AGX-17

It's a seasonal winter cycling beard, not development-related. How is using a choke point to your advantage an exploit/metagaming? In any other game (or reality) it would be considered sound tactical reasoning. Choke points are natural defensive positions in any combat scenario, be it reality or strategy game or first-person-shooter. It would be folly not to take advantage.

How so? Do you have a rational, evidence-based reason (studies, statistics, etc.) or are you just a misogynist?

I've never understood this obvious misinterpretation of the ending. It's not a misinterpretation, the original ending had a wrecked Normandy (which was obviously devastated by a shockwave chasing it through space,) crash on what was presented as an uncivilized planet in a Galaxy with no more Mass Relays. In every version. With the only difference being the color code of the Mass Relay lasers that destroyed all the Mass Relays in every ending and with Joker, EDI and the leaves having glowing green circuits in them for the "jump in the hole" ending.

Gave it another hour or two. Still leery. If they did some kind of holiday discount for the 60 day subscription I'd seriously consider paying.

Every class should have a role that it excels at that no other class can perform. That's what classes are for. Every role they play should be effective in most/all circumstances, especially since it has been confirmed that you can solo the game with the player character only. I also think every class should have some array of abilities that draw on their "soul" in some way beyond the simple emotional concepts of "berker rage" which could be nothing more than an adrenaline rush, realistically. Obviously mages, ciphers and the like would have a much larger number of these abilities with much more potent effects than a fighter or what have you. How are you going to win the game if you're average and weak? There's a reason no peasant uprising ever succeeded before the French Revolution. Unless you expect P:E to be about rabble-rousing amidst a devastating famine while the aristocracy lives high on the hog, that's a pretty unrealistic desire considering you're almost certainly going to be facing supernatural monstrosities at some degree of frequency. I beg to differ. PLEAAASE, pleeeease differ! T_T (Sorry, I've just always found that phrase a bit funny.) Regardless of how imaginary a fantasy concept is for a game, it's still designed to be experienced by humans, who dwell within the realm of reality. If imaginary concepts weren't designed with realism in mind, then we wouldn't comprehend the game at all. The way souls and magic work in the world of P:E might be completely fictitious, but they generate effects within a set of rules based on real physics (such as heat, and lightning, and measurable kinetic forces). We sort of say "If this and this and this were real, how would they fit in with the rest of reality?" Logic and reason still fully apply to the design. That's why you get complaints such as "Why doesn't my fireball annihilate this ice elemental?", as opposed to people just saying "who cares... it's imaginary magic... it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever." Just because a person's hands can't really make a fireball out of mana and willpower doesn't mean that I should stop expecting it to behave like fire would in relation to realistic things like ice (the fact that the ice is apparently sentient matters not.) If there are souls and magic confirmed to exist in P:E, the laws of physics of reality don't exist in that world, because magic certainly doesn't exist, and there's no evidence that souls exist, either. Don't bring physics into a numbers-based RPG, because physics would dictate that magic does not exist, souls are unprovable and there is no evidence of their existence and thus outside the realm of science and your party would be engaged in fights where they could be killed by one hit with excessive frequency. Even Darklands, much celebrated for being "realistic", was still a fantasy RPG whose mechanics were not an accurate reflection of reality. Simply put, your expectation that P:E will be a Simulation of a fallacious reality that exists in the minds of the superstitious (such as yourself,) is baseless, as there is no way to mathematically model and accurately simulate the "physics" of magical thinking and other superstitious beliefs with no root in reason, rational observation or objective evidence. If aboriginal people in an arid African region do a rain dance every year at the cusp of the monsoon season, and it rains during the monsoon season, that is not a causal phenomenon. If you removed all of them or stopped them from doing their rain dance, there is a long-term climatological certainty (barring the effects of climate change or a change in the Earth's axial tilt,) that the monsoon season rains would come anyway, because rain is a function of the Earth's climate, not the superstitions of men who believe that physically unrelated phenomena = causal relationships.

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.