First of all a big congrats to the BD development team. Great job, and a large mug of Dwarven Ale to each of you.

I just picked up my copy of BD yesterday, and am only in BattleField Dungeon level 2 right now. There are some things that are driving me absolutely nuts already, and I hope DD2 will benefit from suggestions from the fan base.

1. Character creation: I played DD 5 times all the way through and several times part way through. Every time my character always looked the same, and no matter how I started the character at creation it always wound up as a very powerful BattleMage in the end. I liked the very powerful part, but it always seems like I end up with the same character at the end of the game. Usually at this point in a game I am planning my next character for a replay of the game. But with BD my choices are Muscular or thin, light or dark hair, and always the same DeathKnight. There should be a choice of the character you are soul-forged to, some characters who add fun to the game like Private Sparkle in Wizardry 8, or Deekin in NeverWinter Nights. Surely this cannot be changed now, but I am thinking DD2. I would hate to play DD2 attached to such a macho-bore as this nameless DeathKnight.

2. The inventory screen: It is a bit... ummm... intrusive. I would rather pull up a seperate window for the paperdoll, stats, and inventory than to have one humongous window that takes over nearly the entire screen.

3. Vendors: omg, this is heresy, and I will have to break it down into small chunks.

a) The vendors do not have enough gold to buy all the items you pick up in the game. The result is always carrying around tons of stuff that keep you on the verge of encumbrance most of the time.

b) When you buy something or pay for training the money is not reflected in the vendor's inventory. Example: Annabelle has only 5 gold (for a long time) so I train for 5500 gold so I can sell some inventory items. I train and check Annabelle's gold and now she has... 5 gold!!! I identify items, and sell what few items I can and the vendor's cash level only goes down... never increases.

c) Vendor's inventory never seems to change. This takes a huge fun factor, and a reason to replay, away from the game. If the items in the vendor's inventory are nothing you would want or buy, then they are totally useless when their money runs out. I have spend many hours of fun searching vendors for just those items I wanted to purchase in DD, but that fun has been removed in BD. I came very close to quitting my BD game and going back to the current DD game I have going, just because of this aspect of the game. But, being curious, I will probably play all the way through once.

d) Items that I have equipped should not appear in my trade window. Most people have probably accidentally sold some items they are wearing in DD and now the same thing in BD. If I want to sell items that I have equipped, I will unequip them. I would rather do that then say "omg, I sold my fully charmed sword by mistake."

4. Too many insta-deaths at very low levels occur in areas meant for very low level characters. I can understand being severely wounded in a low level area, but half a dozen insta-deaths (and reloads) while you try to figure things out is just not fun for me. At least in NWN your henchman would help you out a bit early in the game with some dialogue like:

Deekins: "ummm... Boss... can I ask you something?"
Hero: "Sure Deekins, what is it?"
Deekins: "ummm... Boss, if you so smart why you not see that trap over there?"

5. I would like to see a print function available that would print out your full automap for the level you are on at the time. I can't imagine that would be very difficult, and would sure clear my desk of a lot of post-its and a pile of notes and crude maps.

I hope this post is not viewed as a rant, it is not. I love RPG's above all other games and just want to see more fun put into the games, not taken out of them.

Thanks again to the development team... you all rock.