Shevek

Making a console version increases development costs and forces design changes that would damage the core vision of this project.

Man, why don't you guys let Feargus make the hiring decisions, lol. I think its cool to make SUGGESTIONS about things you would like to see or game mechanics or whatever but it seems kinda wrong to hold petitions over people to be hired for the project. Thats high level administrative stuff. All this "hire Sweet!" and "hire Ziets!" stuff kinda rubs me the wrong way. Also, if these guys wanted in on this project, I would figure they have heard of it and already dropped Feargus a line.

Who says all classes have to be eligible for multiclassing? That wasnt the case for the 2E IE games. They can just make multiclasses for the core classes.

Ranger/Cleric with Druid spell progression was a bug. Sawyer fixed It in the IWD: HoW expansion.

Great. I love the ROLLplaying there. So, you splash Paladin for CHA to saves and then go straight for Sorc. That is not a Fighter/Mage. That is just an example of the many problems and inbalances inherent in 3E frontloaded class design. AGAIN, that is just how multiclassing works in GENERAL. That is not SPECIFIC to the flaws or strengths of 3E. All you did was describe what multiclassing is. Again, read a rulebook. I don't need your tips man. If player freedom is so important, this would be a purely skill based system. The WotC people themselves admit that 3E multiclassing is too munchkinized. They are not letting folks get signitaure abilities by splashing levels (like you did above with your "Paladin/Sorceror") in their next system. http://www.wizards.c...nd/4ll/20120917 A strawman is when you misrepresent an opponents position. If am guilty of this, my apologies - that was not myintention. It is difficult to address your position, however, when you do not make yourself clear. The original supposition I made referred to 2E doing a better job at maintaining lower level encounters as a threat. You responded with 3E having crits. I responded that 2E has crits as well as other systems to address this. Then you call my response a straw man. I dunno, I think arguing with you is a waste of my time.

Thank you for the lecture on what a multiclass is. I think most of in this thread know that. 1. The penalties for MC in 3E are WAY more punative than 2E. Quite frankly, without cheesy PrCs like Arcane Trickster or Bladesinger, martial/magic multiclasses are completely useless. Your "arguements" do not address this. You simply define what a multiclass is. That definition you gave applies to 2E too but doesn't actually address how absolutely worse 3E multiclasses were. 2. Kits were not like PrCs (with a few exceptions - like the Swashbuckler getting fighter THAC0). Most offered a few mild/moderate onetime bonuses. In reality, they acted kinda like "feat packs" you would pick up as a benefit of being pureclass. Please do not use the example of BG2 "kits." Get a rulebook, read actual some 2E kits. You need practiced spell caster. Period. Denying this is foolish. In 3E, if you are a martial/magic MC and you do not take practiced spelcaster, then you are gimpiing yourself. 4 caster levels for one feat. Essentially, they are putting in a cost for having MC work like it should. 3E encourages you to use classes as ingredients. "Oh, I'll take a couple levels of paladin, then I will become monk, then I'll turn into a fighter, then I'll..." Sorry, that is just crap. That "freedom" is just making some oddball munchkinized super class by cherry picking the best frontloaded abilities and working to create crazy synergies. Go ahead and make your Dwarven Paladin/Fighter/Dwarven Defender/Whatever-Other-Crap-PrC, I would rather have a Dwarven Fighter/Cleric with decent caster level. The one thing that 3E did well was feats and they stole that from Fallout (perks). Umm, news flash, 2E had crits too. It just also had a superior method of determining to hit and HP.

I like narration but prefer when there are storybook like still images to along with it (ala-IWD).

I disagree with this. You fail to mention how taking out "opaque" FoW would further diminish the value of stealth play.

It did NOT. They had to put in feats like "Practiced Spellcaster" to make martial/magic multiclasses viable and that just added ANOTHER penalty to multiclassing (a feat cost). Folks had to house rule passive caster levels into the rules to make 3E multiclasses worth a damn without resorting to using cheesy Prestige Classes or unfair feat costs (some d20 system out there is sold using those passive caster levels, don't recall the company or the name of the system at the moment). In 2E aDnD, exp levels were different. You could achieve Fighter (14)/Mage (14) with the same xp that it took to get to 20 in either. That made the multiclasses much more viable than just a typical 10/10 3E multiclass. This was not unbalanced because the attack/hp bonuses were done differently. There was THAC0 progression and front loaded HP progression (these systems, I might add, are just plain better - sure they can be confusing, but they make it so enemies of lower level remain a viable threat)

As soon as they mentioned Big City 2, I immediately thought of the Underdark in BG2. How much more awesome would BG2 have been if the Underdark was a fully realized city like Athlatka?

The angle is closer to Fallout. They are playing with a lower angle for exteriors and a higher angles when in dungeons.

I am hoping for it to be as good as ToEE or better as far as animation goes. ToEE had trees swaying in the breeze, leaves russling about, etc. I think a scene like one in that screenshot will be VERY difficult to animate though. I am eager to see what they do with that.

I am dieing to see it in animated.

This poll is biased. Multiclassing in BG was not overpowered. People still made plenty of single class characters. No 3rd edition style multiclassing please - that just sucks. It gets Martial/Arcane mix classes all wrong. The reason prestige classes exist now is to fix the problems of 3E multiclassing. AD&D Multiclassing is WAY better.

Mask of the Betrayer was an amazing game. It had great story telling and very memorable characters. I played that game in a marathon session the first go around I had with it. I just wanted to know what would happen next too much to stop. Equating the person who led the design on that to Michael Bay is stupid.

You want some original stuff, sure, but some classics never hurt. I think established monster concepts can be valuable in helping people connect with the game. Hell, imagine if they had monsters from settings like Ravenloft or somesuch? Who wouldn't wanna go adventuring while fighting some classic baddies?

It looks amazing. I hope its not a huge challenge to animate all that water (or leaves like ToEE) properly at that resolution.

2E dnd attempted to fix that by using things like THAC0 (which attempted to allow weaker enemies a fair shot at hurting higher level PCs) and having major HP gain limited to early levels (only moderate bonuses after that). In some basic ways, 2E has alot going for it. I hope the devs will take the benefits of something like the 2E system and use the versatility of the 3E feat system (which was inspired by Fallout perks, interestngly enough).

ddillon: I hear ya, man. This is awesome.

I feel that the stretch goals seem very reasonble. Even with the stretch goals, the number of classes and joinable NPCs is lower than BG2. I am not saying this as a bad thing btw. This is just an observation. Think of the big picture here. I mean, there is no multiplayer (not needed). They are skipping the cutscenes (not needed). They are sticking to 2D environments (perfect considering the gameplay and should look great). All these things make the game relatively cheap to develop. There are many things this game is doing that are more indepth. There appears to be more detailed character development, for example. There will be racial traits and most likely some kind skill system. However, stuff like this is easy and cheap to do. Look at Fallout's perk system; it was literaly designed and coded over a couple days. When you figure in that modern tools for game development are much more powerful and efficient, I think OE is on track to deliver this in stride.

$100,000 does not equal $1,000,000. I blame our legislators for forcing dumbed down curriculum standards on our schools. Now kids don't even seem to have any basic number sense.

I am sure the companion interaction will be pretty great in this game with the team they have together. Considering that this game will have fewer companions than BG2, they will probably be able to make each companion a bit more meaningful. On a related note, I always felt BG2 had pretty good companion banter and quests. I would have liked if the companions all had some more quests attached to them but what was there was pretty good. For a bit of fun, try having Mazzy and Korgan in the same party. Korgan and Aerie is fun too (mostly because I hated Aerie).

MotB was a damn good game. It is probably my favorite of the more modern fantasy crpgs. I bought the thing a while back with no idea who Ziets was. Anywho, I am intrigued he may join the project but I wonder if the team can maintain a unified vision with so many strong developers on It.

I like Sweet but whoever did that last wallpaper is pretty darned good in my book. I would like to see where that guy takes us.

I always felt the IWD games were very good dungeon romps. Moreover, they had great settings and tons of atmosphere.