Amentep

I wish I could remember the game I was thinking of that I had that happen in, but alas I can't.

That explanation from whoever at Bioware doesn't make sense - there's really no difference in a 1-50 scale have 29.56 vs a 100 to 5000 scale have 2,956. I mean the numbers are abstractions anyhow, but the idea that "big numbers" is better is ridiculous, just like the idea of making normal items "white test" and rare items Green and unique items purple means anything but the arbitrary designations the creators gave them. I hope that kids today don't look at an arbitrary 10,000 and go "Kewl!".

While I understand the sentiment, my experience with food mechanics is actually the opposite of urgency. You stock up on all the food you can carry at town, then use rations to get to the dungeon, then 1/3 of the dungeon is cleared you run low on food, now you HAVE to go back to town NOW or else run out of rations before you can get to a store, so you go back to town then restock and go back to the dungeon and now you have to walk back down to where you left off (hope monsters don't respawn) and so on. So while I understand in theory food mechanics make you go "We can't just stand around here - our food is going to run out!", my experience with them is that the instead make you go "Wait evil baddy, I need about 12 more days to go restock on food and return because I don't want to starve and die while stabbing your horde to death."

*whew* I edited because I was afraid I wasn't remembering right and thought it'd be kinda wrong to be incorrect.

You'd be amazed at how spectacularly unlucky I am in internet games like this. Haven't heard of her (and a few other former BISers) since Sammy/High Moon closed their forums.

I've never found food mechanics fun*, but as long as it is optional (like how Fallout: New Vegas did it). That said if it can be optional and not a problem to develop it for those who'll like it - sure why not? Sleep mechanics I think I like more as long as its simply a stat penalty and not a "YOU MUST SLEEP OR DIE...HOWEVER YOU CANNOT REST HERE AND YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE AREA WITHOUT FIGHTING 1000000 ORCS BUT YOU CAN'T FIGHT BECAUSE YOU MUST SLEEP" kind of thing. *To me its needlessly micromanaging things; again if we are looking that we're playing a character and their skills and knowledge and not mine are important, that I'd like to think I'm playing a character who knows how much food they need to bring with them and if nothing else how to subsist if they run out rather than make me plan their dietary intake for days on end. I think this is why we just went with a flat upkeep fee in town to abstract food mechanics in most PnP RPGs we played. At least with sleep mechanics you have something that can directly effect travel and adventuring without requiring the micromanagement of items, unless you have to expend bedrolls to sleep or something.

As long as halberds, flails and morning stars are in, I'm okay. Well I'm okay if they're not in too.

I really disliked the "New Area Cutscenes" in BG1 for some reason. If I saw that lady throwing the slop bucket out on that guy one more time...! But not really a big deal.

Thanks for the reply; I think part of the problem is we know its going to be "like" old school isometric RPGs but with the features not more nailed down its easy to suggest things that aren't easy to implement or not necessary given what their goal is. Its also easy to take the fact that we're not literally looking at a new IE game to think of it as a new game full of possibilities forgetting what we know about the game already.

Don't your first two sentences basically contradict one another? Lets say a developer like Obsidian wanted to write a story and include something that a significant subgroup of RPG players dislike in their glorious new RPG. Would you spew your hate and vitriol on their moronic idea or would you accept that its a stupid notion that everyone should be able to enjoy games in any way they want? Cause it seems to me your opinion is suggesting "I should be allowed to spew hate and vitriol on any idea I consider moronic and that would make it so I couldn't enjoy games in the way I want". Or am I missing something?

I'm still not sure how "I'd like to customize my characters look (or not have it change or not have pointy wizards hats or whatever)" = "I want to dress up dolls". One of the few times I played an IE game with a friend we both ended up looking exactly the same. Male fighter avatar in the same color scheme. It was funny the first couple of times we tried to click on each others avatars, but got old quickly (and I changed my color scheme and portrait). Mind you that's not an issue since, AFAIK PE has no multiplayer. However clutter up the UI - not sure how this follows since any of the various clothing requests (my crafting/blacksmith thread, this thread, Monte Carlo's wizard's dunce hats thread) only affect the avatar and character sheet have next to no impact on what you can see - not sure on that, since even in the IE games you could tell the difference in what characters were wearing take up development time and money - they have to create armor weapons art assets anyhow; heck if saving development time and money is the goal wouldn't not wasting time on additional art assets out of a handful of starting appearances actually be less time consuming?

I finally moved mine out of the CD cases not long ago so no longer have that - except for BG1 which had a cardstock paper sleeve folder thingy which is still with my BG1 manual & map.

I played them all. Played them all to completion multiple times with the exception of BG1 which I only beat once (and cheated to do so, I'm unproud to say).

One thing to remember about movie distribution is that digital projection has improved things a good deal (since the early 2000s) because of the lack of need in striking prints. Prints cost a lot of money and probably led some to delayed roll-out to other countries. However I'm not sure that can really account totally for the shift just simply because it required cinemas to upgrade to digital projection as well. It is pretty clear that US piracy - as well as imports of untranslated material - of Anime through the 80s amid fan-to-fan video trade led to companies noticing that there was enough interest in the US to start licensing and translating anime films and tv shows at a greater pace (far greater than the 80s when I can think of only a handful of films that ever actually got such treatment through official channels).

I never joined because I knew I'd get killed. :|

I'd only support racing car clothes if I could dress my dwarf in early 1900s racing gear and name him "Barney Oldfield".

I seriously doubt any one feature being added (or left out) would effect my pledge for the game, unless the feature being added was something like "makes baby kittens in a 30 mile radius of the computer explode" or something. While I may suggest things in these threads, that in no way means that I want Obsidian to do exactly what I want "or else!" I want to play the game they make because I've liked the games these guys have made before.

If the narrative is developed over multiple days...then yeah, I think the PC and NPCs could care about a whole lot of things which might include their appearance. As mentioned above, I saw "dress up" as meaning that the OP was suggesting that the game be Project Eternity: Fashion Show. I think there's a difference in wanting a character to look a bit like their portrait and wanting to try out outfits for hours.

Seems like that is playing dress up, though. Who's to say the gear will be vastly different looking, as well. When I posted my thread on crafting to alter/fit armour or clothes to different characters, there was a post that presented the idea as a "Barbie dress up" - ie that dressing ones character up was the important part of the game. Hence why I said I didn't think it would be dress up as that's what I took you to mean. Odds are the looks will be different but probably not strikingly different (being an isometric game unless they give you a vanity view on the character sheet). I thought they didn't have the NPCs have altering looks with equipment so that they wouldn't have to bother with that part of development since it was a stunted dev cycle. Mind you I wasn't kicking around the BSN any longer so may have had the wrong impression

I don't think people want to play dress-up. I do think people like to be able to give their characters a "certain look" when they create them to greater or lesser degrees.

Yeah I remember the competitions that 'Tess did ... man looking at those names makes me nostalgic...

Tabbards! Thank you I was trying to remember the name. As I recall, some armor wouldn't take the color you picked on the color palette. Also some armors would reverse the major/minor color back in the IE Engine days. I know I mentioned in another thread the possibility of crafting required to fit clothes / armor (for size & body differences) (which wasn't a liked idea) and in that said it could also be used to customize armor further. I think we all recognize some desire to customize the PC (to greater or lesser degrees). Being able to wear a Tabbard over armor could allow that for some players, I think. Mind you no matter how much customization of appearance is put in, there will probably be someone or some group who wants more. I'll be happy with whatever Obsidan comes up with, I'm sure, since ultimately its - for me at least - a very minor part of the game.

I'd be for gnomes if they were more like originally put forth by Paracelsus - earth spirits about 2 spans high (~18 inches) as opposed to D&D gnomes who are a lot like magical dwarves in presentation.

Noober / Neeber characters. Some people found them funny. I didn't. Challenge at higher levels devolving into just throwing larger and larger mobs at the player and nothing else. Skills or abilities that are clearly superior to others, particularly to the point that the game seems to be inclined to make you take them in order to play. I think I'm okay, though, on all these things (ie I doubt we'll see them).

Reviewers tend to be bought and paid for by publishers. You can't tell me that reviews like DA2 getting 5/5 are accurate. Reviewers are just a part of the marketing hype machine. They never give honest reviews. Occasionally, you see reviews where the reviewer criticizes the game a bit but then still gives it a 85 or 90. its a fair point that I've seen made on reviewers that they won't risk alienating the patronage of distributors. That's why I left room for doubt that pirates might have a room to play for good or ill (given that there used to be issues with pirates trashing games only to turn out they'd gotten their hands on an incomplete build - dunno if that happens much anymore). That said, I enjoyed DA2 pretty much despite all of the stuff that I shouldn't have liked in it. So yeah, not really a taste arbiter, me.