Pshaw

Sorry I must have misread and assumed you meant for them to be class restricted. I'm totally fine with a class starting at a higher level of weapon mastery in a specific type of weapon than others so long as all classes can master it. As you say even mastering certain weapon types more quickly is a good way to go about this. I would however like any implementation of weapon mastery to increase via use and not through a talent, feat, perk, or anything similar that you gain upon leveling. I always hated D&D style weapon proficiencies where you had burn a feat to be able to learn to use new weapon types.

I really think that every class should be able to have access to every weapon and use them equally well. If I think my priest should be wading into combat with full plate and a 2 handed sword with his spells to back him up that should be up to me. I think the drawback to such a load out should be universal as well, full plate provides better physical protection but slows movement speed and lowers dodge chances, maybe lower magic defense as well. The 2 handed sword should hit hard and have big crit damage but swing slowly making enemy dodges hurt you that much more as you wait to swing again. If you give these sorts of bonuses I find that they're either too small to matter or too big to be ignored. If they're small then they might as well put the time into something else if they're too big then you end up only using weapons you have the bonus on and it limits your gear selection. So I'd much rather not have class exclusive weapons or exclusive bonuses to them. I don't like finding gear and thinking, 'oh this is warrior loot and this is ranger loot' then discarding it because it's not something ideal for my party because they get bonuses from other weapon types. Also if you add class exclusive weaponry then you need to make sure all that stuff drops often enough so that you can the right type of weapons for your party composition and all those weapons that don't fit in are just junk. I'd rather the amount of loot dropping be less often but higher in quality so little to none of it is wasted loot. Adding exclusive weapons seems to work counter to this. Just my 2 cents but in the end as cool as it is flavor wise, and it is cool, I think gameplay wise it adds more negatives than positives. At least for me.

Diablo 3 is probably the best example of a hand painted isometric game that is current. I think it's one of the best looking games to have been released in years. Even all the 3D objects are beautifully painted and integrated well into the background.

People who say that, "criminals and mad men would get guns anyway" aren't being entirely honest with themselves. If I was an angry kid wanting to do something like this and assuming my family didn't have a gun to steal I wouldn't know where to go to buy one illegally on the fly. Personally I don't know where to go to buy an illegal gun. That right there would leave me either without a gun or having to get on legally. Perhaps while waiting on getting one legally I'd have to reassess what a f*ckin' awful idea getting a gun to kill innocent children was and would get help. Perhaps I wouldn't get a gun at all because somewhere along the line somebody realized I was a crazy son of a b*tch and didn't give me a permit to own a gun. How many of our 10 THOUSAND plus deaths from guns annually would be prevented if an angry husband or wife couldn't reach into a closet in a moment of anger and grab a convenient gun they had for 'protection'? How many kids wouldn't shoot their friends if they didn't find guns in the house? How many people wouldn't mistakenly shoot friends and family thinking they were buglers breaking into the house? Even the criminals we're all supposed to be scared of, how many of them are just desperate people who without convenient access to a gun wouldn't have killed the person they were robbing? After all if you're knocking over the liquor store to get money for food or drugs you've probably long ago spent all the money you had and would have had nothing left in order to buy a gun with which to rob somebody. It's true that guns aren't solely to blame, there's tons of factors, but the guns make it easier to carry out this sort of mayhem. For example look at the similar attack that occurred in china today. 22 children were stabbed, but none were killed. If the gutless wonder from today's attack had to stab people maybe less people would have died. Maybe 1 of those 6 adults he killed would have overpowered him and those children would still be safe. If you're going to tell me that 'oh it's just as easy to go around killing people with a knife as it is a gun' you're lying to yourself. You're crazy if you don't think less guns around the country would mean fewer deaths from guns. Finally you're also crazy if you think making guns harder to get and banning certain types of guns all together would lead to total anarchy where criminals ruled the streets and a fascist government oppressed the people. MANY countries have harsher gun laws than us and are not falling prey to these pro-gun boogey men. Even criminals don't go around shooting up schools it's regular people who are troubled that finally snap. There are other things to talk about as well. The health care system in this county (but then again many pro-gun people are also anti-universal healthcare) is one of them. The fact that even if you do get help their is still a huge stigma associated with seeing a therapist. The lack of time parents have to spend with their children due to most family's needing to put in longer hours and work harder for smaller wages leaving them too exhausted or simply not present at all in their children's lives. The media that pounces on these tragedies for ratings (side note, in china they also don't report much on these attacks in the news to prevent copycatting) even though it's been shown that covering these stories in the way we do increases the likelihood of another similar attack. The list goes on and on. Just because it's a long list however doesn't mean that gun control and reform of gun laws shouldn't be discussed. Truthfully they belong on the list if not right at the top.

I generally have used buffs in past IE games as a get ready for a boss fight otherwise I just took oh sh*t buttons that would save a character from getting dead. Honestly though I don't mind buffs. I think the best way to keep them from getting too tedious is to do it in 2 groups. The first group is long buffs (lasts 24 game hours) with smaller effects. Small increases in damage, defense, hit points, critical hit chance, and so on. These would be the lower level buffs, you get them early and can use them to make up wherever you feel your party is lacking. These shouldn't be stackable, so if you have 2 bards singing the same +5% damage song you shouldn't get 10% damage. The next group is short powerful buffs (10-30 seconds) to be used in combat on the fly. These would grant large bonuses to just about anything imaginable or be the oh sh*t buttons that make you invulnerable for a short time and the like. If spells are on cool downs these should have long cool downs in order to keep them from being too strong in combat, anywhere from 3min to 30min. Any effects from these buffs should be in addition to the effects of the longer lasting buffs.

I like a bit of horror in my games. I full think that you can pull off some horror in a isometric game like this since really it's mostly about atmosphere. I don't expect to feel scared but just getting a horror 'vibe' is all I'd really want anyway.

I've always felt the other way around, that something looked big on the outside, with multiple floors, and then you got inside and it was small. That said it just doesn't really bother me much personally. I can see it as an oddity but it don't really think about it beyond that. If you start nit-picking these things then you start to wonder how come the Inn has no bedrooms, why there is no wash tub or kitchen and so on.

Honestly every game you named suffers from the same problem with me which is boring combat. Skyrim and fallout slightly less so but it's still pretty tedious. Simply put I have a hard time enjoying the story and characters when after every brief interlude of conversation I need to dive into another hours worth of stale comabt encounters.

I've said this in other threads where this topic has come up but I don't mind saying it again :-p I really liked how endings were handled in Dragon Age: Origins. Things were left open enough for expansions and additional content to continue the story but it also gave you lots of feedback to how you played and what choices you made. It gave you a chance to touch-base with all your remaining companions and see what their plans were for the future now that the mission was completed. This is pretty much what I'd like to see. I want more personalized ending than what we saw in infinity engine games where everybody gets the same ending or maybe 2-3 choices and that's it. If they want to have a good, evil, and failing ending I'm ok with that so long as that's not all there is to the epilogue. Also I dislike having just a bad ending or just a failure ending. I'm ok with them being in as 1 possible outcome of many but I hate know that my ending (since I take the time to keep everybody alive and do every quest) is the same as the ending of somebody who played sloppily.

I really don't want my inventory clogged with stray junk just for the sake of 'realism.' Besides I personally wouldn't be looting somebody's pants and shirt after I just blew holes in them with magic and cut them up with swords. I say keep the loot to a reasonable amount and if they don't have clothing, armor, or weapons on the corpse assume you broke it beyond use in the fight.

I think some sexism is good but I'd try and balance it if at all possible since I feel that it's generally woman always getting the shaft. For example I know that in one book I read that handling money and bartering was seen as unmanly so the women tended to handle it transactions while men couldn't really talk about money at all. In another it was reading that wasn't something men did so men in the culture had to rely on women for book keeping and the like. I'd rather see culturally related sexism along those lines rather than the typical men do the fighting women make the babies sexism.

So you're looking for something like say becoming a Reaver in Dragon Age: Origins? I'd be open to this but the issue is balance. If they do this for monks they'd have to do an equal number for all classes. While I'd love that I just don't know if it's in the cards with the budget constraints they'll be under.

It's hard to say without making a character as I tend to come out with the character as I go through the character creation process. That said I usually go a middle of the road, more good than evil play-through first off. After that I tend to go with a ruthless and selfish character. Still without the setting it's really hard to tell. I made a mage in DA:O intending to be good but seeing the setting and how mages were treated I definitely was more 'evil.'

Patrick Rothfuss. Name of the wind is one of most interesting and best written fantasy stories written in years. An extremely well developed magic system that fits into the world in a believable way. Great characters that you always want to know more about. If I had to choose 1 writer to distil into the game it would be him.

I think that characters should have different personalities and that's really all their is to it. Some should be serious, others silly, just like people in real life. I still think even serious ones should occasionally show some rye humor or gallows humor because that's only human. Just like I don't mind if there is an overly silly or crass character. People can take the companions whose personalities they enjoy with them and leave the rest behind. If you encounter an NPC that isn't your cup of tea, slog through it, just like in real life not everybody you meet will appeal to you and sometimes you need to deal with people who annoy you. Now I do agree with the OPs spirit of this post. It's all well and good to say you don't want memes (since there was a thread on that) because they're immersion breaking and usually tired by the time a game is released. However I don't want the game to be so 'mature' in it's subject matter that it's just dour from start to finish. Even games with darker settings and plots manage to slip in humor from time to time. I don't think that we have much to worry about in this regard though. I'm sure that we'll get jokes and lighthearted moments throughout the game.

Those who download from the net any form of art, are not commiting crime. They're not even tresspassing the intellectual property law. A particular user doesn't need to ask for the authors authorization to copy any musical or audiovisual work. If the user makes a copy, without being an object of business, it will remain into legal lines. It will be considered as "PRIVATE USE" (Uso Privado). I'm a bit confused, you're saying that downloading copy righted material is legal? It is not. Fair use doesn't cover as much as some people like to think it does. Generally it only applies in specific instances such as educational purposes or only a small portion of something being reproduced. If you download music off the internet and store it on your hard drive you can be sued by the copyright holders for copyright infringement. They couldn't do that if it was legal to download anything you please of the net . Furthermore I'm sure most people aren't just leechers and upload something while they download in which case you're distributing not merely downloading and that is also illegal regardless if you're making a profit or not. Now I'm talking about US law, I know that some countries like in Canada and Spain it IS legal to download things from the internet for personal use so long as you're not making a profit off it. Also let's just get real for a minute, forget all the legal BS for a second. There is a reason you're supposed to pay for games/movies/books/music/what-have-you. Namely because people put time and effort into creating that product for you to enjoy and they should be paid for their efforts. Is there really an argument that musicians, artists, authors, game studios, movie crews, actors and who the hell knows how many other people shouldn't be payed for the work they do? I really hope not. These people have talent (generally) and talent should rewarded, there's a reason not everybody can be an A list actor or an artist that's a house hold name. Anyway last post for this topic I don't intend to get bogged down nit picking people who aren't comfortable admitting piracy is wrong. Lets face it, you know it's wrong. You just want to justify it so you don't need to admit to yourself that it's the wrong way to go about getting that content so you can feel free to continue doing it. Once again my stance is pirate all you want, just admit that you know you shouldn't be doing it and that is wrong and knowing that you'll continue to do it anyway for whatever reasons you may have. So with that said I wash my hands of this thread.

Pirating games isn't sharing it's duplicating. When I share a book I cannot read the book until it's returned. If I seed a torrent I'm not sharing I'm duplicating which is in fact illegal, regardless if you're making a profit it or not. Once again if you're pirate that's your choice, nobody will convince you otherwise. I just want people to stop acting like it's a noble thing they're doing by 'sharing' these games with the internet. The actions of pirates hurt game developers and publishers and retailers which in turn hurts the populace since there are less jobs available when these companies lose money or close. If you argue that you're simply deluding yourself. Also most countries don't prosecute on piracy simply because it costs too much to do so. Most people can drive around with tons of parking tickets without ever paying for them, it doesn't make it ok to park in handicap spaces.

I understand what you're getting at in the OP but I must say I've never played a game where I felt that my companion characters were stronger than me. More often I find myself in the position of being so much stronger that my companions just aren't all that needed. As others have said the key is to allow characters specializations. If I'm playing a tank like character I don't expect to be able to kill things as well as the mage. But I wouldn't want to be a worse tank than a companion. Equal or equal but different are fine but I worse would be annoying. Still I don't see this being much of an issue since I've not experienced it personally in any games that I can recall.

My hope is that they stay away from full sweeping orchestral pieces aside from the title screen and key moments. I feel that in many movies and games all I'm ever hearing is blaring trumpets and latin/made-up chanting and it all starts to lose it's impact after awhile. I'm a huge fan of Matt Uelman who did the sound tracks for Diablo 1 & 2 and Torchlight 1 & 2. D3's score isn't bad but I'd admit to barely noticing it. It's certainly not memorable. http://youtu.be/dZXleREW38U The entire is simply perfect. Some songs from Mass Effect such as the and the galaxy map song, uncharted worlds really stand out and bring up fond memories whenever I hear them. Of course various songs from the Final Fantasy series I always enjoy, I get nostalgic whenever I hear Aeris's theme, the , or Kefka's Theme which I used as the ring tone for my work phone. Finally though I've got stay that bar-none the best videogame score I've ever head goes to . It might be because I feel like it goes against what I said at the start of this post and uses high tempo in your face songs for pretty much the whole score, which fits for an action game, but then uses low key acoustic songs for impact. Whatever the reason I constantly find myself muting game music to put this on in the background instead. I firmly believe that borderlands 1/2 sound better with bastions score than their own. I listen to it while I'm reading or working as much as any other video game score I've ever owned. theme and theme both are amazing songs in their own right with no nostalgia for the game involved.

It's not that I disagree with what you're saying 100% it's just that I hate that argument. If developers can't say with certainty that you would have bought their product if not for piracy than you can't say with certainty that without piracy those people who thought they'd "never buy" a game wouldn't eventually buy it. I've turned so many of my friends on to WoW when they would "never ever buy a game they had to pay to play" which might have been true at the moment they said it but sure enough I had them shelling out $60 and a monthly fee a month after they said that. The same applies to these people who can't afford or would 'never buy' a game when it's released. You don't, and can't, know that 1, 2 or even 6 months down the line after hearing reviews and friends talk about X game that they might not buckle and buy it while it's on sale someplace. Even if you can never afford it and do never buy it that's ok. Getting to enjoy a companies labors that took years and cost millions without paying for it is not ok regardless of how you try and rationalize it. Still it's irrelevant game companies see people pirating games who did not pay for them. These people clearly have interest enough in the game to pirate it and play it which means they are potential customers as they show interest in the game. To get back to the OPs main point we need try and at least take a stand that piracy is in fact wrong regardless of how it's rationalized and regardless of the fact that we probably won't be able to stop it. If we don't we're going to just continue losing more and more games to the free to play with micro-transactions model, always online with server side content or to consoles which are considerably harder to pirate games on. I personally don't want any of those things. As such I will stand on the anti-pirate side of things and even the pro-drm side of things because I don't like seeing developers go bankrupt and I like playing games on my PC offline and without my credit card handy.

I agree with you there as well, I'm against piracy but I'm one of the ones who've been shouted down so to speak and I've tempered my views about it. I wish that it weren't so but to be frank I don't think a block of text on the internet will ever dissuade somebody from doing what they're intending to do. So in the end I've decided to live with pirates pirating games I just don't want to hear them claiming to be Robinhood while they do so.

Great post Hormalakh. Sadly complacency against piracy and even used game sales will only hurt the game industry in the long run. I've see the arguments on both sides but really all it ever has come down to for me is that if you're going to pirate games nobody will convince you to stop. I'd just ask that pirates stop hiding behind the scapegoats of DRM or games being overpriced to justify the games they steal. It's not justified so just go ahead and say, 'I steal games for reason X, it's not right but I do it anyway' and I'll have no beef with you. So if you're a pirate please stop acting like it's ok or even a good thing to steal because you're unhappy with some aspect of the game. I know DRM is a tricky topic and some people have (perhaps disproportionately) strong opinions about it but in the end I can count on 1 hand the number of times DRM has ever given me any trouble while playing a game. Maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know, but I sadly see it as the lesser of 2 evils in this case. If you're somebody against DRM I'm fully in support of you not buying a game with overly restrictive DRM. I do not support people pirating it and saying that it's ok because you're anti DRM. PS: Also I hope we don't get into the semantic argument that digital piracy isn't theft because you're not taking anything from anybody. You are, you're taking a sale away from the developer/publisher/retailer.

Honestly I'm not overly interested in the BGEE. Don't get me wrong I think it's a good thing but I've already played it and as much as touched up graphics and a little bit of extra content is a nice draw it probably won't be enough to get me to shell out the money for it. Mostly it's because as much as I loved the BG series I've found that the combat systems didn't hold up very well over time. I find them a bit dull when I replay them now-a-days. So in the end I'll skip it. Maybe I'll give it a shot on my brothers I-pad whenever he visits but that's about it.

I find this to a bit silly. In a game like New Vegas where you can just enable the console and add all the gold you want I'm not sure I see the point in trying to stop people from cheating at gambling. Heck I don't see the point in save-scumming your gambling at all when a console command will save you a lot of time if you want to get gold outside of the spirit of the game.

Thats true, for many the DA series has become a paradigm of how not to produce an RPG Which is in some ways a bit of a shame as DA:O had more than a few strong points and overall was decent. It was DA2 (and DA3 doesn't seem to be shaping up any better) that really brought out all the hate for the franchise and makes DA:O seem bad by association.