Pipyui

I think you and I have the same idea, but neither of us is very good at articulating it. Control a "chapter" for each companion in sequence, though the "chapters" would in reality (game reality?) happen simultaneously, like in many fiction books. I'm I getting close to making sense yet?

This would be neat, though as someone pointed out, this would be hard to manage concurrently. Though maybe you had in mind each companion having a "chapter" in the dungeon (or whatever). Set each out to handle a task, and when that task is completed, move on to the next member. This doesn't even need to be chronologically contigous, so long as each "chapter" ends at the same "time" so you can switch seemlessly back to party play.

Whoa, whoa! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy! We're still trying to work out how to distribute the regular old linux game from what I understand. And I don't think this is a question about the game running on an ARM, but of it running on an OS running on an ARM, and that is more a question for Unity than Obsidian I should think.

I already mentioned something regarding this in a different post, so I'll just copy/paste it over here cause I think it's relevant and I'm a terrible human being: Fetch / rescue quests can be randomized and don't always have to send you to the same places. Or, side quests can have slight, maybe even quirky, variations in presentation depending on choices the player has made in main quests. If you let a bandit leader live early on for example, you might find later that he has kidnapped a couple's daughter for ransom, and you'll be hired to get her back. If you killed him, his sister and second in command has taken his place, and you find that the couple's son has been kidnapped because this young new bandit leader found him dreamy and intends to marry him. The quest has the same structure, just two different NPCs. Simple to implement, and effectively adds replay value I think.

As already noted, Obsidian has no plans at the moment for making PE multiplayer. I just hope the system is sufficiently moddable that we can get a multiplayer mod up and running soon after the release. Multiplayer support would require a lot of testing and resources, Obsidian can let the modders handle that if they want to. That being said, I wonder if they could set up a barebones multiplayer network interface for us. Provide the functionality to implement it seamlessly into the game, so to speak.

Nah, I knew what you meant Osvir, just had to make a bad joke. In terms of the journal, I have little to add to what others have already suggested. I would like a margin to make notes, one for each quest would be nice, as well as the quest-independant one. Map markers are fantastic too.

I like where this is going. I never really played cRPGs much for the gameplay, because encounters always ended up being the same - very inorganic. Mixing things up a bit would be a challenge for the devs, but a really fun addition if they pulled it off.

We have magic don't we? How about telephized propaganda. Television - telepathy? I'll find my own way out.

Steam is perfectly viable for some, but many don't at all like DRM and tethering their game to a client service.

Agree to this. And yes, in my mind dual-wielding is cliche. Except for some very specific applications, it's little more practical than a 12 ft. katana. Giant warhammers are impractical too though, and warhammers are awesome.

I'm still up for the idea of dragons (or some other ancient, powerfull being), and I don't mind them being intelligent or otherwise. I tend to think, correct me if I'm mistaken, that the main reason everyone is sick of dragons is because they are never treated with the amount of power they deserve. I shouldn't be able to battle a dragon and defeat it, proving that dragons are little more than any other orc or mortal NPC, inferior to the strength of my PC. I find that unimaginative. I'll submit again that I prefer my ancient, monsterous, and overall superior beings to be exactly that. I should be humbled by them, not vice-versa.

Are quests and NPCs that easy to script into a game without a toolkit? I've only ever created mods on TES games, so I honestly don't know.

I'm afraid that won't stop many from trying. I mean, who would make a nude mod for DAO for anything except the romance conclusions? Still, there are several of them. Plus you have the inventory screens, which will likely have model views of your characters. There may end up being fewer nude mods, but we all know that they'll still top the mod popularity charts. But I digress. My biggest fear about making new quests is that we won't get a toolkit. This results in mods that just modify content instead of adding it, as evidenced by DAO (Bioware/EA's biggest failure there, I believe). I honestly think that a good toolkit can make an IP from silver to gold.

Does anybody tolerate autoupdate daemons? We shall have no such thing here. (I couldn't find the "kill it with fire" emoticon) I think the issue here is that people want an autoupdate feature, and some of us prefer manually patching. I don't think many would argue that an update button in a menu or launcher is a bad idea, I think we'd just prefer the game didn't update itself without prompt from / prompting the user.

Sadly you are correct. I remember trying to find Dragon Age mods and having to go through about 40 nude mods before I found something useful. Still better than the nudity and anime mods I have to sift through in TES mods.

I like an autoupdater, but I can't be the only one who isn't bothered by the thought of having to download patches manually? Maybe I've just gotten so used to mod management for Bethesda games that unzipping archives doesn't bother me anymore, I in fact enjoy the control I get from this. And checking the website for a new patch when I feel one is due is hardly an inconvience for me. Autoupdaters only ever work correctly half the time anyways. On the other hand, I suppose if you have a large game library (not me), autoupdating is fantastic. So in the end, I guess I've contributed nothing to this conversation. It's okay, I'll let myself out.

Successful trolling, unsuccessful trolling, who cares? This was fun.

I am very sorely tempted to take the pimped-out stronghold vote, but I'd also like just a few basic properties scattered around for convienience. Then again, I guess that's what inns are for. Excuse me while I go change my vote a minute... Edit: A little early to be ringing the troll bell, aye? Questioning about a topic doesn't necessarily infer trolling, lets see where this thread goes before deciding.

I'm pleased to see that people agree with my little pining for audio-visual continuity of ambient sounds. I truly had thought I would be the only one here who gave it more than a passing care, and that you all would belittle me for it (I'm very sensitive). So far as games go, I'm actually only a casual gamer so I don't have many samples to extract from, but the first game with good ambient sound that comes to mind is 2008's Turok. It managed to produce a jungle with a little more noise than just the omnipresent and looped crickets and birds.

Mcmanusaur may be trolling, but he hasn't been actively trying to insult people, so I'm ok with this. I've certainly been entertained by this thread so far. Maybe PE shouldn't be a cRPG, but an MMO after all.

The points you've made are perfectly valid, but I feel that critical success and failures that are completely tranparent give more fun to the player. When I charge an orc and accidentally impale myself on his sword, it's easier for me to understand that I've made a really bad roll, and not that the "system" has seemingly arbitrarily caused it. By having to calculate in all of the factors that might cause a fumble, and make it completely deterministic, I'm forced to question what I've done wrong with it, and when it doesn't look to me like I've messed things up I blame the system for cheating me. Sure in real life you don't just randomly screw up, there are factors involved, but if I have no control over these miniscule factors in game, it seems like they are arbitrary and artificial - only exist to irritate me. Plus, rolling means that no matter how awesome my character is, or how meticulously I work to eliminate extraneous factors metagame, I still have a small chance of really dropping the ball on things or doing them spectacularly. I don't want crits to be or feel completely deterministic, I like the random element involved in trying anything in-game. I'm not saying that stats shouldn't modify these probabilities (they probably should), but too many extraneous, superfluous, and otherwise meaningless factors shouldn't arbitrate completely whether or not I crit.

I voted ambivilence. I wouldn't use a NG+ feature myself, nor see much use for one, unless it was well implemented in the game. Touger enemies and all that, maybe some dialogue quirks to recognise you've played before, but even that's not enough to justify it. Unless Obsidian can come up with something really cool, I see no need for a NG+ option, but can't argue against those who would appreciate having it.

Dawnfall? What's that supposed to mean? Are you for it or against it? Thanks for the new word, though. It makes my brain cringe.

Why not just petition Obsidian to make an MMO ... about something else? I tend to think that making an MMO model of any good IP is bad mojo (Skyrim Online, anyone?).

Indeed, though this issue really strikes my interests, I'm afraid Bell has already addressed everything that comes to my mind regarding it. See what you've done, Bell?! In trying to incite this discussion, you've only helped in destroying it! No really though, thanks for talking with us. We get lonely here all by ourselves. I just wish I had more to add to this discussion now... somebody's got to get it rolling again, because I'm incapable of doing so.