Cultist

Overlord 3 was announced. may be released under another name but "will keep the spirit of the game"

I hope they will not repeat AOW2 mistakes. Some creatures and spells were so overpowered it broke entire game. Cityspam were horrible as well. Anyway, I'm happy that good franchizes of old are coming back. Now if only someone would make a new incarnation of Master of Magic. Last attempts were very disappointing.

All that games, System Shock2=>Bioshock, Deus Ex and others, except for Fallout 3 started as Action-RPG hybrids. Problems arise when games start a transition from one genre to another. Even Fallout was not spared from extensive criticism and accusations of dumbing down the gameplay after release. New Vegas tried to fix it but with new Oblivion engine succeeded only to some extent, sadly.

that's why I said "In vast majority of RPGs". There are but few exceptions where you can change goody-two-shoes and righteous character to be more ruthless, selfish and egoistic. No, I'm asking to provide such option for those who prefer to stick with darker path, meaning being selfish, egoistic and ruthless. As opposite features like "redeeming" of "evil' companions\NPCs is common in RPGs. No, you are twisting my words. I never said grey situations should not be present or are bad. I said that OPTION to corrupt and sway companions from their path would be a credit to Role-playing experience.I can always make an excuse for slavery, murder of innocents, thievery and other deeds. I can create a character with fictional ideology that'll see all this deeds as normal, but to a majority of players it will always be seen as "evil". I can call persuading the paladin to abandon his oaths and turn to a life of depravity "enlightening", "opening his eyes" and such, but, again, for a majority of players it will be "corruption". So I will continue to call it that way for better understanding.I'm askign for an option, not overhauling to keep only evil-neutral-good interactions. If someone want other options, like "redeeming" and such - they can make a topic for it, but I'm more interested in corrupting aspect.

I never said everyone should be corruptable. That was the mistake of DA2 - where everyone would agree and support main protagonist, no matter how offensive you act towards your companions. There should be uncorruptable and resolute who would could and would resist. How option to corrupt your companions means there is "good/evil binary sliding scale"? Or you are opposed to ANY acts that could be interpretated or viewed as good\evil? Make everyone grey for greyness sake? How making priest abandon his\her god is evil? Making wizard to ignore restrictions in research could be seen as evil by those who set this restrictions, but not everyone.

In vast majority of RPGs the only way you could change or affect your companions is by making them better, turning them from the "dark side" or persuading them to abandon their evil ways. Could we do the opposite as well? Let us corrupt our companions. Make paladins fall, priests abandon their gods, vigilant betray their comrades. We already had it to some extent in KOTOR2 and DA:O. In Dragon Age it was called "hardening" - making companion more cynical, harsh and selfish. In KOTOR2 via your influence and certain dialogues you could turn companions to the dark side, like "helping" Atton to accept and be proud of his past as a jedi murderer. We already have seen companions in PE like Cadegund - a priestess of Magran. by corrupting her we may have option either to shatter her faith or push her into more sever actions - more like "kill them all, Magran will recognize her own"

HK-47, Bishop, Sarevok, Viconia, Edwin and Krogan.

Elanee - was horrible, and unavoidable, which made it even more horrible. Fenris - animu emo homo whiner. Couldn't get any worse. Khelgar Ironfist - forced to join you no matter how you resist. Sand - words can't express how annoying he was. Bao-Dur- he was so....empty and shallow. Jacob(ME) and Miranda- something makes me want to shot them. Leliana - could be just annoying, but with BioWare's decision to retcon her she moved to the most despised in my list. Mina Tang- she was incredibly annoying during entire Alpha Protocol and I'm thankful to Obsidian that they allowed me to kill her. And the prize winner - Tallis from Dragon Age 2:MotA. She was the worst of them all combined.

Some people try to present BSN as populated by especially vicous and angry users, but in fact it is no more "hostile" than any forum. The forums become "toxic" when developers release bad quality product. It happens all the time. Civilization 5 failed expectations after successful Civ4 and people was outraged by Firaxis' idleness about patches and fixing numerous bugs, glitches and gamebreaking features. They redeemed themselves only with X-Com. Tiberium Twilight forums was a hellhole after demo have been released. Moderators started banning everyone who posted even slightly negative comments. Empire: Total War turned from respectful community into a pit of snakes after game release. And Total War series is unique because the age of average player there is 25+ if not 30+. Sad fate, similar to DA2 - rushed and unpolished product with lot of expectations and built upon great franchize. In all of this few examples devs never tried to fix things that were broken. Which, in turn, intensified the enimity. The easiest way is to blame trolls, naysayers and negative minority.

Steven heck from Alpha protocol is one of the most entertaining characters so far. Could we have his kind of people as allies in Project Eternity? Because is most of "template" RPGs we could interact with such characters only when they are antagonists, as very few games deviate from good hero vs evil psychopath "standart".

NWN2 crafting was a fail. All you could create was trash. In BG2 you created powerful and unique things. Not generic long sword noone uses.

Fallout was turn-based. PE is real-time. ANd that's why very well made DA: Origins suffered from unsuccessful imlementation of finishing moves. The worst case of finishing moves - Dawn of War, pre-patch. Everyone who played it online could remember the horrible and game breaking exploits with Big Mek and his finishing moves animations.

Ramsay Bolton. He's is just plain badass and awesome.

Noone complained about Bridge of Death and Arthur's power armored Knights fighting Killer Rabbit encounters from Fallout 2. Every game earn its own share of jokes. The difference is whether the game itself is the target of the game concepts. DeusEx:HR spawned "I didn't asked for it", Team Fortress2 - got entire joke culture, and joked on itself with Hat theme. DA2 and ME3 "enjoyed" mean and mocking jokes mostly.

Dawn of War and DA: origins were both isometric, yet suffered from sync-kill mechanic problems.

Ah, DoW, yes, players cried when Big Mek gone on his animation spree. Immune to damage and almost every kill with finishing animation. Issue was so serious that developers changed chance of sync0kill dramatically. Every ork player exploited it horribly. Dragon Age had opposite problem, when your char gone on sync-kill or was affected by some deliberating ability - like dog chewin on you or spider pounced on you - you still took damgae from every source.

Finishing moves are known from various games. Skyrim, Dragon Age etc. they add flavor and athmosphere to the game and make battles more entertaining. But with them comes one problem - should time stop during execution or battle should go normally. Because player may be invulnerable during animation to prevent situations when finishing move will result in main hero slaughered by nearby enemies during his finishing animation. Then, hero can use finihing move on the last opponent alive, killing others normally.

Good times with might & Magic 7, where you can turn your characters into Lich.

Level scaling helps game to be interesting. But quite often it is implemented in a way that ruins the game. Oblivion - rats that punched through ebony armor, bandits in daedric stuff and such. It was moddable and was solved quite quickly. Dragon Age 2 - unmoddable, and with scaling so harsh that completely eliminated entire concepts of role-playing, like attributes and skill usage. No matter what you do, you'll always be battling the same way as even the weakest foe will be scaled. Scaling should be subtle like in BG2, that will make game challenging but will not drive it into absurdity.

And he'll be bisexual...and will whine...and will stay with you no matter how opposing main character would be to him.

You can destroy all souls, make every living thing control their souls or...oh, wait.

medicine ball reminds me about:

Kirkwall area was massive. The problem is that it's huge areas were completely empty and dead.

One example of bad time limit implementation is Mass Effect 2 - after you recruited Legion, you get an abduction event where all of your crew got kidnapped by colllector attack. Then, timer.kicks in. You can complete only one mission without "harm", then it's a countdown - for each additional mission the amount of surviving crew is reduced by 25%. So to get the best outcome, i.e. save everyone, you have to complete all missions, then recruit Legion, then complete his Loyalty mission and then go stright for Collector base. Basiacally, timer forces you to avoid recruiting Legion. So if you want to see him interacting with the world and his opinions on missions you complete, you are sacrificing the crew.

DA2 got only Kirkwall, Denerim was one of the few locations, we got Orzzammar, Redcliffe and Lothering. Could not compete with Baldur's Gate, but still filled with quests and miniquests. And encounters were actually more diverse than another group of paratrooping clones.