UncleBourbon

Well, the gold coins weren't 99.99% gold in all likelihood. Probably a lower end of it, really. That said, copper/silver is probably a good idea.

I imagine whatever the case there will probably be some mods to tweak it to your taste - like the mod for BG2 that severely increases the gold required to go save Imoen.

So... many... entendres.... Also: We all know women go nuts for the men with 18+ CON

A few things: Adventurers were basically the 1% top earners in Faerun - everything adventurers bought was incredibly inflated, and most of it was fine as the adventurers still made way more than anyone charged them. Plus they had bags of holding and portable holes - weight-nullifying magic. That said, I do think it should be remade - it was a sort of tack-on way of compensating for a flat gold-reward scaling that was really broken. If magic is scarce, it makes sense that a piece of enchanted armor would cost a whole lot, but how much is something to consider. As does the question of how much of a fuedal setting PE will have. The complexity issue with copper/silver/gold is it doesn't make a terribly great amount of sense for gold to be of equal value everywhere, much less copper or silver. So while 10 copper might be worth a silver in one city, and it might take a lot more copper in another city. In reality, silver tends to be a commodity that steadily rises in value - over years and decades, whereas gold lends itself to greater rises and falls, so a greater opportunity for gain. I think smaller denominations are a good idea, but how to implement them is a question, and really, it doesn't make terribly great sense for a goblin tribe to go around carrying the same sort of coinage as humans (assuming the goblins are like the feral creatures we see in other games). So if they can't carry a lot of human coinage, and their items don't really sell for much, it would probably be largely reliant on fetch quests for a shaman's fetish or chieften's headdress to earn some decent money, which is also non-optimal.

Zed's right though. Western games have been lagging behind Japanese games in this regard. Remember in Fallout 2 when the gangsters wife would tell you secrets if she was satisfied with your sex? The thing is, you don't have any control over that, it's just a simple skill check. This way would be much more interactive, and open up new and interesting forms of gameplay. Different races and desires would create more challenge. It'd work out quite well with romances, they'd go hand and hand. If you can't satisfy your girl she'll leave you, or you'll have to find the gifts she likes in order to make up for bad sex, etc. Most of the games you're praising are "dating sims" specifically meant for sexual or emotional gratification of the player, notsomuch for adventuring and story-telling. I'm not a huge fan of dating-sims getting into my roleplaying games. In tabletop games it can simply cause awkwardness between players, in cRPGs it is always with NPCs and every bit of extra development to "features" of the relationship is time that could've been spent on other things... That said, I think Obsidian will do it right, and find the correct balance.

That is how it is designed to work in D&D - or at least in previous incarnations. 1 gold coin is about a year's wages for a peasent. Heck, in my last kingmaker campaign the entire player-nation had a treasury of about 15000 gold coins. In tabletop, the idea is the adventurers are heroes and they become much more powerful than any peasent or serf. As such, they end up seeking out rare, powerful and highly valuable pieces of equipment and such. Besides, one of the main draws to adventure and risk so much is the incredible payment and the chance for social escalation. A peasent is generally depicted like serfs of old - living on rented land, working some lord's crops. They didn't really make much money. I think the issue is balancing this in-game, and trying not to confuse people with a bunch of different currencies. I imagine they could work it out better now, and that in a different setting gold might not be the super-valuable resource it is in Faerun and other D&D settings, or in today's world.

Hrm, I've seen this dealth with by the merchants - who have never seen such awesome gear! - being unable to fully repay you, so they either offer hardly any gold, or significant store credit in exchange. Maybe have a wandering, wealthy merchant every once in a while for straight up gold exchange.

I've seen a few games that have merchants sell equipment a bit better than what you could find - Storm of Zehir had this going for the first few levels. I'm kind of split on the idea of merchants building a relationship with you as you complete transactions, and at some point unlocking a "special stock" which contains relatively useful items for once. Truly though, it does need some time spent thinking about it - creating a new universe may offer a unique chance to change this pattern. As to equipment degradation: I like how Vindictus did it, where characters could use blacksmith kits to fix equipment so long as they were in a camp (safe) area. Basically any cleared out section of a dungeon qualified. The effectiveness of these kits was tied to the character build, if I recall correctly. This kind of mechanic could work with a sort of engineer/smith companion's bonus, I think.

Actually, I think Star Wars The old Republic is the most expensive video game ever developed. According to wikipedia it cost 150-200 million to make. On topic, 4million is enough for this type of game, imo. I should think especially so given that PE is using an Obsidian original setting and ruleset, and a pre-existing engine that many of the developers have worked with previously.

Not just nudity, sexy female-exclusive nudity.

Women shoud look sexy but no nudity. 3 option and 3 question. What about nude but not sexy? What about decently dressed with a realistic figure?

I kinda liked the old World of Darkness/Vampire the Masquerade system of Armor level - a catchall for deflection/glancing blows - and then a "soak" level, which was absorbtion. So there is one roll for tohit, and then another for damage - and damage subtracts the soak value. I voted for 1&3, having thought a bit it doesn't make much sense to me that any equipment would subtract the same percentage of damage from all damage sources. I could see "physical soak" and "magical soak" values, but I don't know.

A lot of D&D derived systems from my knowledge use the price jumps in magic equipment almost directly from the loot tables. A +1 weapon means a master craftsman forged the equipment, then a proficient magic user enchanted it (or a high priest blessed it). Each enchantment puts the weapon into a higher value bracket, so at +2 sword should be within a relative bracket with a +1 flaming sword. Then you take the region/NPC attributes into consideration as modifiers (a +1 sword in a hub city might be worth say half, but in a frontier town will cost a good bit more). That said, the major reason for the system is because once you're past level 10 or so in most campaigns, you're swimming in gold, so a 20gp sword is worthless, you'll likely have plenty for a 7500gp +1 sword. I'm not a proponent of this - I think the rarity of magic should be a big determinant in the price multiplier enchantments induce. I admit, in most obsidian games you do seem to gain a lot of money fairly quickly, but I think part of that issue in some of the D&D based games is that there are few time constraints. In most campaigns I've been part of, once you're level ten or so you're simply too busy to go around doing several high-reward quests, mostly because the big threat/villain is on the move.

So we're in agreement then that it's perfectly possible to have all three types of armor in a fantasy setting without compromising the aesthetics. And if that is the case why not include everything and make everyone happy. As long the third category is sufficiently explained (in Warhammer case : mutations and gifts from dark gods) and doesn't completely obliterate suspension of disbelief - than yes, we are. That said, I'd prefer it if various subgroups used coherent designs. Here's an example : Allow me to add accompanying images for your post. Military. Adventurers. Necromancers, demons, evil overlords, vampire enchantresses, angels and deva Would that be close to what you had in mind? In short, what I wouldn't like to see is an adventurer that looks like a Chaos Chosen. As long it adheres to an internal logic of the world, I'm fine with it. Are we in agreement? Sounds great to me... But what if the "hero" is the champion of Khorne?

There are a few discussions regarding this already, see: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61750-question-regarding-development-costs/page__hl__budget#entry1252569 http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61919-break-down-of-funds/page__hl__budget#entry1260876 http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61770-is-4m-enough/page__hl__budget That should give you some idea.

Well, I agree the new vegas villains don't quite fit your list, but they certainly were important to me. I cared about the people of Goodsprings, and eventually, most of the local populace - my companions especially. In that way they were villains to me. On topic, I think a mix of really unlovable and terrible villains (seriel killer, sadistic cult leader, etc.) and those who believe they're doing the right thing, but pursue it in all the wrong ways.

That's because Alduin is a crap villain who never presents any real threat. His motivation is also a laughable cliche "I want to destroy the world.... cause that's what I do". A good villain is always marked by a few specific things. 1: You encounter them early and are given reason to not like them quickly. 2: They continue to show up regularly and actively work against you through the whole game, not just part of it. 3: They have a motivation that makes sense and can be at least partially related to, and their goal has to be something sane. 3.5: Due to their motivation they may not consider themselves a villain, or possibly just think "the ends justify the means" and aren't worried about what it makes them. 4: By the end of the game the player actually WANTS to take them down. Make your villain fit that mold and be it a faction or an individual players will love the dude for it. New Vegas is a horrible example because other than Caesar and the bums who directly screwed you no one is actually a real "bad guy". Also Caesar never actually did anything to "you" personally, you just knew he was a bad guy that was bad news for basically everyone from simple observation and common sense. You were never given a reason to personally go gunning for him. Mr. House was always a bit of a villain to me for his narcissism and threat to what remained of humanity - the NCR were generally somewhat bad guys in my opinion for their blatant goal of exploting the locals for their own gain. The mold is nice to go by, but shouldn't restrict creative, able and proven writers.

Way to much work and $$$$ to make that happen IMHO As a personal point-to-point I might agree. Realistically, the mechanics and everything could probably be adapted from the teleport spell removed from BG2 (it wouldn't let you teleport into solid objects, but basically to/from any location with a walkpath space large enough to fit the character). Animations might take a bit of time. Implementing flight and making it significant would take a bit more time and energy.

If you read some of the posts in the thread, the proposed methods are discussed. Likewise, many reasons for non-implementation are given.

Yeah, a lot like that. In KotoR2, your actions can build up/lower the influence you have on companions, and that is a sort of multiplier that alters the companion's alignment. Also, you can talk several of them into becoming jedi. This can change the ending for them, too. Something on a lower scale for an orphanage/kid would be interesting, but I think that is best left for other genre of games. I could see maybe finding funds/convincing the government/finding a donor to keep the orphanage running, or perhaps employing the children as a band of child thieves to support it, or something. That, or buying and selling them like cattle. Maybe worsen the situation, have the kids thrown out on the street, and get a cut of the profits from the pitiless capitalist who opens shop there? I don't know, but a small quest arc - even if it spans through most/some of the game would be preferable to going back to visit the kid and read him bedtime stories, to me.

I've been replaying Storm of Zehir and I think the system in it has grown on me. Random, combat-focused encounters pop up (if you pass a spot/listen check) near or not so near you, with a red ring underneath. The more significant, not-necessarily combat encounters, taken from a decent sized list, show up with a blue ring. Based upon the skills/abilities of the character you've chosen as leader while moving, random map events pop up (ex: appraise succeeds, you find a cache of valuable gems in a small cave). In terms of density, I like the way it is with a couple of super-high-density areas, eg. Big-big towns, like Neverwinter and the keep (though really, Neverwinter is the only really big location). I'm expecting much higher levels of content all together in P:E, and I especially want even the "small" cities/towns to be visitable and explorable, but conceptually, I like SoZ's distribution. That, and the travel system. I'd also like more peaceful/dialog/sub-plot based events/encounters.

The suggestion doesn't seem to be designing epic/unique items/npcs/equipment, but that volunteers should be considered to fill in tooltips or history tomes, maybe tombstones and misc. npc chat. Things that are low concious impact, but on a subconcious level add to the immersion of the player.

I think it'll work fine enough to just have an orphanage in town that you can visit and talk to the kids at, encouraging them to go risk their lives as adventurers or perhaps taunting them with the fact that they're parentless and likely to grow up (if they survive) to be vagrants and criminals. Maybe enable adoption and have them loiter around the player house. I think it is important that it be optional, and also have some impact in the game. The whole mentor figure thing reminds me a lot of Kotor2 - in a good way. I think you should be able to influence people to progressively change their attitudes, or become more set in their ways.

That actually isn't a terrible idea for implementing it. It would probably need some significant tweaking or balancing, but a pre-animated point-to-point short range non-passthrough teleport could be interesting. Then again, it sounds like it would be a lot of work for seemingly little reward. We are talking about some rather innovative developers, however.