1. The way our story system is set up allows you to link as much levels as you want together and still put them together in one storyline, so you can make 100hrs+ RPGs if you want (which tbh will take you some time )

2. From within the story scripting system, you can tell it to play a movie. We're using bink now because it fixes compatibility issues we faced in the past with .wmv files.

3. Modding of audio is something that we're going to have to look in to.

4. As we get closer to release, we'll start showing more of the functionality of the editor & you'll see it's quite straightforward.

5. You can

Thanks! Definitely looking forward to this

I hope the community will pick up on the customization and see it breathe a life of its own.

The editor looks almost exactly like the Morrowind editor, and I know how to use that!

I also hope we'll be able to put in conversations with choices between the party members into the user-generated maps.

I'm a storyteller at heart ... I wonder if I will be able to tell some stories there ... ?

I only play a game like this with people I know who's like minded. If you like SP or can't find another like minded, then play it SP. Simple, no?

Yes, of course, I dunno why I'm going crazy if it also has a SP mode Everyone is happy, lol/

Something for the wishlist: Better balancing of skills.

Divine Divinity had problems - mostly with redundant skills (but with 96 skills in the game, they can't all be winners). Beyond Divinity had incredibly overcomplicated and specialized melee skills, and incredibly underpowered and over-priced magic skills.

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was an improvement, and Dragon Knight Saga even more so, but there were still some balance problems.


Examples:
The Firewall skill was very unimpressive. Even with 15 points, it did a terrible amount of damage per second, and even accomplishing the dangerous and tricky feat of keeping enemies in the flames for all five seconds does literally 2 more than a single Level 15 Fireball tossed from maximum range. To top it off, Firewall's 30 second cooldown was double that of Fireball.

Splitting Arrows was crazily overpowered, if you follow good advice and build to maximize critical hits and critical hit damage - which Ranger builds steer you towards automatically. Add in +488% damage from Way of the Ranger, and you can do tens of thousands of damage spread over a room of enemies. The cooldown: 5 seconds.

Explosive Arrows were hit too hard with the Nerf bat when they were changed to no longer use normal damage from Ranged attacks. Even maxed it did maybe 500 damage with a non-critical hit. The only reason to invest is because it eats a second or two of the Splitting Arrow's cooldown time.

Life Leech made fighting a bit too easy, especially for Warriors who get a health regen buff from natural points into Strength. It worked with special attacks, and it was an instant heal - the only instant heal in the entire game. I think the biggest reason for it being overpowered was that it worked with special attacks, like Fatality (which could do up to 52% of an enemy's HP in damage) and Whirlwind (which could hit a lot of enemies around the player at once, that's a lot of life to leech).



Try and watch out for minor things like that.

There were some really good balance things, though, like how points into Strength and Intelligence didn't do much in ones or twos, but if you build up a big pile, the regen bonuses really started to shine.

I used to knock the Summon Ghost, before I understood it - it is quite effective as long as you put points in to keep it at maximum level, if it falls behind it dies quickly and the healing isn't as effective.

UPD: totally missread that

The attribute system of Dragon Knight Saga really shined. It sets a good precedent.

However, there were much fewer skills than Divine Divinity (96 down to 55), with much less offensive magic and summoning. So I'd like to see more of that.

I wonder this:
playing turn based combat,
can I interrupt a fight (stop the fight by running away or whatever) ?
It will be nice it can because if my hero is too weak for the fight and so I want first go for more healing potions, take an extra skill or wish to buy/find some better gear or weapons ...

I hope gear & weapons have also "durability" like in DD ! I like it my weapon is not unbreakable !

It looks like this game will already have more offensive magic than the four spells of Divinity 2, which is good.

But I'd rather have 55 well-balanced skills than 96 ones which were not very good or were redundant - Remember Elven Sight and Ranger Sight in Divine Divinity? Both increased your sight range, but Elven Sight went up by 2 units a rank, and you could get it at a lower level - there was literally no reason to ever choose Ranger Sight over Elven Sight.

For D:OS, I would prefer a very high attribute cap (like 200), but if you're going to keep the base point cap of 100, at least let bonuses from equipment exceed the cap.

Lots of skills are a feast of micromanging.

Alas, micromanaging has died out. Blizzard saw to it (that it happened).

Since Blizzard, everything has been reduced to ther absolute minimum. People feel overwhelmed by a lot of skills and talents like in Drakensang, for example. They are used to builds & skills like in mot Action-RPGs, reduced to the absolute minimum.

People have unlearned complex thinking. Blizzard's fast-food of RPGaming rules the world now.

The beauty of the NLT (Realms Of Arcania games) was of having a choice. I loved that. I loved having lots of skills vailable at my disposal.

In real-time combat, too many skills and talents don't work very well, though, imho.

I think that having lots of them is rather the domain of turn-based combat - which requires imho much, much *slower* thinking in general - than real-time combat, where everything must be quick and fast - and not thorough and well-thought.

Other day I wold agree with you, but honestly, I just tired and not interested anymore in the game with tons of menus and characteristics and values, where you literally spent 30%-40% of the game doing math. Had too much of it. And since I rarely play games - I'm still thirsty for some nice actionish RPG with nice story and consistent, well-made gameworld/setting (as DD1 was).

I don't like math either. I'm not looking at the numbers, merely at what can be done.

It would be great if D:OS had ways of defeating opponents without killing them.

First of all, it's not realistic that every single enemy will fight to the death. Animals, even the hungry and aggressive ones, might try to flee when it becomes obvious they're losing. More intelligent opponents might surrender in order to save their lives.

I think you should get XP for every defeated opponent, including those who successfully flee or surrender. In this case, it might be necessary to tag those opponents, so you cannot generate an infinite amount of XP by attacking fleeing opponents over and over.

Of course, you'd miss out on the loot of fleeing enemies. Those who surrender could offer you all their belongings in order to get away, though. Some might even offer additional loot, like telling you about a secret stash of items if you let them live.

It would be really cool if your reputation influenced the chance of surrender: As long as you're an honorable person who is known to show mercy, enemies are more likely to surrender. If you kill people who have surrendered, future opponents will be less likely to make the same mistake, and their resolve might even allow them to put up more of a fight.

Of course, this shouldn't happen all of the time. Mindless creatures like some undead should never run away or surrender. Fanatics and soldiers who know that their superiors will kill them if they lose the fight should also have a very low chance of giving up. Untrained citizens, on the other hand, should be quite likely to beg for their lives instead of fighting to the death. It would also add a lot to the credibility of the game world if a heavily wounded opponent became very likely to surrender after you've obliterated the rest of the group without taking much damage yourself.

I'd also like to have a way of disabling opponents even if they don't surrender. You could knock them unconscious or wound them in a way that doesn't allow them to fight on. Why would you want to do that? You might be convinced that your opponent is out of his/her mind (e.g. when possessed or mind-controlled) or you might want to give him/her a chance of seeing that what he/she's been doing is wrong. That might lead to the NPC remaining in the same area, but becoming non-hostile afterwards. It could also leave him/her totally unimpressed, or he/she might even try to track you down in order to avenge the defeat by "purging" this "dishonour".

Yes, I want finally ONCE in the world/in the lifetime a full-fledged fantasy-themed RPG with a complete non-violent path !

Thief is there, I know, and Deus Ex ... But these game are not fantasy settings RPGs ...

Yeah, it would be great to flee from combat yourself or your opponent(s)!

Maybe also a nice and funny(!) thing :
using a skill or combination of skills can immobilize one or more opponents so you have time to flee like for example : let it rain + blow a ice cold wind so all opponents that are standing in the poul of water are now frozen statues
It remember me clearly what Mardaneus did with Lanilor in DD ...

As a (sur)plus you can persuade them to give you nice or special loot if they want free again ! Or you first pickpocket(is this possible in D:OS?) them and run away ... probably the sun melting the ice after a while and they're automatically back mobile, or some other funny/cool thing that can happen ?

Planescape: Torment!

I think he was talking more about "classic" fantasy ie "Tolkien-like sandbox."

Both of you are right. I haven't played very deeply intop PS:T yet ...