Chairchucker

I think instead I will hire a dwarf to collapse your house on you.

Now that's just rude! You have offended my honour, sah! I demand satisfaction!

Yes, yes it is a success if it made 10 thousand dollars profit. However as you acknowledge, you made those figures up. If a company was able to continually make products that made small profits, they would continue to be commercially viable companies. That is how commerce works, if you make a profit it is good. You might mean it as a series, but since Malekith delineated specifically between the two main games in the series, perhaps it was silly to assume he meant the same. And now you're making facts up, where are you getting that it is 'widely accepted' that IWD had the best gameplay? If you're going to try to use an appeal to authority or an appeal to the masses in an argument, you could at least provide the authority, so I could criticise the use of the argument instead of just that the argument isn't even supported.

Well there's a few solutions to this that don't necessarily entail being able to kill that child!

Making a profit is the opposite of being a commercial failure. At least one of those links does clearly place Torment ahead of Baldur's Gate. The first Baldur's Gate doesn't even appear on most of these lists, which is why he said "BG is overshadowed by BG2." Torment has more critical acclaim than Baldur's Gate. The game. The game called Baldur's Gate. That's what he said. That's why BG2 and PST are still consistently showered with praise by critics and the rest of the IE games are "Oh yeah they made these other games too, they were also good I guess."

Not reading all eight pages because... seriously... I don't see what value having killable kids really adds. If it's for "BUT MY IMMERSION!!!!!" well here's a little trick I like to do: I don't try to kill any kids and then as far as I know they're exactly as vulnerable as everyone else, oorah. On the other hand, I can see downsides in terms of the rating of the game and the corresponding sales problems associated with having a higher rating that prevents some members of the population from legally purchasing this. I get the whole "BUT DON'T CENSOR YOURSELVES" thing but, is this really the thing you want to save from censorship? Child killing, really? Let's face it, Catcher in the Rye it ain't.

Sales talk http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article?articleid=55 Chris Avellone explicitly states that Torment made a profit, albeit a small one. Suggests marketing is responsible for this less successful performance. Critical Acclaim (noting that Malekith explicitly stated that its acclaim, amongst IE games, trailed behind BG2) http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-greatest-games-of-all-time-planescape-torment/1100-6135401/ Gamespot thinks it's a pretty good game. http://www.gamespy.com/articles/540/540546p1.html Gamespy too. http://au.top100.ign.com/2007/ign_top_game_71.html IGN thought it was pretty good. BG2 came 43, BTW. No other IE games - IWD included - on this particular list. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/194593/features/pc-gamers-top-100-part-4/ PC Gamer called it the ninth best game ever. (Didn't check all 100 but no other IE games are in the top 25.) Seriously, doesn't take a whole lot of link hunting off of the main Wikipedia page to find that critics really liked it.

There are a few reasons Torment didn't initially do so well sales-wise; usual theories seem to suggest that it is more down to the weird looking protagonist and setting and clunky combat, moreso than the focus on non-combat resolution to problems. I have heard that word of mouth meant that it eventually didn't do too badly. The idea that introducing elements of Torment like story, dialogue and non-combat problem resolution will introduce the combat issues that also had don't make a great deal of sense. Torment is by no means the only game that had these, hell even Icewind Dale let you sneak past encounters (although it then also gave you combat XP for coming back and finishing the job, which is specifically the kind of scenario that Sawyer suggested removing combat XP would solve.) so calling non-combat resolutions to problems a 'Torment' thing is kind of underselling the other IE games.

I just want to point out that Excalibur was given to King Arthur by the Lady of the Lake, and is not the same sword he pulled from the stone. Also, the sword Arthur pulled from the stone made him king, so actually the sword was pretty inherently important, and in fact made him famous. Guess that depends on the setting. P:E is apparently a relatively low magic setting so yeah, I guess so. On the other hand, a setting like Planescape is one in which the magical and bizarre are commonplace, and you'd absolutely expect to have run of the mill magic stuff. It's all down to the bias of the reader/gamer that they'd take their baggage from reading or gaming in low magic settings into other higher magic settings.

I think explicitly rewarding the player for taking the more difficult option, as granting more experience for going into battle than for poisoning his food supply might be, is dumb. If I were playing an actual PnP RPG and I chose to go into battle with a dragon because I thought poisoning might net me, the player, more experience, I would absolutely expect the DM to: a. Slap me down for metagaming, and b. Punish me for intentionally making my character make what would be, for him, a stupid decision.

Well I embraced that for the vast majority of RPGs I've previously played. It didn't add anything meaningful to the experience.

I kind of lost where the discussion was up to but I have some OPINIONS ABOUT VIDEO GAMES and here they come. Get ready for the opinions. Unlimited inventory is good. I like it. I like not having an inventory limit. This is not just because I am a horrendous pack rat, (Although this is true. In FO:NV my character collected about 30 weapons or so, one that used each kind of ammunition. I used about three of them. Don't judge me.) but also because regardless of whether I'm picking up every single item in the entire world (I will be) or just the shinier stuff, hitting your inventory limit and having to trek back to the store doesn't add anything of value to the game. Lack of kill experience will take some getting used to, but I think it is a positive decision in that it makes alternate play styles other than 'comb every corner of the area and kill every single living creature' equally viable. (I will still probably be destroying all the critters, though.) In many of the IE games, the 'best way' (in that after doing it this way your character was objectively more powerful than after doing it any other way) to do an area was to do all the talking or sneaking or whatever that might get you quest experience, and then come back afterwards and butcher them all. No kill experience means players are rewarded equally for whatever approach they take to a puzzle. Otherwise it'd be like the latest Deus Ex which, for all its talk about being able to facilitate any type of play and any playing style being equally valid, and much as I did enjoy the game, there was absolutely a 'correct' way to play that game, in that you got the most of whatever the experience equivalent was and could afford to upgrade yourself the most. That way was to hack every single object even if you had a code, pick every lock even if you had a key, and knock every single person out even if you had no particular intention of walking in the area they were patrolling. I didn't mind doing this because there is a small part of me that likes gaming systems to hoover the maximum reward out of it, but if they had done away with these mechanics, I might've found it easier to actually play the role of my character. Already covered by pretty much everyone else, but side note about plate mail bikinis: it seems like you'd run more of a risk of the edges of your 'armour' digging into you uncomfortably. Also, I think people usually wore clothes under their armour, didn't they? Are we to believe that plate mail bikini wearers are putting that thing straight onto the skin, or is there a cloth bikini directly beneath it? Because that would be as uncomfortable as hell.

Would this ability be called "Frontstab"? And would it deal .5X normal damage, instead of 1.5X like a BACKstab? Come now, let's not tie ourselves to DnD ideas of game mechanics. Clearly if the enemy is not expecting to be stabbed in the face, a facestab would be very effective. Of course, when facing a facestabber, I guess one would probably be quite wary of being stabbed in the face. Perhaps the facestabber should have some cunning tricks at his disposal to draw attention away from the things that he is planning to stab into someone's face.

I propose the rogue be renamed 'Facestabber'. All Facestabbers will have as a base class talent the ability to stab people hard in the face over and over again.

Personally, one of the most satisfying parts of an RPG for me is when my party is comprised of Princes of the Universe due to me absorbing every spare bit of XP and picking up enough magical items to open my own store, and then leaving a trail of the broken corpses of the puny grasshoppers who dared to stand against my might. I'm happy for Obsidian to eventually make me fight against dragons, demons and demigods, and for my party to crush them beneath our mighty bootheels.

I absolutely agree that there are; I call them humans.

No, that's almost the thematic opposite of what I was saying.

I believe both exist; I don't believe a person is, themselves, evil. I don't believe a person is, themselves, good. I think all people are capable of actions that are either good or evil. I am trying to untrivialise all acts of evil, even the ones that some people may think are justified, and I am trying to dissociate them from 'other people' and associate them with everyone, because I believe that is how it is.

Crime is often a manifestation of the visitation of pain and suffering on others, is it not? If someone who has chosen to visit pain and suffering on others can be successfully rehabilitated, as in many circumstances it seems they can, perhaps that is some kind of indication that they are not irreparably evil. Of course I may be biased since, as previously mentioned, I don't believe people generally visit pain and suffering on others because they are moustache twirlingly evil, but I believe there are a number of environmental factors that cause people to want to hurt others. For example, if I feel someone has in some way wronged me, I might wish to see them suffer for their perceived wrongdoing, and if I don't feel that the state has adequately served that purpose, perhaps I would take it upon myself to carry such vengeance out myself. Although since, as I've mentioned, I generally oppose vengeance, perhaps that would make me less inclined towards that particular evil. One can only hope.

As other posters have already covered, many countries aim for rehabilitation over vengeance and, bluntly put, it works. Their crime rate is way lower than in countries that favour the 'make 'em suffer for what they did' method of law enforcement. This isn't just being civilised for the sake of it, this is also a more effective method of handling crime.

Honestly I don't think 'satisfaction of vengeance' has any place whatsoever in any 'civilised' justice system, and I'm not all that convinced that vigilantism would result. Even if it did, I think enforcing harsher penalties to stop vigilantes would be the wrong way to counteract them - with the right way being locking up and rehabilitating the vigilante.

Yeah I have kind of sporadic appearances.

Don't mistake my willingness to discuss how different people might see morality as an indication that I don't have my own very firm opinions on it. I just think it's worthwhile to try to understand what motivates people. I also think that if we hold something to be true, there should be some basis behind where that comes from. And finally, I think it is possible to delineate between things which we believe to be morally 'right', and things that should be legally permitted to allow a society to function.

...so I think we're basically agreeing that reputation systems are better for video games than morality systems, then?

If you're referring to my comment I'm not referring to instances of self defense, I'm not referring to instances where they're in the act of raping someone, I'm not referring to instances where they're doing anything bad at all, I'm referring to characters who are flagged as karmically naughty rather than nice, and therefore even if you sneak up to them in their sleep and off them, your karma rises.