Small suggestions. Easily implemented ideas, quickfire thoughts.

[Sarex]

I'd be disappointed if we couldn't pause in combat - active-pause was one of the great things about the IE games - if you like frantic combat then you don't have to use it but I prefer to consider my moves in an rpg.

 

I'd love to be able to pause cut-scenes too since long cut-scenes are easily interrupted in my household

 

Pausing in game is confirmed, as for pausing cut-scenes, are we even having cut-scenes.

[Lephys]

- A "cautious" mode in between "I don't care if we attract any attention" mode and "OMG there are hostile things less than 5-feet away" mode, as far as stealthy/overt movement goes. It's really annoying when your characters are either running (or, even if you can toggle walking, functionally are no more covert than when they are running) or tip-toeing at 1/5th speed. "We really need to just cross this field without being spotted by that guy 40 feet away, but all I can do is crawl..."

 

- Rebounding with grenade-type weapons (and maybe even some spells/projectiles) would be pretty cool. You could target the ground on the other side of a wall/boulder by targeting a vertical wall, kind of like making a shot in pool. Of course, I'm not talking about any kind of perfect motion physics. Just simple bouncing. You know... "This has a range of 20 feet, so I can fire it at a wall 10 feet away, then hit a target 10 feet away from the wall." *shrug*

 

- Passive/modal things like "detect traps" or "search/perception check" could be directional, targeted things, almost like aiming a flashlight around in a search effort, to tell your character where to focus, rather than simply being a radial range around your character and requiring you to just jog around in the hopes of finding things around them.

[Giantevilhead]

It would be cool if there were situations or quests where you can split your party up and have different members perform different tasks.

 

Like you could have party members pretend to be strangers so you can run cons and scams on people. Or you could have one party member distract someone while others set up an ambush or sneak into some place.

[Lephys]

Like you could have party members pretend to be strangers so you can run cons and scams on people. Or you could have one party member distract someone while others set up an ambush or sneak into some place.

 

It'd be cool if different characters' qualities/factors could buy you different amounts of time to do things. Not necessarily Speech-skill/Charisma stuff. But, different factors. Like, if you're trying to distract a noble, maybe using a character with a lot of knowledge about the local nobility would be capable of properly distracting that noble with conversation for far longer than other characters might, allowing the rest of your team a larger window within which to do what they're trying to do. But, that same character could provide benefits in other areas of the operation as well (like being the smallest/most agile to gain entry to a room, or being able to talk your way past some other nobility personnel in the entry-gaining/information-obtaining process). So, it'd be a tricky choice, instead of just "Well, obviously have the nobility-familiar person do the distracting," etc.

[JFSOCC]

characters (either pc or npc) in well lit areas should have penalties seeing into darker areas. Whereas from the dark you have a bonus spotting those in lighter areas. No negative effects if either party is in the same area.

So basically, I'd like night-blindness to be a real factor. Eyes need time to adjust.

[Calmar]

Allow spellcasters to move and reposition themselves while casting spells that deal damage over time, like Aganazzar's Scorcher for example. In IE games, you can cast this spell but not move until the spell ends. I'm not sure how many other spells are like this, but it's mainly a concern for damage type spells with a non-instantaneous duration.

 

 

I might well be mistaken, but as far as I remember, in IWD II only the target point of the scorcher was fixed and the caster could still move. The downside was that a fleeing mage could burn fer own allies.

[teknoman2]

i dont know how many said it before, but: WE NEED FEEDBACK!!! the thing i really disliked in IE games, was not knowing what area will be affected by my fireball, so often i missed enemies when trying to avoid FF or i simply missed my target outright with some spells, because i didnt know what area they would hit

[Silent Winter]

i dont know how many said it before, but: WE NEED FEEDBACK!!! the thing i really disliked in IE games, was not knowing what area will be affected by my fireball, so often i missed enemies when trying to avoid FF or i simply missed my target outright with some spells, because i didnt know what area they would hit

Josh has said there's going to be visual aids for spell placements (so a circle showing the range of your fireball - a bit like TOEE I think).

Personally, I prefer it without - makes spell-casting more challenging - but I can see the frustration of letting rip with a fireball and missing the enemy entirely.

[Lephys]

This might've already been touched on somewhere around in the forums, but in the interest of consolidated smaller ideas within this single thread:

 

More intuitive indicators for the well-being of a foe (like the BG "uninjured, barely injured, injured, badly injured, near death"). I actually kind of like the idea of not actually knowing exactly how many hitpoints something has, but instead just knowing how its currently faring relative to its total health, but I think maybe an icon or something that pops up rather instantly upon mouse-over might do better than -- to use BG as an example -- waiting on a scroll to unravel and read the state of the enemy. It's information based on your characters' perception (even if not mechanically done so), so I'd think it wouldn't take 5 seconds to figure out if something seems to be limping badly and bleeding profusely out its eye or not.

 

My tentative idea (open to further improvement, as always), was maybe an icon (a heart or something? Whatever reads well), which sort of loses fragments for each stage of wounding (uninjured to barely injured, and so on). So, if you see one little heart fragment, you know it's near death. An almost-complete heart icon would mean it's still doing fine, or barely injured, at a glance.

 

Of course, we could always just use health bars, but, I just thought the idea of a simple indicator (like the BG scrolls) was kind of nice as opposed to an exact meter. *shrug*

[teknoman2]

what i dislike about that system though, is when it is paired with spells that affect enemies with Xhp or less. how can you know if the spell will work if you cant know the enemy's hp? and another thing is when you get a "this spell works on enemies up to lv5" and you have absolutely no way to know the level of the enemy, so you either spam it hoping it will work, or you never use it

[JFSOCC]

what i dislike about that system though, is when it is paired with spells that affect enemies with Xhp or less. how can you know if the spell will work if you cant know the enemy's hp? and another thing is when you get a "this spell works on enemies up to lv5" and you have absolutely no way to know the level of the enemy, so you either spam it hoping it will work, or you never use it

what about "works on the critically injured" or "works from lightly injured to badly wounded"

Makes spells scale with the power of the enemies, might be interesting.

[Osvir]

 

i dont know how many said it before, but: WE NEED FEEDBACK!!! the thing i really disliked in IE games, was not knowing what area will be affected by my fireball, so often i missed enemies when trying to avoid FF or i simply missed my target outright with some spells, because i didnt know what area they would hit

Josh has said there's going to be visual aids for spell placements (so a circle showing the range of your fireball - a bit like TOEE I think).

Personally, I prefer it without - makes spell-casting more challenging - but I can see the frustration of letting rip with a fireball and missing the enemy entirely.

 

That's something a little bit save+loading could fix though (for research, "How big AoE does the Fireball exactly have??". I remember doing this in the Shattered Hand for this specific reason). I learned exactly how far the Fireball was going to go, so I could even hit enemies that were fighting close-range with my Fighter and Paladin without hitting my units. I quickly learned that most (if not all) big AoE spells had pretty much the same range as well.

 

Getting visual aid sounds great, but I do like challenge and your post sprung an idea to mind... how about some "risk factor" of the Fireball (concept) being bigger or smaller than the visual aid? Maybe the fire jets out an extra layer to one side of the "visual aid circle"/GUI. Makes it more risky, which isn't necessarily "challenging" per say but isn't challenge/risk the same thing in some of these occasions?

 

In the IE games = "I could hit that big ball of enemies if I throw a Fireball here but... I could also hit some of my own units"

 

What I'm suggesting = "I'll hit everything in this circle of this Fireball but... there is a risk that it extends and hits some of my units, alternatively there's a chance that it extends and hits more enemy units. Hm decisions decisions.."

 

Don't know how "easily" implementable that is, but felt like putting it on the table:

 

TL;DR:

 

Suggestion:

- Abilities that may or may not become more powerful when cast~ A risk factor as well as a "Buffed Spellpower!" factor. Spells that may be a curse to the battle, or a gift. Not 50/50 chance, something marginal... like... 10% chance of either being an advantage or a disadvantage. Perhaps a Player picked Perk?

 

"Wild Soul - This perk allows the Wizard to cast some spells with a chance to erupt greater power!! Disclaimer: However, the nature of gaining a Wild Soul also gives an element of 'Chaos'. The spells cast can tend to go off uncontrollably in a way not favored by the rest of the group" (insert picture of Powermad PipBoy Wizard with 5 scorch black units with fumes standing around (Party of 6)) or something.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Osvir

[teknoman2]

 

what i dislike about that system though, is when it is paired with spells that affect enemies with Xhp or less. how can you know if the spell will work if you cant know the enemy's hp? and another thing is when you get a "this spell works on enemies up to lv5" and you have absolutely no way to know the level of the enemy, so you either spam it hoping it will work, or you never use it

what about "works on the critically injured" or "works from lightly injured to badly wounded"

Makes spells scale with the power of the enemies, might be interesting.

 

i think it was the death spell in DnD that had in the description "instanly kills the enemy if he has 40hp or less" yet there was no indication of how much hp the enemy actually had in both IE and NWN games. if it scaled based on the health indication provided for the player like "instantly kills any badly wounded or near death character" it would be much more clear when it could be usefull and when it would be wasted

[Messier-31]

What about resolutions? Or windowed gameplay - will it be implemented?

[rjshae]

It would help if they implemented hyperlinks for all of the in-game information. Not to take you to another web site, but to send you to an appropriate page in the codex. It would be nice to open a journal entry, read it, click on a person's name, then read where they reside and what they do. A back button should then take me back to the original journal entry.

[sarkthas]

This is more of a specific class concern, but can also be extended to other classes.

 

In regards to the Cipher class, I feel there's a lot of fun opportunities for special conversation options tied to cipher abilities, when considering mental manipulation and all that jazz. It's not exactly a new concept, but does anyone know if class specific roleplaying options will be implemented? I haven't seen any mention of it, but I haven't read every new update either.

Edited September 23, 2013 by sarkthas

[Lephys]

This is more of a specific class concern, but can also be extended to other classes.

 

In regards to the Cipher class, I feel there's a lot of fun opportunities for special conversation options tied to cipher abilities, when considering mental manipulation and all that jazz. It's not exactly a new concept, but does anyone know if class specific roleplaying options will be implemented? I haven't seen any mention of it, but I haven't read every new update either.

*slowly waves hand* "These are not the druids you are looking for..."

 

Edited September 23, 2013 by Lephys

[rjshae]

The scrolls in the IE games seemed a little too vanilla to me, so I would like to see a little more variety. As an example, I propose, having three grades for each type of magic scroll:

• Adept scroll -- this is the spell in its basic form, cast at the minimum possible level.
• Master scroll -- the scroll spell is cast at four class levels above the minimum needed, providing all the benefits thereof.
• Arch-mage scroll - the scroll spell is cast at eight class levels above the minimum needed.

The scrolls are priced accordingly and the player must make a decision whether to consume a scroll to learn a spell or use one of the better versions during a key moment. Naturally, enemies will have the same option.

[rjshae]

Being able to assign a nickname to each of your companions. This nickname would then show up during interactive conversations whenever you are addressing the character, possibly with amusing effect.

[motorizer]

As mentioned in the class name thread, being able to rename your class at character creation could add a bit of  flavour to your concept of your character's background.

[Giantevilhead]

When you die in certain situations or against certain enemies, boss types mainly, there should be a dialogue option where you give a final word or a curse against your enemy.

[Walsingham]

As mentioned in the class name thread, being able to rename your class at character creation could add a bit of  flavour to your concept of your character's background.

 

The temptation to be a lvl 30 'Wanker/Rogue' would be too great.

[Messier-31]

Message category: ridiculous request

 

I want Lampyris noctiluca (the common glow-worm) lights visible in forests of Eir Glanfath during night-time!

[FlintlockJazz]

and all that jazz.

You called?

[rjshae]

Expendables with storage requirements: once you unseal and activate them, they gradually lose potency. An example would be a potion in an opaque container with a carefully sealed lid. Once opened, the effective number of doses decreases at the rate of one per day. Hence it's better to wait for the right time then use it up all at once.