Sheikh

In practice it is. I was talking about what creative expression is in theory. All creative work involves some creative expression. What I am saying is - the more there is, the better. And I think kickstarted has allowed developers to express their creativeness through developing games more than they might have been able to before. You people have much more practical thinking than I would have figured. And I NEVER did. And I got it all fine. If you consider essays and making maps for warcraft 3 creative work then I am somewhat familiar with it. Also, I didn't say I have no idea how creative work works. I said I haven't done much of it.

People need to have faith in the developer and keep an open mind if they back a project. What concerns the premise that is told during the kickstarter funding, may be it takes a little common sense. In terms of PoE, we haven't seen anything like an infinity engine games since the infinity engine games (and may be Toee). So this is one. Infinity engine game is something very different from games like dragon age or witcher, so if they say the are going to make something similar to an infinity engine game it IS meaningful. It does not allow for a huge amount of room to make "just any game". I know because I havent and wouldnt touch dragon age or witcher with a five foot pole, but the moment I saw this, bam - backed.

Correct. But I think the key is to balancing where it is creative expression and where it becomes work. If you get it right, you get the best of both worlds. Obsidian may not have such possiblity however, since they are a business. On the other hand kickstarter has given them the ability to tilt the balance alot more towards the first than before, which is great.

Well then the developers just dont know what theyre doing. They did not have things planned out alright. Which is understandable though. Nobody ever does know 100% of what's going to work and how well it'll fit into the time they have. It's part of not being able to see the future. Good planning will minimize the need for cuts, but that need is impossible to eliminate. If you set yourself restraints (such as of time) then that is true. That's also why I said it is understandable.

About the book; the world is still full of all sorts of bad people and "****" today. They just have very very few oppurtunities to realise their bad deeds or evilness compared to times past. Song of ice and fire is set in a time where theres plenty of oppurtunity, thats why you see it. Well then the developers just dont know what theyre doing. They did not have things planned out alright. Which is understandable though.

Yep. Also cro-magnon esque broad skulls as well, which exist in the nordic countries. And then more circular/oval skulls as well. 1. Foreheads. Some people in real life have very receding foreheads. Like something completely different from the portraits obsidian have done so far. 2. Various grades of prognathism. 3. Location of various aspects of the face in relation to each other. E.g nose, eyes, mouth etc. These 4 features are major in forming the face. There are probably other major features, but I am not going to try think up more atm. Major features change the overall shape of the face far more than minor features such as the shape of the lips, nose or eyes and brows, etc. All of which would be wasted development time in an isometric game with low poly models. Why? Were talking portraits not ingame visuals.

Yep. Also cro-magnon esque broad skulls as well, which exist in the nordic countries. And then more circular/oval skulls as well. 1. Foreheads. Some people in real life have very receding foreheads. Like something completely different from the portraits obsidian have done so far. 2. Various grades of prognathism. 3. Location of various aspects of the face in relation to each other. E.g nose, eyes, mouth etc. These 4 features are major in forming the face. There are probably other major features, but I am not going to try think up more atm. Major features change the overall shape of the face far more than minor features such as the shape of the lips, nose or eyes and brows, etc.

Portraits need to have lots of character. A face is by far the best omnipresent visual clue as to the persons character. In fact, good portraits can get your imagination flowing and give you ideas of a character you would make. So far I believe in this game we have: The problem with these is, they look too similar underneath skin color, teeth and size of nose. The shape and proportions of their face are almost identical. Other than that, they are not bad. (although they both look disgusting imo - wouldnt want to be one of these unless I was playing some willfully ignorant, loud, rude, chaotic heavy social drinker). This one has the same problem as the ones above - shape and major proportions of the head and face are similar. This one also looks more generic. This is good. This looks way too similar to the first 2 in terms of proportions again. Alright, but not impressive.

I figure for practicality's sake, someone with long hair would probably tie/braid it (just something to keep it from getting snagged in nooks and crannies), or at least wear some cloth cap/wrap thing under the helmet (if they're wearing a helmet). I'm curious how this was handled, though, in actual history/record. Probably shorn. Heat in a helmet is allready quite stifling with the arming cap or coif and that's without extra hair, add to that the lice and filth in a battle camp, the fact that bathing wasn't a fashionable thing and no sane opponent would look at long hair as anything but a useful handhold. I think most sensible knights would favour something like the Roundhead or Norman bowl haircut for these reasons. Generally, shorter hairstyles were prefered amongst soldiers, but there were groups that wore longer hair for various reasons. Vikings braided their hair in elaborate way to express their status and Sikhs wore theirs wraped around the head like a turban underneath the turban, and British soldiers remarked in 18/19th centuries that it was dificult to cut through it with a military sabre. Interestingly none of the examples you gave wore helmets.

Exactly. Cut content is not always good stuff. And even if it IS good stuff, it was cut for a REASON. Look at how they are handling the Extra Stretch Goals situation - it is going into the expansion. These things cost MONEY to make, and in this case, ONLY $4.5 million. Okay safe. My blind optimism perhaps has been dominating my thinking a little too much in here. And I stand by the fact that most of the cut content COULD technically/potentially have been made into worthy content. But I understand that there are many reasons for cutting content. And the money part is something I look past extremely easily, but it is sadly a big factor. Another big reason is the money is better spent elsewhere. Then again if we start talking about money I think many big developers spend huge amounts of money polishing turds of various kinds. But that's another topic. Although that is the reason why I think it should be easy to look past the money issue for developers who don't and sadly not as true as I would have thought. May be it is your opinion of them that what they do is atrocious? Sounds like that to me. Perhaps you have a way of seeing into Martin's mind that I do not possess, but whatever he does works for me. I think this boils down to taste. Advice I can give you is, if you dont like it dont read it.

You can still have randomization in the context of this. The magical attributes of the sword Drizzt carries are different on every playthrough. So can be the attributes of the nasty looking halberd, etc. Up to this point I dont see any good argument not to have randomized loot atm.

Ehhh, sort of. Again, they obviously did not have time to do this, and there wasn't anything else in the game to support any of this significance. You would've just had like 100 different things that were all slightly different in cost/sale price. Thus, again, it's a cost-benefit thing. With the system they had, it really would've been quickest and most beneficial to simply have cut (or at least cut-down) the amount of stuff they were trying to force into that crafting/trade system, and just focus on the quality and implementation of the system itself. If you ever play it, you'll see what I mean. It's a pretty fun game, overall, and a decently interesting story (although, apparently Connor not only was a part of, but also pretty much single-handedly was responsible for almost every major occurrence/event in the entire Revolutionary War, ) Okay safe. Now you are getting me interested in game development as such. I have never developed games, but I understand the point both you and Josh make about direction of effort, I guess. I think at the end of the day you have to know exactly what you are doing for optimal success at both completing successful development of a practically enjoyable game and making a good, innovative game. For example Diablo 2 is not really just an ARPG. Its a semo-MMORPG (socialization) / trading simulator and loot simulator. Thats probably not what the devs were initially aiming at. But it doesnt hurt if you do know what you are aiming at. Diablo 2 just ended being way ahead of its time. That kind of innovation isnt necessary for a good game, but it doesnt hurt. But if you know what you are doing you can at least innovate in smaller aspects of the game than what a genre or semi-genre is. Smaller aspects would be gameplay, story, etc.

I like the vaegir style from M&B: I think in this thread we have seen a fair bit of armor from cultures other than medieval europe and it would be really cool if they made appearance in PoE. Especially lamellar and scale types of armor from just east and south of europe. Additionally, attempts at minimizing heaviness while providing decent protection would also be cool and would fit the age of early gunpowder usage. Such as breastplate and the stuff pikemen and roundshiers wore. And helmets that were obviously later by design than medieval, but only covered the head, not the whole face and neck: Or: This type of 17th century stuff mixed in with more traditional fantasy fare would be really cool.

Minsc was at best an irrational madman. He was copper toxic by my diagnosis. If thats what barbarians are anyway, that'd be fine.

Assassin's Creed III's crafting system. Not the whole thing, but, a lot of it could've been cut out. There was an awful long list of various items to craft with really hardly any significant difference in the outcome (trade price, etc.). It was a heck of a lot of variety for variety's sake. Sure, if they could've spent more time on it and made the variety significant, that would've been great. But, considering they were finished with the game when they were finished (deadlines are deadlines), it would've been better to have simply cut most of that out and focused on the simpler basics of the system than to have spent whatever time they did on SO many items that don't really do anything or make much sense from an economical standpoint (a lot of the items cost a GREAT deal more resources than others to craft, but sold for a pittance and weren't usable for anything other than to sell.) But the better and simpler solution would have been to alter the prices or availability of those crafting items/materials to make them a relevant alternative. See you dont need to cut it out. Either that or I dont know what Im talking about cause I have never played it. Thats just what I can tell from what you wrote.

I think not necessarily. In this regard you do actually have to base your judgement of someone from the perspective of emotions. If you are willing to cause suffering to many people for your personal "biased" causes, you are evil. The slave example - slaves in the roman empire times for example did not live necessarily very bad lives compared to ordinary citizens. And it was socially acceptable because it was not practically possible to create good conditions for most people. So it was a matter of circumstance. I think BG1 made evil characters FAIRLY attractive. Fairly, because they were only barely half way to making them right. The key is, dont express their evilness in their tone or expressiveness or usage of language. Rather express it in their views, egocentrism and actions. Evil people actually think up pretty good justifications for their deeds and make themselves SEEM similar to good people, but you can still tell. It can be a subtle or semi-subtle difference, but the biggest difference comes from the views they hold and their actions, not the way they express themselves a la the mad wizard and fighter/thief from BG1. I think I know about this because I am kind of evil in real life. And yes they can easily be a loving husband. Because they can choose who will be subject to their more evil deeds. It can be only very few people as well. Hitler tried to committ genocide and killed 6 million people to defend his own race and his own people. So is he good or evil? He is evil because he was willing to cause so much suffering for so many to be able to achieve those goals.

With this I am in agreement. However, there are more alternatives than just nothing. Pre-made animations are not what I call something.

Cant think of any game that could have benefited from cut content off the top of my head. I dont think principally such a thing could exist, but I think if I thought carefully and hard enough I would find something. May be as a developer you have a sharper eye for this kind of thing than I do. I mean planning what you are going to do is essential, thats clear. But why couldnt you plan to make "wild" developments and cool things? What I mean is, take something cool like the eth cube bug from D2 (I dont expect you to know what that is Josh, but Id be happily suprised if you did) and plan your game to include SOMETHING of the same sort. Not in the sense that you would have a similar feature, but a similarly crazy feature. Now if you are actually planning to have a fair amount of crazy features in your game, planning around cutting out some of them at the end of the day is also sound. May be the harder part is getting your inspiration working to come up with them. I am always suprised by how they managed to make the code of D2 messy in just the right way to produce those bugs. If that isnt the point of the project of Eternity, thats fine. But the key word with these kind of things is innovation. I hope Eternity still innovates in some cool ways.

It would make for very interesting gameplay addition should it be handled realistically and limited.

I started thinking of this when I saw someone arguing on this forum against someones spell idea with "that would be OP". A spell I never cast by definition will not be fun because I never cast it. Likewise if the spell is so weak that it can only do something so mundane I could have simply memorized magic missile instead and gotten the same effect of one shotting mice but now I can actually do damage to goblins too. I see what you are saying, but your point doesn't hold water. It would be fun because it would make you think of 1. how to use that spell 2. what it would need to be like to be useful and 3. are the developers really pulling me like this?

I think interaction would need to be more intuitive than the infinity engine games, but preferably also less obvious. What Lephis describes about fallout sounds good.

These are two good questions to ask. If the game isn't super linear, and you come across a battle that's just too tough, there should be PLENTY of places for you to explore and quest to level up, and then you can come back to the more challenging stuff later. For your second question, that is definitely a hard tight rope to balance on. I definitely think leveling should feel rewarding, but at the same time I think a good party based RPG should be very tactical, and challenge should be less based on your level. I agree with you on both. The first - precisely. I CAN beat you mother****ers now, hah! Thats always satisfying.

I don't know what "designing an experience" means. I can tell you that Josh Sawyer appears to subscribe to a "gamist" philosophy of design, which basically means that he doesn't put mechanics in a game unless they're well-balanced to offer meaningful choices to players. He doesn't just throw stuff in, even if it might make sense in terms of making the game world more realistic. I don't know if that's what you'd call an "experience", but it certainly sounds different from an Elder Scrolls game. Safe, I understand. Thats exactly what I dont like.

Uh, this sounds a lot more like "designing the game to be an experience" - and a lot more like what Todd Howard does - than what Josh Sawyer intends to do in this game. OP is pretty incoherent. Okay so the opposite of designing an experience in your opinion is what?

First thing from top of my mind is that in IWD you create every character from scratch and they appear in the story only as bunch of random adventures with no real backstory or history in the world. That gives the games it's own touch, which I can appreciate but is detrimental to the depth of the story. If we again draw comparison to Planescape: Torment, there you had party of which everyone was part of the world with their own backstories and maybe even some history with your main character (Amnesia, such a perfect excuse in video games) which was uncovered by conversing with them. People on street might remember you from previous encounter and meetings may have different outcomes depending on which characters you have in your party. When Planescape told story about it's main character, The Nameless One, in Icewind Dale your characters were more like random bystanders getting involved in events by chance. Safe, I understand that very well. Now again my opinion is that there are very few personalities in the real world that are meaningful to a great number of people. I mean lets take 200 figures from history. How often do you actually think of them? How much do you care about the personas of your favorite singers or writers or anyone? I dont really. My world view is not centered on people, but on things. So to me, my favorite singer is just another tool in "god's" (I dont actually believe in god) arsenal carrying out his little mission. Thats why I feel IWD2 actually gives you more freedom in imagining what is the persona and background of one of the 6 (1? 2? 3? 4? 5?) tools in the arsenal of fate, god or nature in carrying out this mission. Because it has only sentimental meaning anyway. Its a flavor. Its important, but only to some extent. So thats my view. So my opinoin now is that it depends on the players personality whether they want more of an experience or a sandbox. Will be interesting to see what kind of bargain does PoE strike in the middle of this 50 shades of grey.