AGX-17

A western style monk would have no concept of zen, and the only way they'd know archery would be if they were former soldiers who decided to become monks. And they'd be giving up their vows to engage in combat of any kind.

For a recent example, Borderlands 2's "True Vault Hunter Mode" allows you to start from the beginning with a character who just finished the main storyline (there is post-game play for DLC purposes and finishing side missions, as well.) It simply increases the levels of all the enemies and areas you encounter (the base game has no level scaling, but DLC does.) By the end of TVHM you're dealing with enemies who are several levels above the 50 cap, so it can get close to undoable without help from friends or overpowered, super-rare gear (for which ingenious players have found ways to grind for in a game designed to prevent grinding.) BL2 actually has a decent EXP/growth model. Almost all the EXP gained is from questing (missions, they don't want to sound like a fantasy game for nerds ahawhaw,) and bosses. Normal enemies, no matter how tough, only award paltry amounts of experience, and effectively zero if they're below your current level.

If I were doing a doctoral thesis in abnormal psychology, I'd have a perfect subject right now.

I actually liked the idea of bankrolling and building the stronghold from the ground up. Not like minecraft, but hiring workers. Since it's presumably not going to be mandatory, it can be a pet project for a successful adventurer to pursue (adventurers tend to do a lot of travelling anyway, so building your own fort seems a bit excessive if you're not being awarded land and title by some lord or king. Then again, most kings don't like their noble underlings to have castles from which to launch rebellions.) At the same time, gunpowder cannon made castles obsolete, so it seems more like a manor house or estate would make more sense.

I think it's more important to be able to easily identify the specific spell or skill rather than the broader category they fit under. You're typically attaining these spells and skills through manual choice, so you're being introduced to its effects and purpose when you're being offered the chance to acquire it. Since real-time with pause allows you to, you know, pause, there's no need to frantically just click whatever "red/offensive" spell is closest to your cursor in the heat of battle without regard for its specifics. Background colors would be useful just for the sake of organization rather than specific identification.

There's no reason Nihilism shouldn't be present, as it's perfectly compatible even with a world with gods who interact directly with mortals. Since various gods are likely in conflict with others in ethics or influence, and world origins are usually left ambiguous, it's entirely valid to believe that the world was created with no intent, or that life has no purpose or meaning beyond what you assign to it personally.

I love pretty much anything by Salamander Factory (I don't get it either,) a freelance Japanese group of composers that does game music and odd iPhone apps. Best known for their Super Robot Wars work. If there's any original character theme in a SRW game, I probably like it, and it was probably composed by one of the members of SF. One of the most interesting aspects of their work is that they typically establish themes, (in a classical sense,) for antagonistic factions, so you hear elements of the base theme in each individual character's theme. e.g. The base theme for a faction called the Balmar Empire is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQAGazWMsNk and you can hear it as an underlying element in the themes of its characters, like so:

You're a sexist pig. "Most women are cold and self-serving"? You read like something out of a bloody textbook! No textbook would say women are cold and self-serving. An old textbook from the 1960s and earlier (pre-feminism,) might say they're overly emotional and the ones who want to do things like "work" or "leave the house for reasons not pertaining to the needs of her husband" are mentally ill. Assume that any form of beauty products or fashions are qualified as having to do with the husband's prestige among his neighbors and co-workers, by the way. You're improperly attributing to academia the sort of thing a typical 4chan or Stormfront user would say.

Really? I can't stand Bend, it's like a suburb without the adjacent urban area to qualify it as a suburb. Also cheese (Eastern Oregon is beef cattle country, not dairy cattle country anyway.) Oh man, like those disgusting Butterfinger candy bars. Whatever that stuff is inside them it sure isn't peanut butter. Or peanuts.

This song feels like an anthem to Independent/Yes Man run Couriers in NV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pm4fQRl72k

We would all do well to remember, a wall of text is a vice, not a virtue. If you can't make a point concise, it's probably not a point worth making.

I would buy it if it gave Shepard access to all the wild skills, weapons and classes added to multiplayer.

How do you reconcile these? You can't have a dialogue with a silent protagonist. Unvoiced is not silent. Have you never played any of these types of games before? CRPGs? It's not like a JRPG where you get to choose "Yes" or "No" and the only correct response is "Yes," or a first-person shooter like the Half-Life series where the silent protagonist is little more than a floating gun platform that people inexplicably have positive reactions to. Did you ever actually try to take different options in DAII? I can think of a whole lot of quests off-hand that only had one "correct" path which the player was railroaded onto regardless of their choices. Like when the chantry woman wants you to take a qunari mage through the sewers, you're presented with a choice of yes or no. If you say no, the game continues as if you'd said yes and won't allow you to proceed until you do it. Not to mention the ending, in which your choices are irrelevant because both sides of the conflict attack you for no reason regardless of which one you side with. The only choice of consequence I can remember was dealing with Isabella and the Qunari.

They don't matter. If you've got ADHD or epilepsy or whatever there's probably some product to deal with it. I also don't like the loaded poll options that suggest everyone can only either love them with an authoritarian stance that everyone must use them, or they must dislike them. I do not care about them and I am only posting because I don't like it when people feel entitled to dictate an entire forum's policies based on their own individual preference. I mean, you posted three of the "offending" images in your post, so you're apprently not THAT bothered or epileptic, so why make it an issue?

I started poor-people weightlifting (use whatever grippable objects and surfaces you have available,) and lost about 45 lbs. this year. Would ride my bike (probably not in the league of JSawyer and his centuries,) if it hadn't exploded. Wish I had one of them fancy-pants carbon fiber electro-bikes for long-distance travel.

But in PST, a floating skull isn't actually that odd. You're equating "well-written" or "well-developed" with "weird." That logic makes any well-written character "weird." A character's appearance matters in the world of the RPG. This is an imaginary world from the start, and we're imagining that these imaginary companions are interacting with other imaginary NPCs, and for these imaginary individuals, their appearance is highly relevant. If you can't be bothered to imagine this world is "real" in some way, why bother in the first place? That's the territory of the powergamer and the minmaxer. Why not just propose an elimination of graphics altogether and make P:E a random number conflict generator?

Let them all burn. The new generations are always built on the corpses of the old.

Not even a fan of 40k, but.... FOR THE EMPEROR!!!! It's called a penalty.

No, this is not a muhmorpuhguh and repeatable fetch quests are not worth anyone's time unless they enjoy MMORPG grinding. If you do, you should seek the aid of a psychologist or neurologist immediately.

Oregon REPRESENT! *cross arms* I'm sure if I put some effort into it I could find a slough of "best cheddar in cheddardom" awards for Tillamook Cheddar cheese. But I won't. So I'll just say HEY WISCONSIN, BALL'S IN YOUR COURT! Man, but Tillamook smells like you're wearing a cow's ass for a surgical mask. I'm actually more partial to Muenster anyway. That or Swiss is what you want for a good sandwich, doesn't overpower the flavor of the meat.

Humans are the baseline, the norm, in reality. They need not be in a fantasy world. I know their traditional role is as jack-of-all-trades/flexible, but PE could shake things up in those sorts of areas. I'd like to see humans as less magically inclined and more technological/inquisitive. Dwarves can keep their precious metals and fine craftsmanship, but curiosity and ingenuity in machinery and sciences seem like a perfect fit for humanity. Humans would have good reason to invent muskets and cannon if they were unskilled in magicks, for example.

Humans are Humans. Humans are Us. We built the mighty cities of the world. We built the computers and networks that allow us to communicate over great distances. We put men on the moon and returned them safely to the Earth. Has the Elf harnessed the power of the sun in artificial stars? No! Has the Dwarf constructed a chemical structure, atom by atom, with absolute precision? No! It is us, Humans, who seek to know ourselves, and to know the universe. It is us, Humans who have found the answers to our questions, and discovered the answers to be questions themselves. To all those who would denigrate the humble Human, the mighty Human, look at your world, see what your people have wrought, see what they imagine to be their future, and ask yourself why Humanity should be the least of all races in your imagination.

I thought the point of the thread is the idea of them being "unusual" in an exceptional way. Not weird like "oh that Gilmdorp, he sure has one odd sense of humor! *laughtrack*" or "oh i'm so emo weep weep i'm going to write poetry about being emo and cut myself *cut, cut*"but more like "townsfolk and important NPCs being outwardly troubled by their presence." Also... I don't see how it's possible to have a pretentiously postmodern companion in a pre-modernistic world.

No, it allows the enemy to get an easier kill. I already mentioned in earlier posts that some British Celtic "barbarian" armies were reputed to have gone to battle against the Romans semi-nude or completely nude (usually for symbolic or health reasons, their clothes were filthy and they had some rudimentary understanding that filth in wounds led to things like gangrene,) and the Romans almost always won. See, the thing about war is, war is scary. An army of guys with sharp objects charging at you with murderous intent is scary. Whether or not they are dressed provocatively is not an issue to the reptilian part of the brain that handles the fight-or-flight response. You may have heard of people ****ing themselves out of fear, that happens because the digestive system shuts down in those F-or-F situations. So do sexual systems. Non-essential functions are sidelined to maximize energy into anything that has the potential of saving yourself from dying. When someone charges at you with a battleaxe raised high, naked, your focus is going to be on the battleaxe if you aren't suffering from some genetic deficiency or mental disorder.

Yeah, and if they're considered weird for their world, it should be something noted by NPCs you interact with. Weird player character options wouldn't hurt, either.