Imrix

And the best game I played were those where the players begin with immense personal power and must struggle to decide how to effectively leverage that power to better the world, so... Duelling anecdotes, yaaaaay! Done right, power progression is a form of character progression.

Well thank 'ee for the compliment good sir, but alas I think there will be no further stimulation. At this point, what you are saying is not in the least disagreeable to me, and I must consider our opinions reconciled.

As far as Project: Eternity goes, I agree - there are degrees. That said. In a a general sense, I disagree. It is possible to take the situation you propose, and tell an engaging story with it (albeit probably not the kind of story appropriate to Project: Eternity.) If you're familiar with a Pen & Paper RPG called Exalted, you might recognize where I'm going with this. Essentially, a fight doesn't have to be challenging to be part of an interesting story - if the rest of the story is on board with the assumption that "this fight will not be challenging". It helps to put a lot more focus on the 'grand scheme of things' concerns that we would traditionally consider the aftermath. So, let's say you have your story of three hundred goblins reaving through the countryside. The party rolls up, wipes out the army with a brief bout of cataclysmic spellfire. The army is blasted to shreds, its few survivors routed and fleeing. The townships fall over themselves to celebrate your name. Local politicians try to contract the party to leverage similar power on other problems - problems which are maybe not quite so cut-and-dry, morally speaking. Maybe a particularly black-hearted aristocrat tries to strong-arm the party into working for him - people like that can always find ways to bend those who think themselves mighty over a barrel. A loved one held hostage, a slow-acting poison in the wine-glass to which only they hold the antidote, simple lies and half-truths... Alternatively/additionally, a week later, goblin refugees start streaming into town. Women and children, starving and sick. That 'army' that was reaving the countryside? That was every able-bodied goblin, out in the world, trying to plunder enough food for their family to eat this month, because their crops have failed (possibly ruined by Something Worse). The townships are reluctant to take in the families of the ugly, stunted creatures who not a week past were cutting a swathe through the countryside. Still, they're mostly good people - they could be convinced. If somebody tried to convince them. Somebody who, say, feels responsible that hundreds of sentients are starving, filthy and driven to begging for succour from their enemies. But this creates further problems, because the townships (still recovering from the goblin raids, mind you) don't have enough food to tend to all these people. Hm. How to solve that? In summary: "A challenge of non-trivial difficulty" is one route to an engaging story, but it is not the only one. I'm not suggesting Project: Eternity take a leaf out of Exalted's book in this, mind you. I just find argument intellectually stimulating Agreed.

If I can't waltz through a dungeon in a top hat and monocle, life has no meaning.

Yes, muskets not automatics, I know, but that's what speed enchantments are for.

Ah well. I always did like the sidequests more

Disagree completely. I played Baldur's Gate 2 back when it first came out, went back sometime after, had riotously good fun with both. I like the epic stuff. Yes. Just, please, yes. I loathe level scaling. I avoid it like the plague. And this is why I avoid level scaling, because that? The situation you describe? That's not a problem to me. That sounds like a good time. There's something immensely, viscerally satisfying about going back to an early foe that gave you great frustration at the time and stomping them flat because you're five or six levels above his weight class now. I liked the trash encounters in BG2, where you'd travel through Athkatla and get ambushed by bandits, then wipe them out in one or two rounds. It's immensely empowering, because it shows you how far you've come. It means that, when my character levels up, it means something. It means I am not simply maintaining a shinier kind of parity with the world. It means there are challenges out there which I have surpassed. Not every fight has to be an uphill hundred-to-one odds hail mary miracle victory to be a good time, you know.

Oh, I completely agree. Sometimes, that kind of thing really works- But only if it's done right. It needs to be clear that these are your only choices. Otherwise, people will point out "hey, why don't you just..." The point is, I don't disagree with this kind of choice, but it needs to be done without forcing the player into a Stupidity Is The Only Option situation. There's more than one instance of this, mind; I'm just using the Rome finale as an example. Still, Alpha Protocol avoids this more than most. It's just a shame they turn up at all.

So far, my only real gripe with AP is the same gripe I have with most RPG's with a propensity for making you decide between two choices: The lack of ability to take a third option. Isn't that what heroism is all about? Defiance of the odds? Admittedly, AP is better than most due to the lack of an arbitrary karma bar (praise be!), but it still annoys me at times. As an example, the Rome finale. The non-spoilers version; whichever option you take, I can think of a few extra actions you could take to minimize the damage of the other outcome, or even achieve both. The spoiler version... Now, these instances of no third options are rarer in Alpha Protocol than others, but unfortunately, that rarity just means they're all the more glaring when they do turn up.

Much obliged to ye, sir.

Argh. I have the same problem, and I'd be grateful to anybody who can help. 20100611175417.sav (think that should work) Thanks in advance. Is there any word on when we can expect this to get patched?