Pipyui

Ugh, I hate those buggers. They're not good eating, but if you leave them alone they'll devour all game in the area. With such voracious appetites, why can't they ever inhabit someplace more urban, meat-populated, and out of my hair? Mother****ing frost wyrms! Better luck than I've had, most times I've gone hunting dragon, the only meat I'd scramble back with is half my party - medium well.

I'm not against dual-wielding, but I'll admit that I'm not sure that I like the damage-defense fighter spectrum that it implies. I'd rather that different melee styles broaden the fighting spectrum rather than deepen it, if that makes sense. I'd rather have three archtypes like, just to use my previous example, attack, defense, and utility, and have to effectively match 2 of the 3 than have just a linear spectrum between two options. In my mind, there is little need to subdivide such a 2-trait fighter role any more than offense, defense, and a midpoint between. Don't misunderstand, I'm not implying that dual-wielding automagically locks us into this latter model, I'm trying to say that I'd like my weapon preferences to reflect a broader one, and as such that a weapon preference like dual-wielding should be more than "slightly more damage than this equipment combination, but slightly less defense too." Just my 2 cents, anyway.

I'm with Lephys on this one. Just to add my own thoughts, dual-wielding can be neat, but it's gonna need to have a niche to fill. We've already got 2H weapons for the "no shield but more damage" business, and 2H weapons actually make sense. So where does that leave dual-wielding? Best thing I can come up with is using one sword to distract, and a dagger for close piercing, and that's pretty washy. Dual daggers? If I'm getting that close in combat, I'd prefer a free hand to a second blade. Maybe you could have a one-and-a-half hand style instead? Wield a bastard sword, and have a utility belt of throwing knives, bombs, whathaveyou. Then you'd have stick and board attack-defense, 2H attack-attack, and 1-1/2 sword attack-utility. I'm just throwing ideas around here. Edit: Sounded initially like I was putting words in Lephys mouth - didn't intend to do that.

Speaking of, isn't it about time we got a weekly update on the state of the sound and music design? Not far enough along to present us with anything just yet? Okay.

It seems I may be the only one, but I wouldn't mind particularly if resting was limited to certain areas. I wouldn't be angry if my party could only rest in the wilderness for example, and not in interior spaces or otherwise dangerous territory (and not "I'll just back up a few yards and try resting again" territory). Perhaps I can rest in such areas, but at significantly higher risk of ambush. Also, maybe my party could be limited in how many camping packs it can carry. That way I'd only be able to strike camp so many times before being forced to visit a town and buy more (it's not like I wouldn't be visiting a town often enough anyway to sell loot). Sure it's limiting, but it feels to me like a gameplay mechanic that can limit how a player rests without slapping them in the face with not being able to. It makes sense to me that I might not be able to strike camp somewhere because I've run dry on the necessary resources to do so. In this case I have to decide for myself when it's appropriate to consume a camp pack for some much-needed health and rest. If I run into a tough brigand and die a few times (not playing ironman), maybe I'll bite the bullet and strike camp to heal before trying again, but thus limiting futher how many more times I can do such before having to revist a town or settlement to resupply. Then you could make inn rooms cheaper than a camp pack (not necessarily too realistic, but practical), and make them almost somewhat usefull. Heck, maybe inns could even grant me a "well rested" stamina bonus.

"Oh Gods, Why is Everything on Fire?"

Not much to contribute here, but to me the question here shouldn't be interpreted as "Should PE include elements of sexism because realism?" and should be interpreted "Should PE make a point to avoid sexism (and other touchy subjects)?" and my answer is of course a big "No." I don't particularly care whether or not society in PE practices sexism, so long as the narrative choice made here is consistent with the feelings of an organic society. I don't want the devs to go out of their way to fit it in, and I certainly don't want them to go out of their way to cut it out. Whether or not society practices sexism though, I do like the idea of granting the PC sexist dialogue options for roleplaying purposes, whether they be male or female.

It's not like the whole world would be pitch black, and even at night darkness shouldn't be complete. In forgotten caves and dungeons though a light source should be necessary to navigate (unless you have a rogue with nightvision or something. Speaking of, a lone torch in the night should make me stand out like nobody's business). I think implementing light sources like torches and such could really enhance the atmosphere of such places. You should probably feel isolated and alone in such places, and what better way to help facilitate this than by sticking your party in a lone circle of light surrounded by unknown dark? Darkness can be as much narrative as gameplay mechanic. Speaking of gameplay mechanics, I'm ambivilent on the idea of granting torches auxilary bonuses. I wouldn't want it to act as a weapon or shield. If anything, it should just provide the party a buff representing improved vision in combat (enemies might get it too, but I would presume any found in an unlit cave would have an aversion to it and might even recieve a penalty). So you'd either have a wizard provide magic light, or hand a torch to a member of the party who wouldn't be hindered so much by the loss of one free hand. And speaking of narrative and gameplay, maybe you could do cool stuff with the lighting for one quest. Like, a maze that could only be traversed when lit, and stepping outside of the light would kill your character. Or, a fortress long lost, not so dark as to make a torch necessary, but where your light flickers ghostly visages of the dead inhabitants and their furnishings present themselves, reliving the last day of their existance before the fortress fell. In the realm outside of your torch's light, you'd see decayed furniture and bones, and at your approach the past would come to life. Maybe you'd pick up bits of history from the visages, and could use this knowledge to reveal secrets in the present fortress or solve an ancient mystery or something. Maybe those are both aweful ideas, but hopefully they help convey the potential I feel that light elements can play in PE.

Continuing along the path-drawing idea, I think it'd be neat if each waypoint showed icons indicating queued actions at that location for clarity. That way I wouldn't need to cycle through my party to confirm their queues, but could read them from a glance. Maybe I could add or remove actions from these waypoints, though this might be a bit much considering that the queues shouldn't be too complex, as elaborated below: Also, I'm with mstark on the queue limit. I can trust myself not to overqueue simply because it would be far from effective anyways. There's no need for a limit on this, as players can determine for themselves intuitively how complex their queue should be with consideration to unpredictable combat elements, and this is likely to result in fairly short action queues. My biggest concerns are of queue behavior as mstark has also already addressed.

To me, what makes game music memorial is not so much the music in itself as the setting to which the music is applied. I usually prefer to have my soundtrack fairly subtle most of the time, but to really strike at me during intense or emotional moments. I trust Justin Bell can organise some good music choreography to meet this wistfulness. Edit: Also, while we're sharing soundtracks: http://youtu.be/jTdcJWDNsao Simple, but perfect for its setting.

Most god(desse)s exist to address a question, I think, so I should start with "what changes when I make souls a reality" and churn out ideas from there: God(dess) of Binding: Alright, so souls exist. So why do I have this silly, dirty, impetuous corpus? Why is my metaphysical soul bound to flesh? Perhaps without anchor, the soul loses itself and dissolves. The body thus provides solidarity and identity. Enter god(dess) of binding. When a vessel decays and the soul is cut from the flesh, it is vulnerable - like a liquid without a container to provide shape. Thus the god(dess) of binding collects drifted souls and sews them back into new physical forms. (S)he doesn't necessarily repressent life and renewal, more like a being that connects the soul to the world - a function of existance. God(dess) of Decay: This is a staple god(dess). Why do I suffer disease and illness? Is my soul broken? Yes. The god(dess) of decay doesn't represent death, but the fragmentation or intoxication of the soul. Things lost or forgotten are represented by this god(dess). Past lives, history, dreams, health, status - the god(dess) of decay governs everything that falters or dissolves. You would ward against him/her to prevent the deterioration of the soul causing malady, or curse him/her when something's been lost or forgotten. Humans love to displace the causes of their misfortunes onto mysterious uncontrollable forces, so a god(dess) of misfortune is a must. Also, I like the idea of a god(dess) which interferes in the mortal plane solely to right an ancient perceived wrong, not of mortal significance, but deeply personal. Unrelieved regrets are arguably the scariest part of dying, especially after tremendous tradgedy or unrecognized injustice. What if you had the power of immortality, and an eternity to resolve or attone for a grievance of the past? A grievance so massive and influencial, that it has changed the face of the world / celestial form / simply your own existance and could take eons to resolve? Haven't fleshed that out yet, but I always love stories of journeys to heal tradgedy.

Yes. There seems to be a lot of hate going around about "savescumming" (why is the exact meaning of this term even being debated? Semantics doesn't address the real issue here). I like this solution though, and thought it deserved reiterating. People can still play as they like, choices made just won't always have immediate consequences. I think of this as more of a narrative decision than an imposed limitation or "desired behavior pushing" on players. Also, I'm on the no-combat-save train. It usually causes more trouble than good anyways.

I think Nerei mostly covered everything, however, I'd like to elaborate that I think that including physics goes beyond being cost-ineffective and approaches the realm of impossiblity. 3D physics in games are almost exclusively implemented by 3rd party applications like Havok or PhysX, which need to be licensed. This could account for all 3D objects in the game, but couldn't interface the 2D image environment. To solve this would be a massive and expensive undertaking, and Obsidian would need design their own physics engine in-house. Now, a basic invisible 3D collision map could be concieved, such that 3D effects and placeables could collide with static environment objects like trees and rocks, but those environment objects would not be able to move in 3D space (accept maybe some very basic 2D displacement). Both 3D and 2D placeables could be scripted (no physics here) to burn, crush, or collapse, but this would need to be done on a case-by-case basis lest Obsidian make a big expensive project out of it, as Nerei details above. This said, I would love to see some dynamic environments like collapsable walls and such, but they would need to be individually crafted into PE.

I shouldn't throw myself so willingly into the gunfire here, but I don't think that magic being "real" or "superstitious garbage" in the real world is relavent to a fantasy RPG. The fun thing about fiction is that you get creative license to shape "reality" as you see fit. However Obsidian decides to implement magic in PE, I don't think that arguments of "real" or "false" apply, so long as there is ample narrative to support their mechanics. Sufficient narrative continuity to the system is what's important here.

Absolutely yes to RTWP. Absolutely yes to terrain modifiers for combat, stealth, and any other particular modes as appropriate (not exploration). Day/night combat modifiers I'm not too keen on - while it may be "realistic," it'd also be darned annoying and superflous. I'd accept and welcome it perhaps in a few dungeons where it serves a narrative purpose, but not as a core gameplay mechanic created solely to hamper me 50+% (caves and the like) of the time. Lighting modifiers to stealth and perception are enough to make day/night gaming dynamic in my opinion. If you can't see the game screen without a torch or light spell, you're already crippled enough. Dynamic environments I'm not even sure are feasible in a 2.5D game. Placed collapsable walls sure; but burning away trees, especially collapsing ceilings? I don't think is a realistic expectation to hold the devs to. Implementing physics effects on non-3D environmental objects is not gonna happen, and I doubt the 3D placeables will be prevelant enough to make it worthwhile for them either. That being said, placed objects like scripted collapsible walls revealing hidden paths, would be easy and A-OK. Cover: This. Also, determining whether or not this character is linearly "behind" an environment object is cake (linearly, PC-Tree------------------Attacker provides cover, Tree-PC-----------------Attacker does not).

Staple his face onto a doll and converse with it like you would your old friend. And don't throw out the bones, I understand they make a fine broth. Don't forget to hide the remains so nobody discovers you killed him.

I don't hate all DRMs per se. I actually see steam as a great platform for indie developers. However, I don't like to have my games tethered inexorably to a third-party client service, and I don't like at all supporting the movement of ALL games to this model. I can hardly buy a PC game anymore that doesn't require a client service to run. I don't need my games to "phone home." Then you've got steam, and EA's Origin, and Gamestop/Stardocks Impulse - I don't want everyones' client installed and have to pick which to run at any given time to play any given game. It's a personal issue, nothing more. ... Sorry about that. Anyway, Steam debate aside, I'm just arguing to not have the game itself phoning home regularly. If I want to update the game, I'll download a patch or click the "Update Now" button in the main menu. This is the only time when PE should be connected to the interwebs (unless the devs decide to add multiplayer after all). I'm not saying that Steam is bad and that you should feel bad for using it. Just different strokes for different folks - I want the option to avoid it or use it as I choose.

Changed. Thought it would be funny. Clearly, it wasn't. Nah. It was funny, just a tad uncomfortable. /

Did you have to ask with "pop your PE virginity"? I feel a little soiled now. In somewhat-format with next post (by ranking): 1 Ranger (it's been a while) 2 Cipher 3 Rogue Subject to change.

Yep. Some of this may be too unrealistic and impractical for PE, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing. (I think the devs already mentioned that they didn't have plans for spellcrafting, anyway) Huh! I'll admit, the fact that a game can do that without making a right mess of it baffles me. What game is that? I want to see that in action now. (not trying to be tricky here - curious in earnest) Consequences: Ahh, misunderstood that part (I think the "bouncing" example threw me off). I had imagined that you wanted to be able to define a spell's behavior something like an effect script. Such that you could create a ball that would bounce towards a target, but with a path defined by physics. Or a contaminating spell (not like "disease type spreads to others," but like "I want my incinerate spell to light other enemies aflame if they touch my first target."). So that's what I meant to describe as unrealistic. So far as spell clouds, explosions, or splashes, I had written those off as being part of the "visual" or "delivery" attributes. I see now that, for the former at least, this isn't so accurate. Explosions and splashes might differ only visualy and not mechanically, but a spell cloud or rain would differ mechanically. If there was a spellforging system, I would certianly like these options. -------------------------------------------------------- On a different note (and more in line with the OP), I think spellforging could work in PE in a more basic sense as scrolls. Like potions, you could produce one-shot spells perhaps a little too specific for regular use (scrolls that wouldn't see use in regular combat, but could, say, levitate your party across a gap to otherwise inacessible areas). The spells would be predefined, but you would need craft them and they wouldn't be an infinite resource. This could be worthwhile for providing hidden content in the world and making exploration just a little more dynamic, making context-specific events, and giving magic some usefull utility outside of combat.