Fiaryn

Sounds like your best bet is to just be a member of the Darcozzi Paladini and play it straight. They are, by all appearances, a bunch of vaguely Errol Flynn-like dynastic men-at-arms so being a witty, exuberant personality just goes with the territory for them.

You're giving Europe a little too much credit. The reason why the ethnocentric and racist dogmas of the 19th and early 20th century had little domestic impact is that most of Europe was fairly racially homogenous. They did not have an enormous underclass of enslaved/impoverished-due-to-recent-slavery Others to foist their troubles on. As Europe becomes more heterogeneous in the modern day, one finds them acting Well, no less xenophobic than Americans. Considering that I started by noting that the original RPGs Race theme, which akin to Ethnics (a definition which include "common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience"), works well. I can only assume that you narrowly interpreted physical difference as skin color... Surely you can understand why your example falls short when we consider fluffy bunny ears vs hulk twice your size with shark teeth.. and how it would effect interaction between the two species during primitive tribal stage... Consider the reputation that Orlans gained in Dyrwood in just a decade. I'd expect FAR bigger animosities between the species, rooted in ages long culture, religion etc other, not equal rights and co-existence. Arguably Alexander the Great is the better example of cultural assimilation, he who first conquered most of the known western world and figured how to hold to it. Although those example are both grounded in our own world, where there is only one specie and such assimilation is possible... FYI on Earth several different variations on what loosely called the human species have co-existed in the past, but only we survived past the tribal stage. And while in theory it is possible that two or more intelligent species would develop at the same time, in the same region competing for the same resources, and each develop the tools to coexist. All we known suggest that eventually one will dominate and lead to the extinction of the other. Which is why I said that on the authenticity side, i'd need more than just a little ritual and low key squabbling to understand how we got different SPECIES that not only coexist, but completely entwined. Alexander the Great is an incredibly poor choice for an example of "figuring out how to hold on to it" because that is precisely the opposite of what he did. Nor is the extinction of Homo Neanderthalensis particularly strong proof of the impossibility of racial co-existence, given how little (read: nothing. We have informed guesses) we know of the particulars of their extinction. It is entirely possible that, to be blunt, they were not eradicated so much as ****ed into the fold.

Wait, that isn't an argument that the communities are pro-romance. That is just an argument that if you stick a big red button in front of anyone, they're going to push it. It might even be an argument for Skinner box style quest rewards, that the players expect xp or a fancy item out of the virtual sexing. This is essentially correct. That people take the option, when it is offered, is not in and of itself indicative of being an ardent supporter of romances in RPGs. It can indicate as little as a propensity for completionism. What would be more informative is the number of people who are upset/glad at the lack/inclusion of romances in a given RPG. I would guess the vast majority don't care one way or the other.

I'm generally not very fond of romance in videogames. Rarely does it feel anything approaching believable. Usually it just feels like cheap, pandering, emotional porn. The IE games are no exception. The Aerie relationship is downright unhealthy codependency, Jaheira's romance moves implausibly fast for someone who literally just lost their husband and is somewhat busy chasing down the killer of said husband and, well Viconia... She's a typical bad girl archetype who "needs" emotional healing via the protagonist's ****.

The main draw of the Souls games, and Bloodborne, is that it's an Action RPG that exemplifies "hard but fair". You're set loose in a bleak dark fantasy world with fairly free run of the place and by extension total freedom to get yourself killed over and over and over again. Combat has high lethality, but tends to be more methodical than twitch (by twitch I mean games like Devil May Cry or Ninja Gaiden). Prediction, managing your stamina, and patience tend to win fights. Exploration is a fairly big deal. If that kind of stuff is your bag, you'll probably like the Souls games. Their reputation for difficulty tends to be overplayed because games journalism is dumb as a box of rocks, and the Internet is a meme factory, but they can be tough.

Well A) The bolded is not true. There is a reason why Culture and Race are separate selections in this game. B) Racism, as we conceive of it, is actually a fairly modern invention. Defining it along grounds of skin color and playing up physical differences is more of an after-the-fact-rationalization that grew out of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. So it's actually kind of mistaken to think, "Wow we're pretty racist today, so that means if you go back 600 years they should have been even MORE racist". The answer is actually "yes and no". Grim and gritty does not historical accuracy make. It is more plausible to me that the nations of PoE are rather multi-racial because it echoes the realities of say, France, which up until the late 1800s was rather multi-ethnic, and rather a lot of people who lived in the Republic/Empire/Second Republic/Second Empire did not speak French.

I think he was more basing the accusation of douchiness based on, implicitly, suggesting that a game can cease to be an RPG based on whether or not the game uses a controller. Or lets you customize the protagonist Both of which are byzantine and wholly arbitrary foundations for defining RPG, but probably not grounds for calling someone a douche. (RPG is a worthless term that does not actually describe anythingggggggg)

Well Bloodborne is a videogame and not a pc game and therefor not interesting to me. Sorry but i have been pc gaming since like 1990. For me it does not qualify as a RPG. For that matter the Witcher 3 does not too, Controller recommended in a rpg? A set main character i cannot create myself ? Sorry don't see any appeal in that. But yeah its much more rpg than an action game as Bloodborne, so it should not affect pillars as its released on a very limited and inferior platform only. I feel really sorry for you that you feel that way But that is the mentality that PC gamers are known for - it's not on PC, therefore it's not worth my time. We've gotta change that, or people will think we're all a bunch of elitist douches. I tried many console games, i had a ps2, ps3 and xbox, xbox 360 too. I just never really used them other than for some exclusives i was hyped about. The problem is that the games are not as fun as they used to be. They seem dumbed down both in content and controls and not only for consoles but for cross platform releases too. Even more so now on almost all games cause it seems to have set a standard. You know that is exactly why i backed Pillars and i did that with 290$, because there is a promise to bring back the deeper games. While i see many great stories in games now, like dragon age inquisition, it hurts me to play that game. It does not feel like a rpg or even a full game to me with out stats to assign and real skills and when i am limited to 8 skill buttons suddenly (when i had basically unlimited in the first part) i feel cheated. Yes its more easy to get into that game, but then it is shallow. Also we have been very limited in all aspects cause of the consoles, be it gameplay or graphics. Since the playstation any console hardware was at least a year behind pc hardware on release, sometimes even more and yes that also counts for the ps4 and ps3. Why is complexity inherently better? I don't really want to debate this with you or anyone (sorry, I just don't) but honestly, really sit and think about that one. I'm not saying complex games are inherently worse, either. But having played games for over 3 decades now, I don't necessarily think more options = better game. I think that's an extremely limited way of looking at games, RPGs or otherwise. A game is an experience. Everything - the UI, the gameplay, the graphics, the sound, etc. - all of those things help build that experience, nothing more. The complexity of the UI, the number of skills you can use at any given time - all of these elements are pretty much aribitrary in an objective sense. They are experience-building tools. You may be used to certain aspects and facets of these genres, sure, and it's certainly understandable for someone to lament the diminishment of a feature they are used to and they enjoy, but please recognize that's all it is. There is nothing inherently better about complexity, there is nothing inherently better about a KBAM setup, and there certainly is nothing inherently better about a PC over a console. That is a very valid view of looking at that, but it is just there where i feel the limits. The UI is not as well thought out as it could be. The experience is dimmed by the controller support ( have you seen skyrims inventory ?). And actually PCs do have much stronger hardware than consoles and way more options so yes they are inherently better. Better is a complicated term. More powerful? Yes, but does that actually translate to added value in all games? There is a cost/benefit ratio to be appraised. Many people, quite reasonably, may find that the value added is not significant relative to the costs entailed. Or not significant period.

This. Also, do you post on PA? Your name is familiar. Once upon a time~

While we're on the topic of RPGs and what they are: It's worth remembering that original, Gygaxian D&D was a hack of a miniatures strategy game, and primarily revolved around playing a band of sociopathic murder hobos. Characterization? Roleplaying? Plot? Those concerns were secondary at best, and mostly came later.

It has stats. You level up, you invest in those stats, those stats determine your efficacy with a variety of equipment.

Genuine indifference is a rare thing to find on a forum. Because genuine indifference tends not to post.

The secret is that RPG is a term that means different things to different peoples, has no actual inherent meaning, and is a term that grows increasingly useless as the years go by.

While I'm on the topic of tribalism and the delusions entailed therein, I got a secret for folks: The people who go onto a forum to actively argue about stuff like this? They literally never comprise a majority of any audience except for the most niche of niche games, I'm talking MUDs. Hell, probably not even then. It does not matter if it's RPG Codex, SomethingAwful, or these forums. The vast majority of fans of a given genre or game will never bother. It's important not to delude yourself into thinking that any of these fandoms are representative of The Great Truth of The Nation.

It is extremely important to define one's identity based on the kind of media one consumes, and also to section off into mutually hostile tribes on the same grounds. Appreciating the merits or game design of entertainment that is not to your tastes is haram, and an offense to Allah.

Part of the whole idea of PoE is that it's a world with people who's cultures and history's aren't all that dissimilar from our own. They are meant to be living breathing societies. They also happen to have magic in their world, and this being a quasi-renaissance setting this means you have people applying (rudimentary precursors to the) scientfic theory to magic and souls. How do they work? Why do they work? That's what people in this setting as well as us want to know. We're not supposed to have all the answers. But we do have some! Like that lashing a soul to a dead body has really bad side effects and that undeath is living on borrowed time that will, inevitably, run out. And not leave your soul in a great state, at that. As for why the powers that be don't have an army of the undead, aside from the above, you know how in the real world it's sometimes hard to get things that are unequivocably good to survive the political process because of talking points or whatever? Okay, now imagine the arbitrary cultural and/or ethical pushback that a good thing might get...magnified by the proposal in question being inherently objectionable, like raising the dead to be unliving enforcers of the state. Ya know, the kind of thing that might incite a peasant rebellion or two or three or four, at minimum.

Sure. While we're at it, both Pillars of Eternity and Superman 64 contain code. Checkmate. There can be good pandering and bad pandering. Citadel for Mass Effect 3 is probably the best handled fanservice I can think of because at it's heart, it's just goofy fun and wants to give a good sendoff to the characters you love. Absolute fanservice, doesn't really help or hurt the overall narrative, but there's nothing wrong with that when it's done right. Romance options typically feel, at best, a sort of cringe inducingly manipulative. Like they're trying to lure in an extra lonely kind of videogame playing geek and it's just uncomfortable to even think about. The romances themselves are never believable, because how could they be, they're usually just "put in the right four or five dialogue responses to get your sex scene". Hooray you have now performed the scary task of socializing with a girl without leaving the safety of your own room. Maybe if videogame romances were more integrated into the critical path of the narrative, they could work better. Mask of the Betrayer comes to mind. The whole thing with Safiya I found pretty interesting because, well, it is what you make of it. Safiya herself is all but trying to force a romance between you and you have a lot of valid, lore supported ways to react to that. The fact that it feels forced is part of the point in that case. Perhaps a deconstruction of the usual romance? Not sure if I'd go that far but it's a thought.

Please stop writing alpha as alfa you are only making me think of delicious alfalfa. While I'm at it: Alpha/Beta/Omega is a load of complete pseudopsychology nonsense primarily propagated by PUAs/MRAs and related communities. Also, I've yet to meet a romance option in a videogame that wasn't some flavor of pandering and bad.

The problem is that the "Battle Cleric" concept inevitably leads to "I can fight better than the front liners because I hyper focus all my 'support'...on myself". Clear delineation of roles is a necessity to avoid shenanigans like the 3.5 Cleric rendering pure front liner classes utterly pointless. Poor Fighter. To put it another way, RPG gameplay tends to reward specialization and penalize Jack of All Trades, Master of None approaches. Making one who feels effective usually means you've made a Jack of All Trades, Master of All of Them Too.

Leave the small increase in power as is for harmonious player behavior, but boost the penalty to small-to-medium level. Unless the priest in question is insane, the cognitive dissonance between their faith and voluntary actions should sap their effectiveness because it's largely the strength of their faith that powers their spells. If faith is the dynamo generating the power, then acting against the ways and mores that sustain said faith ought to have significant consequences. Great update and I can easily see myself wanting to do a run through for each class thus far...accept maybe for monk. I don't think this is called for. Twisting dogma and rules, using more generous or convenient interpretations, is as human as human behavior gets. And I think that's the kind of stories Obsidian excels at. Isaac Asimov's I, Robot series of short stories comes to mind. Even clear, seemingly iron clad rules (such as the Three Laws) can be creatively reinterpreted in the context of the "big picture".

Robust modding tools aren't something you just fart out as an afterthought. It takes work, a lot of work, and the game typically needs to be built with such a thing in mind (see also: NWN1) for effective tools to be generated. The amount of work it takes would take away from resources that could be spent on other things. Such a thing, to my knowledge, has never been promised on Kickstarter or anywhere. It's beyond the scope of the project.

Similar to 3.5 Clerics how? As in being objectively better than nearly everyone?

Simple things tend to become more complicated in practice. The Kind Wayfarers as described are basically the real world Knights Templar, before they got loaded. As we see in real world history, one thing leads to another. Protecting pilgrims means protecting their valuables well how do we do that, and then we see the evolution of the Knights Templar into international warrior-bankers. Simple creeds are good. Nothing is ever simple. And the Bleak Walkers "peace by any means necessary" is pretty much exactly what Bobbin said. The Order of General William Tecumseh Sherman. I can dig it.

I think it's less that you're not allowed an opinion and more that saying things like "Women who are not attractive to me personally should be murdered" (which in turn suggests that you believe being attractive to you personally is the only function of a woman) is a really creepy and regressive thing to say!