Shadowmant

Yes, at least in the form that monsters won't by default give XP for every one you kill. Achieving certain objectives (another word was used here instead of objectives that was better) would award XP. There was nothing saying that if it was an important monster/group of monsters that they won't be an objective and reward XP for killing them though. It just gives them a system where they can reward you for defeating an encounter other ways as well (so perhaps you talk your way out of the fight or set off a landslide that kills a few of the monsters to soften them up) without making you sacrifice all that XP.

Yep, level 12 is the hard level cap unless that gets changed during development of course, but that seems as unlikely as anything can this early in production.

So I was wondering what peoples feeling are in terms of the pacing of character levels and how fast or slow you should gain them. We know at this point there are 12 levels (or 11 instances of levelling up) and while we do not know the lengh of the game I see a lot of people guessing in around the 20-25 hour mark. How do people feel the level pacing should go. Should it be a flat rate of roughly 1 level per 2 hours of play? Should your early levelling be accelerated and then the later levelling be slowed (say around 4 hours per level)? Should the levelling be quick but cause you to hit the level cap earlier (such as 3/4 of the way through the game)? What are peoples thoughts on this?

Bob: Hey John? John: Ya Bob? Bob: Look over there. John: What is it? Bob: Some guy with a flaming lightsaber just flew through the door and stabbed Benny in the throat. John: Dammit Bob, that's way over on the other side of the room, could you please focus and get back to work? Bob: Yah.... yah I guess so.

I really think it depends on the context of the character wearing it. If she's a hardened veteran of war leading a patrol through brigand infested forests, I would hope for realistic functional armour. If we're talking about the egotistical young mage who thinks she is invincible and relies on her spells and enchantments for defence then go for the more artistic stuff.

It's funny because there are so many articles online about kickstarter not delivering because of all these video games missing their target dates. However, it's not the industry norm to provide a release window when a project begins and with such a complex creative endeavour it's not realistic to. It becomes even more complex if you exceed your goals and expand upon the project. It's not as simple as a manufacturing kickstarter where you just order a larger run of the item from the factory. I think the current kickstarter policies on the release dates need to be revamped. Even if you could pre-set different release dates for each stretch goal achieved before the project starts I think it would be helpful. Games would still miss their initial goals (just the nature of the beast) but it would help to have them miss by a much less extreme amount of time than you currently see.

With single player games I very much prefer to wait for the actual release because the alphas/betas are going to be buggy and ruin the story/experience. Multi-player games are a different matter as it can be beneficial to learn the mechanics ahead of the crowd to get an early advantage out of the gate.

It's really nice to see these type of games making a comeback, I really enjoy them (generally). I've been really surprised that none of these "AAA" studios have noticed the trend and announced something themselves. Though, that may prove to be a good thing, as it might allow some of the smaller studios time to establish themselves and put more competition into that space.

Good thing they've spent nowhere near the price of a AAA game. Or cost the same either. SR:R is $20 and W2 is going to be $25 (I believe) on release.

I would argue that the wheel of time was ripe with religions. You had the Aes Saidi who believed in the creator and the wheel of time controlling all events. You also had the dark friends who worshiped the dark one as if he was a god. Additionally you had the Whitecloaks who seemed inspired by both the Christian crusaders and the Christian inquisition and they were heavily religious and powerful to have rule over Arcadia much in the same way as the church ruled Britain at some points of history. You also had the Maesma's Prophet of the Dragon cult who worshiped the dragon reborn as a god. Finally you had the Senchan who seemed very inspired by the old Japanese God-Emperor model.

If there are going to be pre-combat buffs you might as well give a UI where you can tell the system what buffs go on what character and it casts them automatically out of combat. It just removes the tedium from pre-buffing since your just going to have to do it all the time anyways. As for removing pre-buffing all together... that seems difficult to do without removing buffing all together. Though there have been a few neat ideas thrown around in the the thread.

I can't help but wonder where you go if you crawl through one of the smaller portal holes in that thing...

Missing the K

To have a quick save button that generates a new save as opposed to overwriting the previous quick save.

FTL - Fantastic game. I have nothing bad to say Star Command - They didn't deliver everything they hoped to but the game was still pretty fun. Shadowrun Returns - They have only delivered half so far (and announced the second half). Pretty fun, good story but linear. Second half is supposed to be less linear. Banner Saga - Had fun with their PvP portion. Really great battle system. Not tried the PvE version the kickstarter was for though. Expeditions: Conquistador - I didn't even realize this was a kickstarter game when I bought it. Had a lot of fun with it. Battleworld Kronos - Just didn't click with me and I didn't enjoy the game. So far I've been happy overall with the games I've played. I haven't run into any situations of the developer just running off with my money or a game being significantly different than what was promised. I'd say I've had much more disappointment with steam sale impulse buys and "official" pre-orders than I have with the kickstarted games I've gotten, but hey, millage may vary.