Kjaamor

That providing reactive npcs takes time and resources is readily apparent, and I agree with that in my post. My general theme is not that such a thing is easy or that those extra resources should be plucked out of nowhere, but rather that I feel party npcs deserve a greater slice of resource pie than they are perhaps getting. Your 60 character point is all very straw man, however, and is not only not my suggestion or request but is rather in opposition to both my suggestion of 12+ characters and my fondness for having to balance my party on personality and functionality. There may have been some confusion on my part regarding the 'adventurers' hall' setup, and where that is implemented. My understanding from this thread was that extra party members could be created at character creation. Also, while I'm hopeful that P:E will be more creative in its class system than simply 1x Fighter, 1 x Rogue, 1 x Cleric, 1 x Mage or everything fails, that is not to say that party balance won't be important. I appreciate that the six Paladin party is an exaggeration for effect, but the reality remains that, as any rpg worth its salt, P:E will make certain party builds more functional than others. To each their own on that one. Both camps have a fair few people in. I could suggest that if you insist on sweet talking a fighter because of his effectiveness despite your character's dislike of him, then (unless you're being very creative) the roleplaying ship has somewhat set sail without you. As has already been mentioned in this thread, BGII had 16 characters, and BG had 25. All of the BGII characters had their own quests and reactivity, and BG's still managed a fair amount of reaction. 12+ is far from unrealistic. As for the variation in character development, I agree that it shouldn't necessarily feel like that is the case, but it's easier to do than might be immediately apparent when you consider a) When you meet them in the game; b) Are there any extended story arcs; c) Simply, how much does this character say? I would argue that Mazzie does not seem in any way underdeveloped in BGII, but in terms of actual coding I would guess took half the time that Aerie did.

I appreciate that quality is preferential to quantity, but nonetheless it would be nice if the importance of recruitable npcs was recognised to the extent where they tried to bring in some quantity as well as quality. Eight extras for a party of six looks to be fairly stingy. Being able to create extra party members is a potential solution, but a somewhat inelegant one. If nothing else, it removes the party setup process somewhat by allowing all gaps to be easily plugged. I've mentioned before that one of my favourite rpg features is where choice of party based on personality inhibits functionality and vice-versa. The more I think about it, if the npc pool is so small, then use of player-created npcs becomes almost inevitable, and once a player creates one extra npc the temptation to create a second, then third, and so on, increases. If the system encourages a high percentage of players to use party creation rather than party recruitment then the quality that goes into those npcs becomes wasted. So, with my understanding of the mechanics at present, I feel that eight is too small a number, and P:E should really be looking to provide somewhere in the region of 12+, even if some of those contain substantially less dialogue and effort than others.

The first thing to learn from NWN2 is that designing the worse camera system in the history of video gaming is a bad idea. The second thing to learn is that if you are going to insist on making much of the interface keyboard-based, then it's probably best to make the keyboard layout editor/viewer accessible from the in-game menu, rather than just the main menu. The third thing to learn is that it's generally good, if you're making a party-based RPG, to give a choice of party members (or at least classes) before the ten hour mark. Yadyadya. I've never completed Vanilla NWN2, and although I'm presently on my longest ever playthrough, I can't see myself finishing it. As a single-player experience, the annoyances far outweigh the positives for me. The story and characters are drivel, all of the battles up to my point in the mid-game feel extremely easy, and what difficulties are present usually result directly from the interface. When what is essentially a turn-based game makes moving and targeting enemies more difficult than actually beating them then you have severe problems, in my opinion. I'm also not especially convinced by the implementation of the 3.5 ruleset. Initially it looks good, but having coaxed me in with promises of wonderful prestige classes, the reality for all the world appears to be that most of the classes work best as single classes and most multiclasses are a shadow of their 3.0 counterparts. How much of that is NWN2 and how much is 3.5 is another matter, I suppose, but compared to the implementation in BG1/2 (or even ID2/ToEE) that it's akin to painting a turd orange and calling it a carrot.

If you're going to operate in chapters, and I'm not certain that's a terrific medium in the first place, some chapters should have plenty of room for extra quests if it fits the setting. Other chapters can be more sparse - say, if you're stuck inside an asylum or trying to get back home. If everything is even, there is no sense of pacing.

I read Josh Sawyer's response as being: 'The highlight shortcut remains, but it won't show the hidden chests/doors/traps we'll be putting in' Which sounds great. I'm happy with that. Otherwise, OP has my sympathies and I think that the developer who made that red on green puzzle probably holds some sort of vendetta upon the colourblind.

Although, as a further to my two above posts, I recently started playing Icewind Dale 2 again, and I'm slightly confused because the area in which the massacre happened doesn't appear to exist! I had it pegged as the bottom of Targos where some Goblin archers are under a ledge (basically, fog of war issues and indecision over whether the cleric should be tanking or healing a critically hit mage was what I recalled killing us). So er...hmm. I'm getting very mixed up on some level.

This reminds me of the way the Druid functioned in Might and Magic 6 & 7, and I thought it was good. He had worse equipment and was less of a healer than a cleric, but had much better offensive magic. I never played six, but Might and Magic seven was a cripplingly flawed game with a load of good ideas, and the whole class system was absolutely brilliant. The Druid there was more two parts mage to one part healer, but it also came as the only class with Alchemy Grandmastery, which was so powerful as to make the druid worthy of consideration of a spot on his own. But that was M&M7 all over. If you take a class (particularly the back liners), then what are you missing out upon? Taking a druid would constantly leave you aching for the grandmastery provided by the cleric, but if you took both then how would you balance frontline/rogue/mage (M&M7 had 4 character slots)? Probably the pinnacle of class, weapon and armour use. But before I get too rosetinted, and people start to think it's an awesome rpg, it also had horrific level design, terrible party arrangement mechanics, as much atmosphere as the moon, terrible dialogue, an utter dependence upon the invisibility spell (hoard those scrolls!) and probably the most ludicrous and horrible end-game concept of all time.

I wasn't LAN hating, I was just relaying an amusing gaming anecdote regarding LAN versions of an IE game, in a humble way. Hope the sand-removing surgery goes well.

As stated before, P:E was described as not starting with multiplayer support, so that's that. I just wanted to talk about my multiplayer IE experience. I only have one. It was me and a friend, both of whom loved and had completed several IE games. Neither of us were about to write a strategy guide, but we were both fairly capable. At the time I had a duel pc setup, so I said: 'Hey, let's play a multiplayer IWD2, that'd be awesome!' So we spent some time creating 3 characters each, making a bit of a blind party to keep things interesting, and we ended up with a decent if unoptimized group, and hit play. First encounter with more than 3 goblins, and we were massacred. In the very first area. No HoF mode, pause was enabled, and we had what seemed like a reasonable plan of attack. We uninstalled the game after that. So that was my LAN IE experience. I went on to become a mediocre mmo player.

Really liked the concept arts for the cultures. Just adds a bit of depth to the setting and I confess that I'm already in deliberation as to which cultural background I'd choose. In terms of the monk, it looks like there's some very good designs there, and it's great to have such an update. Personally, it doesn't look like they'll be much of a class for me (unless threat/tanking is going to be a substantial thing in P:E), but it's different strokes for different folks and I appreciate the concepts and design even if it doesn't necessarily lend itself very well to my typical styles of rpg play.

It's interesting to me that IWD has been so successful, because I really do regard that series as being several leagues below the likes of BG and Torment - and as I've stated before, I'm not PS:T's biggest fan. To be honest, while the combat in IWD was awesome, that was really all it ever set out to do and both games feel more like expansion packs than fully-fledged rpgs. Obviously, I voted for BG. I want to see exploration of a world map, I want to see a certain level of fleshing out for npcs, and I want to see a relatively complex and exciting combat/levelling system. Anything on top of that is a bonus, really.

I'm going to go on a slight tangent from the OP's original post, which I hope they'll forgive, but personally I've never regarded the whole concept of 'All classes are equally viable' as actually being a good thing. I rather like the fact that rpgs will leave some classes as more or less powerful than others, and more or less powerful at different points. To me, it weighs into the strategy of play, and I find it very rewarding to look at my options, balance them out and try to optimize them. To a degree, you want all classes to have the potential to be similarly powerful, but certainly not all builds. If any idiot can put forward any absurd combination and be as effective as my (hopefully) well-thought-through build, then where is the reward in thinking things through? Similarly, it's awesome when you hear someone who has really done their planning come up with something you might not have done (The fighter/mage as tank in IWD2 springs to mind). Granted, it's a personal thing, but I just thought I'd point out that not everyone would have the same goals at heart for the system.

That sounds like a bad idea. A class that becomes totally or even mostly useless comes the endgame is not good a class. It's a newbie trap made all the worse because you couldn't even see it coming. It's one of the reasons VtM: Bloodlines' endgame gets so much flack. Invested a lot into dialogue skills because they were so useful early on? Too bad! Should've rolled a gunslinger. Rolled a druid because shapeshifting sounded fun? Sucks to be you! Should've rolled a fighter if you actually wanted to finish the game. While I see your point, rpgs inevitably have class types that are stronger at certain points in the game than others - whether by virtue of the class design or simply because certain dungeons/chapters favour certain classes. It's also worth pointing out that surely boosting a druid at certain points is a better mechanic than simply having them consistently worse than everything else all the time! On VtM:B, you're the first person I've ever heard give that game flack at any of its points (beyond it being a bit short). The end-game content is perfectly playable depending upon whatever skillset you've rolled, and really if you're got to the end-game then it seems pretty implausible that you are incapable in all forms of combat. My main character had dialogue skills as a priority, AND I played it on a very under-souped PC that made a lot of combat a nightmare, and I still managed to finish it.

I'm really fond of the double-arc stories, and it's one of the reasons why my favourite game lists feature so many jRPGs. That said, however, I'm really not too bothered whether P:E is single or double-arc. When the double-arc is used well (and not all of your examples, most notably OoT, are true double-arcs), it is used in situations where you have extensive character narratives. The story arcs through the exploration and evolution of the characters. To do this well, you need to have strong, three-dimensional characters around whom the story is based. This is, at least when they are successful, the jRPG way. Really, as a genre they are far closer to interactive novels than to role-playing games in the western sense. Which is fine. Western RPGs, however, generally sit with an explorable world and two (or even one) dimensional characters in terms of the story. Sure, Minsc had a bit of a backhistory, but the tale isn't told through his perspective in the same way of, for example, Rikku in FFX. So really, the games default as something much closer to a dungeon crawl, and don't need the second-arc to fulfill their purpose. There are some exceptions to this, and I would give KotOR and DA:O some credit there, but unless you're going to be very involved with your characters and take role-playing opportunities from the player, it doesn't have as much to gain as an interactive novel would. Given P:E's heritage, it looks fair to say it would be rather unneccessary, ineffective, and likely a false double-arc.

In my experience of rpgs, Druids have always felt like one of the weakest classes, due to the nature of their abilities. Every game seems to run with the mechanic of druids being slightly less effective healers/party buffers than Clerics, and with shapeshifting powers that were never quite strong enough to make them front-line fighters. Personally, in terms of druid mechanics, I would like to see either: a) Greater offensive magic powers (though not so much as a mage) combined with healing powers (but not so much as a cleric) - pushing druids and clerics into healer/mage and healer/fighter roles respectively. OR b) Make the shapeshift powers genuinely powerful AT SOME LEVELS. Say, the shapeshift power of a level 8 druid makes him a better fighter than most level 8 fighters, but by the time both reach level 10 the fighter's superiority has resumed. Realistically, apart from one very brief example in one game, I can't recall druids being anywhere near as useful as the other classes. It feels to me like the class is in dire need of both a boost and a need for its own specific role. Ymmv.

Thankfully, tonight I've had a drink and can therefore skip the wonderful discussions and dive in with perceived reality: So here it is. If you're defending the Skyrim approach to city/map planning, on a forum for a game inspired by the infinity engine in an era where latter day-elder scrolls games dictate the pace....then you're trolling. You might troll well, or you might troll badly, but you're evidently trolling. If you want more Skyrim, then you have a million and one other places to be. This is not Skyrim, and that's precisely why so many people have put their collective money into it.

I'd agree with this, and I must admit the comments made (which may have been taken slightly out of context) about this and similar functions being optional for players has begun to concern me because of the effect it has on balance. Would the game be just as well-adjusted with all the possible mechanics turned off as it would if they were turned on?

While to the greater extent I would agree, I think a good variety of puzzles keeps things interesting, and also helps with the whole mechanic of puzzles. If every puzzle is something you're good at, then that's not very...well...puzzling.

Ah... Um... ...you know what, nevermind.

Yeah. I think for the most part the design for the game basically equals: [individual reader's favourite IE game] + [things Obsidian have confirmed that they're doing] - [things Obsidian have confirmed they won't be doing] Or...for a few people on these forums: [TES V] Honestly, I really admire the fact that Josh Sawyer regularly posts on these forums because I think if I was in his shoes and had to read what we were posting I'd be crying myself to sleep most nights.

This, cruel as it sounds. For me puzzles and particularly riddles are some of the best bits in rpgs. Baldur's Gate II, as I recall had some corkers. The princess and prince one in particular springs to mind. Anyway, variation is the key and unfortunately there will be some puzzles that you'll struggle with and some that I'll struggle with. I'm sure none will be so placed as to completely halt main quest progress without any other options. Meanwhile: YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

In a sentence: Baldur's Gate II with fewer and less talkative party companions, better graphics, less of the linearity and moral absolutes, and a few non-intrusive extra features.

I have every confidence in the medieval enthusiasts of this thread and beyond to spot that a low-cut leather cuirass flies rather less in the face of realism than gigantic, flying, fire-breathing lizards. Again, though, personally I don't support bikini mail! Truthfully I think the whole 15 pages of this topic is rather grandiose if not utterly moot since the practical zoom level for combat is likely to be such that its going to be pretty difficult if not impossible to distinguish boob-mail from plate-mail!

Yet the goal of the modification was not so much to be believable as it was to be fantastical. Dragon and armour design in fantasy have both been focused upon aesthetics rather than anatomy, as it were. I think your assertion of what the realism crowd want is fair, and matches my understanding. I just think that the basis of creation for the armour they do not want is wholly similar to the basis of creation for the giant flying lizards they do want. As such, to fly one under the banner of realism without the slightest critique of the other can itself be criticised. That criticism is not a logical fallacy.

I'm intrigued by the idea of limited resting in a pcRPG title, because I think there is a potential for it to work extremely well. I enjoyed the jrpg model as it worked in FFVI, FFVII and particularly FFIX. Limited resting areas, expensive potions required to regain mp, but your mages were extremely powerful. On the plus side, it made for some excellent sequences where you really had to decide how best to use your resources, but if things looked tough or you were struggling, you could always go back and grind up the gil for some extra Ethers/Tents. On the downside, it could make for some nasty reloads and backtracking to the world map/town if you wandered into an area unprepared. Overall, I was very impressed with it, and most disappointed when they changed the mechanic (and most of the combat) in FFX to automatically renewing health at save points. In actual fact FFX was really the beginning of the end for the FFs, and although I love that game for its characters and story, the combat as a whole was the first of many steps backwards. ...but I ramble about what my IE-loving friend would term 'Japanese Muck'. I think if the limited rest system is to be used, and I would provisionally support it, I think it needs to be very carefully planned and its one of the many systems that I think should be optional, for all it offers. The system as I knew it was dependant upon having specific save points (which the IE games don't have), the ability to grind up stockpiles of necessary items (which the IE games rarely had), an mp as opposed to spell-used system, and - probably most crucially - a very linear approach to areas. I wouldn't be in favour of enforcing any of the above on P:E. What I would say, is that if limited resting is used (and even if it isn't), then camp sites should absolutely be a place for a main/sub-quest related party interaction. If that stuff is going to occur, and I sincerely hope that it is, then there is the place for it. It would be ideal if things could be scripted out to involve several people speaking together rather than just one-on-one, but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself there. I think the system could work, I'll certainly play it that way if it is implemented, but I think that the P:E I'm envisaging may not be the absolute best place for it.