Pshaw

I'm going to say no. I don't think buying regents from a vendor adds anything but an annoying little bit of inventory management. I also dislike the idea of not being able to use spells I've earned through leveling. Now I would be ok with the idea of some of the highest level spells in the game requiring pricey regents provided they packed sufficient punch. I'm ok with having a spell I only use on bosses or other extremely tough battles because casting it is very costly. Still even in this scenario I'd rather the cost come from the character rather than an item in the inventory. The slayer in BG2 did this pretty well as it cost 2 reputation to transform and ran the risk of getting you killed.

Yes thats why i thought of a system like the one i posted. At hier leves you dont have more life per se (maybe some) but you can have more stamina to fight longer piriods of time. Because the damage system is about dodge, block, parry where your defence rating pairs with the enemys hit rate at hier level you are just better so you "Defend" against all their attacks and because you hit is better that theirs you kill them with one blow. if you fight hordes of enemies you will get tired for defending because against big number of foes, but still you can kill them becasue of the disparity of levels, but big number of enemies can still kill you once you run out of stamina, because "Defending" consumes dirent amount of stamina depending of what you are defending against. Focusing in Atacking skills can do more damage or give you advantages but will consume more stamina son can put you in a tight spot later. so when you fight even leveled matches the for those blows that pass your defence there is the armor to soak some damage. And even magic attack can be "Defended" (dodged, paried or Blocked) so the system still applys. (depending of the sort of magic, for example a Fira ball can be blocked with a shild of dodged a magic arrow can be Dodged, Parried or Blocked, etc.) And depending of what kind of atack is used it defending against it consumes diferent amounts of stamina. For example its kinda simple if you "Defend" againt a giant it could be more tiring that "Defending" againt a weak goblin. All its about the character skill and stamina, that we know the Grate heros should have and not the amout of axes to the head they can take. For example when you see a movie for example Lord of the Rings, when you see a epic battle you see the characters dodging atacks and landing theirs. That image feals right. not just taking a beating to each other till some one falls. Technically this is what HP is supposed to represent. All those times you see the hero getting nicked but ducking out of the way that is supposed to be when HP decreased. Those nicks and bashes that won't kill a person is what is happening to you when you get 'hit' in an RPG. Once your HP is exhausted that is when you've lost the strength to continue on fighting like that and you take the fatal blow. HP isn't meant to be I'm getting stabbed in the eye but I shrug it off because whatever I've still got another eye or taking a cannonball full on to the chest but not caring because I've got pecs of steel. I admit that it is poorly represented in games but what you're talking about is generally what HP is supposed to be representative of. I'd also like to point out that HP adds lee-way where as a hit/miss system generally does not. If you have HP decreasing you can adjust your play accordingly. If you're playing something where dodging, blocking and parrying are the primary means of defense and getting hit through this leads to a quick death than damage feels too spikey. It feels like luck when you die because you just happened to get hit back to back when you've got a 85% chance to avoid attacks so that was just ****ty odds. Personally I hate playing any game where things feel this way. I'm not discounting your idea of a swinging system where going more offensive means sacrificing defense. I just think that it's something that should be done in addition to HP rather than being done instead of it.

Heroes of Might and Magic 2/3 were most likely what you were playing. The series has gone a bit downhill, at least to me, in some of the newer versions. However I think that latest game started getting it right again. I'm pretty sure steam has it fairly cheap by now, or at least I hope it does, so if you're looking for that sort of game it's a good place to start. If you're ok with older games I'd also highly recommend Age of Wonders II, preferably with the expansion Shadow Magic and the fan patch.

Honestly the whitewolf rule sets are very easy to adapt to just about anything. Attribute + skill = roll that many d10's with the game master setting the threshold for success. I know that they also have a fey world setting which you could pilfer from as needed. It may not have been updated in a while at this point but you might be able to find a source book in the internet someplace. Might be a good place to start at the very least. Also you could try and adapt shadowrun by taking it out of the cyberpunk and into a steampunk setting. Thematically it's not too far off from what you're going for but it's simply set in the not so distant future. Somethings could be cut like technomancers that require tech that wouldn't be in your world others like mech-riggers could just be tweaked for clockwork/steam robots. Might be a lot of trouble though.

Personally I worry about a bloodied skin really standing out in the middle of combat with attacks and spell effects flying about. Also I think it would probably still be a lot of work to do that for each and every monster type in the game. I'm not against it persay, but if they did go that route I'd probably want it in addition to another way to tell their health level as blood on the clothing might be a bit too vague for my tastes. But I'm all for the second half if they can fit it in. I like it when in skyrim people comment on you looking sick or shop keepers tell you to get out if you're not wearing any clothes. Having NPCs react to your condition in dialogue would be a nice bit of flavor. Even if it was just limited to shouts while walking around town where NPCs you pass close to would have something like, 'hey you really don't look so good, you should get yourself to a healer' pop up over their heads it would be a welcome addition.

Why is this a problem? Surely you don't complain about games that have nothing but humans. While I can't speak for Betraytheworld I personally I dislike when fantasy/sci-fi games have only humans for a racial option. As much as I love Fallout2 I would have loved to have access to ghouls, mutants, and robots as playable characters. In fantasy games where their are completely distinct races (as opposed to ghouls/mutants having once been human) it seems a bit bland for every race to look like a human variant.

I honestly don't remember if all the races are set in stone yet but I'd like to see this as well if they're not. I always liked playing 'beast' races when available just because they had a bit more flavor than those closer to humans. I do especially like the idea of different morals and values from the differing cultures. That's also how I prefer to see monsters done as well. Rather than just having creatures that are inherently 'evil' and 'good' I like them to just be very alien in their thinking/morals. If a group of sprites and pixies decided to randomly attempt to kill my PC and party I don't want them doing it because they're evil but because they thought it would be hilarious to kill us because we have such laughably short life spans in their eyes anyway that the idea of living at all seems pointless.

I'm not sure how many ways you can take a spiritually ascendant fist fighter and change how he's presented without altering that core principle of the class, which you said you didn't really want altered. The only thing to really change after that is their clothing and personally I don't mind if the monks are looking like European monastic monks with hooded brown robes or if they're Asian inspired monks wearing clothes inspired from that region. Really the issue is that if we see something vaguely Asian we assume their is a culture behind that look because that's the way it is in our world. I'd say any sort of visual style doesn't need to be cultural in its origin. It could just as easily be practical or a quirk of whatever 'order' the monk belongs to. I'm sure monks in PE will end up having a flavor all their own just based solely on how souls fuel the magic of the world. The way they're accessing their power just like priests and mages and fighters will be what ties them into the world in a convincing way so I don't see a need to worry about them sticking out like a sore thumb.

I really liked how they did it in fallout 2. Where a enemy would be called crippled, injured, winded, near death, ect depending on how hurt they were. So if you had a bandit down to 90% he could just be called winded bandit when moused over. I'd say maybe even go so far to only have that appear when paused just to help keep things uncluttered. Then perhaps give access to a perk/skill that let you know the exact number of hit points for those who like to see behind the curtain so to speak. It would be cool to see it visually represent in the animations but I don't know how much time/money that would eat up so I thought I'd suggest this because sometimes I think seeing enemy HP in a neat little bar floating over their heads is a bit unwelcome.

A handful of time sensitive quests are good. So long as they're not also time sensitive in terms of when they're taken. If I need to take a quest right now or not at all, then it's got a timer that's just annoying. It makes me feel like my game has been hijacked. So long as they aren't also forced on me I'm ok with it. I can either take the quest and get right to it if I so choose or reload my last save and let it sit until I'm ready to take it.

If orlan are anything like Mogwai then I have to play one.

I like this idea. However as much as people like me and you would love this and explore everything there are a far larger number of people out there who won't to the extra exploration. 'So what?' you might ask, but sadly content that isn't used is wasted. So while I can get behind saying, 'hey man if it's not for you just skip it. No harm no foul.' from a developer standpoint you don't want to waste money on content people aren't going to see/use. Sadly we're living in a time when most people don't even complete the console games they buy let alone grand 40+ hour rpgs. I'd really like to see this sort of thing implemented but I think from the developers POV it's really just not worth the time/resources to implement so much content in between the content.

Well if it needs to run 4-6 months longer than estimated I wouldn't be upset. Any longer than that and I'd feel a bit let down. I'm sure they felt pretty confident in how long it would take them to put a game like this together and probably set the release date on how fast they thought they could get it done well with a little bit of wiggle room. Beyond just wanting to get it out ASAP I think that there are a few other things that would probably be a large factor in wanting The first is the budget. That 4+ Million we raised needs to go to pay the salaries for quiet a few people. If they have a team of around 30 that's about 140K for a year and a half of work per person without including any sort of allowance for expenses in licensing or advertisement buys and the like. So for every dollar spent outside of salaries it decreases the amount they're getting payed over these next 1.5 years. So while I'm sure they appreciate hearing that we're willing to wait til the game is ready I'm fairly certain that the long the development goes on the thinner their budget for salaries is stretched.* Also there is the launch window to be considered. It looks like they're aiming late q1 early q2 of 2014 which is a good time to launch new IP or things that can't compete with the q4 AAA titles. In the summer (late q2 early q3) people are on vacation or out and about in the nice weather and not buying as many games. In late q3 and q4 they'd have to compete with the September/October rush and all big AAA titles later on. So they have a large reason to not miss the launch window they're gunning for. It gives them the best chance at high sales which is of course something they really want so they can make profits. If they delay too long after the window they're shooting for they're going to hit a non-ideal launch time. * I of course can't vouch 100% for how the kickstarter money is being allocated but I can only assume that a good majority is going to towards the team's salary.

I loved the world of morrowind but beyond that I wouldn't argue that it's better than oblivion or skyrim. While I do miss the spellcrafting from the earlier 2 games that's about the only thing I miss gameplay wise. Morrowinds world itself was a horrid randomly generated mess. Nothing but hills forming alleys across and an island filled with dust. The leveling system could and would punish you if you were not leveling up properly. The fact that walking around jumping non-stop and spaming crafted spells that did 1 damage on touch or illusion 1% for 1 second to boost your spell stats was an awful and tedious system. The upscaling of monsters until they all just gave you a disease wasn't a good way to go about adding challenge to the world. The main story itself was forgettable, I only ever completed it once and never had any plans to again in subsequent playthroughs. The only thing Morrowind had going for it was an interesting setting. Both Oblivion and Skyrim just feel too medieval with no flavor for me to really fall in love with the setting. No giant mushrooms and floating jellyfish giving that sense of mystery and fantasy that I got in Morrowind. However personally I find Skyrims more streamlined combat and leveling a boon to the series. It made it a bit more natural and far harder to create a character that couldn't keep up with the content. Some systems still need work. Mainly melee has always been a bit off in the elderscrolls series. Spell casting could use a bit of tweaking as well to get away from the 4-6 spells and you're out of mana time to pull out your sword kind of combat. Granted that changes once your enchanting is high enough to self enchant all your gear with the right stats but that's a long time coming. The UI also needed to be improved on the PC version. It was clearly set up for consoles which is fine but it's still clunky on the PC. Just take the time and build the UI properly for the PC. So while Skyrim certainly has it faults I still think it the best of the 3 modern elder scrolls games. Especially since many of the major issues (like the magic and melee combat I just mentioned) plague all of the games in the series not just this one. As do problems with NPC interaction and a dozen other things I won't delve into at the moment.

I'm sorry.. I can't help but feel you've missed the entire point I was making with that particular argument. Unwelcome advances are not my concern, blatant disregard for consistent characterization is. If a character has shown a complete lack of empathy and an interest in nothing but the blissful feeling of bloody giblets rubbing against his skin then his priority should not be to disrobe a woman and make sweet love to her like the classiest gentleman in the known universe. He should be more interested in where he'll get the giblets for his next bath. Being a Player Character should not allow me to change a character like that by will of the Gods. This guy thrives on violence, he lives for death, he has utterly no remorse and a blatant disregard for the suffering of others, I should not have the power to wipe his slate clean and turn him into the living embodiment of the suave and sophisticated James Bond. If the first Baldur's Gate game had included romance, should I have had the ability to bed the mad mage Xzar? Should that have been an option? Sure he likes to brutally murder people in the most inventive ways, and he's a complete nutter obsessed with violence, murder and death, but dammit! He was sexy in those robes! No. I'm sorry, but the power of "wuv" should not entitle the Player to change the very basic foundations of a character just for the opportunity to establish a romantic relationship. I agree with you. However I think that you can have a 'romance' with such a character despite this. For example if throughout the game you continually choose the most aggressive and evil options available to you and relish the the thought and feeling of hacking your way through a group of anything that looks at you funny than I'd say you and Xzar should be able to get together and talk killing some night and maybe have a romp in the sack while you're at it. This isn't entirely unheard of in movies where a psychotic couple loves each other while they love killing. Natural Born Killers and The Frighteners both spring to mind. However if you're a champion of justice and peace and all things warm and cuddly than an option to romance an evil psychotic shouldn't be available. Now I personally wouldn't want such a romance in the game as it's a bit too macabre for me. Once again I agree that a romance shouldn't change a characters personality but that isn't to say you can't have one in line with their personality even if that personality is a bit off. Morrigan in DA:O was a strong, driven, cynical, bitch. If you romanced her she might have reluctantly decided that you were ok, but she still saw the world the same way. In the end she'd still want to have your demon baby and run off with it leaving you in the dust despite your relationship and her feelings towards you. So I agree that romances if included should not fundamentally and radically alter a companions character. Then again, nobody said that in order to have a romance you had to.

I feel that when it comes to non-combat related skills/perks they shouldn't be tied to a class at all. Which is to say just because I'm a priest doesn't mean I should be unable to picklocks or disarm traps. Nothing about being a priest prohibits me from learning these things. As such I think classes combat potential (whether that be damage, survivability, healing, buffing, debuffing, ect) should be balanced against combat potential. Out of combat skills and perks shouldn't be tied to combat at all. Though I think you should have to choose between whether or not you are going to improve your combat skils or noncombat skills as you level. Such as the skills system in fallout. If you wanted to be great at barter or sneaking you had to give up putting points into lasers or melee. You make the choices in the direction your character grows and at what rate but the only thing your class locks them into is their combat abilities.

Because the higher quality the character models the easier it is to draw disparity between them and the "dead" flat 2d image with no movement, active shading, or depth. Well it depends how it's handled. While I know this game has no where near the budget of Diablo III all the objects that weren't a part of the background blended in perfectly. They were just skinned in such a way that was totally consistent artistically with the background. It's hard to notice some of the more subtle stuff when you're out hacking hordes of monsters to bits but if you run on out the fields of misery in act 1 you can find plenty of areas where there is tall grass that sways and moves as you run through it. They'll also to the same for explosions and attacks that happen on the grass. Also in act 1 at any point where you're in the monastery run up to where the long draping tapestries are hanging on the wall and attack. They flap around and move while you attack near them and if you don't do that you'd probably just assume they're static since they blend in so well. This of course doesn't take into account any of the various destructible objects throughout the game as well. So my point is that it's entirely possible to place high quality 3D objects on top of painted backgrounds without having an obvious separation. It just requires a bit of a hand touch in the skinning and lighting of the objects to make them seamless. This is also a million times easier to do in a game with a fixed perspective which is why Diablo III steadfastly refused to change this aspect of the game.

While I do love when a JRPG has character portraits that change based on the dialogue I don't think such a thing fits in with this game. For example in a lot of JRPGs you'll get characters with portraits or full characters who have different expressions for a variety of emotions. Usually angry, scared, sad, embarrassed, ****y, ect. While I do enjoy these in JRPGs I think that with the tone of this game we won't be seeing simply drawn character portraits. I think it's more likely that they'll have fully painted portraits such as they had in Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. Changing the expression/poses on those sorts of portraits is a bit more involved and therefore expensive. So I imagine for budget alone this wouldn't be a real possibility if they wanted to keep that sort of artistic fidelity in tact. So the next option that wouldn't involve repainting a plethora of extra emotive portraits for companions and PCs would be to simply go the emoticon route. While this is inexpensive to implement I feel that it breaks immersion when present in games. While I don't strictly mind it when I'm replaying Grandia or Breath of Fire I'm also a bit more removed from the world in those games. I'm playing a set character and the outcome in the game is always the same so I don't mind them breaking immersion a bit because I'm not as invested in feeling a part of the world while I play. I really wouldn't want a portrait like those from BG to suddenly get tear drops placed over them or that little angry forehead vein commonly used in more anime style games. I just don't seem the styles blending together well. So I say just make sure the dialogue box is more than just dialogue. Write descriptions of what the character is doings while they talk, how they look, the tone they're saying it in, just as you would in a book. While this might be 'wordy' for some I know it's one thing that people really loved about Planescape Torment and personally I think it's the right way to go in a game like this.

A mix of everything is best. Beyond that a high amount of monster types helps keep things from feeling grindy. I think mobs of enemies is probably the least appealing type to see over and over as they lead to that grindy feeling faster than a few more challenging monsters. Oh also boss fights that mostly consist of defeating a larger than average amount of monsters are boring and don't feel functionally different from the trash you need to clear to reach them. As such they shouldn't be done or done very sparingly because the last thing I want to do upon reaching the end of a dungeon is get more of the same for the boss.

I'm ok with Forton. The idea of an elderly yet still hard as nails kung-fu master is cool to me. I'll admit that I'm not a huge fan of his concept art but that's just my personal preference in art not because he's 'ugly' or anything like that. I kind of consider him to be the Heihachi of this game he just needs to get that hair sticking straight up rather than leaving it down. Edit: I guess he'd need a bad ass mustache as well to pull of the Heihachi look.

I like the idea about influencing factions relationships with other factions. I'm not entirely sure I'd want them to go so far to mini-game it where you could upgrade their weapons and give them funding and keep track of the territory they control and so forth. Not because I think it would be bad but because I think when you get in that in depth with this 1 aspect of the game I think story elements and overall content amount would suffer. As far as staged encounters where you can stumble across a battle between factions I think these are always good. It just helps the world feel more realistic as not everything is about you. A simple flavor example is in open world games where you can find predators hunting prey animals or stumble across 2 different monsters fighting. It's a simple touch but it helps the world feel real. When you add in factions battling it moves beyond just a bit of flavor. If you find an order of rangers battling a group of highway men who've set up on in the woods battling each other you get the the flavor of a living world in addition to extra player choices. You could rush in and help 1 side or the other, just leave and let them fight it out, rush in and kill everybody, wait it out and just finish off the winner. Something that helps both world feel more alive and changes up the random encounters in the game is a great thing. So yes, please add warring factions in at least this regard.

I'm ok with these sort of fetch quests or kill X quests so long as they're in the minority and non-story related. Really the place I don't want to see filler is in the amount of combat encounters. I'd rather have a battle last 10 minutes or so and do 3-5 of those per dungeon than have 20 1-4 minute battles. I just hate clearing pack after pack of monsters in a dungeon, it becomes drudgery, especially if they're just all the same sort of group over and over. So I would ask that they don't pad the game time with wave after wave of the same monster packs just to increase the game play length. Or if there must be caves with 25 or more groups of monsters add a mid boss every 10-15 groups or so. Preferably with a bit of dialogue or guarding access to some interesting world lore to break up the combat grind.

I approve of this. I like having individual party members being able to innate dialogue as it gives companions more uses beyond combat. However if who does the talking is simply chosen by whomever reaches the NPC first I can see it leading to annoyance of have to single select your party spokesman constantly and sending them off to talk to each NPC before selecting the whole party to move out again. It's not a game breaker but it seems easy enough to design around as you've suggested by being able to set a primary representative for the party so I see no reason to not include it.

I never kited in the BG games so I have no idea how well it works. I did however summon a fleet of 6 magic swords, send them into a room of enemies, shut the door and let them kill everything in site while I stood back safely with the party and just rested as needed. That said if I didn't want to cheese out those fights I simply would not. I feel the same way about kiting. Generally speaking somebody will at some point find the 'best' way to win fights at some point. However if I personally dislike that play style I won't do it regardless of it being the best or not. So even if you can kite in the game simply choose not to if it's not something you enjoy. I would ask the developers to not make any 1 particular style or group set up feel required to beat the game. It would be 1 thing if the AI would allow for kiting from time to time, it's another to be forced to do it in order to beat the content.

Honestly even if this is the case it's indicative of what they're going for. I still stand by the fact that I think that scene or a scene like it has more visual appeal than any area or zone present in DA:O. This is a matter of personal opinion but I'd take the dated graphics of BG 1 & 2 (in terms of background design) over the narrow boring hallways of DA2. Further more I think these sort of stylistic graphics hold up far better over time than realism. Realism is only amazing until the next set of graphics cards are out. Morrowind was gorgeous at the time of it's release but if you play it today it's really showing its age. Where as I have no doubt that I will feel every bit as strongly about Odin Sphere or Bastion looking amazing even another 10-20 years from now. I still get greater visual enjoyment out of Fallout 2 from 1998 than I do out of Neverwinter nights 2 from 2006. If I replay FFVII the dated polygon characters are bit hard to take seriously but if I'm walking around in the city of the ancients I'm still impressed by those backgrounds. If you personally think that DA:O or NWN style 3D is more appealing than the fixed isometric approach PE will take I can understand that. I simply disagree and think that if done properly this game will look better than anything done in full 3D.