Pshaw

Nope, this game is inventing it's own system. In fact they have no rights to the D&D franchise so everything will pretty much be original from the combat system, to the monsters, to the world itself.

I understand your premises but even if you start out from humble beginnings the fact that you have become a key player in a grand story makes you special. In Fallout New Vegas you're just a regular dude, shot and left for dead even, you simply choose to get involved in all this **** that's going on around you. I think that is about a lowly as you can get yet you still get that 'I'm somehow better and more crucial than everybody else' feeling by the end of the game. I understand your desire to play a more anti-hero type character who's not out beat an evil force or fulfill a destiny but is really just trying to get away or get safe. But generally in the end being 'cursed' by the gods is still your characters story being driven by the power of gods so it's not that much different than being chosen. The tone would be darker to be sure but beyond that it's essentially the same. So in the end I guess I'm trying to say humble beginnings or a darker tone to the story won't remove this 'specialness' feeling the surrounds the main character. The only way to do that is to make things more ordinary, remove the struggle almost entirely. I personally feel that a good example of this is the end of Red Dead Redemption where your last handfuls of quests are helping your family around the farm. Then suddenly your old life comes crashing back in with disastrous effect. As fitting as that ending was without the epic bad ass killing spree that was the majority of the game that ending would have fallen flat. I'm personally not interested in a life sim which is basically what you'd have to get if you wanted to remove all of that epic/special feeling from the main character.

I personally think Armor Class should reduce all physical damage regardless of it being critical or not. I think armor with higher AC (plate mail) should also make your character move slower and dodge less. This could be offset with perks and talents and so on. I think light armors (hide and leather) should have higher AC than clothes (including robes) but not have any sort of negative effects on movement speed or dodge. Finally I think that clothing should come with a base resistance to magic (doesn't make logical sense but it helps with balance) but no AC. I'm not a fan of heavy armor being 'strictly better' than lighter ones because they have more AC. I like a balance between the 3. If you want your mage to wear plate mail so he's not getting shot down with arrows and guns I'm all for it. If you have a Kensai or other finesse type fighter that wants to wear hide armor or clothes I'm all for that. I don't like the idea of armor just being restricted by class. I think class power should be balanced totally separately from armor type and armor types should be balanced against each other.

This is tough because it depends on how the game is made. In most cases I'd prefer it end and go to an epilogue. Preferably a DA:O type epilogue where consequences of my actions are recounted and I get to find out what happened to my party members but I digress. This may be largely because I do a completionist play-through the first time and every time. I do everything available to me before continuing on main story missions so when the game is over for me I've already completed all the content. As such I'd rather have a nice satisfying ending than the ability to wander around the world exploring things I've already explored. However I totally understand people wanting to still be able to explore the world if they didn't see everything or if there are challenge modes of some sort to complete afterwards. So long as the main character doesn't die in the ending or the whole party disbands after the mission is completed I don't see any reason why you can't have a nice epilogue and still be allowed to explore and adventure afterwards. After all an epilogue explaining the long term results of your actions doesn't mean you can't do more adventuring in the short term. Gun to my head if I have to pick one or the other, unless we're talking about more sandbox games like Fallout 3 or the Elder Scrolls series, I'd rather have the game end.

Absolutely. I prefer Turn Based combat as I find the systems hold up better and provides you with more choices tactically. I find that Real Time or Real Time With Pause generally has to have more lee-way in combat to make up for reaction time and the like. In TB strategy game your choices tend to have a bigger outcome on the battle. X-com is a good recent example of how you can do good TB combat systems where the stakes can be higher than in a real time counterpart. Also I just tend to find RT or RTWP clunky. I love BG2, PST, NWN 1&2, but the combat in those games turns me off to replaying them. At times it really feels more like a chore than anything else. Although I will admit I will always have fond memories of clearing out the under dark in BG2 by summoning up a fleet of magic swords, sending them into a room to cut everything to bits and just shutting the door and resting. Repeat as needed. Take that stupid mind flayers! Edit: I should say however that while I prefer TB I have no regrets about their call to go RTWP. I knew it going in and I wouldn't want them to change what they've got planned.

I prefer non-active NPCs getting experience. I think the only downside to not bringing a party member along with you should be the lack of their reactions to the story as it unfolds. Also I'm strongly in favor of sections of the game where you need to have a certain party member along or one that refuses to go with you for a certain task as it adds a bit of flavor to things. If a party member is forced or out of a segment of the game and you're stuck with an under leveled character that makes those sections of the game incredibly frustrating rather than interesting. I also feel that you should be able to equip gear to inactive party members without having to add them to your party for that sole purpose. Not always, but at certain points like at a camp or stronghold or what have you. I mean I'm sure some (or many) people would disagree with me about having companions forced in and out of your party but if I'm breaking somebody out of prison and I have a lawful good paladin in my party I think it's a good bit of flavor for them to say, "I am with you for the greater cause but I cannot help you in this endeavor." Then bowing out of the mission and having to have his slot filled by somebody with less scruples. In that same vein if you're going on a party member centric side quest I think they should want to be specifically included (or perhaps excluded) in that mission. Personally I like these sorts of moments from a story perspective but I've grown to dislike them from a game play standpoint because I get underpowered party members making the whole thing harder for me. When a game allows me to keep my whole party on the same level I'm never upset by it.

Honestly I dislike the idea of naming the class flagellants. Mainly because calling the class that already decides something about my characters personality. Now as a subclass sure. As a trait required by being a monk of a certain order/deity I'm all for it. But for it to be universal that all monks are flagellants seems unseemly to me. At best you get a different name for an iconic class and at worst you get what seems like a blatant attempt at shock value. I'm all for breaking the mold and trying new things but this really doesn't do much of anything interesting or important while at the same time narrowing the possibilities of what a 'monk' is. Granted this is just my opinion which is no more right or wrong than the OP, it's just how I feel.

Generally I like quests with a bit of puzzles, riddles or problem solving involved. As many people have said investigative quests are generally a great place for this sort of thing. Beyond that I always really liked the quest line in Fallout 2 between Modoc and the Ghost Farm. It had a bit of investigating involved but also had a time element involved making it feel a bit more dire. If you couldn't solve things and make peace in time then they went to war and you had to pick a side. For 2 side areas that had nothing to do with the main story I thought it was a great addition to the world.

While I'd be interested to see it because I find the videogame industry fascinating I agree that this would just become a source of bickering on the forums. Especially because not all the costs in each area are equal. I can say that I doubt writer and artists are paid the same or programers and designers for that matter. So if you we saw a break down of costs it really wouldn't mean much to us as we don't know how many people are in each department and how much those people are generally paid. It would lead to people saying, 'why are you investing so much in X as it's not that important to me when you're only investing this much in Y which is a thing I really care about.' When for all we know Y with the lower overall budget item might be considered a generous budget for that task where as the expensive budget for X might be considering a tight budget for the task at hand. In the end I don't think we'd even be properly equipped to make proper sense of the numbers we were given. In the end it's just not worth all the speculation and complaining it would bring. As far as I'm concerned trust them to do right with the funding we all gave and leave it at that.

If I had to pick one or the other (no middle ground) I'd say content rich is better than content light. I want the world to feel lived in and empty areas with nothing to do beyond killing random monsters and wildlife don't do that for me. I already interpret those areas when traveling from location to location as I watch the the progress my party makes across the map screen. Should I be accosted by wild life or monsters you do a little random encounter to show that even the wild and uninhabited bits of the world are populated and that's good enough for me without the need to devote entire areas to the wilderness like in BG1. So in my mind if there is nothing in a given area beyond scenery and monsters I could live without it. Now that said I think a middle ground is best. Not everything needs to be a thriving quest mecha where you show up and complete 5-10 quests then move on to the next area. Having an point of interest or two is enough to include a more desolate or wild sort of area. A cave that has some treasure and an interesting monster at the bottom is enough to warrant a fully explorable location even without any associated quest or story elements. I'd also like a chance for random points of interest or undiscovered points of interest in the vein of Fallout 2. I like hitting an odd event or location rather than just another pack of bandits from time to time. I also like traveling to a location only to have 'unknown location' pop up on my map as I reach that area of the map. Both lend a feeling of a world at large beyond your points of interest in terms of quests and the story. I for one would love to stumble across a farm, talk to a farmer who doesn't need or want anything from you and gives you a bit of small talk and sends you on your way.

A good read. In regard to the first question he was asked about defining the world I do completely agree. Some mystery is better. Mass Effect for example went a bit too far, especially with the the Leviathan DLC, in terms of explaining everything. However I also feel that leaving things too vague is also a misstep. I personally always felt that the 'magic' in the Lord of the Rings universe was poorly shaped and left me constantly wondering just what the hell wizards actually did. One writer I think does a great job striking a balance between revealing everything and leaving some things a mystery is Brandon Sanderson. He clearly has an entire 'system' worked out for the mystical sides of each of his worlds. So what he does explain makes perfect context in the setting but he also never reveals everything and he always hints that there is more to be discovered or as he would say, "there's always another secret." I think this is perfect because the things that aren't explained don't feel intentionally vague they just a missing piece of the puzzle that you have the potential to uncover if you read closely enough. So Obsidian I feel that if you haven't already read them you might want to go read his Mistborn series or Warbreaker if you want a shorter read. These have clearly defined worlds and magic has strict rules much like it would in a game but he explains only as much as you need to know and leaves the rest a mystery.

Justin Sweet is simply put my favorite fantasy artist. I've been really bummed that Magic the Gathering hasn't used him for any cards in a long time. I think he has a very strong painterly style which I prefer over photo-realism. Especially in terms of character portraits. Sometimes in BG2 everything was just a bit too defined so in the end I felt that they were good paintings for somebody's character but they weren't MY character. Leaving things a bit rougher and painterly allows for me to fill in the broad strokes with my imagination and feel that it's really my character. I've always loved his paintings of Narnia

Unless I'm doing a harder difficulty play through I'll probably avoid the adventures hall. I like that it's in the game but I like characters and people from the adventures halls aren't characters they're just bodies. So if I'm playing on a high difficulty yes I'll be using it to min-max my party to the best of my ability. Otherwise I want to hear party banter while I explore the world and hear their opinions on my actions as I make choices. The most I can see myself using it is for 1 companion to fill a hole in my party or if the provided companions don't fit my current play style. I hate playing a greedy/evil character and having noble/good companions complaining all the time. I'd rather have a party that agrees with my actions or at least tolerates them. If it means that I need to take AH companion to fill a role in order to not have to kill or kick out a real one then yeah I'll go pick one up.

Well I think in a game like this you have 2 choices. Either it's gear or levels that drive the power of your characters. Yes a balance between the 2 is always best but really it's going to come down to those things. Personally I like gear to weighted a bit more heavily than levels. Now I say this because of 1 main reason - exploration. If you're hunting for gear than you're going in every house, exploring every random cave, clicking every chest and every rock trying to find that good gear. I'm a completionist so I'd probably do this anyway but it's also disheartening when I'm doing it just for the sake of doing everything knowing I probably won't be rewarded for the effort. As a quick example DA:O without any DLC had some pretty nice pieces of gear but not a ton. To that end the majority of the locked chests in the games contained junk. My first play through it drove me crazy when I couldn't open a chest so I'd always try and remember where they were so I could go back for them later. Then I'd go back later to get vendor trash. Needless to say on future play throughs I sometimes didn't even bring a thief as I found 2 warriors and 2 mages to be far more effective. I wasn't motivated enough to bring a thief in my party to unlock chests because they were mostly worthless. I don't want a game where I don't check monsters for loot because it's all junk or skip chests for the same reason. I want that feeling where if I see a random cave I want to go in there and kill everything and pick the place clean because there is a chance for better loot. I personally think the hunt for better gear is the best and least obtrusive way to make exploring the world thoroughly worthwhile. Leveling works as well but it's a steady goal. I only get really excited for my next level as I'm getting close to achieving it. Finally there is a 3rd method that can apply to this which is skill. However I don't think this will apply well to a 3rd person isometric game that's real time with pause. Skill can work in darksouls as it's an RPG in an action game package. It can even work with turn based strategy games where you can plan things out meticulously. However I think in a game like this making things too skill dependent would lead to tons and tons of sloppy deaths for your party and feel like it was out of your control. Which would then lead to tons and tons of reloading and break the flow of gameplay. So I don't think the skill method can apply to a game like this.

I prefer the Fallout 2 take. Your an important or at least well known individual to a community that the world at large doesn't know about or care about. As much as I don't mind the random adventure comes from nothing but is somehow trust into events take on things I also feel that it can cause you to lack direction in the early parts of the game. That or it just seems really outlandish when suddenly somebody comes before you to say, 'Suddenly you are very important! You're the chosen one and must embark on this quest of great importance!' (I'm looking at you elderscrolls.) I think it's better to come from a humble background then have whatever minor motivation got you started in your journey ends up getting tangled with the much bigger story. I do like how DA:O handled the starting stories giving various options their own little background. However I'm sure that's a waste of time/money for a fairly low budget project like this. I will say this though if we're going to start out with a fixed starting point let us know about it before character creation. There is nothing I love more than making a grizzled veteran type character only to start the game and have some guy who looks younger than me calling me son (looking at you NWN2) because then I've got to deal with it for a little bit and pray it doesn't continue in the game or restart. So as much as I don't mind fixed backgrounds let us know the set up through before character creation so we can work our characters into it rather than just being blinded sided after I spent 30 minutes to an hour considering how I want to make a character.

I like druids, personally I've always viewed them as sort of a cross between a barbarian and a priest in terms of what their mentality should be. Like you said I don't see them as tree huggers, or at least not all of them. I like the idea of them simply being in touch with nature and seeing themselves as a part of it all which can mean being a bit savage. At some point I read all the subclasses for druids and rangers that were included in 3.5 for D&D and I was very impressed at some of the more 'evil' versions of these classes. I believe they had a sects of druids devoted to disease and death, both of which are parts of nature, rather than the typical idea of what a druid is. I loved these takes on druids and if they included them in the game somehow I'd be thrilled. I'd be even happier if they did it without making them antagonists. I think they should just exist and be accepted if not entirely by society sort of like black mages from dragonlance.

I agree. As much as I understand the need to focus development resources on companions, antagonists, and story elements I think it would be nice if a handful of people out in the world were more than just quest givers or vendors. I know it's come up in the thread regarding guilds/factions but I think that is an area where this sort of thing could really shine. Your character is clearly already involved in their cause so they have some common ground to stand on. Generally you have lots of interaction with these folks as you go back to chat with them and get more quests from then and the like. So why not have these relationships go beyond simply completing their quests? Let them set up shop in your stronghold and maybe add extra features to it by being there. I certainly wouldn't be upset if the NPCs were what they've always been in RPGs. I certainly think there are more important things worth spending time on first. That said I'd be very pleased with the inclusion of some sort of extra interaction with the NPCs out in the world.

I really don't mind the idea in general. I just don't strictly see how it would fit into the game. Who would you marry? If the answer is anybody then you end up with a Fable type system where you seduce and marry anybody in a bad excuse for a mini game. I don't think this fits into the overall theme of a game like PE where I imagine most characters will be deep and interesting and reducing their affections to some sort of game mechanic would detract from the characters as a whole. The other alternative is through romance options with party members and/or NPCs out in the world. While I personally am a big fan of romances and would very much like to see them included in this game I still don't think marriage and family life fits in here. I say this because even if romances are included, as many people have declared their distaste for them, I don't believe that everybody should be able to be married. Even if they did I don't think they should strictly want to become a housewife/husband as clearly in the case of your companions they had chosen a life of adventure. It wouldn't make sense for me companions to suddenly want to give that up to go live in your stronghold and raise a family. Beyond that I think this would be a bit immersion breaking if it was included. Male player romances / knocks up female companion or NPC then suddenly there's a baby. Was that person able to still adventure with you through all 9 months of pregnancy? What if your main character is female? Does that mean at some point in your story you need to stop and go sit around your keep for months while the events of the story are put on hold until you're able to get back out there? Personally I just don't think it works. I think you could get all the same scenarios without the need to involve marriage and/or a family. Why not just have your companions or an important NPC get kidnapped and need to get rescued why would it need to be your spouse? Why not just have the children of a local village start vanishing and are in need of some saving and as lord of their lands it falls to you? Once again I'm totally for romances and even marriage where it fits. However I think any family raising should be covered in the epilogue and not in game. Nor should so much content be developed around the idea of having a spouse. Not everybody wants to get married but plenty of people would feel obligated to slog through it if their was more content to be accessed by doing it. In my opinion any sort of romantic interests and so on should pretty much be covered in dialogue between your character and the NPCs in game with party banter to reinforce it. Beyond that it forces players who don't want any sort of romantic gameplay into doing it anyway in order to experience all of the content.

I agree with the first half and disagree with the second. I think you should be able to receive word that your stronghold is under attack and if you don't hoof it back their to help out their should be consequences. Now I would want the time frame to be a bit generous to allow you to finish up what you're doing if it's a short trip but aside from that I think you should need to have to return sometimes. Granted I don't think the keep should fall into disrepair if you're not there once a week nor should the peasants rise up if don't stop by an visit them from time to time. Even so for some events I think that time should be an issue. If you receive word of plague in the nearby town and people want your advice and you decide to go off into a cave for 3 weeks I don't think it unreasonable to return to a keep full of corpses or return to find out that the nearby village has been burned to the ground. As for things I'd like to see time sensitive events like the ones above along with other less pressing events similar to having a stronghold in BG2. In addition I'd like there to be some sort of resource management and direction given to the stronghold. If I want to build up a strong guard so I don't need to return for every pesky bandit raid as mentioned above I should have to improve defenses and devote income to hiring guards. So I'd need to manage what people on my lands were focused on doing such as getting building materials and trading enough to pay for the guards. However maybe that would mean they weren't making enough food for themselves so they were dying off so you'd need to balance that and so on. Finally I would like things the OP mentioned. Purchasing add-ons and improvements to the strong hold and so on.

I like weird companions because generally speaking they also have stories as interesting as they are weird. That said they also need to fit the world. If Nordom, Morte, or Ignus were in fallout 2 they would have simply been stupid and out of place. So yes weird and unique characters please, but not just for the sake of being weird and outlandish.

A soul comes into a body but how much does the soul shape what you will do? Is the soul of a psychotic murder a psychotic murder in every life? If so is that person really accountable for a fate he can't control? Or is the soul you have more of a power source, something that gives life to what would be an otherwise lifeless body but it does not have any control over your actions? Is your fate is your own to make regardless of whatever soul inhabits your body? Or is it some mixture of the 2? Does your soul have leanings towards certain behavior, almost like a conscience, which can be ignored? If you go against its leanings for long enough will it reshape the souls preferences? I think that these are likely to be some of the questions in the narrative of this game. In a broadest sense what exactly is a soul and how much control does the soul we are born with have over our lives?

I like the feeling that living worlds can add to a game. So long as you have the ability to wait/rest for a specific amount of time in order to get in touch with people you might need or the ability to go into their houses at night and wake them up. Also they need to be done properly where not everybody has the same bed time. I hate it when I'm in a city and suddenly everybody all walks back to their houses at the same time. In that same regard some people, perhaps less reputable people, should be out and about only at night. So with all that said I like it but I think to do it properly you do need to reallocate a fairly large amount of resources for a very small amount of flavor. Flavor that at times can be frustrating. It would have been a nice stretch goal while the kickstarter was going on but now I don't think it would be worthwhile to add anymore stretch goals via paypal.

I love the idea but honestly I think it would take developement resources away from something else that people would see. I truth I'm sort of viewing the stronghold management as a mini-game already. I think it will already break up the gameplay of the game at large so to speak by giving you something else to manage. So in terms of mini-games I'd rather they develope this aspect of the game more rather than add a card game or something to PE. That said I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it at all if they did decide to add it. I loved playing Liars Dice in Red Dead Redemption. As much as I love poker however I wouldn't want to see it in the game as that is bit too specificly a part of our world for me to believe the exact same game would spring up in a fantasy setting completely seperate from our own.

Ok I'm going to go ahead and drop in here real quick knowing full well I won't be agreed with. Not everything in the golden days of RPGs was good. Some of the things that have mass appeal have mass appeal for a reason, quite simply they're an improvement over what came before. Now I'll totally agree that quest/objective markers are a bit over the top in terms of hand holding, but is it really all that different from an 90's rpg where anybody who wasn't important was named citizen or commoner or some other generic name so searching out people of interest was as simple as mousing over and reading their names? Even though I prefer the latter method (it's less passive and makes me feel like I'm searching these people out rather than having them be jumping up and down waving their hands over their heads calling out to me) I can totally understand why that extra step feels rather pointless for some people. Functionally a named character is as good as telling you he has something of interest to you which is the same as a big golden ! over their heads. So while I understand the argument that quest markers are stupid because seeking out quests wasn't exactly hard in the good ol' days but that said they also don't take away much from the game while allowing a broader audience to enjoy/complete it. You can shout that it's not important to do that but you would, quite simply, be wrong. Profits do matter even in a business where artistic integrity is an issue. Have things gone a bit too far in terms of being spoon fed content? Yes, and one only needs to look at World of Warcraft to see how much that game has changed (not always for the better) since its release to appeal to a broader customer base. Not all the changes are bad ones though. So for me as a long time RPG gamer who loves classic RPGs and can see the good, along with the bad, in modern RPGs it drives me crazy when RPG purists bemoan that everything was better in the old days. To use WoW as a quick example much has changed to make it more casual friendly. Quest markers have been replaced with zone markers that highlight whole areas of the map where objectives can be completed, simply put its excessive. However the Raid finder, Dungeon finder, and the inclusion of both 10 and 25 raids have allowed more people to experience the end game dungeons than ever before with far less downtime spamming 'lfg need tank' in a city for hours. Yes, it is a tradeoff. I think the closeness of the WoW community has suffered since Wrath was introduced because of the Dungeon finder. Still I can't deny that I used it and loved being in an instance inside of 10minutes while still out in the world questing or farming rather than begging for players in a city while jumping up and down in place for an hour. I played the hell out of Daggerfall when I was younger. I loved it to death even though I never finished the main story because I always got side tracked then made fresh characters. I also think Morrowind was the most fantastic setting in the elderscrolls series to date. That said Skyrim is hands down the best game overall in the series despite (or because of) it's dumbed down system. Yes this is somewhat a matter of taste, I do miss the old magic system as spell creation was extremely fun, but to be perfectly honest the elder scrolls leveling system was dated and in some ways it was completely counter intuitive and needed to be reworked. There's other things to talk about such as the annoyances of finding your way back out of a Daggerfall dungeon once you'd cleared it even with that awful map but I digress. Using another example Diablo 2 had talent trees that could not be redone later on. As such this lead to many, many, maaaany builds saving their points until you had pretty much cleared the game on normal so you could dump all your points into level 24 skills and their synergies once you hit a high enough level. This made the game completely dull to play through early on every single time you wanted to make a new character. It also meant if you were a new player who wasn't checking up on the internet to see how to make a good build before making your character there was a fair chance that you wouldn't be able to finish nightmare or hell difficulty. So all that time you spent on that character is effectively wasted. People actually miss this. In what world is this considered a 'feature' that people would want? Why would these same people would get angry if the ability to redistribute skill points was added? Is it because the ability of others to not waste their time somehow detracts from their enjoyment of the game? I could go on and list more examples of new innovations in RPGs that are in fact improvements over the old model but citing every good thing isn't strictly the point of my post. In the end I just want people to realize that they're letting nostalgia and in some cases elitism drive them in their demands. Wanting everything to be as it was, even when improvements have been made, is just stupidity. Also wanting a genre you love to stop innovating is just insanity. Yes not all changes that have been made in the last 10 or so years have been for the better but they sure as hell aren't all killing the genre as some would have you believe. So I've said my piece. I don't expect to be agreed with this is simply how I feel about the topic. Take it for what you will.

I would say no it doesn't need to be 'magical' in the sense that it does not need to have been enchaned by magic. However if a weapon has been crafted to such a degree that it is almost a legend it should still have increased effects that one would assocaite with it being a 'magic' item in terms of game mechanics. For instance if you wanted to say have a legendary sword of untold craftsmenship I wouldn't want it to just be 3d8 when most magic weapons are 1d12+2 + 1d4 fire or 2d8 +1d6 poison or what have you. Yes that sword would clearly be better than any average sword. It would also be better than many magic swords. However it's boring, which doesn't make it feel epic. I'd rather have it still have the +stat +damage +attacks per round kind of bonuses associated with 'magic' items rather than just having extremely superiour base stats. So I'm all for masterworks of weapons and armor being in the game but I wouldn't want to see them functionally any different than magic ones. Let the item backgrounds tell me that they're masterworks forged by the greatest artisans of their time and had no need of being enchanted. Beyond that I personally like items being interesting which means stepping away from whatever normal items are.