Suburban-Fox

Well I disagree. For me, arrows being free and never needing to be replaced no matter what happens is far less fun than having to pull arrows out of corpses - most people go round looting the corpses after a fight anyway, so how is having one more thing to pick up going to be not fun? Even if they don't do that, and simply treat them the way they were treated in Baldur's Gate, most people visit weapon shops regularly anyway. How is having to buy a few more of one item going to be not fun? I don't think they should be unlimited, because if they're unlimited, they're worthless. If they're worthless, they can't be too useful, or the game will be broken. This will result in a mentality where arrows are so ridiculously poor that it's almost not worth using archers at all, because they're expected to shoot an average enemy 10-20 times before he even considers dying. In Baldur's Gate, archers could take out most kobolds, goblins, even some orcs, in only a few shots (and at early levels they could do the same to you - making enemy archers that much more dangerous). Compare that to Dragon Age, where even at level 1, archers can be more or less ignored until your health drops to about half. I don't want it to be like this. I want archery to be significant, and when I see a group of enemy archers, I want to be forced to come up with a clever plan to take them out, not simply be able to rush them, shrugging off all hits, until we close to melee range. I don't want to be forced to constantly spam arrows either. I know realism isn't the goal, but there needs to be a balance between realism and fun, and too unrealistic isn't fun either - not for me, anyway. I also disagree that micromanagement isn't fun. What's not fun for me is a game where the only goal is to run from one combat scene to the next, without having to bother with anything else. RPGs are supposed to be about you existing in, and interacting with, the rest of the world. Making it all about combat, and removing everything in between because it's "not fun", just makes it another action game, and there are plenty of those around. Should you have infinite healing potions too? Surely your alchemist will recover all glass vials, gather up any roots that he finds, and brew the potions while you're recovering all of your arrows (which never get damaged at all), and having to buy healing potions to keep your guys alive is "micromanagement", right? ;-)

They may have cost the lowest form of currency available to you in Baldur's Gate, but that wasn't the lowest currency in D&D. To most commoners, a gold coin is quite rare (it's supposed to be anyway), so one crown for a quiver of two dozen arrows is probably a reasonable price - except some other things may also need to be tweaked - for example, two dozen arrows shouldn't cost the same as a single pint of beer! XD But anyway, my point is that if arrows cost nothing, they don't matter. You can loose off a thousand, and keep loosing them off until you're bored - why not? They magically reappear in your quiver without you having to do anything anyway. I'm okay with charging a relatively low cost for a quiver of lots (I'd rather they cost a bit more, however, to make it at least an issue at the start - you know, before you do the first dungeon and emerge rich enough to buy the city you just saved! :D ), but not with them being totally free. Such a mechanic would assume you always have access to a supply of ready-made arrows, but that might not always be the case, and in some situations you might have to prepare for the fact that you might run out of arrows, or be unable to recover those spent. Infinite arrows would prevent anything like this from ever being an issue. Also, the fact that you had 100 quivers of arrows in your inventory was also significant - it meant that there were 100 inventory slots that couldn't be used for anything else. It still meant that they were a resource that needed to be tracked. RPGs of the Baldur's Gate variety are about much more than simply rushing from one fight to the next and ignoring everything else that happens in between fights. A possible solution would be the Mount and Blade approach - you can buy a quiver of 30, which means you can use up to 30 in a fight (to get more, you'd have to either equip two quivers or pull another one out of your backpack - something that wasn't easy to do in the middle of a fight!). After the fight, they re-appear, to simulate the fact that you went around the battlefield gathering them up. That might work, but it would also raise a potential issue: what if you retreat from combat? I'm sure the dragon isn't going to wait politely while you wander around his lair gathering up your arrows, so in that situation, you couldn't conceivably have them back. That's why I think recovering them from corpses would be a fairly elegant solution, if they did want to do the whole "recovering arrows" thing.

As an archer irl, I can tell you that there is just a little bit more to it than that. I recently visited the local re-enactor's market, and found that proper medieval war arrows were selling for about £10-20 EACH. A proper arrow is a bit more than a "stick with feathers glued to it" (for a start, I don't think they were glued but tied on with linen thread). The "stick" has to be properly carved so that it's perfectly straight, with no kinks or knots, otherwise it won't fly properly. Each one needs three fletches, each of which have to be cut and trimmed properly so that they stabilise the arrow. Then it needs a head, which has to be forged by a blacksmith. The head has to be the right shape, and it has to be hard enough. Making arrows is quite a precise art, and not something one can simply churn out in a matter of minutes. Even if you can go into the woods, find some sticks (which, incidentally, is not guaranteed that you'll even be able to find an abundance of sticks that are of the right wood type no matter where you are - what about if the only wood you can find is soft brittle wood?), carve them into a perfect shaft and attach feathers to them, there's still the heads that need to be attached, and where are you going to find perfectly forged bodkin heads in the forest? Finally, you've got to pay a fletcher for the time he's had to spend putting your arrows together, unless you make them yourself, in which case you've got to spend time putting them together. For that reason, I'm against unlimited arrows, because it trivialises them. It completely ignores the cost, and the work, required to make them. This is the kind of mechanic I'd expect to see in an action RPG like Diablo, or WoW, or Dragon Age, but not in a proper roleplaying game. I wouldn't want to go the other extreme either, and have the character only able to carry 12 then have to spend almost everything he made on buying another 12 (because 12 arrows will be just about enough to kill one monster), but the cost of arrows can't simply be completely ignored in any RPG that wants to have even the slightest level of believability. Otherwise, next Call of Duty game, they might as well just give you infinite ammunition. After all, bullets are just bits of metal with a bit of gunpowder, and cost virtually nothing to make, right? ;-)

Interesting point, actually...medieval weapons weren't designed to fight fantasy creatures, so maybe some weapons would be designed with a similar function in mind, that give bonuses against certain creatures due to their design, not just magical enchantments.

I would agree with this if, and only if, such items were rare, difficult to make, and highly costly. If magical protective enchantments were too common, then, like Agremont said, there would be no need for armour...why bother spending all that time and effort making a harness when you can make a mail brassiere and then give it to an enchanter? In fact, why make it out of mail at all? If the magic is going to provide the bulk of the protection, why not just enchant a normal brassiere? Or a doublet, or a shirt, or a pair of shoes. Much easier to carry than a harness. That's not to say that I'm not in favour of enchanted items being available - some of the best moments in Baldur's Gate was in defeating a particularly dangerous assassin then finding such goodies on his person. However, such items should be rare, highly costly, and difficult to find. An item of clothing with magical protection should be the exception, not the norm.

Don't mind the IE method of abstracting it into carrying lots of quivers full and swapping them out. RPGs abstract a lot of things - normally you wouldn't keep all of your possessions on you 100% of the time (a heavy backpack containing that magic harness you just picked up is going to weigh you down horrible in a fight!), so we kind of assume things like: you drop your pack when entering a battle, you keep stuff you're not immediately using in a wagon, etc, so it's not inconceivable to have a few hundred arrows stashed in various archery baskets amongst your possessions, and when you run out you simply grab a dozen more and put them into your quiver. However, few archers shoot all of their arrows and then forget about them and just go and buy more. Arrows cost money, doncha know!! :D (I personally hate it when I lose an arrow, and will spend hours searching for it until I find it!!) So at the very least, it'd be nice to be able to get some back from dead monsters. Maybe the game could remember how many you shot AT the target, destroy a random number (assuming they got lost or were destroyed in the fight) and let you recover the rest from the corpse, assuming those are the ones you reasonably managed to recover. I think that would be a fairly elegant, suitably abstract and not too cumbersome way to allow archers to recover their arrows. Of course, magic arrows would either be destroyed or turn into normal arrows. As for different types of arrows...in Baldur's Gate, you could equip three different types, and switch between them. Maybe a similar mechanic could be used here. Oh, and I have one final request regarding archery in general: if possible, please at least give us the option to have arrow quivers (assuming they are going to appear on our avatars) on the right hip, not just on the back. Pulling arrows from over the shoulder is slow and uncomfortable, and looks silly, IMO. I realise others may disagree and want the Legolas style animation. Maybe it can be over the shoulder for elves, but on the right hip for humans, or sth.

Flamberge, sure, but serrated edges are a different thing - they're only useful for sawing things. I suppose they might stop people grabbing the blade, though (which is what a flamberge edge was designed to do), so maybe it could work... Sabres: are they going to resemble 18th century Napoleonic sabres, or be more like late medieval Polish sabres? Agree regarding pikes...they won't be much use without a formation, because it's too easy to get inside the reach of a single pike. Also, how are you going to get around a 90 degree bend in a 10 foot wide corridor while carrying a 16 foot long pike? :D (actually, by that logic, spears, longbows and most pollarms would also be impractical for dungeoneering!)

False. There's something wrong with wanting revealing armor. There's nothing wrong with wanting revealing attire. The problem arises specifically when you want the revealing stuff to be armor, especially when: A) Non-armor will satiate your desire just fine, and B) The world is full of magic that can produce protection in lieu of armor. It's completely arbitrary to insist that armor both serve its function (of providing a layer of covering protection to the vulnerable "human" (humanoid) body AND somehow, paradoxically, not-cover the human body. You might as well be like "I want a cat that's a dog." You can have both animals. There's no reason to destroy both simply to create an animal that ends up being neither. This. While there's nothing inherently wrong with skimpy armour in its proper context, there is something wrong with: 1) skimpy armour that does the same job as normal armour (unless it's got shed-loads of magical enchantments on it), and 2) skimpy armour in an environment where wearing skimpy clothes is frowned upon (or one in which you'd freeze to death without appropriate coverings) - I don't know what the conventions are in PoE world but in medieval Europe, showing flesh was generally considered baaad, mkay? - especially for women. It's possible that they have no such conventions here, but there's still fashion and current trends to consider. No RPG in the world ever takes things like this into consideration - in RPG world, anything you want to wear is totally fine whatever the occasion, and it's perfectly acceptable to attend the royal palace wearing a blood stained jerkin and smelling of rotting corpses. :D

Archery is always a problem in RPGs. You have the problem of balancing damage, hit chance, and believability, together with making it practical at higher levels. The D&D approach has always been excessive HP bloat, making archery useless at higher levels. To compensate, CRPGs have traditionally given characters ridiculous numbers of arrows, so that they're not having to run to the fletcher every few minutes. I'd rather they didn't do that, if possible, and I'm certainly not in favour of infinite arrows (unless it's for a special magic bow of which only one or two exist in the entire game and are very hard to get). If possible, it'd be nice if arrows could be recovered, though I realise that may be difficult, at least in the case of those that miss - those that hit can simply be taken from the target's inventory when dead, as if you're pulling them out of the corpse, but how does a game let you go looking for spent arrows that embedded somewhere in the ground? In tabletop games, this isn't a problem - we usually grant characters a spot/perception/intelligence/whatever roll per arrow to see how many they can recover, but this might not work so well in a CRPG. As for damage potential at higher levels...I don't know how damage is being handled in this game, but two possible ways to deal with this are: 1) reduce the hitpoint bloat (I'd be in favour of this - it always bugged me how higher level characters had such ridiculous amounts of hitpoints, so I'd be happy if HP progression was curbed a bit), and 2) increase damage as you level up, which would make archery (and melee weapons in general) continue to be useful at higher levels.

Judging by the wiki, it appears they've actually done the one thing few fantasy RPGs in the world do: used proper names!! I'm almost sold on this point alone. I have but few requests: (in fairness, from what I've seen, it looks like this won't be an issue anyway) 1) no big pauldrons - the character needs to be able to see over them, and also move a shoulder that is bearing them. 2) no spikes - seriously, spikey armour is a bad idea. Don't do it! I know it's fantasy, but for anything like that, one needs to consider: is this design better? If it is, why didn't they do it in real life? Also, bear in mind that you won't be wearing your armour all the time...good luck taking it off and storing it without pricking yourself. Fancy armour should be decorated with gold filigree, and things like that, not spikes. 3) no unrealistically big weapons - I understand that it's fantasy, and they need to represent their nature, but they also need to look like they can actually be used. :D 4) no unrealistically fancy designs - I'm talking about two-pronged tips on swords, serrated edges, and things like that. I realise that more advanced weapons need to look the part, but again, if it's better, why didn't they use it? I'd rather the better weapons have the same basic shape but represent their difference with fancier quillions, pommels, grips, etc, than an unrealtsically fancy blade shape. 5) I don't mind including eastern/oriental arms and armour, as long as it's not inherently better than western designs, because that's one thing that bugs me most of all in RPGs - the whole "katana is the best sword in the world!" mentality (nothing against the weapon - I'm sure it's a fine sword - but I resent it when people claim that Europeans were idiots who didn't know how to make decent swords).

I don't mind, as long as they're reasonably believable. Mail bikinis, for example, are a big no-no - not only is the entire midriff and neck exposed but wearing mail without a jack is going to HURT!! Boob plate - somebody did a video on this to illustrate why this is a bad idea. Extend your arms out in front of you, as though you're holding a two-handed sword, then try to raise and lower it while keeping your arms at maximum reach. If you have big breasts, you won't be able to do it - especially if they're encased in metal. Women who do re-enactment wear the same cuirasses as men, not boob plate. Low cut armour is also a bad idea - leaving the neck bare is a surefire way to get your throat cut. Corset shaped cuirasses are even worse - the idea of a corset was to squeeze the diaphragm, which greatly restricted your breathing (hence the late 18th century image we have of women fainting a lot). Now, imagine that happening in a fight, where you need to be able to breathe a lot! Magic: obviously that's going to be a factor, but I don't yet know how much magic there is in the game. If it's going to be like Baldur's Gate, chances are it'll be some time before you get your hands on a Ring of Protection - it's hardly as if those things are available for a few crowns at any local weapons dealer. Even so, all they really did was augment your protection a bit, so I'd be very surprised if a mail bikini plus a Ring of Protection will give you the same level of protection as a full harness. And if it does...give the character a full harness AND a Ring of Protection so that he/she has even better protection! So, in general, sexy armour is fine for ceremonial purposes, but if people are going to fight, I'd rather they make it believable. With light armour, you can get away with a bit more, since the protection they offer is minimal, but for mail and plate, they really need to cover as much as possible to be effective. As a side note (since this often comes up in female armour discussions), wearing skirts won't actually affect you that much - I've seen women fighting in bill lines wearing medieval dresses. As long as it's not too long, or too tight, it won't be as much of a problem as people tend to think.

...just going to add my list of things-to-avoid... 1) - it's all about combat, and everything else is negligable; Rogues aren't locksmiths/trapsmiths anymore, but are simply "melee DPS", while wizards have no spells that don't have a use in combat. 2) Regenerating health; this takes a lot of the feeling of danger out of the adventure, as well as making traps worthless. Also, no petrification, ability draining effects, or any lasting damage effects like that...there is only physical damage that gets insta-healed when you go and make a cup of tea. 3) Super-fast advancement; Baldur's Gate took its time to advance you, and you could only reach about level 8. This made level 8 feel like a major achievement, unlike in most modern RPGs, where it's just one of many levels you trawl through to reach level super-awesome. 4) Heroes who become superheroes; I don't know how anyone else feels about this, but I much prefer the thought that you start off being a fairly normal person who isn't overly special in any way, and becomes a hero by making clever use of the resources he has. In other words, I'd rather start as Average Joe and strive to be Batman, than start as Superman and strive to be EvenMoreSuperman.

What do I think of it? I couldn't possibly be happier about this design choice!! I never liked the quest marker system, ever since they introduced it in Oblivion. I wouldn't have minded so much if there was a way to turn it off and use an alternative method, but usually, there isn't. So I'm very happy that they're not doing that.