Pshaw

They've said they want the game to complete-able solo or with a party size of your choice. typically these sorts of dungeons force a certain number of party members on you where each member or smaller group needs to complete objectives in their respective parts to open the way forward for others. In the spirit if keeping it solo viable I'm sure this is something they'd want to include. Sure you could have 'spirit guardians' or something sub in for missing party members for such a section but I think they really want you to be able to play the game solo from start to finish without any sort of forced NPC company. I've got nothing against this sort of dungeon. They did one in Warcraft 3 when finding Medivh that I enjoyed a good deal. So while I wouldn't mind seeing such a thing I think it might go against their stated design goals.

Considering that the area we'll be confined to in PE would realistically be no larger than a large US state I'm ok with them tossing realism in terms of landscape variety out the window. If you don't do this then you just end up seeing the same sort of scenery over and over. While that can be useful in setting an atmosphere I'd rather have variety. Of course if they were really committed to doing multiple games in the series and putting each in it's own section of the world like the elder scrolls has done I'd be ok with that approach then.

I agree with having challenging and interesting boss battles. I honestly don't think anybody disagrees on this. I don't like the idea of scaling things up though. If somebody is a human or other type of PC race that is as big as they should get. They don't need to be 5 times bigger than me in order to be imposing. They do this in World of Warcraft with raid bosses and it drives me crazy. Granted in that case it's needed because you need the target viewable over 20 other peoples heads. That not being the case in PE I don't want something that should be my size suddenly bigger just because he's a boss. I think they should try and avoid swarm type bosses. I personally never found them to be that interesting as it just feels like an extended version of a random junk battle.

Yes, within reason. Namely I think they should play through an area, clear everything out, and then make it take another hour or 2 of play time before stuff respawns. I don't like beating an area in a games and then needing to fight my way back out of that area. However if I return to that area later it should have monsters repopulate so long as it makes sense. Cleared out the wilderness, a cave, a crypt, or some ancient ruins? These sorts of things should respawn. Cleared out a house in town, castle that was being haunted, a town itself, or anything else where people should 'move' into the space you've cleared? These should not respawn.

I think that they need to give you something to spend money on beyond gear first and foremost. Something akin to the skill books in DA:O which were pricey and always worth purchasing. If you had excess gold sitting around there was zero reason to not buy those books at 27 gold each or whatever they were. So I think books of skill or items with permanent stat increases are always a good money sink as they'll always be useful regardless of what gear your character is using. Beyond that you could make bribes a common option for getting through interactions with NPCs. This would allow for a non-violent play through while not being a high speech/charisma character. Also I simply like the flavor of a successful rogue buying his way through everything but maybe that's just me. Some have mentioned gambling which isn't a bad choice however I think that if they wanted to do that they should do it in the form of an arena battle against random tiers of monsters for maybe 8-9 tiers. Disable saves once the fighting begins and until it stops to keep it challenging. You need to beat say 3-4 battles to break even and beyond that is where you could start getting more than you put it. I figure it would prevent them from needing to code anything completely new into the game as combat system and monsters are already in game. There is always fable approach where you can buy out properties and have tons of cosmetic options to buy. I don't really enjoy this but it did work out ok in Fable 3 where you had to temper your purchases against wanting to have a high amount of gold at the end of the game, provided you wanted to go the 'good' path. Finally you can simply put a set amount of items/gold in the game and therefore make your choices of what to buy more important that way. That being said I hate this method and hope they don't go that route. If there is something expensive I'd like to buy I think I should be able to go out and farm for it.

I'm ok with rat people, I like the look they got in MTG.

Well Diablo is a bit of unfair example because the whole game is designed around loot rather than being an RPG that just has an abundance of randomly generated loot. Personally for this sort of game I like the artifact approach. I want any loot of significance to be hand crafted and placed in specific locations. Random loot has it's place in item hunt games like Borderlands and Diablo but I feel like it's a bad approach in just about any other sort of game. Now from what I've read in one of the interviews they have no intention of doing random loot beyond saying random bandits have either a sword or dagger or mace or axe. So I'm totally ok with the junk loot being random so long as the quality gear isn't done the same way.

I always liked the idea of callous sprites and fairies. The premise being that magical creatures aren't so much evil but completely foreign in terms of their thought process so stealing your things isn't 'evil' or 'wrong' to them, just fun. Personally I'm a big fan of this approach to nearly all fantasy monsters. Those that are 'good' are only good because they simply experience the world in a similar way to what we do and as such live their lives in similar fashion. A nigh immortal dragon isn't evil for eating a village of people or enslaving a kingdom anymore than we are for eating a cattle and domesticating dogs, it just lives on a different level than we do. So yeah bring on the fairies, unicorns and ravenous blobs of jelly. I'm game.

I agree with what Sistergoldring is saying. Then again I am on the pro-romance side of things. In regards to what Sistergoldring mentioned I have noticed that the majority of people against romances DO in fact take offense at the idea that maybe they'd be missing out on 5-10 conversations per romance-able NPC. Any amount of time spent developing romance dialogue is time that could be spent on non-romance dialogue and therefore it isn't a worthwhile investment. While I can understand their desire to have more NPC dialogue (more is almost always better after all) that they enjoy I also think that it's an unfair and greedy point of view to take. Just because some people don't enjoy romances doesn't mean that it's not worth including. Saying, 'I want 100% of what I want in the game (non-romance related dialogue) and you (people who like romances) cannot even have 10% of the dialogue go in a direction I don't enjoy' just seems absurd to me. If there is an NPC or 2 I don't like I'm going to largely ignore them after I've explored their whole dialogue tree once. I'll slog through it thinking, 'oh god I really hate this character' but I'll do it anyway just to see the content. In future playthroughs I'll engage with the annoying character to the bare minimum level needed to meet any goals I may have involving them. It's my personal belief that chances are there will some NPC that just bugs the hell out of most people. Those people will in turn largely ignore characters they dislike in subsequent playthroughs. However nobody bemoans all the lost time and energy that might have gone in to making said unlikable character. Whats more some people might actually like the character you dislike and not like totally different characters instead. I don't see much difference between this situation and romance options in terms of having content in the game that not everybody enjoys but some people do. Both lead to 'wasted' content simply because it's not your particular cup of tea. Nobody is going to enjoy every last line of text written in the game. Somewhere along the line you'll find something trite, cliche, or annoying. So I don't see the purpose in demanding something you don't like being cut entirely for no other reason than you don't like it. I personally dislike amnesia as a plot device as it's been done to death. Even so I wouldn't demand it be purged from every game in existence simply because I dislike it. Planescape for instance handled amnesia very well and is on my list of top RPGs. Who's to say PE can't do the same for romances? I'd like to think most people could find a middle ground on this but after so many posts on this topic it doesn't seem likely. Will the lack of romances ruin PE for me or the majority of people wanting romances? I'd say no. We might be a little bummed if they aren't included but that's probably as far as it would go. However the anti-romance crowd seem to feel that the inclusion of any non-platonic romance will flat out ruin the game. This seems just a bit overly melodramatic to me. A small portion of dialogue being included on a few of at least 8 NPCs shouldn't make or break the game for you anymore than it's exclusion should break it for me.

I like the challenge of X-com (only playing on normal though) I do admit it can be disheartening to lose to some cheese though. I don't mind how easily characters die but some of the choices that cause them to die easily I do dislike. I dislike that it's not entirely clear when you'll be able to shoot around cover and hit an enemy. If it's going to be as vague as it is I think you should be able to take back your move so long as you didn't preform any other actions between moving that character and attempting to fire. Also I find the line of sight to to be a bit too shallow and when combined with enemies getting free movement when noticed can lead to some really absurd swarming situations later in the game. So I disagree with those design choices as 1 is simply a matter of clarity and the other kind of makes the game feel based on dumb luck. I do agree with the majority of the posters here though and saying the problems you're experiencing are mostly on you. Not because you're bad or anything like that but you just need to save more often. I know that I save after missions before I start doing things in the base. Before leaving my base to go on a mission and during the mission as needed. If you do this you'll find yourself able to go back to a desirable restarting point if you lose too many people. Also if you find your troops dying too often be sure to research better armor and focus on purchasing them. Having a huge amount of health goes a long way.

I liked using sneak in order to keep weapons while enter casinos in Fallout New Vegas. That and planting explosives on people. I'd like to see more perception type checks where in order to notice something important in speech or in a dungeon you need a high amount of perception whether it be a base stat or a skill. Beyond that I've always liked more dialogue options from speech skills. I also usually took Survival in Fallout 2 to skip out on getting bogged down in too many random encounters while moving around the world map.

As much as I loved his narration I wouldn't strictly want him narrating a totally different IP. Much in the same way I wouldn't want whoever did the very iconic (at least to me) narration of the orc campaign from Warcraft 2 doing the narration in Diablo. There is a slue of great actors and voice actors out there in the world so I'd rather they bring in a new voice for a new franchise that they could then carry over to further games set in the same setting rather than fall back on somebody who I already associate with another series.

I'm ok with some amount of inequity between combat and non-combat options so long as it's not a huge gap. If we're talking about a 25% difference in what is probably an encounter that would yield 10% or less of a level it's not enough to really invest tons of time in fine tuning. However you've got to give something to the stealth character who is skipping the majority of combat otherwise they won't be able to complete the game. I'd really be more interested in them trying to balance out the number of 'good' and 'evil' side quests. I always feel that being a noble character yields more quests and being evil means skipping quests (content) entirely or completing the quests in a petulant fashion. Just being angry and impatient while helping an old lady find her cat doesn't really fit in to my idea of an evil character who would just not be inclined in anyway shape or form.

Considering that Obsidian has said that they would welcome help as far as translations are concerned I'd like to see it get translated into as many languages as people are willing to help translate it into. I'd like to see Italian, Latin American Spanish and Portuguese translations first and foremost so long as the money for it is there. If the money isn't there I hope they help out fans who are willing to help translate it in anyway they can.

I usually did as well, but that was mostly because I didn't use a mod that gave access to a "respec" item and thought that the "auto-builds" for characters were terrible. Also my PCs usually felt more comfortable around people they were already familiar with. Yeah, I used No Follower Auto Level to make every joinable character level 1 when I met him. I wish I had known such a thing existed. It always drove me crazy that by the time I got Zevran he couldn't pick a single lock and his ability choices weren't the type of character I needed. But being level 9 or so by that point it would take him too long to get on track so I hardly ever used him in my party and felt forced to use Leliana if I wanted a rogue.

Great topic OP. I don't think good actions need more dire consequences than evil ones. I think that if good choices could lead to incurable stat loss that evil choices should have that same potential. If you can lose 1 stamina or what have you sustaining injuries while helping somebody out you should be able to suffer those same type of losses attempting to assassinate somebody for money. I think this would make turning down quests a viable option as right now in many RPGs you just grab everything in sight and do them for the exp and rewards regardless of what your characters personality would dictate. I generally find that being 'good' and 'altruistic' in games yields the greatest rewards. You're more willing to help out people in need so in the end you accept more quests as generally speaking theirs more helping out quests than ones that ask you to hurt people or do other 'evil' actions. Beyond that I always find it interesting that not asking about rewards or saying you don't need a reward usually yields the same amount or more reward than the 'greedy' options. I'd love to see some deviation from this. I think that the greedy dialogue trees should lead to greater rewards than hostile or noble ones. Also I think the number of 'evil' quests in RPGs needs to be increased. f I don't accept a quest to help a lost child find their parents, because my evil/selfish character just doesn't care about them I think that it needs to be balanced out by more quests where people want you to break in to peoples houses or commit murder. Just helping the child but being angry or callous about it seems like a poor option to me. Many of the characters I make simply wouldn't even stop for a crying child from a role playing perspective. However in most games ignoring these sorts of quests leads to a huge loss in rewards and experience so you do them from a grudging standpoint. I think the best way to address this issue is to make more quests that noble and good characters wouldn't want to take part in.

While I'm generally for realism I can't get on board with realistic weapon fighting. It's a bit unrealistic for an crossbowman to be standing 15 feet away from a brawl sending quarrel after quarrel into the fray without hitting your party members (which are usually in the way of the intended targets) or provoking the enemy into running over to you to kill you while you're reloading/cranking your crossbow. At some point realism needs to be enhanced or flat out suspended for entertainments sake. I admit that sometimes it urkes me that what happens in movies is so far apart from reality it strains my disbelief. However if I view it objectively I can see where the visual appeal of a huge explosion is more entertaining than a minor one or no explosion at all. The same thing carries over to the 'fighting styles' involved in movies and games. Realism is a nice guideline but when it comes to entertainment we do need to deviate a bit to keep things visually interesting. Especially when I'm going to be watching attack animations on a loop for hours on end I'd rather go for the action movie interpretation than the realistic one.

I just donated $8 via kickstarter from the PE homepage. This is a pretty great forums community based on my experience from the little while I've been here so I figured no harm in getting a bit more involved in it while helping out the game. So if memberships are still being accepted as far title goes Sophist of the Obsidian Order works for me and for sigil within the Ouroborus an astrolabe or rose compass would look nice.

I think the likelihood of them continuing to generate new in house IPs is going to be based off the success of PE. Yes this game is already funded and keeping obsidian at work for the next year and a half but unless they want to kickstart every project they need to generate some profit when the game releases. If PE does at least marginally well we'll see an expansion and/or sequel. If it becomes a hit it might very well give them the chance to start up new IPs. I personally think that there is still a pretty big market out there for a game like this and if they sell it at a cheaper price point ($40 or so rather than $60) they can probably sell enough to cover the cost of another 4-6million game. So I think it pretty damned likely we'll get some more PE after this and it's not far fetched that they could generate enough profit to expand into new IPs. That might be wishful thinking or biased at the very least because I love that a game like this is coming out and hope more people (who didn't kickstart) feel the same. As a side note since this is a PC/Mac/Linux only title please do your part to stand against piracy. Even if you're an unabashed pirate please do so for this game and other indie/kickstarted titles at the very least. Many publishers and developers are wary of the PC space because of the rampant piracy which is one reason why we get less games than consoles. If we want more games like this we need to encourage people to start paying for their games to support the developers not be complacent about piracy.

I really doubt they would do this. It just seems too at odds with their philosophy with this game. If they feel they must add it just let it there be a toggle in the options to turn it on/off. I do kind of enjoy the direction borderlands 2 has started to take with this though which is to have arrows that get you to the general area but once there you need to do the searching yourself. I don't think it's needed in PE however as the game will most likely have set areas so if somebody says go find me magical tree bark from the mystical grove you'll already be on the right track. I think markers make sense in games that have a more open and less defined world (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption) however I think they should make the shift of pointing you in the general direction/area and not showing you exactly where the object of your desires is located within a cave.

I like the journal feel, sometimes I really want to know the whole reason I'm on a quest and the back story and the like. I think the options should have an 'short hand' toggle that would allow the key objectives to be shown at the bottom of the journal entry with the ones you've already completed crossed out.

I think they should just give you your set amount of character portraits and allow you to import any image file you want that is cropped to the right sizes. This does kind of cover all bases since you could use that creation tool to export to the game that way. I personally prefer something a bit more painterly so if they don't have default choices that I like I really want to be able to get something from the internet that suits my character.

When it comes to locations I really love John Avons work. http://www.johnavon.com/fantasy-art/Galleries/

I do like these moments. I enjoyed them in both BG2 and in ME2. I think NPCs should always have strong opinions of their own and if you work against what they think is right for too long they should no longer want deal with you. In some cases it might be fitting that they attack you or betray you. So I think that a few of these situations should be included with NPCs with particularly strong beliefs about how to do things.

I like first and last names. I also like having a nickname or something to be referred to be other characters occasionally. That doesn't need to be a set last name (like Hawke or Shepard) or a title (Warden, Champion, Dragon Born) that characters call you nonstop. I actually find the later to be extremely annoying so while I like having a nickname of sorts I really would like it to be used sparingly. Beyond that if this game is set to have the amount of voice work as BG2 did then really you don't need to worry about being called anything at all in voice work. They voice work can easily work around nothing being able to say your name and the text dialogue can refer to you by name as needed. PS: All games should have a random generator. Sometimes it's hard to think of a name and you just want to get playing. I'd prefer each race and sex draw from a pool of name that thematically fits with that culture though over having 1 large pool of names or it being truly random generator that spits out garbage half the time.