I was getting ready to jump in with a "On story and RP, this is going to be heavily subjective" by-line... but reading over your thought here, I have to say that they are phrased almost entirely as objective commentaries on general principles and practices, and I fully support what you have to say here.
Thanks. On roleplay and story, like on everything else, I tried to say "this doesn't work" more than "I'd suggest this". And as much as possible, I tried to put the finger on why, exactly, it doesn't work.
There are issues for which I don't have suggestions, and others for which I have some ideas. But I mostly don't care
how Larian solve the problems, so long as they solve them.
I have to admit I didn't read all your topics because you wrote A LOT, but as soon as I reade one I usually agree with everything...
No worries. I wasn't hoping for everyone to read everything. Just wanted to see if I had let incorrect things slip in my feedback. I intend to send to Larian what is, in effect, a long list explaining why their current version of the game is bad, on many levels and approaches. So I'd rather minimise the number of times I say "this is poor design/bad/makes no sense" when, in fact, it's my comment that makes no sense.
@SerraSerra : off-topic, but I like your avatar. I used to have 4 copies of it back in the days
I'm also baffled at some things. I'll try to (re)formulate it better in the future, but here's one attempt : I can't begin to understand how Larian works. I completely understand that it's EA, so a lot is currently missing, and I have no (huge) issue with placeholder and "this content is not available yet". I nearly applauded when I saw a cinematics saying about just that. What baffles me are :
- Self-contradicting mechanisms, writing, and promotional speech.
- Core things that are not just missing, but where it's not clear that Larian has figured out yet how they'll handle them. It's highly personal and subjective though. If I undertook such a large scale creative project, I'd personally want to have a much clearer roadmap drafted instead of thinking "let's set sail and we'll figure out the problems and solutions as they pop up".
- The fact that they were happy to let us in that early.
Anyway, I'm just baffled by the approach. I don't think there are too many issues where they have created themselves insoluble problems. And even when they have (e.g. waypoints), they can drop some of the choices they did (e.g. Gale explaining what the waypoints are), and not lose too much work.
