AGX-17

How are those games not "hand drawn"? Human modelers and animators had to make all the meshes and textures for those games, too. Robots didn't make them with their cold robot claws. Being forced into a conversation and keeping the world animated during the conversation are two different things. The whole world stopping in full view was a big complaint in Bethesda's past few games so they actually advertised characters still going about their business in the background during conversations. Only problem is, if some NPC decides to force you into a conversation in combat, you're defenseless and can be killed while trapped in a dialogue menu.

There's plenty of grey morality to be found all over the western world, it's just not in the form of warfare. A world of black & white is more comfortable than a world of grey. A world where your own government, your own people are responsible for the deaths of innocents or people who want to make the world a better place is harder to stomach than one where your government only kills/imprisons/tortures terrorists, rebels and spies. As for politics, it always boils down to the ruling class vs. the ruled class. It was true of ancient civilizations and it is still true today. Even in republics with free & fair elections, the candidates are almost exclusively members of the ruling elite to begin with, an unspoken prerequisite of the right to rule. Human society, with a few exceptions, has always been shaped in the same way as most social animals, the "strongest" dominate all those who are weaker until someone stronger replaces the former Alpha.

You'd think a guy with your profile picture would have respect for the pursuit of the "Holly Buck."

I didn't like that guy so much. Just replayed BG2 and was amazed how dramatic and overexaggerated his narration sounded. That sounded pretty.... passable and average to me. I assume you meant "melodramatic," which it wasn't at all (it was meant to be dramatic, or are you admitting it succeeded at its purpose?) This is melodramatic acting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTizJemHO8

Skyrim is 2011 though. And everybody (major gaming media outlets) already called it GOTY 2011.

The Ewoks were just overutilized. As was Jar Jar. They were both blatant pandering for the sake of future spin-offs, but the Ewoks succeeded where Jar Jar was just insufferable and maligned by nearly everyone. Of course, Phantom Menace was basically a space-Nascar movie that happened to have some Jedi and Natalie Portman tacked on. Also, Mass Effect.

The problem with that is - the first time playing at least - that the player has no idea how much they need to save for those late-game "best items" that may appear, and thus cannot make any true rational/logical decisions about how to spend their money as they go through the game. Spend too much on a couple high priced items in the mid-game and you might not have enough to get what you really want at the endgame. I don't mean that you can't buy the entire 10 piece set of Uber-Gear-Set-#21 at the last merchant...but that you may not even be able to buy a couple pieces. That's always frustrating, and I've played plenty of games where that ended up being the case ... and I don't mean just looting arpg's ... which is part of the reason I became a packrat in the first place. Where you become paranoid to ever spend money at all, until the last. So whatever kind of economy there is, imo it has to have a bit of a balance ... so if you're the type who doesn't like to spend all their time looting/selling, you can still splurge here and there, just not as often ... yet those people obsessed with looting/selling (or crafting/selling) won't end up with 7billion quatloos in their pockets at all times. ...this all assumes that stores even have the chance to stock items that players are going to feel like spending "big money" on in the first place, of course. Perhaps P.E. stores will largely consist of more basic stuff and the better items will all have to be found. Why would these endgame items cost the same as the total possible amount of money a player can accrue throughout an entire playthrough without buying anything else? Besides, these days it's usually a given that the best gear is not found in the hands of merchants.

That doesn't really work when your "meta-plot" includes licensed content from IPs you have not licensed.

It depends entirely on whether or not the laws of conservation of matter/energy apply in this world. If a wizard can conjure up new matter with a spell out of nowhere, then it's not a closed system and all the established theories of economics go out the window. Every basic theory of economics starts with the notion that there are finite resources but infinite demand for those resources. It sounds more like you've just been playing games designed around packrats who obsessively collect every worthless piece of garbage to pawn it for a tiny amount. Generally speaking, the idea is that you have to make a (hopefully) thoughtful decision about how you want to spend that money. You have to make a cost-benefit analysis to determine which item will get you the most "bang for your buck."

Redundancy is when you have two things that perform the same function. An under-utilized skill isn't redundant, it's under-utilized. There's no redundancy because there isn't a second skill meant to disarm traps.

What do you mean? I'm safely assuming there are going to be restrictions on what classes can use which weapons. A typical Ranger might not see a red lettered "YOU CANNOT EQUIP THIS ITEM" message next to a warhammer, but they might see "You lack the strength to wield this weapon, you lack the skill to wield this weapon, you lack the training to wield this weapon" etc. The entire point of a game is to have rules, and it's the game designers who decide that "this type of damage is effective against this type of enemy or defense." What you're going to get with wanting a CPU to ask itself "how is this damage type effective in this situation?" is a crashed process. The game systems/rules aren't there to ask questions, they're there to answer them. A computer program is a set of instructions for a static, logic-based system. Computers don't ask questions unless told to by a program, and if they're not provided with possible outcomes they're just not going to work. You can't ask a game to design itself.

Bosses should always have a set level but mooks should be capable of surpassing their bosses? A legitimate boss fight (i.e. not one meant as an anti-climax or used for comic effect,) should always be a challenge. What is a boss, if not a challenge?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMqxveujf0I

*shrug*... I made a Dragonball joke, because the Dragonball universe followed the tiniest crumb of power-balancing rules for a game (there should always be a challenge, however powerful you are), and I don't think people got the idea that I thought DBZ, in its entirety, would be the perfect model for balancing P:E. Heh. But DB is more like an MMO where every area/dungeon is 100 levels above your level when you finish the current one, so you have to spend 100 years grinding to be on the same level as the enemies in the next area/dungeon.

Yeah, the whole 100-piece philharmonic orchestra thing is overdone in fantasy games (although I doubt P:E's budget could pay for that, anyway.) These didn't even exist in the high-middle ages/early renaissance (the age P:E's world is set to be analogous to,) they were a product of the late 18th/early 19th century. The music should honestly be more.... folksy. Not folk like American folk-revival 1960s or American Folk music in general, maybe more like the old Irish music that American folk and bluegrass music evolved from. Although that sort of music might be too melodious for some of the people here who prefer the standard BGM of recent fantasy games.

It's not much of a theme if it's not memorable. It doesn't have to be old school 8-16 bit console era catchy, but it ought to be memorable. For all the bland ambient background music and forgettable combat music you hear in Oblivion and Skyrim (and Fallout 3 and New Vegas, for that,) there's still a strong title theme that lets you know what game you're playing, and if it's a familiar theme it's that much more effective as it stirs up old memories of prior games in the series.

On the subject of dual wielding, there's no reason that would be less effective against some manner of beast. A bear, for example, is not a nimble creature. At any rate, the idea general is nice and all, but veers too far into the ream of simulation rather than RPG. P:E simply isn't going to be realistic like the guys who want armor limited to chainmail and steel plate want it to be. Aren't you the guy who said P:E should follow the rules of the Dragonball Z universe in another thread?

This is now a "look of disgust/disbelief/disdain" reaction image thread.

The line "the depth of the lore" made me laugh and stop watching the video. Not that I'd need to watch it because I could give Bioware a pretty long, detailed list of missteps and major stupid decisions on my own.

This point undermines your self-perceived authority on how F2P works and what costs are associated with it. At this point it's just the typical "I dislike EA, so I will manufacture reasoning by imagining that their current implementation will incur additional costs simply due to the nature of the implementation, because trying to point out that there's severe financial implications is all EA will listen to." Your assertion is only correct if all the F2P players do is log in, play their class campaign, do nothing else, and then stop playing altogether once they are done. They have to take more time to accomplish the same amount of stuff, yes, but unless their goal was to simply get through the content as fast as possible and then stop, this incurs no additional to cost for EA in terms of server infrastructure. And even if that IS all they are doing, they costs are only felt at the tail of the playthrough, and I think you're overstating their impacts. The idea, however, that they'll be logging in more frequently than they otherwise would have, implies they would have played less with a subscription. Unfortunately gamer habits contradict this assertion. When people have a subscription, they feel compelled to play more because it ensures they get more game time for their dollar. I say all this with the notion that I think they'd be better served with a different F2P model to boot. Your attempt at a strawman argument implies that F2P players are allowed to do anything outside of the basic "Story" content without paying, your strawman argument also falsely attributes to me the claim that they're trying to go as fast as possible, when I said the opposite, they're being forced to proceed at a slower pace because they have to grind for extra hours in order to be at the same levels as subscribers, because they gain less XP for everything they do. Maybe they just log on and do that chatty social crap, which costs more money to EA. More server traffic = higher bandwidth costs, server resources being used, electric bills, etc.

You haven't ever played Team Fortress 2, have you? TOR is one of the worst F2P models I've ever seen in the world of real "gaming." i.e. not Zynga/facebook games. The most hilarious thing to me at the moment is the reduced XP gain, which means F2P players have to use more server resources, connect more often and for longer (things that cost money to EA,) to accomplish the same "story" goals as subscribers, by grinding.

Here's a brutal irony: The majority of the NRA's rank-and-file members believe in gun control laws, yet they simultaneously blindly allow the leadership of the organization to take an extreme right-wing Fox News hyperbolic stance and let their money go to extreme lobbying for zero regulation of firearms as well as completely unrelated conservative boogeyman causes. http://www.mikebloom...1818d65164a53a5 http://www.mayorsaga...home/home.shtml http://www.demandaplan.org/about - 87% of NRA members believe that second amendment rights go hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals - 74% of NRA members and 87 percent of non-NRA gun owners support requiring criminal background checks of anyone purchasing a gun. - 79% percent of NRA members and 80 percent of non-NRA gun owners support requiring gun retailers to perform background checks on all employees – a measure recently endorsed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry. - 75% of NRA members believe concealed carry permits should only be granted to applicants who have not committed any violent misdemeanors, including assault. - 74% of NRA members believe permits should only be granted to applicants who have completed gun safety training. - 68% of NRA members believe permits should only be granted to applicants who do not have prior arrests for domestic violence. - 63% of NRA members believe permits should only be granted to applicants 21 years of age or older. No, no action will be taken. Gun control wasn't an issue (but a conservative boogeyman in both 2008 and 2012,) and countless shootings occurred in that time span (without making the national/global news.) Even if someone (Democrats, it'll be a cold day in hell when the GOP stands for gun control,) started to push gun control legislation, the tea party/far right controlled GOP would fight it tooth & nail.

Oh if you want to make yourself sick, just search deviantart for either your real name + sonic or your favorite video game/character + sonic and you're done.

He was making a joke. Do you have a rational, evidence-based sense of humour (sarcasm, wit, etc.), or are you just an aspie? Sure, a misogynistic joke. But I'm really impressed by your calling anyone who doesn't share your sense of "humor" an "aspie." You are a true visionary, and a shining example of the wit you profess the joke to embody. It's amazing how bitingly clever you are, because using autism as an insult has not been a standard on 4chan for 5+ years. When your reply contains the word "butthurt" I'm sure everybody here will double over, gasping for breath, until they finally choke to death on their own phlegm and bile due to the sheer force of their heaving, breathless laughter. Your razor sharp wit and originality will go down in history for being the first ever human to use "aspie" as an insult. And the strawman! What a tour de force! It's like you really understand socratic thought! Bravo, sir. BRAVO.