had Vista, I went crazy and bought a Mac. After I calmed down a little, 2 years later, I finally switched back to Win 7. I love Linux and everything, but it's just way too much work for me. Last time I used Ubuntu, I had to code my own drivers or something.

Would they even need to us agile methodology in this sort of product? I know that we the backers are the clientele, but ultimately they are the ones coming up with the final vision.

God yes! This. So much this. Everytime I cast a level 9 spell I remember thinking to myself, "That was extremely unsatisfying." Where are the charred remains of my enemies?! More than half of them are still standing!

I'm not saying for adventurers to start adventuring at age 60. Some of them can start a little later, at around age 30 for example.

From what I remember in high school history, the muslims weren't as cold-hearted and "evil" as the song made it out to be and it was an example of I guess early propaganda. Of course, Muslims weren't really liked very much back then. Now that I think about it, they aren't liked very much now either...

As a left-handed person myself, I really couldn't care any less about what hand my characters use to wield their weapons.

I remember in Fallout 2, you couldn't have weapons being brandished inside NCR. That was a very interesting concept. Not allowing weapons inside taverns, inns, or even cities. Guards arresting you if they see it.

One thing I wish they'd do with NPCs that have nothing of value, is that they continue about their day without stopping and opening up a dialogue box. Something like "I'm too busy to talk right now" and then they just keep moving.

Synergy is a good idea.

I hated having to cast spells if I was trying to play real-time. Some way of making sure that accessing the grimoire/spells is fairly easy would be great.

A very cool website that I found posts real weapons that look cool. One of them that I saw was called a "gun katar." I think my mage would definitely enchant this. http://www.collector...g01/Lot-101.htm Another cool one I found here: The tanegashima (Onimusha uses this name for another enchanted weapon in that game too). This is a real weapon.

Any specific ideas on how to make crafting "deeper" as you call it? I am of the same mind as you, but I honestly can't think of any games that are SP that have done crafting remotely well enough to where I enjoyed it. BG2's Cromwell was too specific and limited - it seemed almost like quests in that game. Cespenar from the ToB was much better, but it was still missing a little something. I also didn't think having to wait for Cespenar to go through your packs one at a time (and you having to skip items that you knew you didn't have everything for) was the best way they could have done it. Perhaps some sort of menu would have been better.

Yeah I agree. I was just trying to say that the dialogue isn't the challenge. I didn't mean to make it sound like all three options would be the same, but rather that picking any dialogue option shouldn't be the "insta-win" scenario where your only challenge was the dialogue.

n/t

I don't have an issue with context sensitive clicks. That should just be a more effective way to click the mouse and if it's more effective than non-contextual clicking, then so be it. But it doesn't obviate the need for keyboard hotkeys. There will be situations where you want to do something other than what the contextual click is for. In those cases, a hotkey would be great. In your starcraft example, the context sensitive mouse-click, didn't mean that they didn't have hotkeys for players who used the keyboard. Right clicking usually moved the army, where as A+click attack-moved, killing anything in the path.

I would be fine with contextual cursors when there is only one possible action to be done to an object as this makes sense and is good design. I'd rather not have contextual cursors because I would want to do more than one thing to a chest/door. In cases where I can do more than one thing to an object, (i.e. should be able to "attack" it, trap it, pick the lock, attach an explosive to it, etc), then having hotkeys would be great. There will usually be more than one thing to can do with any object in-game, and making each object only have one single context doesn't make sense. That leaves a contextual menu that you open with a right-click, and then select the correct action with another click. How big should the menu be? If it's too small, people might make a mistake and attack the chest instead of picking it. If it's too big you still have the dragging mouse issue. Let's assume that you only have one context to the chest. Great, we've solved the problem for one specific object (chests). What about other NPCs? Will you also have context-sensitive menus for them? Pickpocketing? Attacking? Dialogue? Sneakattack? Cast spell, etc? What about other objects? Doors? Will you have a lockpick, lock, bash, open, close context menu or no? How about setting a trap? Or disarming a trap? Would you just right-click the floor and it automatically sets a trap? What if you wanted to throw an object there instead? There are too many contexts to have a single-click. Edit: Changed mind about contextual clicking.

It's not just mouse click. It's two mouse clicks. With a mouse alone, you need to drag your mouse over to the picklock skill, and click it. Then you need to drag your mouse over to the chest/door and click again to pick the lock. With a keyboard, you hit the "pick lock" hotkey, and drag your mouse to the chest/door and click. One click + key vs two clicks. With the use of a keyboard, I can always have one hand on the keybaord, and one on the mouse. I'd quickly choose the particular party member with one key, activate the picklock skill with another key, and only have to drag the mouse over once to click on the chest/door. However, having the mouse also able to do the same thing (redundancy) allows people with disabilities to play the game without having to use the keyboard. Remember, this is a computer game, might as use the computer's peripheral devices.

Other than combat movement, you also have world movement too. Getting across the map in the IE games would slow down some party members more than others depending on their weight limits. I remember having 2 boots of speed and always having my two tanks at any particular location (outside of combat) before anyone else.

I wouldn't mind coming up with one and presenting it to the devs. In a lot of the older IE-based RPGs that I played, I saw just little things that would have made the game easier to play with a keyboard. That's why I think that if the devs start creating their UIs with this in mind from the beginning it would be easier to implement and shouldn't waste resources. BG2 was a great example of keyboard shortcuts being done right (with a few small changes). I don't want to talk about this in your thread, so we'll continue the discussion over in the relevant thread, for those interested.

Right I know it's not. But I think that action games do some things well and those ideas should be incorporated into this game. Having hotkeys doesn't take away from the play style of cRPGs. They only allow you to perform actions faster than you otherwise would be able to. What's the difference between trudging through a few skill screens clicking away, and being able to to quickly perform the same action with a hotkey? One just wastes time, while the other allows you to focus on the things that matter: the story and the characters. If you think that RPGs are defined by clicking away, I would disagree with you. I don't like wasting time clicking on a bunch of screens just to be able to do a simple action (over and over again too, sometimes). Let me spend my time on those parts that matter. As for those mechanics that seem to "break" with hotkeys, I would say that it isn't the hotkey that breaks it, but rather the way the mechanic is implemented that does so. The healing potion example as given before is one. Instead of forcing me to "slow down" by making me have to click with a mouse, make potion drinking a timed-action, like Baldur's Gate 2 does. Instead of allowing potions to work immediately, make them take a certain amount of time before I can do it again. That worked well. The quickslot hotkey wasn't part of the mechanism and so it still worked as it should.