What do you wish not to see in PE

[Cryticus]

I could be wrong but I think Obsidian is hoping to come up with a story that is 'good to follow'.

 

I don't doubt that, I just wanted to say that good story dousn't need to convey any deeper meaning or, such

[kenup]

Since bos_hybrid brought it up:

 

No only one separation between choices. The pc should have the ability to be anything from a hero to an anti-hero, to an anti-villain all the way down to the most villainous bastard possible in the story setting. And yes that includes all the stupid equivalents of the DnD alignments. The last thing I want is to choose between being a hero poster boy or a jerk/bully posterboy.

Edited September 28, 2012 by kenup

[Pixelperfekt]

Uneven level of challenge in the main story

If i choose easy, normal, hard or whatever the difficulty shouldn't spike at certain points. I´d love to have certain optional areas and side-quest do this but when playing through the main story I don´t want to be locked at a sudden major increase at a certain point maybe forcing me to change the difficulty for that area just for it to drop down in the next area. But I love the idea of exploring, taking the wrong turn and get brutally butchered by some hideous monster!

[Gene3]

Trash Combat

MMO mechanics & Cool downs

Randomised items

Level scaling

Awesome button

Quick Time Events

Lack of meaningful choices & consequences

Pandering

Just about every character is bi-sexual and romanceable

Edited September 28, 2012 by Gene3

[Luckmann]

- Blatant soapboxing of social issues, e.g. sexual politics, environmentalism, racism. Yes, discuss them. No, don't make them simple black and white. (DA, for example, turned into 'mages good templars bad, OPPRESSION IGNORANCE zomg' even though the setting should've made it more subtle.) I have stances for this IRL like everyone else and will argue them there endlessly if needed, but I'm tired of having soapboxes in my games.

- Obligatory minigames. Optional ones are fine, but no required ones, please.

- Minority opinion, but no obvious power builds. Everything should have pros and cons.

- Fully voiced stuff. I read much faster, and it always feel like 'look at me, I'm trying to be movies!'

- Minsc-styled characters. I'm sorry, but i can't laugh at disabled/mentally disadvantaged people being turned into jokes.

 

More as I get off work and think of more.

This. So much this. All of this.

 

Tired of soapboxes. Tired of minigames. Tired of blatant, easy min-maxing. Tired of full voiceovers crippling the scripts. Tired of goddamned Minscs, even though there really only was one, he still haunts me for taking an NPC spot that could've been Xan, Kivan, Eldoth, Garrick, Kagain, Ajantis, Tiax or even goddamned Yeslick's.

 

I was forever robbed of all my favourite Baldur's Gate party compositions in Baldur's Gate II. No elven hegemony. No dwarven warband. No bard troupe. No grandeur noblesse. Instead I got a mentally handicapped uninteresting one-dimensional halfwit, a pathethic & deficient & wingless & whiny avariel, an annoying half-elf and an annoying gnome.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Luckmann

[Moonlight Butterfly]

- Chainmail bikinis

- Humans being the dominant race

- random loot

- repairing...ugh its just busy work.

- All the good items being for me-lee characters

- spamming health pots

- regenerating health.

- spawning ninja mobs like DA2.

- The whole world being built around the assumption that the player is male.

- REPEATED BACKGROUNDS/AREAS NOOO GOD NOOO.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Moonlight Butterfly

[Luckmann]

Okay, I can't stand quest markers. When an NPC says: "I need to to find out what Burke is doing, he usually winds up at the black crow tavern after market for an ale before he goes home, I want you to follow him" and I ask "Where's the black crow?" I expect directions, I'm fine with those being written down in my journal I'm even okay with occasionally having things drawn on my map, but not a quest marker, especially one that will follow him throughout the day, even if he buggers off out into the country for an unscheduled picnic.

I think that "Quest Markers" is a matter of utility and the way they're used.

 

If someone says "I need to to find out what Burke is doing, he usually winds up at the black crow tavern after market for an ale before he goes home, I want you to follow him" and you ask "Where's the Black Crow?", I want a detailed description of where the Black Crow is, but once I have that, I do not mind at all having it put on my map as a marker.

 

However, if someone says "I need to to find out how Burke is doing, he usually winds up in Cloakwood Forest after market for an moment of peace and quiet before he goes home, I want you to talk to him", I want a general goal marker placed on Cloakwood Forest; not an arrow pointing straight at his goddamned corpse hidden under a tree or dumped in a ditch.

 

The only game I have known to do this in a good fashion is, as weird as it might sound, an MMO; Warhammer Online. Sometimes it showed a specific marker for a specific person on place when it was very clear where it was, or when you had gotten good directions. But most of the time, it only highlighted a general area on the map, basically saying "Roughly in this area".

 

For the other end of the spectrum, we have the horror stories of ARPGs like Oblivion or Skyrim; "Fetch me something somewhere" and then you get a pointer and a compass straight to something hidden under a bridge, under water, under a ruin, in a box. Above all else, that rubbish must be avoided at all costs. Dragon Age: Origins were practically as bad as that, just not as flagrantly. I hates it.

[Hoverdog]

- romances

- catering to handicapped 'casual' players (quest markers, quest compasses, low difficulty, streamlining, overall retardiation)

- non-static camera

- cinematic cutscenes

- trash mobs

[RiceMunk]

- spawning ninja mobs like DA2.

Oh god, I just got horrible flashbacks.

 

"Oh, it's raining bandits again. Must be tuesday."

[Hiro Protagonist II]

What's wrong with cinematic cutscenes? Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale had them.

[Gene3]

Huge resource sink if we're talking modern cinematic cutscences, if they just want to do a voice over with some rolling text it's probably no biggie.

[MReed]

Just wishing, but... I'd really hope that we don't have absurd level demographics, like in every single RPG ever made...

 

"Level demographics" refers to the distribution of levels across the population in a game world. In D&D terms, 95% of the population is level 0, 4 % are level 1, 0.9% are level 2, and 0.1% are higher than level 2. This is how the real world works, after all -- exceptional individuals are, well, exceptional.

 

To provide a concrete example, if a 10th level party gets a standard quest to "Save my little girl from bandits" the bandits should be level 3-4 maximum. In other words, if the party just goes in and slaughters everything in site (fairly standard for these sorts of side quests), then the combat should be an absolute joke. As this isn't very fun / challenging, developers will choose to make the bandits level 10 or so, which provides a good challenge to the party. If you don't look at it too hard, this works, but... Level 10 NPCs should be bandits that sneak around and steal children -- much more reasonable is that they would have conquered the town and likely established a new kingdom to boot.

 

The downside of accurate level demographics is that the pool of potential side quests drops dramatically as level increases. There are a couple of ways to address this -- for example:

 

* In the case above, the quest could be reworked into "Save my little girl from vampires" and the combat challenge problem is addressed, but... Now you have to explain why vampires would be interested in kidnapping this random little girl, and why they wouldn't drain her immediately to boot. This takes more time, more text / dialog, and so forth.

 

* Clever quest design is another way to go -- the quest is "Rescue my little girl from the bandits", and the bandits are, indeed, levels 1-4, so the combat is a joke, but... If the player fights the bandits before rescuing the little girl, then the bandits kill her. Oops. Of course, now you have to design a way for the party to succeed in the quest, which is much more time consuming than the base "kill all the bandits and win" quest design.

 

It comes down to "Which do you prefer -- 5 side quests that are carefully designed both to be fun and justifiable in the game world, or 30 side quests that are just as fun -- as long as you don't examine them to closely". Every game that I've ever played has always come down on the "more quests, suspend disbelief" side of that equation, and I'm not even certain that's the wrong decision. Still, I'd like to see one game try going the other way...

[Hobo Elf]

Combat mechanics inspired by MMO's. Things like threat and cool downs.. no thanks.

[sollus]

Over-emphasized realism, adherence to DnD resulting in impaired game play.

 

Yes DnD is the father of these games, but some of the ideas and ensuring everything "makes sense" down to minute detail level doesnt always work well for cRPG's. A lot of these ideas tend to really be pushed by the hardcore RPG crowd. I understand where they are coming from, but there is a reason that the audience for cRPGS is much greater and diverse than the audience for PnP DnD.

[Pope]

+1 for no level scaling

 

Having areas beyond my party's experience is awesome.

 

Although make sure we can always return from such areas. I remember doing the Unseeing Eye quest way too early during my very first BG2 playthrough, and once in the Beholder lair there is no turning back. I eventually managed to fight my way through, but it took many reloads and some cheesy tactics.

 

 

 

Also no drow please.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Pope

[Luckmann]

What's wrong with cinematic cutscenes? Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale had them.

Really? I can only remember 2 that could possibly qualify, and that's the intro movies, and I'm not even sure I'd put that in the same category as modern "cinematic cutscenes".

 

 

Over-emphasized realism, adherence to DnD resulting in impaired game play.

 

Yes DnD is the father of these games, but some of the ideas and ensuring everything "makes sense" down to minute detail level doesnt always work well for cRPG's. A lot of these ideas tend to really be pushed by the hardcore RPG crowd. I understand where they are coming from, but there is a reason that the audience for cRPGS is much greater and diverse than the audience for PnP DnD.

The game isn't based at all around DnD or DnD rules, so this fear really has no basis. As to why there's wider audiences.. well, I'd say that that is an issue, like most things, of availability and accessibility.

 

After all, the audience is bigger for Mass Effect than for Baldur's Gate, too. It is always easier to reach a wide appeal than to make something out of quality.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Luckmann

[Gene3]

Over-emphasized realism, adherence to DnD resulting in impaired game play.

 

Yes DnD is the father of these games, but some of the ideas and ensuring everything "makes sense" down to minute detail level doesnt always work well for cRPG's. A lot of these ideas tend to really be pushed by the hardcore RPG crowd. I understand where they are coming from, but there is a reason that the audience for cRPGS is much greater and diverse than the audience for PnP DnD.

 

Since the game is not turn based i'd rather they move away from D&D and build a system that works with real time combat. D&D needs turn based to shine, like the combat in Knights of the Chalice or Temple of Elemental Evil.

[aVENGER]

What's wrong with cinematic cutscenes? Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale had them.

 

Not quite. They had in-game scripted cutscenes rendered at the same PoV that was used for the rest of the game in addition to pre-rendered intro/outro sequences.

 

On the other hand, NWN2 and KotOR had in-game cinematic cutscenes, with facial close ups etc.

Edited September 28, 2012 by aVENGER

[zimcub]

Please no broad, silly humor. I've never allowed myself to say out loud or type this, but Minsc and Boo annoyed the hell out of me. I like humor, but it should be humor that makes as much sense in the game world as out of it.

I don't really get it how it doesn't make sense out of the game world.

The guy was touched in the head so so why is it hard for him to behave like that?

You can easily look at him as a kid who wanted to be a hero but never outgrew his childhood.

I mean i respect your choice to dislike and i also wouldn't like it if they made a similar copy of the character in the new game.

Just the logic behind it doesn't make sense when you describe it as this type of humor.

[kenup]

- spawning ninja mobs like DA2.

 

Specifically, spawning plate mail knight templar ninjas!

[Hiro Protagonist II]

 

What's wrong with cinematic cutscenes? Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale had them.

 

Really? I can only remember 2 that could possibly qualify, and that's the intro movies, and I'm not even sure I'd put that in the same category as modern "cinematic cutscenes".

 

 

There were more than 2. There were atleast 5.

[Luckmann]

 

What's wrong with cinematic cutscenes? Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale had them.

 

Really? I can only remember 2 that could possibly qualify, and that's the intro movies, and I'm not even sure I'd put that in the same category as modern "cinematic cutscenes".

 

 

There were more than 2. There were atleast 5.

Wait, what? Really? I have the vaguest memory of.. Was there a cutscene when you got the Suldenesselar(sp?) and Watcher's Keep? Oh, and right, when you went to Hell, too. And then one when you reached the Thone of Bhaal.. I think. And when you died.

 

But honestly, at least all the Baldur's Gate/2 were extremely basic. I'll concede that they were there and that yeah, my memory probably betrayed me, and yes, they are technically "cinematic cutscenes", but I do not think that these basic scenery-scenes were what was being protested against.

 

At least I hope not, because I like those.

 

But yeah. Fair point, points to you.

[Shardbearer]

I honestly prefer everything happening in the rendered game world like most of BG2, rather than cinematic cutscenes. Imo, the cost to benefit ratio of cinematics is not favorable within a project with limited funding like this.

[Amentep]

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.

[Karranthain]

I honestly prefer everything happening in the rendered game world like most of BG2, rather than cinematic cutscenes. Imo, the cost to benefit ratio of cinematics is not favorable within a project with limited funding like this.

 

How about narrated sequences instead?

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60371-narrated-sequences-instead-of-cutscenes-lets-use-our-imagination-again/page__view__findpost__p__1196013