Hi, I understand this is my first post here, so please take the following as being from and experienced player and GM. I have been playing and running Eclipse Phase for quite a while, playing several long games and running a long campaign. In playing we have found a number of issues with some of the design in the game. While I do not mean this as a criticism as such, more my thoughts on the current system. I know some of these matters have been discussed before but I thought I would put everything here [h1]Skills and Stats[/h1] I have always found the question of how skills and stats relate to be awkward. A person in a basic morph with a EGO of 10 and another person in a morph at the bleeding edge with EGO 40 can both have an identical skill level, lets say they both max out to 99. There is no game mechanical meaning to having an EGO of 40 to an EGO of 10 aside from the cost of purchasing the skill. This would imply using a modern day equivallent that a low IQ person with say and IQ 60 can be just as an effective scientist as a person with IQ 160. Now I do understand the idea that even an EGO 10 is brilliant by todays standards but still there should be a quantitative difference. My general thought are to a) limit the maximum skill level based on EGO b) allow higher EGO people to reseach faster and with better results, not just based on a dice roll c) maybe limit degrees of success, irreguardless of the dice roll, based on the stat. When you move to other stats it gets worse for me, with the physical stats it is odd. A person with SOM 40 should be superhumanly strong compared to a flat. The above ideas apply for ther other stats (well not really b) [h1]Skill Softs[/h1] A major issue is the limitations of skill softs in the game, a max bonus of 40 and 120 points in total. It is argued that this is the difficulty to program a high skill and separate personality. The 120 limit is odd as you can have a ghostrider module implanted that can run a full ego and ALL their skills. My issue here is why? It is possible to develop full AI's with any skills including muses and full player characters. So this means transhumanity understands skills and building EGOs. Now I also understand here there is an implied technological limit, after all you torturer a captured backup/ego, you do not decompile it and extract all of it's data. But part of this is the ego encryption and firewall mentioned for ego bridges. Personally I immediately introduced a new breakthrough in my game increasing the limit for skill softs. Actually I regularly introduced changes to technology in the game, as the setting is not a stable time, technologies are transforming and advancing. A good hook I used for a game was the development of a new exploit and the window of opportunity until systems were upgraded (and the exploit became public) I suggest up the max bonus to 80 and limit higher or remove the limit all together. This greatly affects the world but given the technologies discissued it should! [h1]Morphs[/h1] I have two main issues for morphs 1) why does it take so long to grow a new morph. Can't you just make one using a cornucopia machine? A cornucopia machine can make delicate electronics so should be able to grow a body, either bio or synth quite quickly. A bio may be technically dead, but is could be revived as such. A synth would just be charged and turned on. 2) more a minor issue that at time it seems a bio morph and synth morph are too equivallent. Both can get the same max stats, so a machine cannot be stronger than a biological organism? [h1]Gear[/h1] It seems some gear pricing and size/capabilities are odd and need review. Costs in the game are based on rare materials required to make and time to construct. A profit margin would be added even in rep based economies. Still some prices seem arbitrarily high, I trust this was not just a game balance issue but based on some decisicion by the designers. For instance nanoswarms vary from low to high in cost. To make a swarm means running a cornucoia machine for a while. No excotic or rare resources like metals etc are needed. In some economies prices may be legislated high to precvent ownership but this would not apply in an anarchistic economy. In the gatecrashing book the Neutrino Retreat is a 1 meter cube weighting 400Kg. It has a battery, data storage and a communicator, all of which can be implanted in a morph (for instance nuclear batteries, ghostrider modules etc) I can give a lot more examples here, but I did not want to sound anal or something, so if desired I can post more examples. In general though I do not have many issues with gear I would just appreciate a review in light of the publiched technologies and please do not consider game balance. For balance, remember everyone can own them, your enemies too. [h1]Background[/h1] While I appreciate the game is giving a framework for GM's but and does not state motivations for the ETI I would prefer more of the big picture to be fleshed in. I am perfectly happy to make it up myself, but some more meta-story is good. I can ignore it if I want or use the neat story of the developers. After all the story as basically shown is a total loss situation for transhumanity. The ETI is much older, advanced, and with huge resources. It is hard to imagine how transhumanity can survive a direct meeting, but why hasn't it happened? [h1]EGO Hacking[/h1] The rules for ego hacking is neat but seems to be incomplete or at least you should be able to do so much more! Sorry nothing specific here but I have seen some neat third party ideas, I would appreciate more to be fleshed into the game. [h1]Conculsion[/h1] Please do not get the idea here I am just criticising everything. I very much enjoy playing and running Eclipse Phase, I would just like it to be improved. Please note, I have been a little unwell recently, so I may not be able to reply to any queries for a day or two. My apologies.