Amentep

Dye, Dyed, Dyeing. I hope they don't do something silly like charging for cool color dyes; it'd be a pointless money sink in a sp game. I also hope that being 3D character models there's a little more control/consistency in how the colors are displayed.

Every time someone says something breaks their immersion in a game it breaks my immersion in real life. heheh, the world would have been different with an Acaste romance in PST...

"Dragons" is to lure attention to the thread, an "Event"/"Enemy" that you can't defeat or merely a new form of an Ancient Godlike Beast, is the "Topic". Could you elaborate on this? I'm not sure I get the intent of the thread after this post.

Personally I'd rather them avoid statistics when designing NPC-PC character interactions. That's the line of thinking that gives you a "romance" not because it makes sense for the character/story/game but because it fits a percentage point or gives you 2 "evil" characters, 2 "neutral" characters and 2 "good" characters so everyone can be represented equally.

And in DA2 where her Dragon form kills a bunch of hurlocks (or whatever) and save Hawke and crew. It leads to the "I want to be a Dragon" dialogue option that is so often posted here. Originally in the 1st movie Godzilla is a representation of the dangers of nuclear technology; the hero has to convince his friend to unleash an even more destructive force (the oxygen destroyer) to kill Godzilla. Lots of philosophical debates about the ethics of unleashing such a force on the world which is why the friend kills himself and Godzilla with his weapon, so that both terrors of science are eradicated because mankind will never be able to be trusted with such destructive force. Once you get into the later series (battling mechagodzilla, ghidorah) Godzilla is a completely different take on the creature and the purpose of the films are different (instead of being a philosophical horror film / cautionary tale, its become an all ages adventure series with hero Godzilla fighting giant monsters and humans battling aliens).

No interest in any kind of multiplayer content at all for this game. That's assuming it was an option, but since they said they were going to use all the resources to make the best single player game they could and not allocate resources to trying to add multiplayer content its not like it was ever a choice.

Yes I have played a rogue. One of the issues with this thread is "Why does the rogue get a bonus to attacking from the back when a fighter doesn't?". In reality an unprotected back is an unprotected back; someone with a clear strike to the back of an opponent is always going to have an advantage regardless of whether they're a rogue or not. Why it happens in games is an attempt to give a combat role to a class that's primary features (lockpicking, trap disarmament, pick pocketing, guile and bluffing) aren't combat related. But in making the rogue's primary combat role that of being a backstabber, there is a certain degree of arbitrariness to the abilities introduced. Arguably this could be a vote against a rogue class, or it could be a call to perhaps look at what the ultility of a rogue could be in combat based on the character skill rather than giving them the ability to do something that no other class can do with no logical reason for it.

Why do you want to encourage a particular playstyle, though, for a rogue? The goal should be utility in the choice to play a rogue based on how you see them, not in being trapped to a singular concept (and really is a blacksmith-rogue, assassin-rogue, or bandit-rogue really the same)? Part of the problem with rogues, IMO, is the things that really define them are things that generally don't play a role in combat; therefore many people go through mental backflips trying to create a justifiable combat role for the rogue that doesn't make them suckier fighters.

christ, tell us how you really feel Would have been funnier if you'd said "So...tell us how you really feel."

I seem to recall getting stuck in a situation with NWN2 where the autoupdate would fail and it wouldn't recognize the manually downloaded update once you went that route.

Changing Voice set work seems like it'd be expensive. Also starting off in an "unconfident" voice would probably not be welcomed by most players who probably want their PC to be a confident character. I'd say the same with cooler combat animations; to make it happen this would probably required the initial combat animations "uncool" which again I think wouldn't be supported by most players who'd like to feel confident with their character (it might even turn people off combat builds). More attacks per round really depends on the system they're making. Ultimately though, none of these things - nor other visual cues like the glowy or cracky faced KotOR character figure or things like that - are things that I particularly value in games so if they're there or not there will probably make little difference to me.

I'm for non-lethal alternatives to combat resolution (like knocking enemies out). Created a poll on it early on - http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60706-subduing-enemies-alternative-paths-to-combat-resolution/

I'd like to avoid dragons being in the game, myself. Too often they become a bit of a...mcguffin in terms of storytelling.

I'd agree with you if so much in the Expanded Universe wasn't so incredibly awful. We have people turning into trees to prevent evil sith lords from getting their lightsabers. who wrote that crap? Wait, wasn't that the plot resolution for the Elfstones of Shannara too (well it was demons overrunning the realm, not sith lords but still tree transformation to end/delay evil)?

I dunno, seems like its an only slightly more complex version of Arcanum's backgrounds, only one that tries to apply more scenario based elements into the chosen background.

Sounds like it could be a cool way of doing character creation to me. Can't imagine it'd be easy to implement, though.

As much as I liked Firefly, my "Favorite TV show cancelled before it could go anywhere" would be The Others. NBC midseason replacement, part of the Profiler/Pretender block on Saturdays. Pulled in decent ratings but NBC decided to can the entire nights scripted shows in favor of Vince MacMahon's XFL show. Only had half a season before being cancelled, and to make matters worse ended with a cliffhanger which appeared to kill all of the main cast!

Because you either can't, or refuse to read. As a roleplaying tool/element does not = pointless. if you need to have bluff and intimidate options for your characters for role-playing purposes (some games don't have these skills and would base these decisions on raw stat rolls or other kinds of resolutions than skills) a single skill like SPEECH with situational/goal modifiers would work just as well as two poorly defined skills. My big problem, ultimately, with this line of debate is that you're saying it is okay for the scrawniest, most non-magical person in the world to intimidate a person or group just because they have a high enough charisma and bluff skill. Somehow this will make people intimidated despite the fact that person visibly before the eyes of those being bluffed can't even hold themselves up straight or pick up their own cane, much less a weapon. I'm sorry this does not make sense to me at all - not from a game perspective, not from a logic perspective and not from a role-play perspective. EDIT: The purpose of "Intimidate" in - for example - D&D 3.5 IIRC is to force a NPC to be non-hostile while the PC is in view. This could be handled with a bluff by having the player bluff that they're on the same side as the NPC for example. So you can still end up with the same result from a bluff and intimidate (NPC doesn't go hostile) but its through actually convincing the NPC to believe something that isn't true not through taking the place of an intimidate check. Let me put this another way, if bluff works the way suggested, then bluff should actually be able to supplant every other communication skill. You don't need diplomacy, you just bluff everyone. You don't need disguise because you can bluff people to believe you are whoever. You don't need perform because you can bluff a crowd into believing you've just performed a wonderful act for them.

I'll concede that you'd have an argument, but not a very good one. They can't be combined for this reason...Being good at making people afraid doesn't necessarily make you good at all of the other things that bluff entails. Why have LESS options? Why have more options when their use overlaps to the point of rendering one pointless?

Not all skills are built equally. i.e. survival in the majority of the NWN games/expansions. Sometimes there are skills you invest points into, then rarely have a chance to use them at all. It just works out that way. Yes, bluffing has far more diverse usage than intimidation. It's the nature of the beast. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the intimidation skill attached to a stat other than charisma to add more appeal to it, or have it be a skill that will use your highest stat between STR and CHA. I wasn't asking for utility of skill, but a lack of duplicity of skill. Survival does not have another skill that encompasses what it does in NWN; whether it is useful in NWN or not, its use is not ambiguous. To my mind either you have distinct [bluff] and [intimidate] mechanics (ie situations that are distinct in how/when you use them), so that they are unambiguous in use, or you've got a very good argument that you don't need two separate skills. The way most people are suggesting [bluff] be used on this thread is that its basically a [speech] skill. In which case I would argue, instead of having [bluff] and [intimidate] as individual and indistinct skills, you'd want to have a [speech] skill and allow situational modifiers (ie STR might apply a modifier to [speech] for intimidate checks and charisma for [speech] bluff checks or beauty for [speech] charm checks) because that's how people seem to be using it.

There isn't any difference. And its a fair point that big business with a vested interest in things being the same will want people confused over the issue, because confused people are apathetic. I'm only giving possible reason as to why people are confused, not making a value judgement on the reason. Science may not care about politics, but once research goes out there, people are able to use it to represent what they want; a research scientist may not care about anything but the truth of his research; the research university he's working for cares about the next big grant they're going to get if they spin the research results in the right way. Any dissent will confuse the layperson, hence the reason why...people are confused over global warming. Any big issue is going to be made political (and financial) Depends on your goal; do you want to convince people of the correctness of your views? If so you might want to consider that you'll not convince anyone by yelling at them and calling them names. What they'll take away from it is not that you're right in your view of global warming; in fact they'll be less likely to listen to the next person who comes along talking about global warming.

Right, I agree that would not be the way to do it. I think for the PE world to really pull us in, they need to think about how to integrate the concepts of creatures like these (that is *if* they decide to include them) so that it feels like part of the setting and not like Vampire: The Masquerade broke out in the middle of Project Eternity.

And again I point out that instead of telling people how stupid they are, explaining to them why the evidence is right makes more sense. If you're not willing to educate people who disagree with you...you're wasting your time yelling at them. EDIT - to explain why someone might feel this way - There is money in alarmism. Alarmist reactions tends to flood money into fields. Therefore being an alarmist can get you money. Academia does have a leftist bent; Academia is the primary market for research journals. Research journals are the primary venue for Researchers to publish their research. Ergo the argument could be made that the market is going to sell more journals if they play to the preconceived notions of academics. Given that we've had a few scandals over the past decade over articles published in supposedly peer reviewed journals that actually didn't have any sort of review, given that people on the right will have a natural distrust over information provided by the left...is it really THAT hard to see why people in the US - where the left/right divide is a gaping chasm - don't always have a full understanding of something as complex as global warming? And just yelling at people calling them stupid for not understanding what is so obvious to you isn't going to help convince anyone to see what the evidence tells us.

Good news to hear; hope it continues that way for him.