AgentOrange

I think Demon's Souls and Dark Souls have a nice balance between fantasy and realistic medieval designs. They have over-sized swords and hammers and such, but the over-sized weapons, the swords in particular, look like massive hunks of unwieldy metal and stone; the animations also help, in that wielding a massive weapon is visibly far different than wielding a dagger, but of course such intricate animation isn't really an option in an IE style game...maybe. Here is the Ultra Greatsword class weapon the Demon Great Machete.

The only solution is to learn from Dungeoncrawl Stone Soup, and have a race of cephalopods. No armor unless it is specifically made for you race, but you can wear a bunch of rings on all your extra appendages.

Why livestream. Make him write up a Let's Play, with pictures and talking heads. But really he should play it on his own time, and not concern himself with people who want to watch and comment.

Other: The opposed schools of magic and technology, and in general how you had to specializein in whatever path you chose to take. I played a diplomatic thief, and I was utterly useless in combat, with both low hp and low stamina I would pretty much die in seconds. But, with all the points I had put into Beauty and Persuasion, and the fact that I was a half-elf, and so on, I gained some big advantages when talking to people, with them being more positive on first approach and easily coerced and tricked. I loved the fact that I had chosen one path and was forced to stick with, rather than becoming jack of all trades. The demo of Age of Decadence echoed this, and I loved it for that. Also the cities. I liked that you had to actually make note of street names and house numbers in order to find locations. No divine quest compass.

I don't think they should take power-gamers/min-maxers, etc, into consideration when designing the game. Those sorts of people exist as an X factor, and they are going to find a way to break the game to their will no matter what the developers do. Your point about certain monsters in The Witcher giving you high XP: well Obsidian can incorporate them into a quest - except with the benefit of gaining quest XP only from completing the quest meaning that both those who fought the big monster and those who found another way around it get equal xp for their individual struggles. A lot of your argument falls flat because you are applying the logic of quest only XP to games that are no built from the ground up with that concept in mind.

I support this. As someone who almost always plays stealthy/diplomatic characters, it is always a source of distress that I feel like I'm being under-leved because I'm not killing every little trash mob that comes into sight.

I remember the first time I played Baldur's Gate with the expansion, I neglected to read the manual or any guides and ended up going to Durlag's Tower fairly early on; the upper part of the tower wasn't all that difficult, and I managed to complete it as I found it. The lower portion however I didn't even discover at that point. It wasn't until I got to Ulgoth's Beard that I figure out that there was an entire ****ing dungeon underground. And even at that point I wasn't quite the level for "proper" enjoyment of the dungeon. But I got through it anyway with lots of trial and error, and got some items that were overpowered at my level range (which is absolutely fine, I like being rewarded for getting through stuff that I'm not at the proper level for). So, bearing in mind that some people probably aren't as stupid and unobservant as me, it could certainly be interesting to have a dungeon that is divided up into individual sections, some parts even being above ground, like Durlag's Tower, with multiple entrances - with different parts perhaps related to different quest lines outside of the dungeon. They should still be accessible without having to go through the quests, but I mean just as a way of introduction (another example would be the Super Mutant Base in FO1: you could have the Brotherhood quest take you there, or you could accidentally stumble into it (as I did...right after leaving V13)).