Pipyui

Some good ideas so far, particularly the taxman one. Like a shadow that follows you wherever you travel - with every one you kill, and you will kill one, he's replaced with at taxman bigger and badder. It'd be like having a growing bounty on your head, not because of your actions, or what enemies or allies you decide to make, but because the system won't let you get away without paying your dues, hero or no. I think also it's common consensus here that enchanted items are worth way too much. They either should be rare or have a significant price cut (for selling at least, and I'm rather partial to magic items being rarer). Stronghold wealth and picking up damaged equipment from fallen foes also sound promising. A supply and demand economy would be neat too, though that might be a real project and might just annoy some people. Other thoughts: Harder difficulties have reduced inventory cappacities (who really carries around several suits of armor and a plethora of weapons in their bag?) Sponteneous halfbaked idea here, but what if magic items could be stripped of their "soul" (presuming this is how magic items will work in PE) and collected either as crafting material or some other boon? I don't know yet how this would work so as to incentivize consuming rare equipment rather than selling it, but maybe one of you has an idea (or will be sure to tell me of how foolish this idea is, no hard feelings I promise)? Maybe enchanted items need to be recharged regularly? (Ouch! Alright, who's throwing the stones?)

I'm sure this is an old and dead topic, but I couldn't find it with a forum search so here goes. How can currency be given a real value to players in PE? In every RPG I remember, I would systematicaly collect and mangage loot to optimize the money I could get selling it. But for the life of me I can't understand why, because in every game money has been a completely useless resource, meant for hoarding and nothing else. Sure, I could buy weapons and armor from merchants - weapons and armor little or no better than what I find dungeon-delving. Heck, maybe I could buy property - a single-payment investment that meant nothing considering my income. And then there was there were the bribes for info and selfless acts of sacrificing coin to help the needy - what sacrifice? "No trouble, maam. I'll just sell an enchanted necklace or something and make it back. There's likely one in that barrel behind you anyway, so if you'll excuse me..." You all get the point, and I'm probably preaching to the choir here on this one. Money in RPGs have, so far as I know, always been completely useless. So how can we change this? First I suppose is to make money less prolific, and not just make items/services more expensive; I doubt many would argue much that this wouldn't be a necessary step. Player income needs to be considerably less abundant. But how can money then be given a real value, made to be worth the effort of collecting? Are critical items like health kits and portal scrolls (or whatever PE will use) to be given exclusively to merchants? Will investments into things such as strongholds require more than a single-cost payment? How else can we make the decisions of spending or sacrificing coin carry more weight than the nil it has in past titles? Would it be better to remove bribes or sacrifices made in coin from PE entirely? What are your thoughts on this matter, and what might you suggest be implemented if you agree that this is an issue that should be addressed?

Yes, a no-nonsense health system is definitely better. NWN, clicking the rest button after every other fight to heal, sometimes having to backtrack a few feet to find a safe place to camp. Those were the days. My PC didn't just go down fighting, he went down fighting with every ounce of vigor as he started with. Ah, the nostalgia. Seriously, the whole rose-colored glasses, any-new-innovation-since-1/2-decades-ago-is-dumb thing is silly. Of course PE isn't going to be exactly the same as BG. There are some things too that can just be plain implemented better, like the health and rest mechanics. I personally think that the staminia business, if it's what I imagine, is a welcome addition to PE. Perhaps a heavy blow to the head isn't enough to kill me outright, but it sure might knock me the heck out of a battle. If it doesn't, the daze will certainly leave me more vulnerable to more damage and/or still yet a KO. And when I step out of battle, the fatigue may dissipate so that I can step into a new encounter with renewed vigor, if not replenished health. Let's face it, no game is perfect and the IE games are no exception, regardless of how vehemently some may try to deny it. There is a lot of room for improvement here I think without straying from what IE games were.

Alright, so I read a bit more into tiling, and came to my own conclusion that tiling is a dead end for PE if we want anything remotely close to unique landscapes. So that brings us (or me anyway) back to where we started. Unique landscapes require, according to the devs, a whole ton of memory. Will compression be enough, or will other tricks, less lossy than tiling, be necessary? What kind of compression should be used, anyway? Edit: Sorry for the self-righteous attitude here, just trying to get a little more inspiration in this thread - the tiling debate is going nowhere fast.

Forgive my ignorance in such matters, but I'm not too sure that reusing objects is the same as using tiles. It sounds like you're descibing prerendered sceneries with a few objects rendered onto them, which would do very little to reduce their aggregate size. What I had imagined was texture tiling such as was used in NWN. This would reduce memory impact from game maps, but would also be much less pretty without a GPU powerhouse of a computer to run on. Edit: Sorry Frisk, you're right, this topic is really losing traction.

I like the idea of unused NPCs having their levels capped just below used ones. I think the slight restriction on companion choice adds more real decision to the game. I'm sure I'm not the only one with the habbit of powering through my game to experience every single bit of content, and this habbit is both unrealistic, and removes much of my games' replay value. I'd like it if my PC only made bonds with companions he traveled regularly with, and that I couldn't completely experience all 8 companions in one playthrough. This doesn't necessarily have to result in left companions getting less EXP, but should otherwise restrict the amount of content I can experience regarding them, such as them being less "open" with my PC, or missing dialog elements during quests. This is of course a touchy suggestion, as many feel that it is their right to experience everything a game has to offer at once. Yet I feel that player decisions and actions should be reflected in the world for consistancy (I shouldn't have to explain how awkward it was to be the arch mage, thief, assassin, and fighter in Skyrim all at the same time), and that this should also extend to companion choice, thus making party generation more dynamic.

Does anyone really think something like this could be done using tiles?

I'd like finisher move animations, so long as they're short and don't, or very hardly, interupt combat. Varied combat animations like NWN had made combat feel a little more dynamic than the turn-based system might suggest. As for character models, I look forward to seeing some pretty impressive characters. Using the 2.5d approach, I would think there should be enough room for some high-poly characters/creatures. I suspect though that this depends on how much vram is left after loading scenery.

You help assuage my fears a little, Infiltrator. I suppose I could like combat stealth so long as it was done right (not DAO). But stealth is more than just getting the first strike in an encounter. What other elements/skills are you looking forward to your rogue (umbrella term) having? Personally, I'd love to see some infiltration type encounters (I have a hunch that you may feel the same). Quests that require the skills of a rogue for more than just opening combat / chests / dialog options (looking at you again, DAO).

Your Fighter is making the enemy Fighter pre-occupied, your Wizard is having a duel against another Wizard whilst their Archer is focused on your Rogue. But the Archer gets distracted when a Magic Missile hits his face, and the Rogue is gone, the Archer lost focus and is now focusing the Fighter. Couple moments later the Archer goes down as the Rogue had taken this moment to sneak around the perimeter and flanked the Archer. Likewise, an easier example: 3v2, you have 2 fighters and a Rogue, the enemy got 2 Fighters. If both my Fighters keep the enemy Fighters busy, they won't have much of a clue of my Rogue sneaking about. That's why it isn't silly, it is just the execution of it (specially in Baldur's Gate) that is somewhat silly (in combat). It could definitely be improved on, and made better. Stealth isn't necessarily your character vanishing into thin air in plain view, it's your character tricking the enemies and pretty much stay in hiding. Your enemies should know that you are out there (if used in combat), they might just not know exactly where. And they should never return to their duties like nothing happened, if you get seen you get seen, the soldier that saw you and his fellows around him should be on high alert. Maybe they should even run across the entire dungeon and alert all of their buddies too ("sound the horns!" works too) making the dungeon suddenly much much more difficult <- That would advocate for quick take downs before everyone are alerted of your crawling about. That's kind of the feel that I was trying to get at (pre-combat anyway), and I can't entirely disagree with the rogue sneaking so long as other enemies are preocupied, which brings me back to my first point: terrain / lighting stealth modifiers. The trouble with having rogues with little other utility than sneaking behind enemies during combat is that it's reminiscent of Dragon Age: Origins rogue combat. And that really stunk. (Traps really were useless in DAO) If this can be improved significantly (see terrain modifiers), I think it would bother me less. Hopefully this example helps to explain better my fears for stealth gameplay (I'm not the only one who thought stealth was crap in DAO, right?).

That's too some extent why I changed my view a little bit. Stealth during non-combat is fine and I do not think it should be cut, I just think that stealth during combat can be rather silly. That isn't to say that rogueish characters shouldn't be able to backstab or anything, but rogueish combat should be more about trickery and misdirection than about sneaking behind opponents. I still think it'd be neat to give stealth classes more devices to work with towards this end. Traps, caltrops, smoke. I'm saying that rogues should have more power to manipulate combat to make up for loss of combat-sneak.

The problem is that while there are many settings where stealth is acceptable, there are also too many settings where it is not. I already used the barren field / broad daylight example. Especially when in a combat setting, this is not acceptable. That's why I suggest a terrain/lighting stealth modifier. I'm not trying to heckle assassins, I love playing assassins/rogues in games. I just feel that if I'm gonna be one, I'd like to feel that I'm playing as one. Entering combat with my whole party, entering sneak mode, and walking right into an enemy to stab them on every encounter does not give me that feel. That's why I think that rogue classes should have more of a combat-control element in combat, and save the stealth for non-combat, where it's truely useful.

Garden gnome. It wouldn't even have to be animated, just always appear from offscreen in front of you as you explore, creepy little lawn accessory that he is.

I think I'd have to agree with AgentOrange there. Unless someone comes up with some good inspiration to fix stealth, I might rather it cut as it always feels kinda dumb in isometric games. At the very least I'd like to see some terrain modifiers to stealth - I'm sick of walking through barren fields in broad daylight undetected because I'm "sneaking." Am I wearing the world's most super-advanced ghillie suit or something? Darting between sparse shrubs? This area could really use some originality. Perhaps rogues can desguise themselves. Maybe scout ahead and set traps/ambushes, throw bombs or create distractions during combat. It'd be real nice to have an infiltrator on my team to open a stronghold's gates from the inside using guile and, yes maybe, stealth (much less obnoxious at night and within city walls in non-combat) while my fighter shakes his fist uselessly outside at the gates. A control character. Really, just needs a little more work than "enter sneak mode, approach enemy, stab, run like heck, repeat."

Great. Well now I just feel stupid.

So, Berath/Cirono have already been revealed as the twinned gods representing the cycle of life and death, and we also have Eothas and Magran. What other dieties would you like to see in PE? How about we make some up! I'll start: Rassah, Treasurer of Souls. He manages and documents all souls that enter and leave purgatory (time between lives). Considered a lesser god, it is he who files all of the paperwork in place of higher gods. When somebody has to pick up lunch for the Office of the Gods, it's usually Rassah. Funny or serious, what are your ideas?

Just my two cents, but I think it'd be simple and neat to be able to portal out at the end of each level, but should one choose to do so, they must fight their way back in, with no promise of loot or experience for levels already cleared. Perhaps the final floor contains a soul-recycler thingamajig that respawns enemys every time a level is exited? This could be any number of things: elder god, undead tyrant, ancient magic, whatever. Being forced to go through all at once as many suggest would just be silly: it'd only be something you'd be able to do end-game, at which point the first levels would be mostly pointless, and in the end you'd have way to much loot, and way to little content left in the game to use it for. Making it too easy though, as many have pointed out, takes much of the fun and challenge out of dungeon-delving.

I think I take a liking to this idea. Having too many religions would be difficult to manage in dialog. I say we stick to a few select religions (3 - 5), or on a different approach, have a few holy factions. Depending on how Obsidian wants to consider the role gods serve in their world, it might make sense that its people worship a single pantheon, but that this pantheon is split into a few holy factions that may compete/ally/abhore one another. Edit: By single pantheon, I mean that all gods/godesses in it are accepted to exist, they just don't have to like each other. Less "my religion doesn't believe in your god" and more "my god doesn't like your god." I think this could be an interesting idea, and might make religion-specific dialog easier to manage.

I'm on this wagon. I don't want all of my choices to be one-dimensional good/evil, but I want the option of either with consequences for both. My biggest criticism of Mass Effect is exactly this: "Oh, you're a 'good' character? Please excuse us while we clear any obstacles and moral dilemas out of your path." I'm saying that there needs to be more ambiguity between choices the PC has to make, so that there aren't always simple good/evil ones, like GhostofAnakin described. No one can stand in the light without casting a shadow.

That might be hard to implement without causing the graphics to tilt. For example, a tall tree would be on a fixed point on the ground, but the top would shift against the more distant background. Yeah, I was afraid of something like that. I think with a bit of trickery and cleverness, it could be avoided, but I certainly don't know. Zero artistic talent over here.

Yep, graphics whore over here too. However good art design is also perfectly acceptable, in its place. I want PE to look gorgeous, as does everbody. It's why PE's pledges jumped with the screenshot. One thing I'm hoping for though, is that the 2D background can be "layered" so that elements of it can move with the panning camera. Of course, if a mostly static image fits the game better, I'm all for that too. Style above all else, I guess.