AGX-17

The simplest solution is usually the best solution. More stats and more complexity can be fun, but they can also be a nightmare depending on who's designing the system. I thought that was a joke, but actually, rain's kind of a big deal. Then again, I'm pretty sure it's already in (how hard is it to make a 2D rain overlay?)

****, Cat's out of the bag. It's time to bolt. OUT Then again, liar paradox. Minds = blown.

A proper burger and a proper hefe go a long way at the end of a long day.

They have emails. Best bet: Josh Sawyer's formspring account is a great venue for engagement, he really goes above and beyond to answer legitimate (i.e. not stupid/troll/spam,) questions, etc. Also, a forum mod generally isn't a dev. In case you didn't notice, the internet is a (more or less) anonymous venue. I don't think Obsidian is going to send in their special forces to assassinate you for asking a stupid question. Nor do I think the NSA particularly cares about the issue you have. I've yet to encounter any legal troubles regarding my unspeakable deviant sexual proclivities (ironically less horrifying than the Bioware Social Network's Quarian Sweat/Urine science team,) over the internet.

Red Dead is, like I mentioned before, Anachronisms: The Game. It's fun, but it's still got the staple Rockstar sense of self-importance and the delusion that they're producing a cinematic production on the level of a Sergio Leone Western. It's pretty sparse, though, it's not a crime game like GTA if you stick to the story. Of course, you're always free to hogtie a nun and drop her on the train tracks. And then wait 20 minutes for the train to finally show up to fulfill your moustache-twirling fantasies. It still suffers from myriad bugs, glitches and freezes, though. I feel like an open world Western game could be phenomenal if executed more properly. The most enjoyable part of the game, for me, was just the scenery in Mexico, which was actually the scenery of Utah's Monument Valley. I still get morally questionable dreams imagining New Vegas with that graphical quality. Just trotting around in a poncho, killing the occasional obvious horse thief, was quite relaxing. Almost as good as a real vacation in the Southwest, albeit without getting to shoot the hundreds of horse thieves just sitting around trying to play the same trick over and over (guilt free killing at least.) Bug stories from PS3: Audio bugs out, have to restart the game. Game freezes constantly, have to turn off the console. Mount horse, horse proceeds to walk off a cliff into water which John Belm-arston is allergic to, both of us die unceremoniously. Rambling tangent: John Marston is certainly, without a doubt, a Belmont, given his reaction to contact with water (instant death.) Ironic, considering the desert setting of most of the game, where water is kind of vital to survival. I don't know about Grand Theft Chariot, really. Could be interesting, could be terrible. Well, it would be more like Grand Theft Oxcart, chariots were pretty primitive by the height of Rome. A Simcityish game set in the ancient world would be interesting, though.

Fantasy is rooted in/influenced heavily by history, and history is ultimately about stories, true or not, and humans view the world in narrative form. There's a nostalgia appeal, but all of the "tropes" of fantasy are based on ancient tales and myths that entertained and inspired ancient people in the times before the teevees and the interweb supertubes and so-on. Such stories have always been about escapism, because they're usually about excitement and adventure, as well as often integrating tragedy, like a hyperbolic exaggeration of real human experience. A good story is an appeal to the emotions of the listener/reader. The peasants of yore would certainly have found tales of heroes like Hector, Sigurd, Cu Chulainn, Rostam, Heracles, Sun Wukong and the like to be thrilling escapades, an escape from the mundane and often grim realities in which they existed. Most people dream of having power, fame, prestige, wealth, etc., and thus live those fantasies vicariously through such tales. The fundamental truth, though, is that all the stories told, even today, are built on the foundations of archetypal legends and characters that appear throughout human cultures the world over. It's fundamentally something that appeals to the human condition regardless of setting. That said, I'm all for novel settings (retro-future, steampunk to a degree, cyberpunk to a degree, and perhaps more adventurous forays into unconventional territory like Torment.) Fantasy is overused, but it can be great when done well, simply because it's a model that has worked for thousands of years. There's a definite appeal to the setting in that it hearkens back to simpler times, without being too simple (hunter-gatherer societies, for example.) Most people seek a certain balance between comfort/safety and risk/excitement in their lives, humans being the highly adaptable creatures that they are.

Disappointed by the Wii-watered down version of La-Mulana, which I only bought because A.) 256 deserves money for all the fun I had with the original free Windows game and B. the original free Windows game doesn't work on versions of Windows higher than XP. One of the best aspects of the original game is that there was no apparent story except "loot some ruins," but as you explore further and further things get weirder and more haunting as you pick up every little clue hidden around the ruins.

This is a video game, not reality, and in video games, bosses exist to challenge an ever-growing/improving player. You already know enough about the game and genre to know you're just splitting hairs over a tangent (they're obviously not going to model their game's antagonist on King Koopa.) The poster I was responding to was clearly operating on the model I was making fun of.

The level of immersion you feel in a game is ultimately determined by your own imagination. I've never heard of a person who genuinely mistook a video game for reality, and in the case of every person who plays a game, video or otherwise, their ability to have fun with it hinges on their ability to imagine stories, strategies, possibilities, etc. Developers can go to great lengths to improve immersion for people who are not very imaginative, but there are also people who can feel completely immersed in a game with primitive or no graphics just as there are people who can't feel immersed in a game aiming to be as realistic as possible in terms of immersion. It all boils down to the individual and their own inherent preferences. I see "imagination" too narrowly defined these days, particularly in the context of "somebody please think about the children!" It's almost always used as part of an argument (not peer-reviewed studies,) that's generally against technology and its advancement. People imagine things all the time. Nearly all the thinking you do is imagining scenarios, it doesn't matter if it's about the real world or not. When you broaden the subject to technology in general, it's something of a false dilemma, because most of the things technology helps us do are things the human brain did not evolve to deal with. Classic example: people who complain about calculators. The common assumption is that using calculators makes people less intelligent, but the sorts of math dealt with in this day and age by professionals (mathematicians, physicists,) are simply impossible for a human to perform, at least in a remotely efficient fashion. The mathematical calculations performed by supercomputers these days would be impossible for an army of human brains to perform in a remotely useful timescale. The human brain was never a calculator. There's a good examination of the concept here in the "Innate Numbers" story: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91697-numbers/ People didn't evolve in an environment of strictly scheduled work regimens with meetings and co-workers in a concrete city where they have to fill out spreadsheets all day, people evolved to live the life of a hunter-gatherer in smallish groups roaming around sub-Saharan Africa. That's why people are so bad at all these things that they're supposedly bad at because of video games and TV and smartphones and Excel. We were never good at them in the first place, it's just that we've developed technology that's so much better at it than we are that peoples' perspectives have shifted.

The same mechanics are used over and over and over again in nearly every game in existence. I think the more likely scenario is that it's a regular game and you've just burnt out on it. Take a break?

In which case the safe assumption is that they aren't considering the prospect, given how major an impact such a decision would have on the end result.

Sorry, I was just righteously punishing furries with an assortment of fatal melee blows to the groin, what was that about social commentary?

Given the fact that it'd been nearly a year since anyone had replied, I'd say it's also given that any decision as major as there being a time limit to the game has already been made. Considering it'd been nearly a year since the thread was left to gather dust, if someone were to make a new thread, nobody would need to "locate and read a seperate thread in order to catch up." If you want a generalized discussion of time limits in games then isn't the general game discussion section more appropriate? Finally, because this is a thread about time limits pertaining to P:E, arguing the many merits of thread necromancy falls outside the purview of the topic. P.S. remember Fallout?

Wait, isn't this a tacit admission on Prosper's part that he's just been trolling all along? How am I supposed to deal with these emotions?

Drink potions past their sell-by date to increase your Guts.

Thread about time limits. Thread necromancy a year later. I get it. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. Ha.

You're really going to have to work harder if you want to be in the same league as Prosper. Step up your game, son!

Was playing Red Dead Redemption (better than GTA4 despite being Anachronisms: The Game, also that stupid Louisiana cajun swamp bayou area in an ostensible "western" pissed me off to no end, geography nerd rage I guess,) but got sidetracked 100% after getting Persona 4 the Golden. I heard about that game's disastrous launch several years ago, after hearing of its disastrous relaunch. Sterling talked about it as being outdated, or some equivalent term. But gave a plus that there's stat growth and gun customization. So I guess you can improve that. I don't think "outdated" is the right word. There were games that came out during the same era as GTAIII that had superb 3rd person shooting gameplay *coughcoughMaxPaynecoughcough* (which wasn't developed or published by Rockstar,) GTA has just always had mediocre combat. If you stripped away the open world and boiled any given GTA title to a single element as-is, it would be panned as a bad game.

The simple answers, but not the specifics/methods. Granted, I think some people get a little overly worried about a sheer lack of specificity in answers, and start making unnecessary assumptions regarding the truth of the simple answers in the first place. You know, like "Wait, my Wizard won't be prevented from possessing some basic training with a sword? OMG, MY WIZARD'S GONNA BE ABLE TO BE A WARRIOR -- THE CLASS, SPECIFICALLY!" Really, it almost seems like just telling the dev team "You're telling me what your goal is, but I only believe you'll make terrible decisions and fail at that goal, because possibility." I don't need Obsidian to publicly release every algorithmic detail of their (still-tentative) game system to believe what they've said about how much flexibility there will be for different classes. To suggest they'd make a TES-style system in which every class can be the most bestest at everything is hyperbolic, if not hysterical.

Given the fact that the answers are already out there (i.e. choosing to be a fighter with high charisma won't make you a "bad fighter" by default,) I'd just say that I prefer flexibility. I'm glad they've decided to design it with the idea that rolling non-standard/ideal builds for a given class will make the game more challenging, but it won't make the game unplayable or unwinnable. I'm not expecting to go all knight of flowers and seduce every enemy into submission by tossing a single rose at them and sparkling, but I would like to see some unique interactions as a result of such a build.

There's no distinction to be made between [airquotes] "symbolic vs realistic" [/airquotes]. It's entirely symbolic no matter what. Everything that comprises the game is symbolic, even the code and the binary information that makes up its most basic foundations. The "characters" you see on the screen are symbolic representations of imaginary persons or creatures no matter how cartoonish or realistic their visual proportions. How does a "less realistic" aesthetic presentation comprise a "symbolic language"? Can you use Baldur's Gate as a system to effectively communicate with anyone who has learned Baldur's Gate? Less sarcastic question relating to mental health: What, exactly, is "crisper feeling navigation"? If the intent of the thread is the issue of aesthetic presentation (cartoonish/fantastic vs. "realistic,") it's rather pointless given these factors have already been more or less set as far as I've heard/read.

Last time I checked, NV tech support/QA was entirely Bethesda's job. Of course, last time I checked, XBL support was entirely Microsoft's job because it's Microsoft's pipeline that's malfunctioning. Then again, Microsoft charges money for direct tech support for their products, so it's no surprise their phonebank monkeys would just try to misdirect a "customer" to avoid spending money on productivity.

The fundamental basis, for me, is intent. The most fundamental basis of art is derived from the human capacity for symbolic thought, but the common understanding of "art" among laymen is something which is created with deliberate intent to be aesthetically pleasing or to convey some kind of message. A great novel might be considered a work of art by many people, but only a minuscule number of people (if any,) would consider technical manuals to be works of art simply based on the fact that they contain a series of symbols (letters, forming words,) which convey concepts and ideas. There have been all kinds of artistic movements, like "found objects" as art, but even then, the artistic "value" is associated with the choices of objects by the "artist," which delves more into the realm of Dada/Avant-arde, which is more about reaction to established standards and definitions of "art." Which brings us back to intent. But, as with all things, it's a matter of perception and personal bias. Some people will define anything as art, or things which most others would not, even if no artistic intent was involved. At any rate, the end result of all of this is: OPINIONS So yeah. Back to the bearded-woman fetish lived vicariously through dwarves in fiction.

It was just a standard bokken, at least in rough dimensions (he did carve it on a boat ride, ostensibly,) from what I've read. Anyway, an oversized sword meant for cutting down horses isn't really ideal for dueling. There's a buttload of Nobunaga's Ambition titles for PC, but the last one released outside of Japan was in 2005, if I'm not mistaken. Their flagship product these days is the Musou franchise (known in the English world as Dynasty Warriors, Samurai Warriors, etc.) The next Nobunaga's Ambition title will be on 3DS, and I don't have high hopes for it, considering the poor reception RotK12 for PSVita received (for design reasons, not PSVita reasons.)

Orders are nutria are to be shot on sight.