Frenzy-kun

I think Obsidian should focus in what they excel, meaning CRPGs. I really like the Baldur's gate series, and a setting in forgotten realms or symilar always attracts me, but if I had to choose, I'd ask for some horror setting. Not in the direction of big shapeless monsters (not even cthulhu), but something more psycological oriented: Something that makes you afraid of going forward, but even worse when they ask you to backtrack. One example is the feeling in amnesia, where nothing really happens, but you really are afraid of the shadows. In a CRPG context, it could be something like being afraid of being wounded: Maybe your own wounds come after you? Maybe wounded characters become crazy with time up to the point where they attack the party by surprise in the worst moment? Leaving your wounded companion behind before he strikes the party badly and running short of power until another companion appears or risk yourself keeping a clock bomb next to you? Maybe leaving them to become crazy is the only way to know what's inside their minds, what are their deepest fears and how do they really see the world? I always dreamt of a game where a small group has to survive in a dark, lonely and dangerous world where any mistake counts, where companions are lost so easily that you are even frightened of making bonds with them, but somehow the game pops up with a lot of situations to create bonds, to understand them, and even when you know they are about to die, you can even empatize with them because they are finally showing their true faces, fears and delusions. The original group of survivors is slowly going down in numbers. When comming back to the basement after expeditions, you find out some of them didn't make it alive, but if you take them in your party, sometimes sacrifices are unnavoidable. Even if it's up to you to rescue new lost characters (some of them could be already ill, being a clock bomb in the basement), there is always a luck factor involved in who is going to die. Although as the player you have direct control over your character, it doesn't mean you have the control over the group. You need to gain trust and support from others to take the decisions: where to go next? should we sacrifice the suspect of being ill? Can you please obbey my commands in battle? Whatever you do make you earn friends and enemies, and if your friends die, you lose control over the decisions of the group and even your party, so better make new friends. How many will make it alive? And the best part is that each game is different. Your class, race, sex and age determines who likes and dislikes you, who ends up being ill, making it easier or harder to control the small crowd of survivors. Sometimes you will even be forced to team up with certain people you might dislike, sometimes forced to go with an enemy because he has to watch over you. Hell, even sometimes you won't even be able to team up with your lover because of that jealous crazy bastard who thinks he can take her from you. maybe you should let him die. Maybe if you manage to wound that roommate of him... when they go to sleep...

During every game development there is always a limited budget. Which means, there is a limit to the quantity and quality of the content. In any game, the critical point is always the beginning because that is what is going to hook the player into the game or drop it for something else. That is the reason why the beginning is always much more intense and well done than the rest of the game. I know no game whose midpoint is better than the beginning. Quallity comes through the iteration and experience. That's why the beginning is the last part to develop, but also that's the party that requires the most work. And you could think, "then, reduce the content and improve the quality". Yep, you can do that, but you can also keep improving the quality of the beginning, and then, the mid part will be also of a lower quality than the rest of the game. It's always more interesting to focus in the early game than in the late, no matter how long the game is or how big the budget is.

I will try to be a bit more constructive than the average. In my sense the problem doesn't come of the engagement, the lack of prebuffs or whatever. I believe any game design can be good if developed properly. In fact, act 1 is very good as you say, which means the problem doesn't come from the combat itself. One of the rules of game design is that when players learn the most eficient way to succed in the game, the downhill of boredom begins. Saying so, I think the problem relies there. Basically there are two points to explain this. First, is that most of the player comes from the Baldur's gate saga, which made the combat for this people much easier to predict. It doesn't mean it's simple because there is still many people who never played IE and they struggle to understand what's happening. The second is the one I would like to talk about: the lack of content. This game is a 40 hour game, which means, it requires enough variety of situations to do not get bored. And this game lacks of it. The proof? Check the wizard spells. When you see one of the spells you can really expect an improved version in the next level. This translates into higher level skills being like the lower level skills but improved. Since the game progresses according to your character level, it means that basically is just an up-to-date of a previously existing skill. So this skill plays the same. It also happens with the different controlling skills. Basically all the status effects works pretty symilar. They drain health or incapacitate. So at certain point I was just spamming status randomly. Then you go back to baldur's gate And then you see that yes, there are some upgraded versions, but the quantity of new spells is so overwhelming and the number of upgrades is so little that probably you already switched tactics when the upgrade came, forcing you to readapt. My solution would be to first, create abilities that are unique and combine. Not an easy task, but BG is full of those. But lastly but not least, make conceptual battles. Force the player to deal with a situation they didn't deal before by making some themes on every combat. Most of the combats are a bunch of enemies mixed together with more or less resistance. But I really miss battle themes where you really have to deal with unique situations in unique ways. What about some spiders that can paralize whatever gets closer and can attack and poison on distance? Try to engage it and you lose your character for several seconds. Get too close and even your ranged attacks won't work. And then, after the player learns how to deal with this, have the spiders protected against ranged attacks. Even more, bounce back spells. The companions that becomes agressive because of those huge mushrooms doesn't attack you. That would bring new situations as well. And what about an improved version where the parasited companion ends up exploding if you don't manage to deal with the one controlling him? What about some engage braking abilities. I can imagine for instance that maybe those lions could have a roar that forces any engaged enemy to drop to the floor and disengage. Then they would not be just an upgraded wolf. If you engage them, then your fighter could be screwed. You don't have to go for those complicated patterns. Just using several thematic battles it would be already very good. A fireball theme, for instance. Have 3 wizard enemies pointing fireballs around. Having fire resistant companions that synchs their pushing attacks to the fireball launching. As the wizards start casting the fireball, the warriors pushes your fighters to where the fireball is going to be launched. Hell, that would be crazy to win. THe player for sure needs new strategies. Even if it's about using fire resistance potions, it's already something. The next battle with the fireball mages and the fighters could have some paralysis attack that would make your team an easy target. I remember in the first baldur's gate, the boss battle in episode 4 where you had to fight a wizard that teleports and launches bouncing lightnings in the small alleys. Hell, I didn't know how to deal with that at first. It's not about having a bunch of well localiced enemies, it's about generating sinergies between enemies to create new situations that must be handled in a different way. And I don't know up to what point was done because I could not care less about what skills the enemies were using, but if tried, not achieved.

Well. People have different tastes. The problem is people who believes the game should suit them and only them. Just take the game, take what you like from it and if what you can take don't deserve your time, then you have plenty of games out there.

After the gamergate scandal, I trust no more the media. They follow interests, and I could believe that there are plenty of interests from some media to not to support this kind of games.

As far as I played, it seems Perception, resolve and constitution are redundand. It improves your resistance to death. So in the end, somehow it feels like it's a matter of which defense to improve (and I think the root of the problem is having attacks that targets some defenses instead of defenses preventing effects). I can understand what they tried to do here. But I find it was not ver well developed. Basically what (I think) they wanted to do is a set of stats for the player to be able to make any combination of stats/class. In BG, you have only one dominant build. If you were a warrior, STR, DEX, CON to 18 (well, if you roll enough, everything to 18 except for dump stats, beginning by CHA in BG2). For instance, might could be a dps oriented build, while intellect is about status effects. So instead of having an Intelligent wizard or a strong warrior as dominant builds, you can combine any class with any stat: a strong wizard that deals great damage, a strong warrior that deals great damage, a controller wizard that inflicts a lot of status or a controller warrior that could hold enemies better. Those stats seems to work pretty fine. As well as dextery, which implies more attacks: you can have more combinations. A mighty intelligent wizard whose spells could break through the enemies defenses, but in exchange they are frail and slow. A powerful and fast warrior, making him a glass cannon, so he just attacks and deals as much dps as possible before dying. A rogue that could be oriented to dps, but he could be oriented to status, blinding enemies or poisoning them by increasing the intellect. But appart from that, it seems the other stats are rather redundant. One of the stats needs to be about tanking. Do you want a tanking wizard? Go for it. So it means that the concentration should be increased with this stat. Then you will create a wizard that can go in the first line and make a good use of the fan and contact abilities. Let's call it "resolve". But I think 3 stats for defenses is a waste. Want a tank rogue? Perfect, just add intellect to ensure blindness hits and lasts and then poison your foes and wait for their health to drop while trying unsuccesfuly to land a hit on you just to check your incredible resistance to the very few that does it. Then, perception and constitution seems like they have no room. How could a warrior be modified in order to be able to make a competitive build appart from tank, dps or controller? Probably then the game needs more mechanics in substitutio of the matching defenses (I don't like that the characters have several defenses, because then attacking becomes an obvious choice out of 4 possible target defenses, and when the choice is obvious, there is no choice). Of course, in the end some stats will synergice better than others, but the possibility of having different builds than the STR fighter will be there, and your team configuration will depend on those builds. I think that the mentioned stats works pretty fine. Still, pretty unbalanced (like if I make a rogue 20MIG 19DEX with cloth armor and dual wielding, I expect to kill anything in two seconds even if I die in three hits, but that never happens), but they have a clear purpose. It's not the case with perception, resolve and constitution. They seem oriented to tank. Since you cannot know what kind of attacks your unit can receive, if you want a tank you need to improve all of them, or stick to the most useful one (perception).

Of course. Videogames is leisure, and the objective is to provide something people likes.

Um. Okay, but you haven't actually justified why this limitation should exist, you've just spoken up in favour of limitations in general, which I don't think anyone's arguing against. Because every game is different. Why should I justify that in soccer you cannot touch the ball with your hands? It's the game rules. They could have done it differently? Yes, they could, and then, a different game it would be. They decided to go for static characters for some reasons. I am not part of the dev team so I cannot know. But, that decision makes a different gameplay. Or are you not going to agree that the feeling is different? Because we are the example. You like it so you can freely make your party as desired. I prefer built and unique characters and finish the game with the resources given. Two different profiles and luckily, we can have both choices.

Let EoS be EoS, and let PoE be PoE. One of the things I dislike the most is when devs takes one of my favourite sagas and make a different game out of it. Why? firstly because changing it usually means never comming back to how it was, and how I liked it. If people asks for a sequel of a game is because they liked that game. If people gets tired of that kind of game and the sales drops, then let it rest. I think the culprit is the people. We, as consumers usually buy things with a name we know. Sales of Resident evil 26, Final fantasy 8.645.32 or new super new best mario bros N+1 sells much better than new saga with a super cool new system. That's why when a formula is over or another works better, the classic gets screwed. So, don't worry, you will have a new Elder of Scrolls and you will have a new Pillars of eternity, and certainly if PoE becomes more popular another developers will make a game that might suit your tastes better. But please, keep PoE as the PoE fan wants it. PoE is the spiritual sucessor of Baldur's Gate, and that's what the people who backed it wanted. As fans of the original saga, it was taken out of our hands once, do not ask for a second.

From a gameplay and design perspective, having a set of characters makes perfect sense. A game is about reaching a goal following some rules. Rules are limitations. Having a defined and not variable set of recruitable NPCs is also a limitation, a rule and part of what makes the game. A game with no limitations is not a game. In fact, adding limitations to common actions makes them a game. Do not mix up your tastes with game design. Game design is never intended to please all the tastes but their target's one. And your tastes doesn't have to fit 100% the tastes of the target.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Farming edition.

There is a point here that you are forgetting. If you invest so much in INT, other stats are lacking behind. Yes, you can increase the area, but you could be increasing the damage, increasing the defenses, the stamina and such. According to the strategy you want to follow, you can choose. For a fighter that extra damage might be more useful than the extra second he gets. Or maybe you prefer to incapacitate enemies rather than dealing an extra dps. For glass cannon characters probably focusing on dps than in status is more interesting. In fact, if there is a balance issue, I'd rather increase the bonuses on other stats, because actually the damage bonus seems quite lame to my tastes. I love the strategy of kill before they can kill you and it's rather hard to do it when a character with an awesome might vs a mediocre character deals just a 30% more damage. If I sacrifice all my defenses to increase the damage output and attack speed, I expect some real differences. What I noticed when playing is that a more rounded character works better than extremely specialiced character.

That is just your opinion man. Fact is so many people come on some thread they have nothing to do just to flame and arass other people, go get a therapist and be off. Walking/running as been in every RPG for a long time, you can't bear that ? We don't give a **** Well, the fact that inmersion is how the user is able to abstract from the real world and take the rules of what they are doing as if they were real is not an opinion, but the description of inmersion from a psychogy point of view. That walking and running has been in RPG for a long time and you want it to be here as well, suits more the opinion description. No one is judging you for having such an opinion, so no need to be defensive. But the inmersion argument is a falacy. No one needs to justify an opinion. An opinion is something that needs no justification. What I am pointing to is the justification, which is not valid. I am sure many people will be happy to see their loved mechanic in the game, but do not dress it as something it's not: You are not going to have a more inmersive game for being able to walk. That's not how inmersion works. If you want a more inmersive game, then just point that and I am sure the designer will think about it. If what you want is to be able to walk, then you want to walk.

My conclusion in the subject is that if some people believes that the lack of walking in a game where walking is needless affects the inmersion, then the inmersion word has been completely distorted. Inmersion is not about being realistic, consistent or with x or y feature. Inmersion is about being abstracted of the real world. Tetris is a game that is most inmersive than many games and you cannot walk. If people believes that walking makes the game more inmersive, then think it twice and think if the reason you feel better is having a better inmersion or having a whim granted.

I agree with the fact that there is not enough content. But not in the direction you are pointing. Actuall, the dungeons are pretty good. One of the things I disliked the most in BG series were the awfully long dungeons. The quantity is the key here. There are 3 acts. It feels like 3 chapters from Baldur's gate. there is only 8 characters, not well developed. It lacks of classes or sets as well as some magic or spells (some classes like cyphers has some levels where you can just select all their magics). I finished the game if 42 hours and I did a whole lot. I think that was impossible in BG. I still agree on maps being monotonous. Enemies here and there and lack of other contents. In the first BG there were some empty transition places, but at least they got some stuffs to explore, like the gnoll fortress. The cloak forest was a dungeon inside the worldmap and you had to face the spiders' traps. Something I felt here is that it didn't matter much what enemies I found, the combat was a bit symilar. In BG1 I remember the spider traps, the basilisks, the bandits... some places you just run away because of the creatures found. Basilisks are my nightmare and the sword spiders is something to be avoided until late levels. The mermaids that confuses you and stuff like that were really something. Now... well, let's say I care very little about status effect. I can die against a very strong and numerous enemy party but I really don't mind about status. Something temporal that usually doesn't make me stagger. I probably die more often because of getting out of spells rather than the enemy owning me. It feels like most of the battles are hard because of the numerous enemies or the difficulty to take them down rather than the enemy playing smart against me. But that feels like lack of content rather than bad quality content. There are many surprises everywhere. The dungeons seems mostly good for me. As I always said, I really feel that the levels lack of other kind of interactions to make each level unique and memorable, but tha would be an extra layer of work, much above BG series. For me, they needed to fill the empty areas of the map. On the bottom there is room for 2 more levels. On the top there is room for 5 more. With that you can always add 2 more episodes. And then, some "comming back" episodes like the last 2 in BG, going back to the first ruins to discover a new route in the dungeon and then going back to defiance bay to finish your business there. Then we could have a ~80 hour game. This could be enhanced with higer level magics, traps, enemies, missions and situations. And it would be great.

I just want to say, no offense intended, is that if you think the two health bars are unnecesary, it means you didn't understand well how it works. Those bars are an example of good design. But of course, specially for the people who comes from baldur's gate, this feature forces the people to stay out of their confort zone. Rest spam. Once you learnt it, the game balance was off. And it's not the first, neither the last that forces you to come back to town to rest.

My two cents -Banters were kind of dissapointing. There is barely a few. And only 8 characters. Wow, I expected to be 8 very well polished characters, but it seems I was wrong. They have almost no content outside of their mission. More banters, please. -Romances are missing. I miss them. -The stronghold is purposeless and empty. At first I thought more people will come and populate the area. But in the end, appart from my soldiers, not much to see. Also, the shops doesn't seem to scale properly (or scale at all). It can be really improved. First, add more population. You could even earn some money by renting rooms. Then, add a few content as the game progresses. Missions available in the new npcs, for instance. Being able to choose the benefits of sleeping in the stronghold doesn't deserve the efforts of unlocking it all. Maybe even some companion NPC could spawn here. -NPCs should be unique, and not just another fighter with a different portrait. They should have their unique ability or custom object in order to make the player to want to play with them. Edwin sais. Why should I play with one of the mediocre NPCs when I can create a really good companion? This is the answer. -Scenarios are repetitive. Visually, no complains, but you could replace every background by a black and white picture showing the collisions and eventually you will notice they are all the same. Every stage should have their own unique features to add a new layer over the gameplay. A hot desert that removes the resistance of the party, playing with the shadows to prevent yourself to get tired. Maybe you can find a cloak to protect a character against the effects of the heat and then have your ranged characters in the shadows. Use the pushing abilities to force the enemies into the sun. This way, you cannot just draw the level with black and white, you need to add color. What about playing with the water levels? And what about some windy plains where the characters move slower if going against the wind. What about a foggy valley? And about some hazarous floors or bushes that poisons on touch? The game needs more interactions with the levels to prevent them to become "one more layout". Make me believe I am in a desert not just by watching a picture. -A gnome race. A hated race of trolling small creatures. All of them are crazy and have some weird sexual fetishes. -Please, make it so the helmets doesn't make you bold. Is it so hard to make a "flat" version of the headstyles? -Add some sexual behavior. Really, almost all the sexual references are in the brothel. Why cannot you flirt with the people when talking? I can be cruel, I can be sarcastic, but I cannot flirt with the people. What about some beauty skill made to deceive people when you don't have any reputation? I wanted to play as a manipulative woman, but it seems I have not enough choices to use my perfectly shaped ass to achieve my goals. - Also, I think that the combat system is very like a rock-paper-scissors style. I have an attack that attacks one specific defense, so the winner strategy is about choosing the ability that targets the lowest one. I think it works, but it could really be improved. I believe every skill should target all the defenses, and the defenses denies the specific effects. My reflexes should help me to avoid that sword in time, not only deflection. Will is something used to prevent status that makes you lose the control of the character, but if I am being attacked by some deadly psicotropic poison and I am able to resist the psicotropic effects, it doesn't mean I will be protected against the poison damage. Even normal attacks should have effects over the characters. If a weak minded character is repeteadly hurted, they might be scared and try to run away. This way you can create a strong willed character that will rather die than be controlled, or you can create a character that can resist any hit with no recoil, but any mental attack or any arrow will hit him with ease. Or you could try to have it all so your character becomes a wall in exchange of other features like damage output. But right now it seems like a paper-rock-scissors game. It's not a matter of how you want your character to be, but a matter of what kind of attacks you will find in the adventure. -The new classes are good. I expect new ones. In this soul based universe, I can think in some soul related class (soul, not mind). So, what about a class that can posess other bodies? Skills to control other people or animals, skills to enhance the posessed creature and skills to damage oneself. I really would love to take the control of one of those ogres, smashing everybody in my way and when everyone is dead, suicide myself. The class could summon creatures and posess them, or even posess other party members to enhance their power. Passive ability: every wizard, cipher or priest spell that has an area effect boost its damage x1.5 and knocks out the targets. - I miss necromancers. I mean, real necromancers, not wizards with skeleton summon abilities. A necromancer can revive any dead body to serve him temporarily. A necromancer can attach his soul to his unconscious body to have a second chance. The "revived" version has his power increased, is inmune to non-magical damage and healing magic will hurt him. Once the effect is finished, the necromancer will return to normal, but it won't trigger again until resting. - Some kind of swordmage. Embed a magical spell into your weapon to trigger a lower version of its effects on each hit. Plus with multiclassing, else, you could even steal spells from another wizard or cypher. Fire damage? Add fire damage. Stun? Stun the enemy. Drain? drain. -Magic equipment: missing. I mean, yes, there are lots of possibilities with the enchantments. But that makes it so the real unique weapons feel like any common enchanted weapon. First, make it so the magic weapons (the unique ones with unique effects) have a different color than the regular enchanted weapons. A quality sword is blue, good, but if I find an unique sword, say it: green, orange, yellow, magenta, whatever. So I can know I just found something really special. Then, add some more here and there. At first, finding quality items felt good, but then, they became so common that they feel like average equipment. I miss that type of sword you find at the beginning of the game and you keep it all around. It's your treasure. Now, when replaying the game and finding "quality something", feels a bit dissapointing. Even if it's not better, it's unique.

Sex is fun. Sex with a prostitute is not. People who did it disagree with you.

If they built it in unity, then it's not a "proper" language. Unity uses some scripting tools and you can choose the language to work with. It can be a variation of javascript or a variation of c#.

Actually I would not use DA as an example of how to make a romance. Romances are something you should not be aware of, something that happens. If you want to flirt with a girl you don't watch a screen with a counter out of 100 and increases by giving a present. Romances should be the consequience of the behavior and interactions between two characters: You like one character that for you stands out the most. If you start talking and bugging them they will not like you. If you give an expensive present to a person you just met, they will think there is something wrong with you. BG2 was kind of interesting because when you create some connection between the PC and one NPC, then you are waiting for the next banter. Because the banter is the reward of two characters trusting each other, not the opposite. In DAO it feels weird. Banters are how you increase your relationship with that character, so you forcefully talk through an endless tree of dialogs than rather of showing your interest in that person, you become a stalker. But also, the interesting thing about relationships is about the other person paying attention to you. DAO takes the romance mates as a trophy to achive. And that's just the opposite as romance. Romance is not about trophies, but about feelings. I'd never follow the DAO's system. In fact, I'd do the opposite. I would make a system where the actions, even in combat, are related to the evolution of the bonds between two characters. If you take care of them, then they will reward you with new banters. Because the purpose of the romance is that. Even if there are some sexual intercourse cinematics, they are the consequence for caring about. Having visible counters and flags, making them to react so mechanically to the different mechanics, it breaks what makes romances interesting. It doesn't generate emotional or sexual tension. Then, your romance mates becomes a paid whore. Romance is worthy when there is real romance. Else, it's just fanboy services, as you said. Actually, there are not many games that has some real romances. I can think on none. BG2 had some moments. Some tension that made you want the next dialog. But, further than that, in videogames everything is excesively mechanic. Still, there are some TV shows that are pretty good, and this kind of games with such a good narrative and deep character interaction are at the doors of something great. If all the effort used to create a setting were used to develop a character interaction that could lead into a romance, then, we could watch one of the very first games into have some real romance, further than story guided games or mechanical "do this to force she to love you". If I had to vote for a reference, I'd go for the rune factory series. Maybe RF4 since is the most polished one. It's a bit childish and very mechanical as well. But since the relationship evolves in the long term, is not like you can just spawn presents to the girls. But instead, you just want to check the next holidays in the calendar or the next town events to hang out with that girl and let her tell you part of her story. It's a game that even with those mechanical relations, it made me change my favorite girl several times just by learning about them: listening to their stories, learning how do they feel, generating emotional tension. Rune factory are low cost japanese rpg games. But I can imagine how good a mature well written and deep romance can be if taken care properly. That's why I want romances in the games. If it's not the writer's best, then, have a support writter or just keep trying and learn.

My turn, though I dont participate much. I like romances. For me it's one reason to replay the game. Reading banters and watch how my character and the NPC gets closer and closer feels nice, and I like to check what this other person has to offer. But I can understand there are some people who doesn't care about it. ACtually I think the best is that the interactions between companions is directly related to how they like each other, but some mechanics like that would force the people who dislikes romancing to do something they do not want to. So, I understand the decission, but I think, nothing bad happens if as players we can have the choice. Something pretty natural like in BGS (not like in DA, where the relationship is even shown in the menus),, but some banters here and there, some progression, and even some secondary missions, could be more than enough to satisfy the romance lovers. After all, this is a fantasy rpg, not a sim dating.

@Meisser. None taken. But I think the stories should be autoconclusive. I wouldn't mind on Sarevok doing something else. I dislike that a piece of the story was taken out of the game where it belongs, purposedly or not. @Lephys. If something was never exposed in the original campaign then I cannot imagine how it can be related to that, unless it's an unclosed thread, which is bad as well. I disliked it because Sarevok ends up in the first game being the absolute evil who wanted to claim his murder heritage by forcing a war. After ToB, Sarevok was a little poor little boy who was abandoned and destiny made him like that. The whole Sarevok's plot was spoiled because they wanted to extend a supposedly closed story. If Sarevok was at first a victim of circumstances that's how he should have been presented in the first place. That's just one example of why I don't like stories to be extended. If we go to TV shows or movies we have endless examples of how stretching the plot ends up in screwing the original idea. So I firmly believe that a plot must be autoconclusive. There is plenty of ways to approach a expansion without having to touch something that is round already.

I don't pretend to be that extreme. I just think that a story or campaign should be round itselft. Not saying it should explain every possible thing that happens in the game world, but the facts that are shown to the player should be closed and explained. I think that if there is any room to add extra information, it means the story is not closed, hence, uncomplete. The story has a setting, has a triggering event, has a development that triggers new events and has a closure. So I expect from a campaign or story that everything triggered reach to a conclusion. Bringing new events or changing supposedly concluded threads just makes me think that there is something wrong, uncomplete and unreliable. Even if there are good intentions. I can also understand that it might be a bit utopic and that a story is always far from perfect, but i'd orbit around that idea. I don't mind about having side stories based in the same setting or parallel to the main story but without interfering on it. For instance, I found super nice to hear something about the dead god Wakueen in BG2:ToB. It has nothing to do about the story of the baalspawns, but it enriches the game. But I really hated when Solar talks about your past and Sarevok's one. Hell, that should have gone to he first game, a game that was about sarevok and his retribution, and this is part of that story thread. I had to wait for the expansion of the next game in order to close the story thread of the first game. After that, it feels like the first game is uncomplete. There is relevant information missing.

I think everybody will agree that the dice system in IE games ended up in wasting half an hour checking for the highest possible stats, unless is your very first game where you might not understand the core rules. So in the end, I think RNG is no good, specially in something that you will carry all over the game. But I aggree there is something in this lottery that makes the player to feel satisfied after the effort. If I wanted to add this lottery system I'd work with something that won't affect that much the gameplay (where the difference in stats could create from the crappiest crap to a godlike). For instance, the initial equipment. It could be randomiced through some parameters. You could have a magic weapon, or even exclusive items, or an equivalent to the stat tomes that increases one point the stat. In the end, those objects would become obsolete or you could find equivalent quality items while you play, but it will make a difference and this rewarding system would still aply.

1. Nude mod 2. Romance mod 3. Healing potion mod 4. Rest anywhere 5. Inventory anywhere Wisdom > 18