Malekith

You probably just don't like one or two aspects about it, and now you're trying to make the game look bad as a whole. The music, while perhaps no masterpiece, was above average. The candlekeep track is even one of my all time favorites. It's not like the combat was much different from Icewind Dale. Icewind Dale was harder, but that's about it. If anything, Baldurs Gate had more combat with other adventuring/mercanary groups, which I think is always the best part. And you can't really compare the characters to, let's say, the one's of Planescape. Baldurs Gate I never demanded to be an "adult", realistic or particularly intelligent game, it was more of a fun game most of the time, that didn't take itself very seriously. Minsk, Edwin, Xan, Kagain all were rather caricative characters, or well, just dopey. But I don't think Bioware made such a bad job there. No it isn't. It is.BG1 was the weakest of the IE games and the "explorability" of half-empty maps was one of the worst things in it. On the other hand BG2 was the best of the IE games(with Torment very slightly behind) so I'm not bashing Bioware.But the first BG was average to good, but nothing special

Who said i bought them? What the friends are for if not for borrowing their games? I only buy games that i know i will like, but i generally play a few hours in every RPG/Strategy with the hope i will find a hidden gem or a company i don't know about yet.

Fair enough. But even as an isometric fan, New Vegas WAS a good enough game. Fallout 3 was Oblivion with guns. As someone who found all TES games crap(yes, even Morrowind) Fallout 3 was a disapointment. Whereas I found New Vegas gameplay bad, but the rest of the game was really good. If New Vegas was in the style of the first two fallouts would be easily on par with them. If Fallout 3 was isometric it would still be boring. But maybe my problem is with Bethseda. I never liked a single game that company made.

Fallout 3 was crap

That is the heart of the matter. For people who used the editor, played online and the modules NWN is the perfect RPG as it comes the closest to emulate P&P. For the others OC=NWN and it was lackluster at best.The two groups played a completelly different game

Fair enough. But the NWN OC was more of a way to show what can be done with the editor than an interesting campain in its own right. For many is the weakest game Bioware has made.(pre-DA2)

The reason why noone asks for NWN its because it was a poor game. The game editor is the thing most people fondly remember when they talk about NWN, and if you pay attention to various kickstarters you see that game editors are always high in peoples demands. Shadowrun Returns will have such an editor. Maybe other games too.

If you have it already try Dragon Age:Origins. It no BG2, but its not a bad game.

EA, and others but EA is the most blatant at it, represents what is wrong with the industry.Paying ever increasing amounts of money for ever decreasing returns,don't own your own games,games as a servise etc. This whole direction that many gamers find abhorrent. So it's natural for these people to wish this practise makes them crush and burn, because if they are succesfull and make money this way, the others will follow EA. Its not about the "evil" EA but a hope that the direction of the intustry will lead it to a dead end,forsing it to change. I don't care about the EA games, so i don't give a rat's ass what EA does to their customers. But if that leads to others copying EA practices to making business, then it becomes my problem. So i would prefer if every attempt to milk their customers backfire spectacularly.

There are people out there who have absolutely no problem with the publisers.If the majority of gamers refuse to buy the products, they have the power to do what they want.until that happens(and it's not going to happen) whatever power they have is dormant

With any luck, never! I hate sandboxes.Many people like them.Both should have games to play. With the current publising model if you don't like the trent of the day direction you are out of luch because,quess what, all the industry goes in the same direction. That i don't like sandboxes shouldn't mean that i should give up RPGs altogether. But,at least from the big, AAA games i have no RPG that i want to play after DA3, and with DA3 i'm in a "wait and see" and not "excited" mode

So did Wasteland 2, or even Project Eternity - games that also "allegedly [have] a small chance of financial success" that still had no trouble at all making their goals via Kickstarter. In fact, your statement is misleading because even Feargus notes that Torment eventually made money, even using the publisher model. The problem bigger publishers have is usually one of opportunity cost. EA or Activision could easily make these more niche games, and probably still turn a profit doing so. The problem is whether or not it maximizes their profit. Making a Torment presents an opportunity cost (that I feel is overstated, but alas... only so much I can change at any given time even from the inside). So if Project Eternity takes $4 million and ends up bringing in $8 million in revenues, you get pretty good return on investment. But if you take the Obsidian team, through $40 million at them, and they bring in $70 million in revenues, while the ROI is not as high, the absolute revenue is much, much, much higher. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just creating 10 different projects for $4 million a piece. What you do illustrate, however, is that the cries of "too many sequels" is pretty disingenuous by gamers. They have no problems with sequels, as long as they are sequels of games that they like. This. I think that the gamer's problem is not the sequels per se,but that all the games are the ****ing same. DA2 has more in common with MassEffect than DA:O. Fallout 3 has more in common with Oblivion than F1 and F2. You see the trent? The problem with all genres bleeding in each other is that after a point all the games are exactly the same. Mass Effect 4 is a sequel. If Bioware made the same game as a new IP, with diffirent names, diffirent lore and same gameplay,romances and all, what exactly would be the diffirence? I would prefer if they made Mass Effect 4, and along with it a new IP that is completelly different experience. That is the problem with publisers. In the rare occasions they have a new IP, chances are that is the same with the previous ones. The CoD crowd is too big and too different to like RPGs. The solution? Let's copy Skyrim instead. DA3,TW3,Cyberpunk,F4,TES5. How long before all RPGs are sandboxes after Bethseda's style?

Yet no other RPG had them.(except perhaps MotB) Even the other IE games (BG and IWD), Fallouts, Arcanum etc fall way short because they had other priorities. Even P:E will be more of a BG3 than P:T2. That doesn't mean that can't have Torment level writing or story, but that they will not be the main focus of the game. There will be too much combat for that.

Start MotB. You don't need to have finished the NWN2 to play the expansion, the stories are 99% separate

^This. NWN2 had one of the worst UI i have ever seen. MotB is for me the best game Obsidian has ever made, but still replaying it feels a chore because of the UI and camera controls

In a RTwP game there is no point to have all classes require a lot micromanagement.Some of them must be passive. In theory it sounds good to have many "options" and abilities for every class, but in practise is almost impossible to micromanage SIX characters at the same time unless you wish to pause the game every 6 seconds.If you want that it would be better to make the game turn based from the start. I believe is better to have 1 or 2 characters that require active managment all the time and have the rest be almost entirely passive. Like it was in IE games.

PS:T style

For me IE games had the best interface from all the games i have played. As long as they take IWD2 interface as a model(or even BG2) i will be happy

a mix of a and b. BG2 had the perfect balance. Sandbox doesn't mix well with story driven, and all IE games were story driven. As P:E is a successor to IE, i don't think anyone should excpect a sandbox.

Baldur's Gate 2

Sad news. I don't like sandboxes. I know open world =! sandbox, but they keep mentioning Skyrim... I didn't liked New Vegas either, so if Obsidian can't do it for me CDR sertainly can't

And why should I engage in combat if avoiding combat yields the best results? I could kill in Deus Ex too, but why should I? Stealth yields the best results in Deus Ex. And why should somebody who hates stealth play a stealth game? Why should someone who hates combat play a tactical combat based game? Why should somebody who hates real-time-strategy games play an RTS game? etc. etc. etc. Read the rest of my post. And be4 "but i feel like an idiot if i play the way i want if i know that i could have sneaked and be done with it", whats the matter? You can't control yourself? That's the main complain i have seen from most people who hate Sawyer's changes(i don't know if you are one of them), that it catters to "idiots who can't control themselves" Sawyer said that if people avoid all combat is not how the devs want the game to be played, and if it happens it means they did a crap job. They just changed a "degenarate gameplay" for another. So he knows your fears and i'm sure they will try to balance it correct.Most of the problems you mentioned are pretty obvious, so unless they are complete idiots they wii see to them. I trust them. If you think that Sayer and Cain don't know what they're doing why did you backed it in the first place? In IE games resting after every encounter yields the best results.Geting the quest XP and then killing the guestgiver yields the best results.That's not how the game has to be played.

No, let the game designer make that decision for you. Sneaking and avoiding combat is always the best option because it yields the best results. That is what you want, right? Easy no brainer stuff where the outcome is always the same... unless you actually fail sneaking and have to engage in that pointless combat. But then you can just Press F9 and reload. Even if that is true, you can still fight all you want and you will get your XP. Nothing stops you from playing the game exactly like you played BG2. What is your problem with a "combat hater" geting the same reward in his own, completelly seperate game? How is that affecting your own gameplay? And be4 "but i feel like an idiot if i play the way i want if i know that i could have sneaked and be done with it", whats the matter? You can't control yourself? That's the main complain i have seen from most people who hate Sawyer's changes(i don't know if you are one of them), that it catters to "idiots who can't control themselves" Sawyer said that if people avoid all combat is not how the devs want the game to be played, and if it happens it means they did a crap job. They just changed a "degenarate gameplay" for another. So he knows your fears and i'm sure they will try to balance it correct.Most of the problems you mentioned are pretty obvious, so unless they are complete idiots they wii see to them. I trust them. If you think that Sayer and Cain don't know what they're doing why did you backed it in the first place?

Thats your problem. You want the game to force you to kill everything. How is that good game design?Most of the backers don't want that. No I don't. I just don't want the combat to be annoying and pointless. I want to be rewarded for making wise decisions, I want to be rewarded for making the hardest and most demanding options and not just for crossing some imaginary line. I just want what the backers want. A spiritual successor to the IE games. Nothing more and nothing less. The game only rewards you for crossing an imaginary line. What the game should be doing is rewarding you for the most xp for the hardest and most demanding options. But that is not what we will be getting. So your problem is not that there is no combat XP but that quest XP is the same no matter what you did. If the system rewarded diffirent XP amounds of XP depended on how you solved the quest you would be happy?

Really? Not after finishing a quest? So let me get this straight. You are claiming that the system in PE dictates that if you engaged in combat to complete a quest, then you will not receive EXP? BS. Prove it. Of course you would get xp for combat if you had to kill everything to complete a quest. But the game will not force you to kill everything to get quest xp. Actually, you will not need to kill anything to complete a quest. I am just repeating myself now though. Thats your problem. You want the game to force you to kill everything. How is that good game design? Most of the backers don't want that. The game still rewards you for combat.It just don't rewards you for combat better than non combat. That was the goal from the start. You seem to find that unacceptable. Why is that?