Tale

My ideal fantasy setting is one where magic does what magic needs to in order to push the themes along. I'd like a word where magic is ubiquitous and controlled to the point that people queue up at the tele-port to take vacations in hell, yahoo. If the world is ending and magic is totally at fault, raging entire cities with apocalyptic disasters because one wizard OMMed when he should have OHMed, that makes for an intriguing story. If there's rumor of one legendary sword that gives the wielder the strength of 3 guys, but everyone thinks it's a myth because magic's totally not real and you're a fool for leaving on a quest to find it, well, that sounds like an adventure all the same.

One of my story ideas I'm trying to figure out how to make it more Shadowrun. It already leaned Cyberpunk so that's a bonus.

More technical limitation than design choice. I think I heard they had problems implementing manual saves and not enough money to get around them.

That's rather ambitious, no wonder it took you so long. If I find the time I'd love to try it out.

I try to speak of what I consider an ideal. Baldur's Gate and IWD were not ideal. But they made their audience happy, me included. And that's absolutely fair. But I also remember that I had to cheat my way through every final boss encounter in the series of BG for one reason or another. I remember tagging Katanas. I remember struggling to find a good club for Jaheira. I remember that when I fought Melissan, only one person in the group had a weapon that could hit her. I remember the Golems in D'arnise Keep, I figured out they required special damage types to beat. I savescummed for hours just trying to figure it out and couldn't. So I looked it up online. I remember the guy outside of Friendly Arm who could one shot you as a mage. I don't think a single one of these things made the game a more enjoyable experience for me.

Oh man, I could practically chart the varieties of twit I've been over the years. But I won't because it would be shameful. It makes me be a little calmer towards people who are being twits, knowing that I probably did that same kind of crap at some point in my life.

I'll say that it should be possible not as a design goal. It should be possible more because there's diminishing returns after a certain point in making sure he's not. The ideal is that a player can make a character with honest effort without screwing it up. "Honest effort" being kind of weasley, I'll admit. Basically, so long as they read the descriptions and the descriptions aren't long winded, then they can make good choices. But I don't think people should have to read the manual, study it for a while, and plan several levels ahead. And they definitely shouldn't be required to be pre-cognizant about the late game enemies or availability of equipment. Jump in feet first.

I think the term "reinventing the wheel" refers to unnecessary change. It's also a bit of a self-defeating metaphor. We went from solid stone rollers to rubber tires filled with air. That was a good change.

I've lost three Xbox 360 controllers. I hate them for that reason alone. If you simply look at them while your eyes tear up from allergies, they get a short. And then there was the one that had the battery pack become completely unrechargeable because I didn't play it for a while. My Dualshock 3s are Gameboy levels of durable. Still have the original one I bought with no problem. Anyway, still on Blood Dragon. Nearly done all the fortresses and about to get all the upgrades. I don't expect this to be a long game.

I'm of two minds. Aaryn Flynn's now infamous twitter response is not one I can condemn. But it probably didn't help the situation. There may have been no way to help that situation.

I was thinking target. Answer both, I'm interested.

Nah, let's do this instead. What is the appropriate response to abuse?

Divine Divinity and Darklands?

The ideal is really that all commentary is some sort of actionable signal that gives a clear idea of concerns or problems. ("The balance is unfair because of X and Y." The realistic ideal is that people express themselves in ways that are understandable enough that, at the very least, conveys how they feel about things, whether it's good or bad, and the developers end up struggling to puzzle out why. ("This new change makes things unfun." "This game sucks.") The intolerable BS is people having trouble controlling themselves to such a degree that they try to cause emotional harm to other human beings. I can understand people who think that perhaps the developers have themselves a malicious or negligent attitude, and that may spur harder to control emotions and confrontational actions ("your stupid and should be out of a job."). But death threats and mockery don't even contribute to that ("DIAF, fatty"). It crosses that line beyond benefit of the doubt.

I think it's been a while since I agreed with you. I'm not sure how I feel about this.

You and I have a different idea of what it means to be an old IE games. It's real-time with pause, focusing on tactical party combat, questing, and exploration. That's what I expected, that's what I seem to be getting. I know some people are upset that it's not a 1:1, that wizards don't look to be quadratic, that it's not D&D 2E with the serial numbers filed off. But I never got the impression that's what they were aiming at. Respecting that subjectivity, and since we're in the right forum for that, I should ask; what does the spirit of the infinity engine games mean to you?

6.28 meters

Very rarely midnight. Probably around 10 am pacific. I'm getting an unhealthy level of excited about playing around with the level editor. It'll be hilarious if it doesn't even run on my computer.

I think the intent is to make it without traps, not make it foolproof. So there may indeed be corner cases such that you build a character with stats that completely contradict equipment, or you maximize penalties that the game explicitly warns you not to do. Like a fighter that equips the mage tome and robes, then stocks up on heavy armor mobility feats or something.

I'm now envisioning a game where character creation is intentionally designed to be a puzzle. And then the encounters are puzzles where the enemies are 10 levels too high and the only way to beat them is through rules abuse. I'd call it Min-Max Hero.

I would be hesitant to say that. I'm sure if I try to optimize for least value, I can make something bad.

I think the Forumspring post by Sawyer goes towards that way. Previously posted by Infinitron. Now, it may still be possible to make very bad builds. But the intent seems to be for those being the exception. With valid concepts that are typically crappy characters, such as the intelligent weak fighter being viable.

That is the most beautiful snake I've ever seen.

I'm playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Fun game, but I have a complaint. There's no carrot. The story isn't even trying to be compelling. You start off with all the guns accessible. You start off with the full map. The only unlocks are weapon mods and a few abilities. Is that a complaint, though? The game essentially has minimal mechanisms that artificially lengthen it. Maybe I should be praising that. It only has any reason to last as long as I'm having fun.

The problem is that each distribution of Direct X is ever so slightly different. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/03/why-steam-makes-you-install-directx-repeatedly/