No arbitrary party size limits. If the game must be balanced, let the NPCs refuse to join, abandon the PC, or kill each other if they don't like what the party is doing. When I'm going to face the boss or kill a dragon, I want to take the entire party with me. There is a reason why the typical squad size is around 10, not 4 or 6.
The rest of the world must not level up with the party. If the typical town guard is a level 2 fighter at the beginning of the game, the guards must still be at level 2 when the PC is about to become a god.
Don't swamp the player with millions of side quests that ruin the pacing of the main plot. If you must urgently save Imoen and then hunt down Irenicus to recover your soul, you can't spend half a year solving every single problem in Amn.
There are also many minor annoyances I'd like to get rid of: invisible thieves that run around the battlefield instead of hiding in shadows, crafting, carrying ridiculous amounts of loot, thieves pulling massive traps from their sleeves in an instant, and so on.
You know, maybe instead of punishing people for playing evil characters and preventing them from doing so, maybe they should make some more of the goody-goody characters fun and powerful. If all the "good" party members are evil, you feel a little more compelled to play evil just so your party is as strong as it can be.
You can't throw a fireball into a crowd without everyone turning hostile.
You can't get caught stealing or everyone turns hostile.
Keeping evil-aligned characters in your party drops your reputation.
If you have a low enough reputation, you'll be attacked by swaths of soldiers just for walking around.
You can permanently lose a character in the Selfishness test in the Hell Trials.
I don't know why everyone's getting all uppity with my comment; Baldur's Gate already punishes you for playing evil in plenty of ways. Realistically, your actions should have consequences.
1. A voice acted main character. Voice acting is a trade-off and should be treated as such. Like for example if I wanted to play my squeaky voiced Piro but my options are American Voice and British Voice I kind of can't. I don't mean voice-sets I mean like entire voice acted dialogue for the protagonist.
2. Less Human and Elf romance options. Give me some dwarves, gnomes, half-orcs, etc. of either gender.
3. Don't use just rolling for stats or just point buy. Be like Temple of Elemental Evil and allow both. I'll always use point buy but I know a lot of people like rolling for stats.
3. Don't use just rolling for stats or just point buy. Be like Temple of Elemental Evil and allow both. I'll always use point buy but I know a lot of people like rolling for stats.
- Roll 24D6 and a lot 3 die per stat (throwing out 6 unwanted die). no point trading.
- Roll 3D6 per stat. Choose two die to reroll per stat first round. Choose one die to reroll per stat second round. 3 round place rolls where ever you like. no point trading.
1. to hit or not in combat depending on my dexterity with the mouse instead of the character's stats
- in an RPG, how well the character is with swinging his weapons should determine if he will hit anything, I don't want to play clumsy me, I want to play the character
2. getting rid of the pause function
- if my mind gets overblown with what's happening in combat, I want to be able to pause and think thing's over - I'm not a super-warrior that can make life-or-death decisions in split seconds, besides I have to think for the whole party, I wan't to be able to pause and take my time and if something goes wrong, it should be due to a bad decision or a bad die roll, not due to my autistic mind getting over-stimulated
3. a maimed save-system
- I want to be able to manually save as much as I want, give my saves any name that I want - if things go the wrong way, it should be up to me to take me back to a point in time in which I chose to save - with a savegame name I've chosen myself to keep track and know why I've created that particular save or what was on my to do list to do next (which I express in the name of saves).
3. I want my characters stats and abilities to determine how well they do in battle, not my own ability to hit buttons quickly.
Agree fully with this. It should be about using the skills and abilities you have to build a strategy to defeat enemies - not about mashing keys quickly, and hoping that I pull off the right combo. If I'm too weak or don't have the right stats, I should die. And then I will amend my strategy and try something different the next time. In that sense, the battles are actually puzzles - what strategy do I need to overcome this enemy with the stats that I have.
1. Humanocentrics; every boss, mini-boss, mother, sister, traveler, trader, warmonger and their uncles are quite often human. Even though NPC's have a decent variety, more is always nice and especially then for all non-party members you encounter. Also applicable to romances, though I personally seldom care for those (I might try it out more if my non-human/elf charnames got get som love as well).
2. Less great items, but more items with funny abilities. Eg, once you find your third "whistling sword", which should be a unique sword I guess, it starts to feel kinda odd. Instead there could more +1 swords with some cool added pro's (and con's!).
3. NPC's joining very late. I'm a semi-power-gamer and prefer to prepare alot of things before playing, such as planning my party beforehand. I'd like the freedom to pick and choose a bit more than in ie BG1, where IMHO e.g. Tiax joins too late. I admit, the first time it was a great way to introduce characters into the game, progressively while you played (and maybe lost NPC's) you met new ones to replace the old ones. After the first playthrough though, this becomes more of a nuisance.
3. NPC's joining very late. I'm a semi-power-gamer and prefer to prepare alot of things before playing, such as planning my party beforehand. I'd like the freedom to pick and choose a bit more than in ie BG1, where IMHO e.g. Tiax joins too late. I admit, the first time it was a great way to introduce characters into the game, progressively while you played (and maybe lost NPC's) you met new ones to replace the old ones. After the first playthrough though, this becomes more of a nuisance.
How about some kind of training camp that you can send NPCs to? So you carry on with your adventures and meanwhile you've sent Fred & George off to a training camp to learn some new skills/improve their stats, or whatever. So they level up without you having to bring them along....
Of course, this would cost lots of money and take up some time but it would be a nice in-game way of resolving some of these issues.
I think that NWN2: Storms of Zehir had an adventuring guild you could pay to level up your cohorts. Or just have it like in the OC where all party members are the same level as you or your level -1.
I think that NWN2: Storms of Zehir had an adventuring guild you could pay to level up your cohorts. Or just have it like in the OC where all party members are the same level as you or your level -1.
PoE and Assassin's Creed got this right. They go on their own adventure, reaping the rewards (loot and xp) while you do your own thing. Time sensitive with a chance of the NPC failing and never coming back. (Which could open up a new quest to retrieve the companion to revive them/free them depending on time lapse.)
Are people maybe getting Evil alignment mixed yp with low reputation?
Sarevok was evil but didnt he have a good reputation with the people of Baldurs Gate? I think they need to make the evil options more nuanced to allow more for a littlefinger style of evil involving playing people for your own ends but still appearing reputable.
@Mr2150 I like the training camp idea - it would be a good use for your Stronghold which, as things stand, is fairly underwhelming (if you can get it early enough for training purposes).
- equating "evil alignment" with "homicidal maniac psycho killer"
Yeah. How evil people is portrayed is sometimes a bit ridiculous. Apparently all of them have to be pshycopaths (and certainly a few of them should be, but not 90%). Why not taking real day to day examples of evil? they arent so black and white, but surely they are more interesting.
Hmm a few years back I was a little annoyed when I saw topics of drama over rpg romances. What bothered me mostly was how people elevated romances to some ''special place'' when to me they are a subcategory under NPC Quests.
Other long npc quests types(whatever that might be) can be just as important and fulfilling as romances.
Comments
- No arbitrary party size limits. If the game must be balanced, let the NPCs refuse to join, abandon the PC, or kill each other if they don't like what the party is doing. When I'm going to face the boss or kill a dragon, I want to take the entire party with me. There is a reason why the typical squad size is around 10, not 4 or 6.
- The rest of the world must not level up with the party. If the typical town guard is a level 2 fighter at the beginning of the game, the guards must still be at level 2 when the PC is about to become a god.
- Don't swamp the player with millions of side quests that ruin the pacing of the main plot. If you must urgently save Imoen and then hunt down Irenicus to recover your soul, you can't spend half a year solving every single problem in Amn.
There are also many minor annoyances I'd like to get rid of: invisible thieves that run around the battlefield instead of hiding in shadows, crafting, carrying ridiculous amounts of loot, thieves pulling massive traps from their sleeves in an instant, and so on.You know, maybe instead of punishing people for playing evil characters and preventing them from doing so, maybe they should make some more of the goody-goody characters fun and powerful. If all the "good" party members are evil, you feel a little more compelled to play evil just so your party is as strong as it can be.
2. stripperific outfits
3. Vampires
You can't get caught stealing or everyone turns hostile.
Keeping evil-aligned characters in your party drops your reputation.
If you have a low enough reputation, you'll be attacked by swaths of soldiers just for walking around.
You can permanently lose a character in the Selfishness test in the Hell Trials.
I don't know why everyone's getting all uppity with my comment; Baldur's Gate already punishes you for playing evil in plenty of ways. Realistically, your actions should have consequences.
- equating "evil alignment" with "homicidal maniac psycho killer"
2. Less Human and Elf romance options. Give me some dwarves, gnomes, half-orcs, etc. of either gender.
3. Don't use just rolling for stats or just point buy. Be like Temple of Elemental Evil and allow both. I'll always use point buy but I know a lot of people like rolling for stats.
- Roll 24D6 and a lot 3 die per stat (throwing out 6 unwanted die). no point trading.
- Roll 3D6 per stat. Choose two die to reroll per stat first round. Choose one die to reroll per stat second round. 3 round place rolls where ever you like. no point trading.
- in an RPG, how well the character is with swinging his weapons should determine if he will hit anything, I don't want to play clumsy me, I want to play the character
2. getting rid of the pause function
- if my mind gets overblown with what's happening in combat, I want to be able to pause and think thing's over - I'm not a super-warrior that can make life-or-death decisions in split seconds, besides I have to think for the whole party, I wan't to be able to pause and take my time and if something goes wrong, it should be due to a bad decision or a bad die roll, not due to my autistic mind getting over-stimulated
3. a maimed save-system
- I want to be able to manually save as much as I want, give my saves any name that I want - if things go the wrong way, it should be up to me to take me back to a point in time in which I chose to save - with a savegame name I've chosen myself to keep track and know why I've created that particular save or what was on my to do list to do next (which I express in the name of saves).
1. I really hate not being able to type in my own text for a saved game.
2. I prefer that my protagonist not be fully voiced.
3. I want my characters stats and abilities to determine how well they do in battle, not my own ability to hit buttons quickly.
2. Less great items, but more items with funny abilities. Eg, once you find your third "whistling sword", which should be a unique sword I guess, it starts to feel kinda odd. Instead there could more +1 swords with some cool added pro's (and con's!).
3. NPC's joining very late. I'm a semi-power-gamer and prefer to prepare alot of things before playing, such as planning my party beforehand. I'd like the freedom to pick and choose a bit more than in ie BG1, where IMHO e.g. Tiax joins too late. I admit, the first time it was a great way to introduce characters into the game, progressively while you played (and maybe lost NPC's) you met new ones to replace the old ones. After the first playthrough though, this becomes more of a nuisance.
Of course, this would cost lots of money and take up some time but it would be a nice in-game way of resolving some of these issues.
It might explain why Dynaheir needs rescuing from the Gnoll Stronghold, for example...
Sarevok was evil but didnt he have a good reputation with the people of Baldurs Gate? I think they need to make the evil options more nuanced to allow more for a littlefinger style of evil involving playing people for your own ends but still appearing reputable.
1. No NPC Romances.
2. No Stongholds
3. No Fast levelling
I'm sorry, but elven waifus are the only reason I even play these games.
Other long npc quests types(whatever that might be) can be just as important and fulfilling as romances.