Namutree

300 NPCs is a lot of resources. For two cities, which PoE has, that would be 600. So either you get a lot of copy paste, or you don't get your peeps. I personally think Torment was a good number of people. Never played torment enough to know how many that is. Also, as long as they had an effiective way to create npc's; I don't think 600 is unreasonable.

You COULD just make only a minor portion of it needed. Since there would be a lot to choose from no particular task/quest would be considered "critical", but instead optional. Not that I'm saying Obsidian should do that. Then what are you saying? It seems you want to be politically correct and say something without saying anything. Im only saying that some optional content could be needed to complete the critical path, but still be considered optional.

I find that a lot of crpgs don't have enough people in their cities. I hope that in PoE the cities actually have a reasonable number of people per city. I think at least 300 npc's per city is reasonable. Does anyone know if PoE will satisfy my need for big cities?

QFT!! High body count games have always bothered me for that reason - don't get me wrong, I have nothing against killing my enemies, but do I have to kill quite so many of them? Surely some of them will try to flee, or simply be wounded. The problem I have with this is similar to the problem I have with most CRPG aspects...believability. When taking on criminal gangs and the like, you can pretty much expect to have to brutally murder a bunch of 5-6 people in every room. If there are 10 rooms in the building...that's 50-60 people whom you've just murdered! So, that many people die in one day, and this has no impact whatsoever on the population of the city? In a huge scale battle, then sure, I can understand having that many deaths, but if this is happening in street skirmishes with that kind of regularity, surely there's going to be a population crisis before long. I kinda agree, but the issue for me isn't the amount of people I'm killing. It's how few people there seem to be in the cities/towns. Heck, in BG1 there were like 20 people in Neshkel, and a lot were guards. I'd hardly call 20 people a town. More like a tiny village.

I'd rather not be forced to take the definition of "advantage" that someone else bestows. Maybe I want to explore everything for funsies, and/or because all that optional content is just plain good, and simultaneously do not want that last boss fight to become significantly easier (for example). I'll not say the scaling shouldn't be an optional thing, but, whatever the basis, I'd rather like it if the story decided I'm going to face a really tough encounter no matter what I do, with certain integral encounters, rather than "Well, the Dark Wizard Blegmar WAS really tough, but, luckily, our heroes found all the +5 equipment in the land, and practiced extra hard with their abilities, so that this world-ending threat amounted to simply a moderately tough challenge." That's what some people don't seem to get. Just because I want to complete more content doesn't mean it's expressly so that nothing will be a match for me anymore. Then don't play rpgs. The whole point of an rpg is leveling up to become more powerful. Plenty of non-rpgs with exploration, but me: I want an rpg.

You COULD just make only a minor portion of it needed. Since there would be a lot to choose from no particular task/quest would be considered "critical", but instead optional. Not that I'm saying Obsidian should do that.

It seems to me that you don't want leveling to be a major factor in determining whether or not a party can overcome a challenge. In which case; why even play an rpg? Levels matter, and should be a major factor in determining success or failure. There are plenty of strategy games that don't have leveling so you won't have to worry about grinding.

You'll probably have to do a lot of killing, but not any murder. By the way, a stronghold focused game might as well be the sims. Play that instead.

Did the person who worked out the pattern for Pac-man exploit the game by getting a perfect score? Are you exploiting the game by finding patterns in them? I remember playing the Atari 2600 games Dodge 'Em and working out the pattern with hand drawn maps (which I still have to this day) at non-stop full speed and getting a perfect score. (the clip only shows one enemy car but later you face against two enemy cars). Did I exploit or abuse some part of the game? Or are people at Twin Galaxies abusing and exploiting some part of the game design by getting incredibly high or perfect scores? Those are not RPGs and do not have a focus on tactics. The fear that PoE will be soloable has its roots in the fear that the game will have cheap exploits. After all, your tactical options are very limited with one person; if a player only needs one guy to beat the final boss, then the boss must be a breeze for my party of six. So as long it's not a rpg, and a person works out a pattern within a game, then the player is not exploiting or abusing the game in any way? So (arcade) games don't have a focus on tactics? I'll have to tell arcade players next time when they're playing (especially tactical arcade games) that they're not using tactics, according to some on this forum, are exploiting and abusing the game and are not skilful players. Also, it's not an either/or. There have been players on this forum who have admitted they can't finish ToB and beat Mellissan. Some find the fight hard but doable with a party of six. Others have beaten her solo. If one guy beats Mellissan solo, then according to you, the fight is a breeze with a party of six. No. I can't say when people are exploiting a game when I haven't seen them play to know what they are doing. I can say that incredible feats are possible when a game focuses on reaction time rather than tactical party play. In regards to BG2, three things are important to keep in mind. 1- BG2 was very exploitable. 2- Making a bad main character/team was very possible for a noob. This is why noobs would struggle with her. PoE will not have this issue. 3- BG2 had a very high level cap. PoE will not.

Did the person who worked out the pattern for Pac-man exploit the game by getting a perfect score? Are you exploiting the game by finding patterns in them? I remember playing the Atari 2600 games Dodge 'Em and working out the pattern with hand drawn maps (which I still have to this day) at non-stop full speed and getting a perfect score. (the clip only shows one enemy car but later you face against two enemy cars). Did I exploit or abuse some part of the game? Or are people at Twin Galaxies abusing and exploiting some part of the game design by getting incredibly high or perfect scores? Those are not RPGs and do not have a focus on tactics. The fear that PoE will be soloable has its roots in the fear that the game will have cheap exploits. After all, your tactical options are very limited with one person; if a player only needs one guy to beat the final boss, then the boss must be a breeze for my party of six.

And to me everything in IWD2 was pure quality, my favorite game. Not to mention that the game was made in 10 months. As I said everyone likes something different, that the dev thinks something he made is of quality doesn't mean it is. You question is flawed, everyone wants more content that is good. The devs aren't going to release content that is bad, but not everything they release will be good. While you may want to make it black and white, it simply doesn't work like that. But if you really want an answer to your question, I want as much quality content as they can make with the money they have. I actually agree with you that the quality of content is subjective on a personal level. For the sake of the question; let's assume the developer is aware that 99% of the customers will not enjoy the quest, nor will they hate it. You already answered me, but I'm still waiting for a definitive answer from Vol. His answers so far have been just dodging my question.

You make is sound so black and white when it obviously isn't. Even if all the quest are of top quality to the guy who made them, they won't be to the people playing them. Everyone likes different things and so not everyone will think of every quest as quality content. Thus the more quest you have the greater the probability that there will be something for everyone. You are also under the impression that game developers leave bad content in the game, those things are either scraped or reworked. The reason Im making it so black and white is because the point of the question was to figure out his priority. Also in IWD2 there was a lot of poorly designed content in the game; so yes, sometimes designers prioritize content over quality. Heck, some quests in Morrowind were so bad Modders altered them just to make them playable.

Lets say the guy who made it thought it would be fun. Only once he finished it did he realize it was lame. Now you're back to the scenario I put you in. Would you remove the quest? The point of the question is to establish your priority. Quality or content? Both isn't an option in the case I have presented.

Can these arguments be made into a poster and be mailed home to me? No.

I agree. I also wish a few of the npcs in BG1 had ben cut in exchange for better versions of the npcs that I wouldn`t cut. I think I`d cut about 1/4th of them. Starting with Sharteel.

Fair enough, but what's the priority? Lets say in PoE there is a side quest that isn't very fun, and doesn't give a good reward. Would you remove it? If you do, the game will be shorter. If you don't, the game has lower quality content.

I was wondering what matters more to the forum community; a large game with lots of in game content, or a deep and well designed game engine with quality content? How important to is it that the game has alot of content, and how important is the quality of content?

The dragon thing makes a lot less sense when you remember that Bhaal's entire plan relied upon his children dying to fuel his rebirth. If that's your plan, why would you breed with a species that lives thousands of years and makes mincemeat out of entire adventuring parties single-handed? Makes them dying on schedule rather frustrating, doesn't it? Lots of little, easily killable things makes a lot more sense. But then how would ToB have thrown in the obligatory gigantic boss battles? So whatever. We've got a dragon Bhaalspawn with an adult son. I don't think the writers of that expansion pack gave enough of a crap about the lore to care whether it made any sense, just so long as it provided a big battle. Good point. Perhaps the dragon didn't have anything to do with his plan; maybe he saw a big half dragon and was like, "Come to Bhaal.". Then when he prophesized his demise he forgot about his dragon kid. That's the only explaination I could think of. It's not great, but I bet it's better than most fan-fiction.

I have to admit, the assassin scenario Sharp_one brings up makes sense to me. That said, it still has been bad game design when level scaling has been used so far. So it should be understandable that so many people are not happy with it.

I found IWD2 harder than BG2. Not that I found either really challenging.

Well, Josh sorta answered that question in the OP's you tube link. Anyway I'll give my opinion: First, I will say, I *liked* IWD2's story(s). Isair and Madae were potentially intriguing villians. And just like the first game, all the major dungeons had decent back stories. The story behind the ice temple was really good, even if the temple itself was a rather dull/repetitive dungeon experience. The story behind Dragon's eye was really good too (the eruption, the Yuanti, the time loop, etc.) IWD2 could have had a much better storyline though. I wouldn't have changed anything, per se. Instead, I just would have...expanded it more. You can tell that Isair and Madae were meant to be far more "personable", but the devs simply didn't flesh them out.. Unfortunately the game manages to drop the ball each and every time they do show themselves to the Player. Every one of those cameos they do is like: "Oh hi!, we were just leaving. here, fight our minions!". Compare that with how BG2 handles Bodhi and Irenicus' multiple appearances. Also, IWD2 had so many areas. But many were wasted with meaningless filler (river caves, fields of slaughter, the monastery, the underdark, etc), when the devs could have easily used them to better flesh out the main plot. ^Considering AD&D lore, this *alone* was a risky (and potentially unbelievable) opening scenario on the part of Bioware. What happens if you decide to play an elf? Well, In D&D, Elves don't reach adulthood until they're about 250 years old. Problem: Gorion is human. So Chances are if you're an adult elf, you're probably older than he is. Except that you can't be, because the time of troubles wasn't that long ago and he supposedly saved you from being a baby sacrifice to bhaal after the time of troubles. So by the start of the game, you're a 20-25 year old elf. Which is still a baby. You're like, 2 in human years. Of course, this whole time-based inconsistency stuff in the BG games is made even more illogical in Throne of Bhaal when you meet a huge ancient Dragon who is also a child of bhaal, and who has a Son who's also a huge ancient dragon (if you're keeping count at home, that's a 2000+ year timeline discrepancy, since the time of troubles at the point had only happened, what, less than 25 years ago?) From my understanding, Bhaal had many children BEFORE the time of troubles; so a 2000 year old dragon child of Bhaal is fine, but you are definitely right about the elf thing. I think I read in the player handbook that elves become adults at about 90, but maybe I'm wrong. Either way, an elf PC makes no sense.

Great idea! Obsidian, do this.

Everybody would become passive push-overs. I'd think it'd be the opposite. With a lot of fear of death removed, it'd be easier to stand up against oppression. Of course, it depends on the other factors. Does the world value submission or bravery? Will you get a better next life if you're a conquering hero in this? Does XP help you along towards "the goal". Good point.

I feel that a part of the argument has to do with what people consider level scaling. When I complain about level scaling I am only talking about the game world changing because my team leveled up. I feel like the game is cheating me out of my reward for gathering xp. If enemies got stronger for any other reason it wouldn't bother me; at least not by default.

I think the stamina/health system is probably one of the best design choices Obsidian has made on PoE.