Pipyui

Hormalakh's got some good ideas up there. I think one good solution, though perhaps this was expected, is to have many scripted encounters. This can be used to provide mini objectives during combat, allow enemies to make full use of their terrain, grant them more advanced tactical symbiosis, or any number of things. Or just produce a wider range of NPC AIs. Anything to give hostiles a little more character than "I approach, and I swing. I approach, and I swing. I ..." Swarmers should try to actively surround and sepparate the party. Archers and wizards should have guards that will (relatively) hold their ground to defend them. Rangers can switch to melee when confronted, but should switch back when it's not necessary. Mages can blast at you from on high as you try to cross a river (wading water decreasing your combat effectiveness), with a melee troup positioned on the other side to hold you in. These kind of things could make combat more dynamic and rewarding for me.

This. I keep pushing this I know, but I really really hate that my rogue can sneak through a darn prairie like it's nothing. Forest? Sure, don't even have to calculate LOS, just imply (modifier) that rogue can hide more effectively in a forest. Flat barren wasteland? Better be one heck of a good rogue.

Yeah, in retrospec my idea cannot be reasonably implemented in a video game like PE (perhaps in a stealth-centric one though). So I suppose that simplifies that idea down to perception vs. stealth checks. If I can come up with any bright (and realistic) ideas to make this better for stealth/scouting, I'll be sure to let everyone know. I guess when it comes down to it, I've always been very unimpressed by past implementations of stealth in isometric games, DA:O included. So I suppose my reservations about "farsight" are more a sentiment against isometric stealth mechanics in general. Sentiments for another thread.

To the first part - isn't that a risk to be taken for scouting alone? I don't see a problem here. To the second part - dialogue shoudn't pause gameplay, just like in NWN. If your scout is chatting with a hostile (one that doesn't immediately gut him), perhaps that dialogue would end abrubtly (and violently) when said hostile discovers the arrival of reinforcments for the scout. You can manage your party formation and try to approach the scout during conversation then, but at the risk of losing out in possible dialogue options and content. Scouting is still risky business, but not wholly disadvantageous. Greater risk, greater reward. Regarding implementations of "farsight," isn't this what stealth is for? Not saying it's a bad idea, just don't see it as being a necessity. Scouting only works because scouts have an advantage in knowing where they're looking and usually what for. I'm no word wizard, so you'll just have to use your imagination here, but a scout knows to examine anything in the way of his party's destination. The scout doesn't need farsight to avoid being spotted, it's good enough that (s)he knows an enemy camp is there and not vise versa. The scout uses stealth and has the advantage of knowing what to look for (an encampment isn't hard to spot) on his party's intended path. The camp will surely have sentries, but they don't know when or where an enemy might be - much more uncertainty here. Am I making sense (not being sarcastic here)? The scout and the enemies of the encampment might have the same visual range, but the scout has a huge advantage in spotting the encampment over being spotted.

Though I think you're right about this for the most part, I feel that with reasonable responsibility civil arguing can be productive - that is, so long as the conversation doesn't degrade into polar arguments, each party unwilling to compromise and just throwing out the same responses ad nauseam. I think tossing ideas around to be a constructive exercise, one just needs be careful in how they choose to respond to a topic.

It seems many share my sentiments that multiclassing is a bit cludgy. I'd eleborate on this more, but the fine folks just above me have already done a pretty good job of it. This isn't to say that I dislike having wiggle room in my class structures. Throwing out an idea here, but what about "core" talents having trees common to all classes? Say magic, stealth, and combat can each have a bare-bones tree available regardless of class. Thus my wizard would have his own unique wizardly talents, but could also learn to pick up a sword from the core combat tree, though perhaps without so much afinity as a fighter (the fighter him/herself having their own unique (or more elaborate core) combat tree). Yay? Nay?

Melodrama doesn't bother me so much, as long as my character doesn't get dragged into it. That kid from ME3? The one that appeared for a cutscene at the begining and died, only to have Shepard lament over him for the rest of the game, whatever their moral integrity? That was just really bad. I had no established connection to this arbitrary child, and yet he determines my psychological state for the whole game! No, if any emotional impact should be conveyed on the player (player, not PC) it should be through others. If the above mentioned child dies and I have to witness/console his mother about it, who is justifiably crying, perhaps screaming at Shepard's incompetance, I, the player, might feel a lot worse about the whole ordeal, but I wouldn't be forced to through my PC. Then I can have my PC react according to my own sentiments on the subject, or my character's if I'm roleplaying. By making the player react to such situations, they can better connect to their PC, and thus to the emotional content of the game. Forcing the PC to feel something for narative purpose is NOT good mojo for an RPG, and more than anything disconnects the player from any emotional content. Like in the case above - seriously Shepard, screw you.

So long as my characters don't facepalm on a spell fail, trolls don't assualt me with "lol u mad?", and Vegeta's disembodied voice doesn't scream "over 9000!!!!!" when I reach 9001 kills, these are still a-ok.

For your perusal: Maintaining risk and unpredictability

I wouldn't mind a few, a few, pop culture references, so long as they're clever, subtle, and somewhat timeless. Monty Python jokes, old IE game references, etc, are fine. No gangnam style, troll faces, or any other internet memes, period.

Certainly I'd love to see terrain modifiers, both for combat and stealth gameplay. Dodging missile attacks would be much easier in a dense forest than knee deep in a river. Elevation should certainly augment combat prowess. A rogue should be largely more effective sneaking within city walls than sneaking on a prairie (that always bugged me).

While I agree 100% with this, was it really something that needed to be addressed? I kind of thought this sort of behavior was, you know, expected. Everyone knows they should be civil, some just don't care, and I doubt starting a thread telling them to is going to change that. It's unfortunate, but no amount of patronizing can stop the internet from being the internet. Edit: Smiley face for positive inflection.

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.