Gairnulf

Was I unclear? Probably... This isn't a mechanic more than buying buffs from shops is a mechanic. So buying a potion of master thievery just in order to complete a quest by pickpocketing instead of killing is something you wouldn't approve of in PoE as long as the potion is really expensive?

Just another possible way of disposing of your money. While playing Underrail today, where I'm swimming in cash, in spite of some game mechanics intended to limit this. If the game provides you with chances to use a large variety of skills - hacking, lockpicking, sneaking, social skills, etc. and you simply can't keep all of them at high enough level to pass the checks, but you want to pass a certain quest in a way which utilizes a skill you're not very proficient with - you can buy items that enhance that skill for serious $$$. For example, there are "lockpicks mark 2" which increase the lock difficulty you can pick if you use them, but there are even more complex and expensive tools, like the cloaking device which boosts your stealth, or motion tracker googles which increase your ability to spot stealthed characters, or traps. Basically you can take a shortcut if you haven't bought enough points in a skill and buy them temporarily for a serious price. I think PoE can take a lesson from that approach and adapt it to its own skills and skill checks.

I remember a question on the bioware forums way back, before NWN was released. Someone was asking one of the most regularly asked questions: And the answer that I remember word for word, because of how hard I laughed: So, yeah, anout those romances, I'm sure I read somewhere there will be prostitutes. You can always develop a one-sided romance with one. Even Peter Dinklage did...

FNV grabbed me from the beginning and only later I took notice that it wasn't developed by Bethesda, and I was like "Oh, that explains it". I can't argue with the Fallout 3 and Skyrim sales numbers, but let's not forget that the people who bought Fallout 3 are 7 years older today than they were then, and the people who bought Skyrim are 4 years older. Their preferences may have changed in the meantime, and I think last year shows evidence of that. I'm betting Fallout 4 will flop, because I saw lots of AAA titles flop in 2014 and this makes me think the long trend is turning, with AAA titles with huge budgets becoming unprofitable. It took ten years for the casual audience to notice, but I think it's finally beginning to notice that it's being milked with buying the same mediocre games year after year, not to mention the dlcs, microtransactions intrusive drm "services", etc. I can list you at least six big titles that flopped last year, and there is EA's telling silence about the DAI sales. That's mainly why I expect the market will respond badly to Fallout 4, in relation to the investment in its making.

Based on absolutely nothing - Fallout 4 will be in no way better than Fallout 3 which - just my opinion - is below average, will disappoint fans, and what I will find the best news - will flop sales-wise

That would be admitting defeat though

http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/293644/Pillars+of+Eternity%3A+critical+path+only+"a+third+or+quarter"+of+game/

It was just a normal question... If you would actually read the statement before it, it says: "Then you are an exception, against the rest of romance-requesting people I've seen."

Having an unlimited quantity of some resource, or just more of it than you would ever need, removes the need to choose between alternatives, and substitutes it with no-brainers. Compare unlimited money to the lazy design decision of having unlimited inventory (with the Stash). That's called degenrative gameplay, and it's what PoE should be giving players a break from. You can't throw away items and pick them back up either.

Unless this was said with irony - this proves nothing m8 Then you are an exception, against the rest of romance-requesting people I've seen. So what would be your definition of romance, when you were requesting it as a feature? Or did you request it as a story element? There are people who disagree with that approach. I believe you can tell what someone wants by looking at his actions, not by asking him to explain, but that's a famous "behaviorism vs cognitivism" argument which is a different subject altogether. Might still be related to romances somehow but I hate playing at Freud

With such a loose definition, you're sure to find a romance in almost any game. I suggested what people asking for "romances" understand under "romance" - a minigame where the player navigates a dialogue tree until he reaches some outcome where an NPC declares its love for him/her.

If somebody does all the sidequests, he should have more opportunities to spend in addition to more opportunities to loot. I don't agree there is no solution, and I've actually proposed a few.

Deal with it - the game's ruleset will be improvised by a caffeine-stoned Josh half an hour before the release is pushed to Steam

Some people a considering a self-imposed "late access" to skip some of the initial release's bugs and start playing after the first patch has been released. Early access is a luxury that Obsidian can't afford I'd be happy if the game is moderately bug-free on the 26th.

Hmm, I can't tell here if you are picking at my post or what I wrote was not as reflective as it should have been. Saying I made them learn about the game reads like I strapped them in a chair and forced them. Reality is, I asked everyone to watch the Kickstarter video and the video intrigued them. After they asked for an explanation and it led to a healthy discussion about what KickStarter is and how in this case it allowed the developers to be unchained from big corporate restrictions. Sure, sure. I just imagined the "made them learn" process in a more cartoonish way and it called a funny image. We tend to forget that most of the time when we are in this more or less anonymous communication, we rarely recognise each other as persons, and the usual empathy we would show in a real conversation isn't present. We forget there are real people at the other end, unless something has been said which concerns us. But given these circumstances, we tend to care too much and take things coming from strangers too seriously. I got carried away...

That's how normal people go about things, yes. And I especially want to point to this too: That's exactly it. Immature people cry for dialogue tree minigames. Those who can actually tell quality characterisation want to learn about the characters, not play a game where they hit the right lines of dialogue and call it "romance". It is funny to follow how things evolved with Bioware's attempts at romance minigames - from something quickly thrown up at the end of BGII development, to becoming a selling point for a big part of the audience - you can imagine the kind of audience - and to the actual introduction of 'quotas', where there has to be a romanceable woman, a romanceable gay, romanceable lesbian, and a romanceable antropomorphic bull just in case someone is not satisfied with the other options. Sex scenes are obligatory to exist with each "option". Does this quota-based romancing and growth of development time and budget devoted to producing this bland game-within-game sound closer to the concept of "good characterisation where the reader/player has enough content prepared for him by the author in order to discover things about the character he talks with" or does it sound closer to the "romance simulator" side of the spectrum? The existance or absence of romance mechanics (dialogue trees) is a non-issue. What is worth asking for is good characterisation and quality writing. Going for the superficial things only tells about the people who do it.

I'm glad that community patches will be possible. The currently existing mod already has quite impressive features imo. I never expected we'd be able to create our own areas.

You can also play without a party. The developers have said it's possible but not intended, and quite difficult, so probably only good for a second playthrough and on a low difficulty.

I disagree that having romance potential, in itself, automatically means there is depth in characters. One doesn't necessarily follow from the other. So, "romances as a game mechanic". I'm against this existing as a game mechanic within the game, and I'm against it again, as a way of thinking about character development in the first place. I don't agree. They can be deeper subjects, if they are presented as such, when the writing is good. When the writing is bad, they will not have the depth. Again - having a "romance" minigame where you navigate dialogue trees until you reach a "success" outcome has nothing to do with how well characters are developed in the game. To demonstrate my point with an extreme case, there is a genre of books which deal with "romances", and "romances" are the center of the narrative, with minimal plot. There are also computer games (or if not games, at least PC software with rich graphics) which concentrate on the same parts of character interactions. So, lots of "romance" interactions, little depth. Apparently there is no correlation between "romance functionality" and writing quality or style in which themes are presented (mature treatment of the subjects you listed). Alternatively to dinosaur porn, you can google the titles "Princess Trainer" and "Witch Trainer". Now that's what I call romance simulators, and pretty detailed too. But is the writing good, or important themes explored? I don't think so. And my point is that the existence of romance functionality is irrelevant to the quality of characters, and I can prove that with examples. I argue that the functionality being there means nothing without well-written characters, and well-written characters can be just as exciting to read about without the functionality. In the days before video games, it was, and still is, possible to fantasize about developing a relationship with a character you read about in a book, if the book was well written. No dialogue trees, no kiss to build a dream on even. Just imagination. I don't see what having a character reply to my lines could add to this experience. If anything, having some sort of interactivity could enhance and make more exciting those characters which otherwise you wouldn't see as so interesting, romance- or otherwise.

It may be able to run it, but I wonder if it wouldn't start overheating. If it does, better don't force the Surface of course.

Just for the record, I count the Sharwyn and Aarin Gend (there may have been more, I don't know) interactions in NWN as romances. They were crappy, but that I consider to be in line with NWN as a whole, so the romances were of the same quality as the whole original campaign. The Aaring Gend one was also either bugged or the character was bisexual, because I discovered I could give him romance dialogue lines while playing a male character. I felt rather weird when I found that out, while playing at the age of 16-17. I'd understand someone saying he wants well-developed characters which he can get to know and learn much about. This is asking for quality and quantity of content. This I agree with and approve of. Part of this content which allows further exploring the characters could involve romance, this part could even be available with NPCs which are impossible to get into the party, because why limit romance options just to party NPCs anyway, but these opportunities are only a part of a bigger whole. On the other hand, when I see someone whine "no romances", all I read is "I want dating simulation functionality". This doesn't sound to me like someone asking for content, or for quality characters. It's asking for functionality, not for content. Do you care about the quality and detail of characters - I'd wager if you truly did, you wouldn't be asking specifically for this functionality - being able to navigate a dialogue tree where you develop an intimate relationship with some character. That shouldn't, I imagine, be important to a player who attaches importance to the level of development of characters in general. You can't convince me your motive for wanting "romances" is concern over how well characters are developed. This motivation just doesn't add up with this kind of question, at least that's the way I reason. As for the "BG romances, oh no I meant a fan-created NPC in the BG:EE", sometimes admitting your mistake (if it's even a mistake and BG:EE isn't the only version you've had experience with, which isn't the end of the world) is the mature thing to do, but refusing to do it is fun to observe.

Cooldowns as an alternative to per-rest abilities tend to lead to reusing the same tactics in every encounter. But if a player relies very much on a given spell or ability, what's to stop him from running back after the first encounter in a dungeon and resting in the town, then returning to complete the dungeon. There are a few options: 1. Respawning enemies within the dungeon - that's kind of annoying imo. 2. Making the quest a timed one - the player will fail it if he rests/rests too often. 3. Shutting the door of the dungeon behind a player - he can only leave by completing the dungeon and can't rest while inside. 4. Nothing. Yet, if there are no cooldowns but the abilities are per-rest, the number of players who would go through the grind of returning to the town to rest after each battle wouldn't be as large as the amount of players who would reuse the same tactics every time. If a player who plays for the immersion, like I do for example, finds out he has the possibility of doing it, he would still feel "wrong" about exploiting the game and refrain from rest-spamming. I guess a single player game always involves some sort of "house rules" about how much it will be exploited by the player.

I like the idea of spending money on healing/buffing consumables. For now there is little more than inns/camping supplies that present examples of such consumables though, and I'm not sure if this would be enough to keep the cash reserves of my party within reasonable limits. I agree that if the player gets possession of a stronghold, it's only reasonable he should be well off, but I don't know enough about the circumstances to judge. He could be poor at the time he is awarded the stronghold, and the stronghold could be coming with some sort of fief/domain which itself could be a source of income, as well as present opportunities to expend money. Oh, it's not like I'm not metagaming. I loved the moment when, after I had liberated Nalia's mother from the De'Arnise keep (BG2) she said something in the lines of "I suppose you will now ask for some sort of reward? You won't be getting anything from me, you've probably already plundered most of the keep anyway!". I laughed hard at that. I like to be able to play rather egoistic characters whose actions are more motivated by personal gain. I don't like being railroaded into a heroic cliche by story elements, and I'm hopeful from what I've seen on the question in PoE, that this game will give me more freedom to roleplay than what's usually available. The problem I'm describing is especially acute when trying to roleplay a profit-oriented character, who is swimming in cash but still haggles over 200/300cp awards with quest givers. My main concern is that if enemies drop all their equipment (which I'm in favor of) and I'm able to sell it, I'll get rich too quick. That's one of the reasons for me to be against the Stash concept. I considered the option for enemy equipment to be damaged/cost significantly less, but this would be going against the IE games' practice, where equipment didn't degrade. I also liked shops like the Adventurer's Mart or Sorcerous Sundries, and the Adventurer's Mart was restocked at some point in the game, and I was often raising money during play in order to be able to afford some item from there. Such shops are a good means to relieve the player of some cash. So what's really important is coming up with uses for all the money that the party accumulates. I hope this is balanced so I don't find myself too rich. Thinking about this problem further, I could identify a few solutions that I've seen in various games. First, have more than one currency (like Underrail or New Vegas), and charge serious commission for exchanging between them (I haven't seen that but it's my sugesstion). Second, shops with expensive gear, like in the IE games. Third, shops could be limited in the number of items per item class they are willing to buy, like in Underrail (for example, a shop wouldn't buy more than 3 armors, 4 crafting items, 2 swords until it restocks after a set amount of real time) Fourth, the game could have story progression blocked by a monetary requirement - like the 20000 gold you had to collect in BG2. Fifth, in addition to customizing his party's gear, the player could be given a stronghold which would also be customized and upgraded with money. Sixth, the shops could barter all types of items instead of always trading them for money. In that case the player may begin dumping/"destroying" items which take up inventory space if he can't barter them for anything useful and this would limit the cash flowing into his pockets. That's all I can come up with for now.

.... From the rest of my post, I was referring to BG as a series, including the BG2 and Throne of Ball. Neverthless Neera the Wild Mage is in BG EE as well. Romances are staples of the best and most memorable RPGs of the genre. .... Never gets old. I wasn't planning on giving a second reply, but this is getting better andbetter. Forgive me, I Didn't realize when you said you are a veteran of BG, BGII, etc., you meant you were a "veteran" of Enchanced Editions. Or that by listing individual titles, you really meant the opposite - the whole series.