AGX-17

How is this a problem? What industry is this?

This. I've always felt RPGs were the most fun (at least combat wise) when you're just starting out. It's strange though because picking up every small shield and selling it for a few coins = not fun, yet it's the barely-getting-by feel that made it so satisfying. Maybe it's because it's easier to balance the game at the start (esp in open world games) since devs have a good idea of how capable the player is at that point. Another reason might be the sense of real danger in every battle due to your character being so weak (an extreme case being Baldur's Gate where a few unlucky rolls got you killed in a hurry). Battles tend to loose tension mid-late game because aside from the occasional boss fight, you're just mowing through mobs left and right. It's not really strange. The best parts of games are usually the beginnings because you have so much unknown adventures to look forward to. The fact that it's often more challenging is just a bonus. The challenge in late game is too often rooted in tedium, excessively long end-game dungeons/levels or might simply not even be present (Fallout 3 lol.)

Chainmail bikinis are so trite. It's peasant-garb. Today's fantasy female fashion is all about overly elaborate, gravity-defying, fetish-inspired design. It's all the rage on the runways of Tera and Guild Wars 2. There's no more titillation in something so simple as a bikini in this day and age. The 1980s are over, boys and girls, it's time to catch up with the world. All that should be read in the voice of Tim Gunn. 1. drunk hillbillies/fratboys horsing around and 2. a gay pride parade.

Isn't this more an issue of Europe's attempts at "multiculturalism" than racism? Besides, would you have a problem if a black woman was Miss France and people called her "too black"? Which isn't to mention the issue of objectification of women which lies at the heart of all these "Miss X" competitions.

I've never been a fan of clicking on every pixel on the screen in search of any possible interactive item (adventure games lol,) so I am in favor. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic had a similar skill to what you're imagining, it highlighted secret doors/areas/items/breakable walls/etc.

The power would have to be massive to justify that. If I'm only going to be able to get one shot off during a fight it should do such massive damage that the highest-DPS classes do a double-take and spit water out of their mouths when they see the effects/numbers. And muskets are not meand to be used as cudgels. You'd typically have a bayonet, and even then you've effectively got a poorly-balanced substitute for a pike.

Well it's a fantasy game (fantasy implies unrealistic, imaginary,) centered around souls, a metaphysical concept that has no basis in reason or rational science. So there's not really any realism to be found from the start. ....Also the word is "one." "Won" is the past-tense of "win," and also the South Korean unit of currency. That said, there should be no Bethesda-style, balance-free power/metagaming. No character and no class should ever be able to become close to being the best at everything with maxed-out attributes, skills and derived stats like in a Bethesda game.

While dual-wielding is historically accurate for barbarians in the real world, there are also dual-wielding fighting styles present historically in later periods of European and Asian history. Which is why I don't get why there's usually a penalty for dual-wielding two weapons but not for using a shield. It takes training to use a shield and sword together correctly/effectively, and there were rapier/dagger fighting styles developed in the renaissance (primarily centered on dueling,) and Japan's most famous samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, went undefeated using his own originally developed dual-wielding fighting style. The common thread in all of them was that the "off-hand" weapon was used for both offense and defense. It couldn't protect you from archers, but these were fighting styles for skirmishers, duelists and wandering ronin. Hell, the Japanese didn't even use shields. They had large, tripod-mounted shield-like barricades to protect the front lines from archers, but the common soldier was a pikeman equivalent and the samurai saw shields as supremely cowardly, which is why the use of a dual-wielding technique grants the benefits of a shield in a duel or general/small fight (the sort an RPG party of adventurers would be engaging in,) without the cowardly (but pragmatic, not that honor is compatible with pragmatism anyway,) implications of shield use. And it goes without saying that a samurai bringing a bow and arrows to a duel would be grounds for hara-kiri. All that said, dual wielding doesn't really fit a ranger, as ranged combat is implicit in the class' name. A knife for short-range self defense is what sounds sensible, but not deliberately running around with two knives and little/light/no armor.

Worked poorly for "Shaker"... Pretty cheap dude, don't kick people while they are down. This is AMERICA (deep, throaty, GTAVC/SA gun shop voice,) if their idea failed in the marketplace of ideas, then it wasn't a very good idea. Right. Americans only ever buy good ideas. Snort. No, Capitalism decides. The invisible hand of the market shot down Shaker. WITH THE INVISIBLE GUN OF THE MARKET! OOOOOH-RAH GUNS AND BEER AND LISTENING TO CHICAGO SCHOOL ECONOMISTS, OH YEEEEEEAAH. btw: I stand by my guess.

I thought DA:O did a decent job by making them sustained spells that took a chunk of mana and reserved it for the buff spell/skill. Just as an odd aside, this subject reminded me of the JRPG Seiken Densetsu 3 (1995,) Because it was a class-based action RPG that came oddly close to RTwP gameplay, and the start of most late-game fights consisted of tedious buffing of your party and debuffing enemies. So let no one say that Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are the only JRPGs to emulate WRPGs. Also the rogue character had the highest damage numbers, the highest DPS and a full set of debuff skills depending on how you proceeded along a class tree. I can only assume the designers were frustrated D&D players.

Puzzles that aren't frustrating. Isn't that just a secret? Those usually are just a clue that says there's some obscure wall you can open by right clicking it. And then you do it and you get some crappy generic random loot chest reward (DA:O and Skyrim I'm looking at you.)

I'd count caves as a wilderness/natural environment. A forest can be just as confining as a castle hallway depending on the density of trees and the topography of the area.

I think you should sign all your images just to be safe. You never know how many people would love to steal such quality work and claim it as their own.

You should probably seek the aid of a mental health professional.

NPCs don't have their own FoW obscuring the player, do they? FoW is strictly for the purpose of obscuring the player's view/hiding hostiles. And with stealth play it's a straight-up numbers game.

Bards in Oblivion aren't real bards. They're the same fluid multiclass who can still become the best at everything as every other "class." Double posted again. It'd be nice to be able to delete these things.

Generally during the heat of battle people aren't inclined to focus on a fantastic story someone's shouting from behind them.

I don't like the way war and combat function in Civ games because of the timescale. Time passes so quickly before hitting the Enlightenment/Industrial age that you can have a single "war" lasting for 2000 years. Plus I've always preferred devoting my resources to building, culture and science rather than military, so I usually just build what I need to keep barbarians at bay, make a lot of declarations of friendship and give away strategic resources as bribery/tribute to not attack me. The fact that I usually end up with the most world wonders tends to balance things in my favor when those approaches fail and someone (Alexander,) finally declares war. Actually, the Ottomans are worse, they like to play they're you're friend then suddenly start denouncing you, even after making a declaration of friendship. At least Alexander just talks **** from the start most of the time. Of course, sometimes he doesn't attack at all. But he's actually just looking for allies to help him conquer closer neighbors. And I never play with randomized personalities. Montezuma is surprisingly unaggressive toward players compared to Civ IV, at least in my experience.

Since I finally got a PS3, I've been sorely tempted to buy RDR. Aside from the sexism it looks as close as I'll ever get to a Man With No Name game. I'd still prefer a PC port but that's obviously never going to happen (what's the deal, Rockstar?)

Kingdoms of Amalur... oh boy. That game had good gameplay, I wonder if they could have improved its flaws in the narrative/lore department with a sequel (seriousy, you'd need to pay me to give a **** about all these flower men and their flower stories about being flower men who are flowers.) It's kind of telling that all the game's lore was devoted to NPC factions and not playable races or their countries or cultures aside from the generic TES style "dark elves are attractive and slutty, blue elves are blue and stupid looking so they never get laid"* *This is not an entirely accurate representation of the two races' descriptions or names. Winning militarily is both tedious and trite, it's far more graceful and clever to win through other means.

A truer comedian I have never met. BRAVO, SIRE.

It will be Khan You mean aside from the fact that it doesn't fit his backstory or relations with Kirk? Sure.

The differences between the books and the series are more dramatic in the second season, Riverrun, Brynden & Edmure Tully and Meera & Jojen Reed being rather glaring omissions. I hope they don't keep that trend going as the series continues. I realize they sacrificed faithfulness to the book in Arya's story to make Tywin Lannister an actual character rather than just this looming shadow, but it's surprising for HBO to be going to lengths to tone things down and soften them up, considering how Arya deals with Harrenhal in the book, which was more interesting in her development as a character. While the second season fell short of the first season as a quality TV series, it still wasn't half as bad as the book. Clash of Kings was a gigantic drop in quality from Game of Thrones, and GoT was nothing particularly brilliant anyway. I can't imagine how the subsequent can get worse, but the internet tells me the quality drops as the series goes along. ASOIAF is above average as far as my opinion, for fantasy. The series is well produced and well acted, the rest falls in Jorge Rico Rodriguez Martin's hands. A Storm of Swords is where, for lack of a better term, **** gets real. in the sense that it gets less realistic but more emotionally charged. At any rate, it's a big leap from text and imagination to real actors on the TV, so that does give some improvements. And some downsides, as well.

Rolling my d100. I got 96. Housewife. That's... interesting.

Man, when you begin to read the topics and you genuinely discuss with heart and soul, and intellect & knowledge, then I'll be happy. I'm not even going to address what you think I am saying. See you later AGX, I guess until you've read the whole post.. maybe? Willful ignorance. What you've proposed is an unlosable game, plain and simple.