AGX-17

Ol' Willie the conqueror didn't need +2s. If a lord or noble ordered a suit of plate armor, it had to fit right, like a tailored suit. It's not a matter of "one size fits all." Range of movement is severely restricted by plate armor, and chafing is also a problem.

Star Wars will be appearing in Square-Enix's Kingdom Hearts games. That is reason enough to hold a funeral for Star Wars.

There's no evidence whatsoever that "Martians" ever existed. When Mars did have surface water, a viable atmosphere and a magnetic field it couldn't have had more than single-celled life, if it had life at all. There's no legitimate, evidence-based reason to assume that a planet further from the sun, with less mass, less water and less internal heat could miraculously generate life faster than the Earth or that evolution would take place at an accelerated rate. You could not be more wrong. Life on Earth and the Earth itself are fated to be vaporized by the sun as it grows ever larger. The planet's surface will be scorched clean of life long before it's finally engulfed by the sun as it grows into a red giant. The pressing long-term issue is not how we treat the planet, but how we escape from it. Humanity has to be an interstellar species if it wants to survive indefinitely. The risks of trying to escape the prison that is Earth are well worth taking if the species is to survive beyond the life of our sun. It would be far worse for the Earth, humanity and all its accomplishments to be vaporized and forgotten by the universe. You really prefer that tragic an end for humankind?

If you've played Dishonored, then you know that rats are a terrifying force capable of stripping the flesh from an armored man's bones in a matter of seconds. So... you want PE to be a parade of well-executed cliches. You want PE to be Dragon Age Origins? And using all your resources for war is not adaptability. Developing a way to make a house out of ice in the arctic is adaptability. Humans are adaptable. Orcs, as you describe them, are not adaptable. Humans spread accross the globe thanks to adaptability. The Romans conquered the Mediterranean because they adapted to use new ideas and abandoned the old ones that failed. If Orcs were adaptable, they wouldn't have a cozy cliche niche as evil, bloodthirsty, barbarian monsters, they'd be just as varied as humanity.

The definition of stamina you provided seems to fit PE's concept of stamina more closely than vitality. Vitality is derived from the latin vita, which literally means "life." Vitality would be more appropriate for the "health" stat whose loss results in permanent death. e.g. Vita is the root of the word "vital," as in "vital organs." It's life itself. It's the difference between you and I typing on our machines and the corpses buried in the ground. To call the non-mortal variety of wounding (whose worst-case scenario is unconsciousness,) "vitality" would be misleading, because even a nick or scratch would then be a "vital wound."

Transhumanism refers to things like genetic modification and cybernetics, not murdering people so you can enslave their souls and imprison them in their rotting corpses. And let's face it, 99% of necromancers are the generic "I must murder more innocent townsfolk to build my army/harem/fantasy football league! Muahahahaha! I also enjoy killing puppies!" kind. It's tired, it's old. I'd say it's practically The Dragon at this point, but The Dragon is actually formidable and respectable, and Necromancers are just perverse cowards.

No, quite the opposite. Loot oriented games are all about tossing gear as soon as something better comes along, because something better always comes along. So often that there would be no benefit to such a system as this. The entire point of a concept of familiarity with a weapon is that it rewards the continued use of a weapon which may be outclassed by newer gear. There's a New Vegas mod called "Signature Weapons" (http://newvegas.nexu....com/mods/43557) that basically does this, though it is easily exploitable since it doesn't prevent them from using it with, say, an AMR or Brush Gun. The idea behind the mod was to make low-tier weapons like .357 revolvers/rifles, laser weapons, 9 and 10mm guns and so on viable throughout the entire game by implementing a type of experience system for the weapon itself.

It'd be interesting if you had to consult local elders, historians, etc. to actually learn the name and description/history of an item. Just being able to identify the enchantments doesn't necessarily mean being able to identify the object or its history unless the entire history of the object is somehow recorded in every object that exists.

Cool waifus brother.

Companions (aside from Merrill,) were the only thing DA2 really did well. If you DO befriend her, she will step up, be honest, admit she stole the book and that's why the Qunari are still there, and she'll return to the city to give the Qunari their book back even though she'll be pursued by goons of the guy who was going to buy the book from her. Then the choice is letting the Qunari take her or not. If you refuse to let the Arishok take her, you fight him, if you let him take her there will be no fight and the Qunari will leave peacefully.

No, the Red option will get him to back down peacefully. If you're going to shoot him, the option is in white text on the right and says [shoot him]. The most egregious example I can remember in ME2 was playing a straight-laced Paragon Shepard and doing Jack's loyalty mission, and at the end chose the renegade option whose text said something along the lines of "just shoot him so we can get out of here," a rather nonchalant, pragmatic line given the time-bomb subplot of the story; but then Jack makes a 180 and decides she wants to be merciful, so my shining paragon Shepard pulls his gun on Jack, aims squarely at her face, looks her in the eye and demands that she kill the guy or he'll murder her in cold blood. Then it goes into this whole downward spiral of Shepard talking like someone verbally abusing a child to keep them from reporting his pedophilia to the authorities. That is Bioware's dialogue wheel system.

Libertarians have a tenuous grasp of the founding fathers' principles (public services such as education and the postal service being some of the ideas espoused by those men,) and the actual wording of the US Constitution at best. "Free markets" and "capitalism" never appear anywhere in the US constitution, and broad powers of taxation and interstate commerce (which exploded in importance as time went on,) are granted to congress. Their faith in Austiran/Chicago school economics (which is more an economically far-right political philosophy than a science, as it disregards all scientific methods and evidence,) and Randian principles of rational self-interest have been refuted by both science and economic events over the past 150 years. Their reading of Adam Smith is even worse. As Herbert Stein said, "Adam Smith would not wear an Adam Smith necktie." Adam smith advocated for government regulation to protect the laboring class as well as increased taxation on the wealthy, going so far as to specify various types of luxury taxes that should be instituted. He was a "moral philosopher" and his analysis of embryonic Capitalism was just that: an analysis, not an endorsement. Smith would be appalled by their ideals of Social Darwinism and Might Makes Right (as long as it's private Might, not public Might.) Those Austrian/Chicago school economists have been the biggest influence on the political/economic elite in the last 50 years, and it shows from the growing wealth gap. In the late 30s, the Roosevelt administration was convinced by Hayekian economists to stop Keynesian intervention in the economy and it was a disaster that led to another mini-depression, remembered as "The Mistake of 1937." Here's a fun fact for the finish: Alfred Nobel did not establish a Nobel prize in Economics. He did not consider it a science, he considered it dogma (the same dogma espoused by today's Libertarians.) It was a Swiss bank that established the "Nobel memorial prize in economics." If I had to say one positive thing about them, it would be "at least they're not the Constitution Party."

So, what, it should be color coded? Or should each choice be written so obstructively obvious that it ruins the dialogue altogether? "HEY, [NPC name] I am incredibly CHARISMATIC and would like to take advantage of you for personal gain with my CHARMING nature." Getting rid of those prompts will just lead to save scumming because players couldn't tell which option was the one that suited the gameplay style they're pursuing for that character. The problem isn't NPCs misunderstanding, because unless the scenario in question was designed so that a certain skill-based line was going to be misinterpreted, it's a case of just confusing players who thought they were taking one angle but it was actually a different one. This whole thing is proposing PE to have a dialogue system of misleading options like Mass Effect. One of the most common gripes about that series was that you were given sentences in the dialogue wheel that were WILDLY different from what Shepard actually said, and often gave different results from what was the implied intent of the initially presented dialogue options. i.e. You get a renegade choice that looks like you're just going to threaten or punch a guy, but instead you shoot him in the nuts and then stomp on his neck.

So you're saying that people who aren't good at IE-style games should be punished for not being good at them. How is this a good idea? Denying unskilled players for whom this kind of game just isn't their "thing" access to the full game is an outdated concept that detracts from both the gameplay and narrative experience, especially given Obsidian's strong slant toward story and characters. What's the point of telling a story if you selectively choose the "weak" and tell them to leave the room so they don't get to hear the best part or the ending? It's like literary eugenics.

No, this is a discussion of the basic concepts behind armor and how it should function. Whether or not it magically(how else do you justify the concept of AC?) grants increased evasiveness by virtue of increased mass (I think we've already established that as a ludicrous concept.) This is not high-level game design. You don't need numbers, equations and charts to tell the difference between the concepts presented here. While opinions expressed may be taken into consideration by the design team at Obsidian, they are not looking to us to do their jobs for them and we are most likely not equipped to deal with this issue on a serious basis unless Steve Jackson is a regular contributor.

Morrowind clone? Where? I've never heard of a Morrowind clone. But Stamina, last I heard, is going to be the basic unit of damage which can be inflicted upon characters (with health representing a sub-level whose depletion results in permanent death,) whose total loss results in unconsciousness. If you could KO your characters or enter battle in wounded states just by running around it would not be very much fun to play.

Why would it be funny? I have never heard of sociopaths who derive their pleasure from destroying plant life (pyromaniacs are in it for the fire, not some psychosexual obsession with plant torture.) This warrants further psychological and sociological investigation. I DO remember reports out of 4chan of a Brazilian with a sexual attraction to houses, but that's neither here nor there. And I thought it was already crystal clear that Obsidian and its people are renowned for their writing and game design, not for copying the Red Faction FPS games. What good are these two giant huge cities if the player can just "lol i bloed up teh citiez"? This all sounds very... Call of Duty.

If there are respawning enemies, I stick with the idea I espoused in the quest-based XP thread that enemies should reward you less and less experience depending on how much you've fought that particular variety. If you've killed 100 wolves you've got nothing left to learn from killing wolves. At a certain point a slaughterhouse goes from disgusting new job to monotonous, intellectually vacant manufacturing process.

Are you saying in broken english that you are attracted to women (a heterosexual male,) or that all women in reality are sexy? Because, if it's the latter... I beg to ****ing differ.

Blizzard? Respectable? Or are you insulting Valve as well?

If you're just going to kick someone to the curb for good (who's helped you along the whole time 'till now,) no better off than they'd started aside from their level, it seems right that they should get a cut of what they helped acquire. It should be an option, but so should being a greedy, selfish ****. Unless they weren't doing it for the money or loot. In which case they should be fine with it or emotionally distraught. And then start stalking you. Edit: for the record, Obsidian, **** is 7 letters, not 4. This is a rather perplexing situation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_I_Italica

Wait, someone expects there to be detailed nudity? In an isometric game? This entire poll is full of loaded options.

Given the fact that this game is set in a Renaissance-equivalent period, (i.e. the time of Mercantilism, the last gasps of Feudalism,) that doesn't make much sense. An adventurer is already highly analogous to the roving merchants that inspired Mercantilism (who were typically urbane in their retirement.)

Even though they've already said they're not interested in binary good/evil morality? Anyway, my personal favorite villain in a video game was one in (bear with me,) a Japanese sci-fi game series, an alien scientist whose role in the invasion of Earth was to create human/alien hybrids to infiltrate the Earth and sabotage its defenses years ahead of the invasion. They were supposed to be kept in place by some sort of psychic mind control device (to prevent the old humanity is infectious trope,) but he deliberately used himself (he being immune to this device,) as the genetic basis for the hybrids, with the intent that they would resist the mind control, get all infected with humanity and sabotage the operation by providing the Earth with access to alien knowledge and technology with which they could better fend off the invasion. He then subverted his race's invasion fleet and purposefully lost in battle to ensure the Earthlings could salvage and reverse-engineer his people's best technology. He foresaw future attempts at peace between the races and plotted years in advance to sabotage those efforts, all of which went off without a hitch despite the fact that he died in the aforementioned climactic battle two games prior. The guy was an interesting twist on the classic sociopathic mad scientist type because his apparent goal in the end was the destruction of his own race using humanity as the weapon to do the job. I say apparent because ongoing bits of lore and out-of-game content suggest he may have had a grander scheme whose results have yet to come to fruition.