Randomthom

"They're robes dammit, ROBES!" - Every male Wizard ever

As a sound engineer I see a solution to this problem. Compression I won't explain it because it's boring and won't help me make my point. If you're interested then go wiki dynamic compression. Here's my idea... X boss is level 7. With no scaling he stays like this regardless of player party level. X boss is level 7 or 7+ (3:1 ratio over threshold, always rounded down) So, if you meet X boss when you are level 7, the boss is level 7 too. If you meet the boss when you are level 13, the boss is level 9. This is because you are 6 levels above the threshold of 7. Our ratio of 3:1 means that those 6 levels you possess translate into 2 levels for the boss, thus 7 becomes 9. This means that extra levelling both benefits the player without completely trivialising the encounter. Obviously the ratio can be adjustable to fit the actual level range of the game. I'll also add that plain 1:1 scaling makes my skin crawl. I'm very good at "seeing through" a game to it's inner workings. Even more so when so much information is presented as it is in cRPGs. It sucks the fun out of the game for me to know that no matter what I do, the next boss will be the same level as me. An RPG has to show progression objectively and relatively.

Ever use it on Glacius in the D'Arnise keep in BG2? That was cool

Skyrim with pickpocket perk and strong frenzy poisons on a sneaky character... Sneak up, pickpocket them then put a poison in their pocket. They then find it, drink it (curiosity killed the bandit) and proceed to murder all their friends I agree, it's a lot of fun to do this, it'll be even more fun in PoE when i won't be worried about "aren't I losing XP because I'm not the one doing the killing"...

While considering classes & levelling, something I'd like to see NOT making an appearance in PoE is the dreaded re-spec. For those who aren't aware, "re-spec" or re-specialisation long-hand is the act of undoing and then re-assigning all your character's historic development choices. It is common and indeed necessary in games like MMOs where the goalposts can move and different skills are required. It's also common in ARPGs where character story is practically nil and it's all about the finer details of the build. I feel it devalues and trivializes player choice and makes a mockery of "roleplay"... It's like re-writing your own history to fit with what you need.

Classless can work but PoE is meant to be a throwback to the old IE games we know & love and thus classless isn't a good fit here. Regarding classless, I think that TES: Skyrim got it right whereas TES: Oblivion got it wrong. That is to say that in skyrim you couldn't really accidentally level a skill and screw your character over, there was no real detriment to your character if you did. Oblivion required a massive amount of micromanaging that very-much hampered player immersion. I'd also point out that I think Skyrim's system is probably the best system to encourage actual roleplaying. The core reason is that the game isn't really that hard, it is easy to trivialise it by powergaming with enchants thus the focus of the player leans away from what is "best" and towards "what do I want to do...?" What we're getting in PoE sounds somewhat like a hybrid of the 2 ideas. We're getting classes but it sounds like we'll be able to use the class as a base concept rather than a specific path. In AD&D (aka 2nd Edition) and thus also in the original IE games, classes were very definite. If you were a mage you didn't know how to swing a sword and never could. In 3rd edition & 3.5 (IWD2, NWN, NWN2, TOEE) a wizard didn't know how to swing a sword but they could spend a feat and join in the fray (although it was still a summarily bad idea). PoE sounds like it's opening up the game a little further. Character concepts should be much easier to turn into reality in the game engine. This is an impressive feat of game mechanics if they pull it off. It will be to class-based systems what Skyrim is to classless. The other key thing to mention about the class-based vs classless is that of course Skyrim and similar systems has no level cap and eventually you can master every skill, I don't expect this to be the case with a class-based system. I envisage something more like the fallout system whereby you have options when you level up but you can't pick 'em all. The pitfall to avoid with this I guess is for class choice to mean nothing at all. Either way, I can't see that being an issue.

For me, I'm still playing BG2 14 years on. If a delay means the difference between a good game I play once and a great game I play thirty-or-more times over the next 2 decades, I think I can wait a little longer

I tend to work with the following; 1 tanky melee 1 damage melee 1 archer 1 priest 1 mage 1 "flavour" The "flavour" character varies. In my favourite ever BG2 group that party was as follows; Tanky - Keldorn Damage - Gnurk (Kensai half-orc PC) Archer - Fingolfin (Archer Elf MP-made PC) Priest - Anomen Mage - Imoen/Nalia Flavour - Aerie & Haer'dalis* *I actually ran with Aerie AND Haer'dalis but no Keldorn with Anomen filling the tanky role somewhat but that damn tiefling tried to steal my lady in Spellhold... Picked up Keldorn after getting back to Athkatla. In general I like to play an archer but it's flavour varies. I will probably play a rogue archer for my first playthrough in PoE.

This "massive waste of time" is the kind of thing that makes sequels possible... Imagine the conversation in a years time. "Hi, I'm Josh Sawyer. I'm looking for a publisher to back Project Eternity 2." "Oh yeah, I saw you guys at E3, the old-school RPG right?" "That's the one" "Yeah, I saw that sold pretty well, let's arrange a meeting" or perhaps this conversation "Hi, I'm Josh Sawyer. I'm looking for a publisher to back Project Eternity 2." "What the f### is that? Ever heard of Kickstarter? Try there..."

@PrimeJunta Very eloquently put re: PJ's Elves. I find myself in partial agreement in that I think that PJ did portray some of that bittersweet beauty and sadness (in particular in the EE of FotR scene when the hobbits see the elves passing through the shire) but perhaps not enough. It's odd that actually, a book can do that better perhaps than a movie because it requires very strong acting to portray that kind of subtext. I also agree with JFS that Tolkein's Elves were perhaps too perfect though they did have their flaws. They are arrogant, self-absorbed (as a culture) and aloof. They think themselves better than other races, perhaps because they are, and don't seem interested in these other races unless they themselves have something to gain from an alliance. Thranduil's abandonment of the Dwarves of Erebor is a classic example of this. Back onto the thread topic, the main pitfall I'd like to see avoided is the mistreatment of stealth-based characters. Sneaksneaksneaksneak... "HELLO, welcome to my bossfight"... I don't want to sneak over another conversation trigger that 1. Brings me out of stealth 2. Puts me in a conversation 3. Puts me next to the big bad brute who is good at stomping on my face I fact, I don't want it to do that last one even if I don't sneak, if I'm playing a squishy wizard then I don't want that either. No game has yet done this perfectly but the closest is probably TES and most of the infinity engine games. Games that have done this poorly are manifold but the worst perpetrators are comfortably NWN2 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (with it's terrible outsourced boss fights). NWN2 was particularly bad. I recall one situation where I told the rest of the party to stay put while I sneaked ahead with the tiefling thief NPC (Neera?) At some point I crossed a conversation trigger and it instantly swapped my PC with Neera, placing my squishy wizard all alone in the middle of a map full of nasties and putting Neera back to the start, stood among the other NPCs. Better yet, because I had been controlling Neera when I told all to stay put, now I'm controlling my PC, Neera hasn't received this instruction and commences charging through the level unstealthed, opening doors and running across traps. I felt like NWN2 was only playtested with fighters and kick-down-the-door tactics.

Personally I'd like to see a mixture, allow me to explain. I open RandomCrate.243 in DungeonX and it generates loot off a random table. Most likely it'll be 5 gp or similar but there's a small (too small to encourage save scumming) chance it might turn up a +1 longsword or similar. Similarly when I kill the average mook loot is a mixture of what they have equipped + random loot gen. There will still be placed items but here's the innovation. Specific items with different bases. For example, Firkraag dies and Carsomyr is a 2H Sword/Bastard Sword/Longsword. Shortbow of Gesen might be a Longbow of Gesen. Hindo's Doom is a Wakizashi (sp?), Mace of Disruption could be a flail or a morningstar. Likewise armour could be any type within it's category (heavy, medium, light). Also rings might suddenly be necklaces etc. Perhaps that last one could be turned on/off to allow for pre-built ideas.

Mine is showing on my profile but not on my posts...

Using the PoE classes (& races if applicable), make a group out of a famous franchise. I could explain the concept but it's probably easier if I just put an example below. Mine is from GRRM's A Song of Ice & Fire (aka Game of Thrones) Wilderness Expert: 'Lord' Jon Snow - Human Ranger Meat-shield: Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane - 'Godlike' Human Fighter Spellslinger: Lady Melisandre 'The Red Woman' - Human Wizard Sneak-Thief: Arya 'Arry' Stark - Human Rogue Battle-priest: Thoros of Myr - Human Paladin Chronicler: Tyrion 'The Imp' Lannister - Dwarf Bard Tyrion of course would be the spokesperson for the group and would delight in ordering the Hound about. Thoros & Melisandre would have much sway over the group's religious affiliation while Jon & Arya would watch each other's backs. It would be an uneasy alliance at best, particularly between Clegane & the Starks while Tyrion would no-doubt have little time for the religious ramblings of the two devouts. Obviously Melisandre would make sense as a Priest but I chose Wizard for group balance purposes (e.g. if I were to make this group) though Cipher might have suited too. Other characters that could have joined; Hodor: Hodor 'Hodor' - Godlike Human Barbarian Misunderstood: Jaime Lannister - Human Paladin/Fighter Man of many faces: Jaquen H'gar - Human Rogue I like playing through the IE games with a party built from another world's setting. I once even made custom weapons for a LotR party through BG2 (complete with glowing Sting).

There's another way to view this little conundrum. I am a big cRPG and PnP RPG fan. I share DM duties with another guy in a semi-regular D&D group. One of the difficulties I encounter is with the different people in our group, one guy is a pure power-gamer, loves combat and no matter what game system or setting we play, he always wants to play a 6ft redheaded amazon women with 2 swords and big boobs. Another guy is pretty much purely interested in playing evil rogues and pissing on the DM's best laid plans. Another guy is all about "does it look cool" and the others are somewhere in between all these. Between them they really stretch my ability as a GM, I have to make things challenging enough for the power-gamer but not too challenging for the more balanced characters. I have to carefully consider PC motivation and give genuine incentive or the evil rogue will derail the evening's gaming by picking the holes in my plans. I have to consider how things look, feel, sound or the other guy will become disinterested. God I hate that lot! Aaaaanyway, this was my very long-winded way of pointing our that different people see RPGs in very different ways. The power-gamer cares passionately about balance, well, imbalance too if he can exploit it for his own ends.* The evil-rogue-playing-guy likes to play meta-gaming devil's advocate and likes to challenge my on-the-spot creativity. He doesn't care about balance.** The other guy wants to feel the world his character is experiencing but also actually does care if he can't effect it.*** *He's in his 50s, lives with his mother and typifies every negative D&D player stereotype you can think of. **In his 20s, intelligent and fun guy, loves to wind me up... git ***You should have seen his face light up when I told him that Magic Missile could look more-or-less like whatever he wanted. I'm really barely making a point here aren't I? Oh well!

Damn, I thought I was being original with my suggestion, apparently forgottenlor beat me to it by a page! Ah well, great minds think alike & all that! I think that a limited quiver adds a tactical element not present with pre-existing systems. Do I stop to refill my quiver for 5s? Do I switch to a sword and join the fray? It means that if I focus solely on being an archer then I can make a tactical decision about when I refill and if I really want that faster-firing bow. It also adds value to the archer who does spend some of his character build options on other things e.g. magic or melee. It enhances player choice, it allows for infinite "normal" ammo and when you click the button to refill the quiver it could show a list of all the ammo types in your bag/ammo belt as well as the mundane "infinite" option. You could also build into this menu my previous suggestions of magically conjured arrows (for the arcane archers), poison-tipped arrows (for the assassins) and perhaps special armour-piercing/barbed types for the blacksmiths! I guess it would be an easy developmental step within the engine, pretty much all these functions already exist in separate places in the old IE games. I don't know though, I'm no games developer and not much of a programmer!

It'll be an archer but I haven't decided on military archer (fighter), sneaky archer (rogue), woodlands archer (ranger) or arcane archer (wizard). It'll probably be an elf, perhaps Godlike but I'm not decided yet.

It's the constant battle between balance and differentiation. Too much focus on differentiation and you end up with over & under-powered classes, too much balance and you end up with homogenisation. AD&D was probably too focused on differentiation. 4E is too focused on balance (and mimicking mmorpg group roles). In AD&D's defence, it was more focused on being true to the lore. Epic characters truly were epic, powerful wizards were REALLY powerful. Fighters were useful but couldn't change the world in the way that wizards did. In 4E's defence, it is very well balanced and actually can still be fun to play though fights tend to get bogged down by players who are too worried about making the wrong choice and thumbing through their action cards looking for the perfect solution. Also, playing a wizard totally focused on controlling the battlefield is a lot of fun and when done right can lay waste to the DM's best laid plans. There's many good rule systems out there and many more bad ones. D&D has never been perfect. I can recommend the Cortex system* and have heard good things about the pathfinder system (though it breaks down at high levels quite spectacularly, especially with min-maxed characters). 3.5/pathfinder is better balanced than AD&D and is more fluid & varied than 4E. The 2nd edition Star Wars D20 was also very good, essentially it was an adapted 3E D&D. One of my favourite elements of this system was the damage & crit system. Characters had Vitality Points and Wound Points. Wound points never increased (except with the toughness feat) and you started with your Con score e.g. a character with 14 Constitution had 14 wound points. Characters also had vitality points (which force-users could spend) which increased with level. Damage went to VP before WP unless it was a crit in which case it went straight to WP. This meant that a blaster rifle (3d8) could outright kill anyone anytime if you got lucky/unlucky. Palpatine himself could die to a lvl 1 with a blaster rifle if he rolled back-to-back 20s! At high levels, 3.5E in particular did suffer from hit-point bloat and both 3.5 & pathfinder became very 'math-y' in combat. Turns could take a long time with people trying to calculate every variable in their favour before rolling a dice (which frequently became a player hoping "please not a 1" as anything else would do). *Cortex is not a level-based system per-sé and suffers from a slightly confusing though more realistic damage system. It is far superior for non-combat interactions though. It occurred to me as I was writing about the Star Wars damage system that it's not too dissimilar from the PoE system though I understand that PoE hit points will increase with level.

I'm not a fan of systems that tie a +ve and -ve effect together but I am a fan of systems that have +ve and -ve separately and you have to finish your character creation neutral. Maybe I should explain with some examples; I don't particularly like the Fallout 3 system where I have options like You are lightweight and nimble gaining +1 to agility but -1 to strength. I like the cortex rpg system where I might see something like; You are lightweight and nimble gaining +2 to agility. (+4) You have a low pain threshold, you lose one action point if you have taken damage since your last turn. (-2) You are a kleptomaniac and compulsively steal. (-2) Those aren't genuine examples from their systems but just examples. The cortex system assigns scores to each virtue and flaw so you can balance them appropriately. Also, note that the final example is a roleplayed flaw (though perhaps you could write a rule for a game where you need to pass some sort of willpower test to stop yourself when in a store/house). Essentially I prefer being able to pick my own virtues and flaws rather than having them pre-bundled.

For me, the main thing to avoid is screwing the squishy classes with forced dialogue/positioning. e.g. my Mage PC walks into a room and triggers a cut-scene where there is a chat between the big bad's dragon (not necessarily a literal dragon) and my PC. It concludes with us having to fight. Now I find that, due to pre-determined programming, my mage is stood smack-bang in front of the big orc/troll/blackguard and my front-line fighters are behind my PC. NWN 1 & 2 were the worst for this. This also happened despite clever sneaking with stealthy characters. NWN2 would even let you sneak with a party NPC e.g. Neela and when you walked somewhere that triggered a conversation your PC and Neela would switch locations, wherever they were stood. I don't want in-game triggers to ruin me tactically.

I find that the pop-ups can spoil the immersion that the developers work so hard to create. I disable the steam popups but a lot of games have their own pop-ups too, sometimes not disable-able. (Is that a real word?)

In a cRPG I'd agree, it usually means a lot of re-rolling. In old PnP I used to love playing flawed characters. A bad set of stats could make for a very interesting character. There was Fingolfin, my Elven Fighter/Rogue/Deepwood Sniper with a con score of 5. At level 22 (3.5 ed rules) he nearly killed a great wyrm red dragon in 2 rounds but he was the epitome of the term glass cannon. There was Gnurk, my half-orc Fighter/Barbarian who was responsible for more player kills than any NPC (Vampires with Dominate can be such a pita) thanks to a low wisdom (and int) score. He was a hit with the ladies though! In cRPGs it's not quite as fun to have a weak character because essentially it's a game that you're trying to beat whereas PnP RPG is different (unless you play with a bunch of powergamers).

Personally, if a game doesn't allow me to roll stats (e.g. IWD2) then I'll kick up excel and generate my own rolls then apply with Dalekeeper or the cheat console. I like rolling and I agree, I like the notion that not all people are equally gifted.

My favourite character to play (and always my first playthrough) is the archer. I vary it up slightly from the military archer (fighter), the huntsman (ranger) and the silent sniper (rogue) but it's almost always a variation on this theme. I also love my arcane archer (fighter/wizard). Ammunition is a constant issue for pretty much all the reasons listed by the OP. Another problem is the fact that you end up a very one-dimensional character. Some may like this but personally I'd love to experience a system where, in a long-ish combat I would run out of arrows and need to either spend some time opening my backpack to retrieve more or be forced to grab a melee weapon. I think it would detract from min-maxing and be an exciting adaptation. Some of my ideas surrounding ammunition. - Quiver of 20 arrows which, when expended must be either replenished (takes 1-2 rounds) or switch to melee & join the fray. - Talents/Items could extend this further or reduce the time it takes to re-stock your quiver from your backpack. - For archer/casters, summonable arrows. - Talents/Items/Spells could improve the arrows summoned - Apply poisons to a quiver - Talents/Items/Alchemy could make better poisons - Risk when applying poisons to affect yourself? On a related note, I'm very much hoping sneak attacks will be do-able with ranged weapons like they are in D&D 3rd edition onwards.

Achievements can be a great carrot for some people to try something they wouldn't otherwise try e.g. Beating X encounter using no magic, beating X encounter using only magic, beating X encounter by avoiding combat altogether. An achievement might be given for getting to a certain point in the game having spent very little time resting or having spent little money. I must admit though, I wish they didn't flash up on your screen in such an obvious way. In BG2 I love to periodically check my characters records for their most powerful vanquished (also, gotta love the word 'vanquished', you just don't see it much anymore eh?) I'm not really one for achievements personally but I can see the attraction and sometimes I'll go out of my way, especially if they've got cool names, it's an excellent chance for some funny cultural references

Got to agree with this; Creates an emotional response: This can cover over a multitude of sins in a game. For all else you can say about Mass Effect 3, it definitely managed this, particularly for me with Mordin Solus. I'm not one to get overly attached usually or particularly tearful but that tugged at my heartstrings. For that scene alone I applaud the writers & voice actors. Worthwhile companions: I'd agree sort-of. They need to be worthwhile mechanically, but mostly, I'd just say they need to create an emotional response in me that is something other than "mildly annoyed". If I love them, hate them (Joffrey Baratheon-esque hate I mean, not Justin Beiber-esque hatred), it doesn't matter, so long as they make me feel something. Obviously different people respond differently to each NPC so there needs to be a good variety. Both of these are talking about the emotional reaction of the player towards the events within the game of course. I'm not asking for an emotional reaction such as the one I experienced at the end of ME3 (pre-"fix") which was somewhere between "angry", "disappointed" and "WTF?" which was more to do with the games creators (or more likely their publisher).