AGX-17

I don't recall saying that. And I don't consider FotNS a great and deep anime. Entertaining, yes. But greatness is not a label I give out lightly. It's your thread, only 5 pages long. It's not that hard to look back at page 3. Whatever, it's your can of worms. You get to clean up the mess.

I'm not clear why people call it any kind of RPG over just a strategy game. Characters don't even have their own levels. In Japan they have an odd concept of what constitutes an "RPG." For them it's more a matter of visible statistics and RNG determination of combat results rather than player agency. So long as it's a game that involves visible statistics, it's considered an RPG by most Japanese gamers, as well as western adherents to the JRPG genre. They don't even have to be identifiably linked to actual gameplay mechanics, the numbers just have to be there, and be labeled to qualify. One interesting thing to note is that western RPGs have been gaining a foothold in Japan (primarily in the form of Bethesda games like Fallout 3/NV and Skyrim, which in turn is thanks primarily to Zenimax's exceptional localization efforts with those games by giving a full Japanese audio dub rather than just English subtitles, as is the case with pretty much every other western publisher's efforts in Japan,) that some JRPG publishers actually make "JRPG pride" an advertising focus. Pretty much any turn-based tactics/strategy game is dubbed a "Simulation RPG" in Japan. Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, etc. Anyway. Here's what I'm playing: ****ING BLIGHTTOWN Those who know what I'm talking about know what I'm talking about. Those who don't, well... count yourself amongst the fortunate. Also TF2. The past month or so of playing mostly Dark Souls and SRW has made me too rusty in it. I need to spend a few hours abusing new/f2p players on 24/7 2fort and valve servers for practice.

This sounds more like a plot event rather than deliberate lying. I suppose glossing over important details might cause this kind of situation, stumbling into a conspiracy without realizing it or something similar. As a dialogue option it would have to be unobtrusive. Alternately a bluff that reveals more than you knew from the npc. Bluffs and scams should also be marked in dialogue just like lies. Just to ensure it is obvious. I suppose a surprise skill check in dialogue would be interesting every so often, but intentional skill/spell/ability uses should always be marked in the dialogue choices. I'd dearly like for spells and talents to be used in dialogue choices for more exotic solutions to quests. Psychic brainwashing or magical charm for example during interrogations, disabling and disrupting spells/talents to weaken enemy groups, etc. No, you're missing my point. My point is that the player should always be aware of what dialogue options are lies. It's not a lie if the player or the player character ignorantly/falsely believes something to be true but the dialogue is written as though the player/PC does know it's true. Here's another example: the player has completed a quest in a way that was not recognized/accepted as "success" by the game, by design or by bug or by unanticipated possibilities the quest designer had not thought of, and the player had the option to lie about completing it without doing so in the first place. If it wasn't marked as a lie, and the quest's basic conditions had been met, to the best knowledge of the player, that player might choose to say they had completed the quest only to have the quest giver shout "YOU LIE!" and become hostile without it being marked as a lie.

Remember all those times I advocated the ability to jump straight up in the air two feet to get to higher ground? No? Exactly. Respond unto others as you would have them respond unto you, u_u. Nothing personal. And I'm well aware that those barriers are "typically" the actual edge of the area, but sometimes they aren't. That's precisely why I was referring to the times when they weren't. If you get to the edge of a cliff, and there's another plateau at approximately the same altitude 5 feet away (which totally occurs in nature all the time due to gradual fissures in mountainous/cliff-like rock formations), I'd rather a simple, ground-targeted jump ability let some or all of my party jump across than have the level design force me to wind my way around the map just to get to the other cliff (or abitrarily rid the land of ALL easily-jumpable gaps, anywhere.) Maybe that's just me. You yourself just said climbing reasonably climbable things and jumping chasms and gaps are totally cool. I don't think either one of us wants Mirror's Edge-ternity, which is why I don't feel the need to point out obviously-terrible forms of implementation, such as "We shouldn't be able to jump over entire cities, or swing through busy streets like Spiderman" as if anyone was suggesting such things were in any way viable. *shrug* A person of average height can easily walk two feet in one stride.

The idea of thieves' guilds and assassins' guilds are ludicrous enough. You might as well propose a stableboys' guild and a gaoler's guild. That said, the idea of hiring men to carry out the stuff isn't, at its root, bad. Assuming there are enough free men shiftlessly lazing about the game's cities, it would be more believable to simply go and hire people to carry things for you. Better yet, they should be untrustworthy and selfish, liable to conceal the best stuff so they can sell it for their own profit.

Why should the player ever be put in a situation where they may not know if they're lying or not? It's plausible that some players could miss or forget some narrative detail and choose the dialogue option they thought was best only to fail a random skill check (pretty sure those aren't going to be in P:E though,) and find themselves in a situation they had no intention of entering.

Remember all those times you needed to jump straight up in the air two feet to get to higher ground in real life? No? Exactly. Climbing, sure. Jumping over chasms, gaps and other hazards that could be leapt believably, sure. But an IE-style game isn't exactly a platformer or parkour. And the barriers you're referring to are typically the limit of the area, in the vein of "invisible walls" and "rubble heaps."

Bethesda owns Fallout, Bethesda makes all decisions related to it. Obsidian (the name is plastered all over the site, you could at least spell it correctly,) has no say in Fallout production unless Bethesda chooses to hire them to do another Fallout title. Furthermore, there's no precedent for your demand for a Fallout New Vegas sequel starring "THE COURIER" from NV. Fallout 2's protagonist was a descendant of Fallout's protagonist, not Fallout's protagonist. Besides, "The Courier" was tainted as a player character by Lonesome Road, which forced a specific and rather unbelievable background story onto the player retroactively. Most importantly, the last thing Fallout needs is to be more like Mass Effect.

Everything Gabe said just reinforces my sentiments that everything heavily controlled and centralised - Consoles, Corporations and the European Union - suck and have no future. The future are Internet economies, personal 3D Printers and TF2 hats! Gabe said so therefor I will follow! Valve is a corporation. Corporations come in all sizes. Incorporation is a legal method of separating the assets and income of a business or non-profit enterprise from the assets and income of its owners/shareholders and employees. That said, Valve is a sizable corporation. It's no Fortune 500 company, but it's bigger than your run of the mill local construction firm. And the EU is a loose alliance of independent nations, not a confederation with a strong central government. A number of European economists are constantly complaining about the fact that its central bank is essentially impotent compared to, say, the US Federal Reserve. The EU can't set interest rates, it can't engage in quantitative easing, etc. Any EU member can leave if it so chooses. The EU is closer to the UN than it is to a highly centralized federal system like that of the US. Keeping in mind that the UN is pretty much impotent in all matters, especially relating to the actions of certain permanent security council members.

If you don't want to manage a huge inventory, don't pick up every piece of garbage you find lying around on the ground. Easy peasy.

This subject was already more hotly debated in another thread whose OP proposed that the player should be able to do a no-kill clean hands MGS/Dishonored type run. I was not pleased by that concept and made my perspective clear on that. Regardless, the Stamina and Health system is already an established differentiation between damage that results in unconsciousness (stamina,) and damage which results in death (health.) Also:

1. Does that mean Steampunk? The on-topic question: 2. Could a Cipher use some experimental "machine" or "contraption" to enhance their Ciphering? It's from the Rogue page. It's about Rogues. It is not related to this Cipher thread. It's not Steampunk. P:E is not a Steampunk setting. They have never said P:E is Steampunk. Honestly, how do you manage to see one word and turn it into another before it reaches your visual cortex? And then make a thread about it every time it happens?

Cool strawman. I already addressed the fact that while they did have medieval tournaments these were a noble affair. The peasantry got their entertainment from other sources (drinking, festivals, whores, fighting amongst themselves in alleys, bars, streets, etc.) The nobility felt no obligation to entertain these people as these people were their property. What you clearly don't understand is that the world of medieval Europe was not the same world as that of ancient Rome. There was no centralized nation-state with a need to pacify a massive population of free citizens, the church was the locus of power and (no surprise,) would not tolerate such a thing as a gladiatorial arena even if there were the money and impetus among the nobility to construct such a thing. Human desire and reality are not always in agreement. Getting back to my original point... Battle arenas are as tired a cliche of fantasy RPGs on both sides of the pacific as it gets. I already explained that there are opportunities for alternatives among societies not based on that of high-medieval/early Renaissance Europe, as well as informal affairs.

How option to corrupt your companions means there is "good/evil binary sliding scale"? Or you are opposed to ANY acts that could be interpretated or viewed as good\evil? Make everyone grey for greyness sake? How making priest abandon his\her god is evil? Making wizard to ignore restrictions in research could be seen as evil by those who set this restrictions, but not everyone. Given the context and history of fantasy, cRPGs, etc. your post makes rather clear that you want to make your "good" aligned characters turn "evil" aligned. With this response, all you're doing is dancing around the fact that you're asking for a binary good/evil system. You're even letting slip that you want a binary good/evil morality system with your strawman "argument" against "make everyone grey for greyness sake."[pic] When you say "How making priest abandon his\her god is evil?"[gic] you're presenting a morally ambiguous situation, depending on context, something you just attacked in the same post by implying that morally gray situations are bad simply by virtue of being morally gray, and you are the one who started a thread called "Let us corrupt our companions."

Arenas are one of the most tired tropes of fantasy gaming. They didn't have battle arenas in the high medieval/early renaissance era which P:E is meant to model. They have no place in P:E on that basis alone. Gladiatorial combat and so-on ended with the Roman Empire. A tourney was an event organized by nobles for the nobility, these were held in open fields owned by nobles and so on. They weren't public spectacles meant to entertain the shiftless masses like in ancient Rome. The ancient Hellenes and many cultures, both civilized and pre-agricultural did entertain themselves with sport of kinds like wrestling bouts, but this was wrestling in the old style, not the fake TV kind. And it was certainly not meant to be lethal, because in these societies a physically fit, strong male was a valuable asset to the community. And so far as the East is concerned, the ancient Chinese valued intellectual pursuits above all else, and the highest honor most people hoped for was for their sons to become government bureaucrats. They, too had, sport, but not bloodsports like in ancient Rome. In the greater Far Eastern region, martial arts were not public spectacle. Things seen as "sport" today like Kendo were simply swordsmanship training/practice in schools of swordsmanship.

Grenades, Rocket Launchers and Nuclear Missiles are illegal in civilian hands. So are fully automatic weapons, silencers and ultra high power sniper rifles. People are pretty much limited to handguns and semi automatic rifles, regardless of what they look like. AK-47's and M-16's function no differently than hunting rifles in a civilian configuration. BTW: Liberals and Conservatives calling each other "nuts" is exactly the sort of polarization the establishment wanted to create with a 2 party system. The phrase "Guns don't kill people, people kill people!" is less than mainstream and logically fallacious. The intended purpose of any firearm is to kill. A sword or lance made in 1100 AD was meant to kill people. Guns are the modern standard of killing technology. A gun is a tool meant for killing, just as a hammer is a tool meant for hammering nails. A hammer can be used a kill people, an unintended use of the device. A gun's intended use from its medieval-era inception was to kill people, not to shoot at paper targets or bleach buckets filled with explosives. A gun used to kill people is being used for its intended purpose. The second amendment isn't as simple as "everyone has a right to lethal weapons." "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Notice that it literally begins with "A well regulated militia," not "An unregulated individual." You have to twist it into a lot of knots to say that means individuals have a right to bear arms. Remember, the founding fathers were the elites. Have you ever heard of Shay's Rebellion? The founding fathers did not design the US system of government with the intent that citizens be guaranteed the right to violently overthrow the government that they created and ran. They had no intention of being killed by a mob of angry citizens. And just for a fun jab at libertarianism, the terms "free-market" and "capitalism" never appear anywhere in the U.S. constitution. But here's what it does say: "Article II Section. 8. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offices and post Roads; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; [...] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." Besides, isn't the endgame of Libertarianism to have total deregulation of the economy with the government's role relegated to defending the property rights of property owners? With guns and soldiers?

Getting killed by Capra Demon and its Stupid Dogs: The Game. I would buy it if when you died it would play a clip of Bill Paxton saying "Game over, man! Game over!"

You may have done it before, but you probably weren't thinking "what's that super fast looking dragonfly thing?" No, but given the apparent inability of large numbers of new players to find/read the "DO NOT GO NORTH" signs, and the posession of a gun that shoots explosions, one can reasonably assume that some proportion, however small, of pre-purchasers/GOTY players with the Merc pack did successfully traverse that area, ignorant of the fact that they weren't "supposed to." Then again, the Cazadors fail to spawn with a not-insignificant degree of frequency, so in that case it's irrelevant and "lucky" players can head northwest unassailed.

You know Fallout 2 was released 15 years ago and all the developers of it who are even present at Obsidian have gained 15 years of experience and technological advancement in that time, right? All you're doing is listing complaints about Fallout 2 that I'm sure have been made many times before. Have you ever played any games actually developed by Obsidian? Especially recent ones? That would be a much better predictor of how P:E is going to turn out than Black Isle circa 1998. ...Really? You're judging P:E's potential writing quality based on Fallout 2, rather than, say, KotoR2 or Alpha Protocol or Fallout: New Vegas? What are you even doing? Why does this thread even exist?

Why bother with dragons at all if you're not going to make them conform to historically-established myth? The entire point of putting a "dragon" in your game or story is to evoke the myth and legend that players or readers are already aware of. And, come on, an Anglerfish is a fish, not a reptile. I've yet to hear of a culture in which stories of dragons are present but the dragons are not reptiles. Even a "sea serpent" is a "serpent." Why not just have a giant anglerfish if you want an anglerfish's ugly mug? Besides, how do you even make a super-deep sea creature variant (the super vicious-ugly kinds of anglerfish pictured by the OP live at depths that weren't accessible to man prior to the mid 20th century,) relevant to a game world where it's not likely they have any kind of submersible, much less one that can withstand the pressure of the ocean's blackest depths? If dragons are there they should be dragons. Not as the poorly written focus like Skyrim or as the poorly written afterthought to justify the title like in Dragon Age. If you want a giant spiky armadillo/ankylosaurus thing with praying mantis forelegs and a scorpion tail you should put in a Giant Spiky Armadillo/Ankylosaurus Thing With Praying Mantis Forelegs and a Scorpion Tail. Ignoring the remarkably terrible spelling, it sounds more like you're asking for either Skyrim dragons or some sort of fur***/otherkin race. The fundamental idea behind a dragon in Western myth is that it's a terrible monster (they don't have opposable thumbs or tools or societies.) In Eastern myth and pre-Buddhist religion they're the highest of Gods and are serpentine creatures that tend to dwell in heaven/the sky. Neither mythos implies any kind of anthropomorphic traits beyond intelligence, if any is implied.

Player character backgrounds that affect the story and NPC interaction in a significant way are something I've been advocating in about a dozen threads since the P:E board opened up. Not racially-focused, though. The whole concept of race = capabilities is a tired trope and borderline racist in games like The Elder Scrolls where redguards, as described by the games/lore, are a flagrantly racist stereotype of african-americans. Background should be more about experience (since the soul is a big part of the game, it could be theoretically interesting if a reincarnated soul could posses some latent residual memory of past experiences like the Nameless One,) less about lineage or race. It doesn't matter what race you are if you spent half of the last decade as a blacksmith's apprentice and the other 5 as a journeyman smith. You're going to have the qualities and skills of a journeyman of that trade as a result of doing that work. Bodybuilders aren't born as huge rippling masses of hard muscle, after all. In terms of both brain and body, you have to exercise them to make them stronger. An elf who never learned to use a bow isn't going to have a "natural racial aptitude" for it unless elves have a malformed back and one arm significantly stronger than the other (archers are easily identifiable archaeologically because the frequent use of a bow distorts the spine and, while making both arms strong, leaves the string-drawing arm significantly stronger. Furthermore, evidence of the size and strength of a muscle can be determined from the degree of wear the muscle's tendons left on the bones they ran accross.)

You have fundamentally misunderstood both the question and the answer. In the scenario you're referencing, the player character is the god, one who must seek out and gather faith to become powerful enough to fend off attacks from more powerful deities. It's not about a mortal player praying to a deity for an extra life or what have you.

What about them? I'm pretty sure EA and Microsoft aren't food carts or microbreweries (note my location.)

Clipping issues? Have you played Oblivion or Fallout 3? Anyway... Gold? The currency in Borderlands' universe is Dollars. US dollars if the texture is to be believed. Well, whatever, congratulations on being incredibly lucky. I use the slots for Eridium, never hold out any hope of a gun better than purple. I twink lv50 items to low level characters so they can sell them (bonus badass points for getting money/buying items of the day which are usually green or blue,) and use that money to hit the slots for Eridium. Might as well get all the carrying capacity upgrades while Eridium isn't just a stupid little "99" that never changes.

I'm going out on a limb here to assume you've only just started the game and haven't gone far beyond Goodsprings. Kill the guys you run into on the road to Vegas and take their guns and ammo which are better than varmint rifles. Repair them to high condition and equip them. The light metal armor that came with your merc pack is already better than most of what you'll run into prior to Camp Golf (easily stolen 100% CND combat armor and helmet,) and Durable Dunn's Sacked Caravan (two suits of black combat armor.) If he has light metal armor he must have the Mercenary Pack, and thus the grenade rifle that comes with it. Using that you can get past the cadazors at the tribal village. I've done it before, and taken out the Vipers in Bonnie Springs (with help from the drugs lying around at the tribal village.)