dukeofwhales

I'm not sure if c*** is meant to be slang for male or female genitalia, but either way your suggestion of replacing it with a homophobic slur seems like a strange one.

Grimrock did 600k in sales (admittedly, some of them were heavily discounted). PoE, a self-professed Baldur's Gate successor, is considerably less niche than Grimrock, so I think it will be fine. I think sales will be 1 million after a year on the market, but if they're half, or even a quarter that it is still more than enough to fund a sequel.

I prefer IWD-style loot tables with only the occasional hand placed loot where it's important. It makes replays more interesting, but the high end loot has to be hand placed (I don't think savescumming your way to the best loot is really a good game mechanic, so the game shouldn't encourage you to do that by having 'ultimate loot' which is only attainable through random drops). There's no reason for all uniques to be hand placed, though, and also no reason why you should be guaranteed to see all unique loot in one playthrough.

It didn't have to have them, but it does convey additional information about how the line was spoken. To achieve a similar effect in a novel, it might be written (and please note that I am definitely not a writer): Both passages convey a similar meaning, but the latter nearly doubles the word count. While some people's preference may be for the longer form, I do not think that kind of script was within the design spec for IWD2 (nor do I think it really adds anything to the effectiveness of the storytelling, though that might just be my writing ). I'm not a huge fan aesthetically of astericks to convey emphasis, but I think itallics could comfortably be used occasionally.

That would be much better. I'd much prefer characters to have personalities (perhaps they could refuse to threaten someone when you asked if they didn't want to?), rather than having your NPCs being tools for your conversational minmaxing with each party member having maxed out points in one attribute.

I think you may be underestimating the speed at which this will change. 1080p is already standard for pretty much all laptops as of this year. The Asus Zenbook Infinity has a display resolution of 2,560x1,440, the Chromebook Pixel 2,560×1,700 and the Samsung Ativ Book 9 3200 x 1800. These laptops are high end this year, but the specs will be standard next year. I think we're going to see a big change, as we did over the last 18 months in mobile phones. Though I do disagree about pixel doubling - I'm working my way through the IE games (currently on the last one - IWD2) and have been playing at 720p on my 2560x1440 monitor. It looks just as good as a 720p screen would (as it should - every pixel becomes 4 pixels on the screen - no distortion). It doesn't look as good as running it in glorous 2560x1440, but at least I can read and use the interface.

While I disagree with the decisions outlined in the most recent update, I hope the devs don't take these polls too seriously. The thing with crowd sourcing decisions is that it creates a game destined for mediocrity - when you try and please everyone you end up completely pleasing no one, and I would like this to be an exceptional game, not a mediocre one. My main hope is that the game is fun to play, no matter what mechanics are chosen.

I thought the 'bullet economy' in Metro 2033 was interesting. I don't really know how it could be applied to a PE world though. In terms of 'what to spend money on', I know we're 13 pages deep but in case you're still reading, Josh: * I think unique items are more fun if they're mostly found in dungeons, but with any game with a form of loot table, at some point one of your characters is going to be under geared. For instance, by the end of dragon's eye, you may have been unlucky and your mage is still using the normal 1GP sling you bought in Easthaven. In this case, you can use gold to buy a sling+2: not a unique, but it'll probably cost a fair chunk of gold. Shops should be used to gear your characters to expected level, not above it like you'd get from uniques (ignoring the fact that everyone playing the game will find some uniques so actual level for everyone will be above expected). I remember being pretty pleased when I got the robe of the evil archmagi from the High Hedge shop - not a unique but a good, expensive item. * I think consumable ammo is a great way to spend money, but you have to somehow get it into people's heads that it's worth using. I was one of those people who hoarded all the special ammo 'just in case' and completed basically all of BG1 and 2 using standard bullets and arrows. Only in my recent playthrough of IWD did I start using special ammo and it's been a good gold sink (other than that there frequently isn't enough of it to buy!) * I think a minor change could be that mages had to buy most of their high level spells. Why would scrolls be left around in a dungeon? Most mages would learn them and then they're consumed in advance of a battle, not like potions etc. where they may be killed before they get a chance to use them (you could use them from your quickbar but I would say this isn't the 'normal' method of scroll use). They can be expensive in stores because they're very powerful, but aren't unique like weapons, and it means every level up a mage will want to sink some gold into new spells. Obviously scroll mechanics can be different in PE, but a similar method could be applied. * I think, as many others have said, that the idea of spending gold as part of story progression is a good one, and it should be used more than it is. I'm not a creative dude, but it makes sense that information should cost more, and the standard 'give the beggar 5GP for quest info' could be improved. * I also don't mind paying for crafting, but I would much prefer the crafting was the kind of thing where you craft a few uncommon (or unique) items into a (better) unique, I don't enjoy the mechanics of crafting where I collecti junk 'just in case', and typically it means I won't use them. *As long as gold is a factor for much of the game, I don't think it matters if you get wealthy when you start clearing high level dungeons and selling expensive loot. If items are priced fairly you will have to have some kind of increase in the amount of gold being acrued as you start finding better weapons.

This is the kind of crafting I enjoy, and hope is in the game. Combining my Pencil+2 with my Eraser+3 for a PencilEraser+6 was great fun in Throne of Bhaal. I'm not huge on 'collect flowers and junk and use it to create stuff'-type crafting that we see in Elder Scrolls games. It's a bit grindy, and I usually find the payoff isn't worth it. Perhaps because I don't usually put many points into them because I don't find it that fun.