Valmy

Um what? Bioware had a contest on the boards and Lanfear, Gromnir, and Draconis (I think?) won. Them being in the game was hardly some shock.

Was it really bad? I had a tough year in school when BG2:TOB came out and was not on the boards much. Strange, I thought that was a great cameo. This is why we cannot have nice things.

Wait you think the culture wars ended in 1989? You think the right wing is winning? Fascinating.

If I had to take a guess, Bruce is using SJWing as an attempt to attract women. Wouldn't do that myself, but sometimes you have to work with what you've got. Around here? I have to question his tactics.

Shouldn't first wait for POE to be a successful franchise before we plot its demise with a MMORPG?

How's the contrary preferable? I can give you about 10 reasons why the contrary is preferable. But this morning I only have time for one. Here goes. I don't like my single player combat rulesets to be mechanically, soullessly, and rigidly Balanced. That's why. I want to be able, after a few playthroughs, to discover a build that blows away the rest. Conversely, I want to be able, after a few more playthroughs, to discover a truly underpowered build and then challenge myself to beat the game with it. This will let me know that real Human *art* was behind the creation of this game, not some undeviating, soulless, 'Balanced. At. All. Costs.", mathematical formula. BG1, BG2, and Icewind Dale positively oozed of the former. And that's why they're still great to play 14+ years later. While crap games like Dungeon Siege 1, and Dragon Age 2 suffered from droves of the latter and thus aren't worth the box they came in. I don't mean to offend, but to me BG1, BG2, IWD1 and IWD2 weren't that great to play even 16-14 years ago (good? Yes. Great? Not by accident) if we are talking about combat. Part of this is because of that unbalanced mess that was AD&D (with the 3rd edition things got better, but not that better), part because every adaptation of a turn based ruleset to a real time environment is average at best. Sawyer and co. are trying to fix both issues, with my blessing, for what it counts. PS: leaving alone the fact that I can't see how on earth balance = soulless in a game which is mainly about tactical combats. If they were inferior could you please list the sorts of games they are inferior to? Also what is the evidence that every adaption of a turn based ruleset to a real time environment is average at best? You just said BG1, BG2, IWD1, and IWD2 were good...then you turn around and say they were average at best? Which is it? I guess I see the important point of balance in a MMORPG but I do not see why it is a necessary thing in a single player game so long as each class is useful on a strategic or tactical level.

Still think he came off better than Lanfear hehe.

I am with you to some extent. I mean it would be awesome to me, a history dork, if they created a fictional society with gender roles almost perfectly lifted from 8th century Mercia. That would be fascinating. It might even be very confronting to see how their values created a rich culture and society. Problem though is that there is no real nuance or exploration that could be done. Mercia had a society that worked in a lot of ways for everybody who lived there and the ways it didn't...but the problem is we are not operating with 8th century values. To 21st century people alot of what the Mercians did is just plain wrong. I mean we might talk about how they made sense in their time period or were progressive by the standards of our view of the Dark Ages or even the actual Dark Ages. But, at the end of the day, any suggestion that these values are anything but wrong would basically be an endorsement of say...gender inequality by the game. Um yeah that is not going to work. We can only ever say something as uninteresting as 'sexism is wrong mmmkay?' Since there is not alot of debate about this I do not really see how it could be explored in an interesting way. Maybe I am wrong about that.

August-September-October? Dang this is just around the corner. Pretty exciting.

Premade stories is something we're getting in Pillars of Eternity (as it seems from reading the preview articles): The whole NPC Banter early game that defines who your character is sounds like premade stories that you puzzle together to shape something. It sounds really great and I believe it will be a great mechanic. We'll have to wait and see. Perhaps the NPC Background Banter uses some key words only that you can't Edit (due to them being important to the story of the character later on, or can be used in dialogue later on), but maybe there are other sections of the background that are open-ended and can be played around with. This was originally an idea I got for Wasteland 2, where this idea fits much better, but I thought that I could throw it in here as well because one idea isn't entirely exclusive to one specific game. Hugs are in Wasteland 2 for instance I have to say it would be kind of nice to know what those options are because then I could plan out my character based on them. But no big deal. It is not like I cannot roll with the punches easily enough. 'My character is the sheriff of Dyrford? Ok then' I just cannot get too married to a character concept before I actually play.

Right I mean I have no idea how resources are allocated since they are not completely interchangeable. Your team of artists and modelers are not going to be brought in to work on multiplayer issues for example. So would adding this feature divert resources from other parts of the game? I do not know, but statements from Sawyer and company suggests that it would. Hence I am against it.

I think the argument was "The time and resources that the developers have to implement X, Y, and Z are finite" And "X, Y, and Z all require time/resources to be realized" And "I like all features, except for X" Then "I would rather feature X was not developed" Maybe I'm wrong Right. This is a zero sum game. We have limited resources that need to be allocated. I do not get the logical fallacy of having your opinions in this area be impacted by that underlining fact.

Remember the 'canon' party from BG1? The one BG2 just assumed you had for some reason (PC-Imoen-Minsc-Khalid-Jaheira-Dynaheir)? That was not the best party around simple because, if you dual-classes Imoen like you were apparently supposed to, you had to go through a lot of the game with no thief unless your character was a thief. That was kind of fun trying to do later on.

You could do this in the infinity engine games right? They had a backstory but you could write your own. In general I am not a big fan of game options that do not do anything in the game though. I mean in a single player game there is no reason for me to type my backstory into the game. I already know it.

Agree with this, when I played baldur's gate I knew nothing about any of the companions, and finding someone who would join you was always a nice surprise. The internet is spoiling this stuff a bit, one reason I rarely go on this board any more or read much about PoE is that I don't want to know who any more of the companions are. The thing I remember about Baldur's Gate is in the pre-release hype they introduced rather obscure companions like Safana and Yeslick. So yeah it was surprising to find not just how many companions there were but they were mostly people we had not met before. So far it looks like at least I will know very little about the companions my first play through so that is nice.

My God France as a Eurpean Superstate? Anyway English victory in the Hundred Years War would have enhanced French power, not decreased it. It would have combined England and France into a giant kingdom that would have been ruled from Paris. Just saying...England was better off losing. And France was a chaotic mass of local power centers that the French King had mostly informal power over, hence the Anjou conquest of Naples of Provence and the Norman conquest of...well...you know. The thing that made France possible to be a European Superstate was the Hundred Years War itself when the French nobles gave the King tax power to fight the war. Since the war went on so long they sort of became permanent. But you know this. English always gotta be busting French balls. Anyway the key here is the second part of the paragraph. This is a big and complicated topic. It is not nearly so simple as 'the Middle Ages were just one big misogynist fantasy from 400 AD to 1453 nonstop" as you say. It is also one that would invite lots of controversy. Are RPGs really the right places to be exploring these topics? I guess they could be but that strikes me as a lot of effort that would be better spent on making a great game.

Don't listen to actual professors who study the mountains of evidence left behind on an entire continent. Because history is all about studying books? Um and if drawings of torture is reality why can we trust drawings of torture, why were they the only things to escape the vast Historian conspiracy to lie about everything? Granted I guess they have done a very good job hiding the fact that the Inquisition, an organization invented after the Middle Ages, went through the countryside killing half or more of the women...which is bizarre I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you are talking about the witch burnings but that happened, again, well after the Middle Ages and mostly in Protestant countries so not sure what the Inquisition had to do with it. And it seems the demonic Pope ruled all during the Middle Ages...except the Pope had no temporal power at all until right at the end of the Dark Ages and the idea the Pope had supremacy over the temporal powers was an idea that came along pretty late in the Middle Ages. That and during the Middle Ages huge parts of Europe were pagan, muslim, or were part of the Eastern Church (though that distinction did not really come about until very late...the Pope hardly was the absolute master of those areas to say the least) I especially like the idea that an era that saw increasing life expectancy, population expansion, and rises in the quality of life for many long periods in many places was a period of constant death and torture where everybody had a horrible life. But I guess you are saying everything we think we know about the Middle Ages is a lie and somehow you know everything about the truth? That all your darkest fantasies are the reality? In any case I very much enjoy history but I do not play RPGs for that. There are plenty of historical references in them but RPGs are for modern people to explore modern themes in different exotic settings. Most of what happened in the Middle Ages would not be relevant to people today, and to the extent that things were I think they can safely be explored without trying to recreate Dark Ages gender roles (which are highly varied and complex over centuries and dozens and dozens of cultures anyway).

Whoops I thought the strike throughs were some sort of temporary thing until my post was approved...um once I can edit I will go back and fix that.

My Character will be Lefwin the Chanter. Beyond that um....guess I need like a front line and some mages or something.