Amentep

No interest in a multi-player aspects of the game. I'm not going to be upset if they were to include it and could make it work without effecting the single player game....but I don't think they can. This project wasn't designed from the beginning to feature multi-player and trying to add it on at this point would be courting disaster, IMO.

They were organizing the Obsidian Order of Eternity backers group, so had high visability

Part of the reason that (AFAIK) publisher use the current model is, like film, they'd rather pay $50 million for $200 million profit than $2 million for a $10 million profit. I don't really see that changing with the PE Kickstarter. Unless PE becomes the video game equivalent of Friday the Thirteenth, Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity - low budget films that earned big budget profits. In which case I'd imagine the publishers would be thinking about how to tap that market (just like each of the above films generated copycats from other movie companies trying to cash in on their low-budget success).

They didn't like the directional information that has come out on Project Eternity and have decided no longer to back it. I don't see why its an issue; their money and their right to change their mind. Obsidian's been pretty good about throwing hints and discussion to the community during their game development based on past evidence. I don't expect it to be any different with PE.

Which should be dependent on whether the game is hack and slash or not. What would be the point of creating a hack & slash game where the primary resolution for quests isn't combat? In other words, why would you have an experience system generated on quests so that players are rewarded however they play but make the game only resolvable through combat? Or am I missing something?

I really liked character creation and how the character I created was reacted to. Yeah all the background may not have worked out as well as others, but I enjoyed this aspect of the game. Also did like going through windows (except when I was trying to go through a door and my character decided to leap through the window instead. Not so bad when playing a barbarian, but a bit embarrassing when one is playing a talky character with the utmost decorum). :D Didn't like the bug that caused my first game's inventory items to be eaten taking out a quest item and making the game unfinishable about 8/10 of the way through the game.

... Are you sure they weren't non-poisonous beetles? It's been a while, but I'm almost willing to bet that's what they were. Bards Tale: The Mostly Terrible Remake ARPG had a cool take on the "go killy mah ratsies" quest: a puny-sized, fire-breathing rat that you had to run away from like a good little hero-wannabe. I'd love to see the traditional rat killing get a similar treatment in PE. yes you are right. My memory lied to me. There were spiders somewhere early in IWD. I think. Maybe I should go play it again...

No, there isn't. But to me BG and IWD pretty much assume the game to be solvable by group combat. You couldn't just have a group of rogues sneak past a bunch of monsters, lock pick their vault and get the quest item and sneak out. Because the minute you triggered a quest plot point you were railroaded into a fight. Lionheart did this as well. It was an action game built with the SPECIAL system. And pretty much there was no reason to not concentrate everything you had in combat because the non-combat skills were worthless (since, really, they only mattered in a few situations). That said, designing a game around combat as the primary conflict resolution is okay, not saying it isn't. But I think that Obsidian has looked at wanting to make class skills more...vital to a player so they're not wanting to railroad the player into having to fight in to resolve all quests.

So you get better at killing certain monsters because you've killed a lot of monsters? Then I suppose the successful pickpocket could get perks to be a better pickpocket, or the wizard a better spell caster or something. Could work, I suppose. Ultimately on this issue I really don't feel strongly about there is wonkyness inherent in most systems, whether it be jumping off buildings to improve your jump skill in Morrowind, learning how to better disarm a trap by stabbing a kobold or unlocking level 5 spells because you negotiated a compromise in a family feud. Seems a bit strange to argue about the abstraction to make the game work and be "unreal".

There used to be a DM on the old BIS boards who ran a Planescape campaign. I'm not in or running any games, but I'm still working on getting a complete set of some of the 2nd edition books (still not quite finished with Ravenloft, Planescape or Al Qadim).

I always liked the fight in IWD where you can't get an ale because of giant spiders in the basement (as opposed to rats). Low level party walking into an early fight only to be hit by web and poison? Ouch! But still fun.

I'm okay with it; wouldn't say happy or sad or anything. It seems to fit the setting so: cool.

I'm more than just a bit sad that one of the few combat elements that required actual skill (aiming/estimating) is being removed :/ Please make this radius indicator optional? I wonder if radius spells will be altered due to walls and stuff (IIRC, wasn't fireball supposed to funnel a bit in D&D if fired in a confined space). Would be nice if true (and really tricky to gauge without something showing the radius - a way to toggle off would be an increase in challenge)

Yeah, the hardest part now, I guess, is the waiting.

I am not a proponent for food requirements just simply because my experience with it in the past has been fairly negative. To me, if food often ends up being just a way to force you to pay money for a resource that has a high rate of consumption. I'd rather, in that case, have to just pay some money and assume that my character knows how to feed themselves. I'm not convinced about the need for the simulationist approach either; as people often point out there's plenty of other things that happen in real life that aren't simmed (using the restroom being the common example) and some are met with outright hostility (romances). In the end I don't find it integral to the experience and often it just becomes a pointless time sink. That said, if PE was to have food in the normal game, I'd just deal with it and hope they avoid the things that I haven't liked with food systems.

That understanding could only come from reading the entire thread and J. E. Sawyer's comments regarding how experience is accomulated -- quest/goal only. No experience for killing foes. Do you understand now? Even if XP is only generated from Quests/Objectives, it still doesn't follow that they couldn't trigger objectives (so you earn XP) when you stumbled across something from wandering around the wilderness. Only you'd be earning XP for that objective not for whatever you killed in resolving that objective.

You missed the point, naturally. Combat skills/attributes/abilities are (also) tied to level up. Don't people hone their combat skills by.. you know, engaging in combat and defeating opponents? What I'm taking away from what they are saying is this - Complete a quest by stabbing things = XP Complete a quest by sneaking past things = XP Stabbing or sneaking as actions do not, inherently, give XP. So no 3xp for stabbing a Gibberling and no skill ups for sneaking around your empty player house with no one around. Enough XP = level up = raising level = improving skills. There may be a logical disconnect to someone earning XP by sneaking suddenly puts it into combat, but if you're wanting to play a sneaky type why would you do that. I may be wrong, but that's what I'm getting from what they're saying.

I think it took me at least 26 minutes to get our of Irenicus' dungeon most of the time...

What is the spirit that it's violating? Not meaning this accusatorially, but I don't see the stamina or healing things as issues. Because to me the spirit of the IE games has nothing to do with setting, lore or game mechanics (particularly since they didn't all share the same setting, lore or game mechanics). My thought is that they'd do this by triggering some sort of goal if you explore and find something interesting; like if you wandered and found the sculptor in BG1 who was part of the stolen jewels quest and triggered that quest that way. Or stumbled upon some bandits waylaying a caravan and you could help either side, sneak past it or defeat the bandits and take the caravans stuff. But I might be wrong - just how I took it on first brush.

As long as there are custom portraits, I'm not sure it matters what kind of style they go for. I like Sweet myself, but understand how others might not like his style. Personally I usually ended up importing most of the portraits I used for the IE games, either using famous painters like J. W. Waterhouse or other game art as sources.

You mean that gibberish was an actual developed language? News to me. Yes it was. It also just goes to show a developed language used in a handful of case specific situations will often be indistinguishable by the untrained ear from having "Star Wars"-like dialogue featuring random grunts and clicks and whirrs.

It does seem that bartering should be more useful in terms of intelligence gathering (but IMO it should have a downside - the more you barter your way in and out of situations the more likely you're going to attract attention for people wanting your gold).

Certainly by small country you were talking of Liechtenstein, and not the seventh economy in the world? It was a joke for effect; sometimes I've ended up with so much money in RPGs I can't imagine there's any gold left in the world for anyone else to have a nugget, much less a gold coin for themselves!

The Party Has Killed Ago Nee, the Tax Collector The Party has gained 30000000 XP Reputation + 10

One of the reasons why everyone feels they have to carry every looted armor is because money tends to be scarce early on then by the end you've got enough money to buy a small country. Like Brazil. So honestly there's a couple of problems going on when this happens and not all of it is related directly to the inventory system itself (playing inventory Tetris is often just a symptom of trying to maximize the amount of money you can get so you buy that Silver Sword that allows you to beat the werewolves that you know about but can't beat because you need Silver weapons). So really the best inventory has to look at a number of different problems in the game and find a way to solve it that makes sense and doesn't annoy the player.