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erragal

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Everything posted by erragal

  1. It shouldn't make you smile. Holding a position doesn't require arrogance. Confidence is the positive expression of the characteristic you should aspire too; arrogance is when your confidence cuts you off from considering other viewpoints. An enlightened human should never be proud of having a closed minded point of view. You completely misunderstood the argument in your next statement. It's a shield in that your evaluations are devoid of any practical analysis outside of an attempt to push the game further towards your point of view; you utilize it as a defense of your point of view without offering substantial reasons outside of personal preference as to why your point of view has merit. Holding a point of view without objective data is what they call ideology. Ideology is not a path to critical thinking. You're basically saying right here "I am an ideologue and proud of it". I did not go back to review your past post history. There's that arrogance to assume I care enough about -you- to research your past decisions? Your past actions don't excuse present behaviour. That's a logical fallacy...one I'm not surprised to see from an ideologue. They still hold merit. Regardless of the ability to pause there is still a significant reaction and point/click necessity to micro movements in a real time setting. Not everyone has flawless physical capabilities and to assume so is again, arrogance (Ignorant of other peoples positions/situations in life). I certainly am not forgetting melee engagement exists. Not being able to disengage safely is what we would call a tactical risk. It also allows the enemy to gain an advantage by successfully engaging on one of your vulnerable characters thereby necessitating a swift response (All those knockback spells/abilities seem relevant?). Again your ideological point of view is inhibiting your thought processes. Instead of evaluating the merits of the system you only cite the flaws because you have an agenda that is informed by your strict point of view. This does not lead to good game design. Replicating something old just to 'recapture' it is in fact artifice. Artifice is not the realm of the creative, it is the realm of those lost in the past. You literally didn't read what I said at all. I am well aware that the player can control that...the point being that it -SHOULD NOT BE UP TO THE PLAYER- to replicate those actions. Being a real time game doesn't mean that the player should have the burden of micro movement for each individual character to perform feats of athleticism; this introduces a level of physical player skill and reaction time into the gameplay that limits the ability of the game to represent the raw skillset of a trained combatant. You have a misunderstanding that being a real time game must necessitate a huge micro control burden on the player. This is not Starcraft 2 or Dow2. I'm happy for you that you like to play these games this way...but it's not how most people played them. Your argument here is spurious "The only reason people will prefer this system is if they do not enjoy controlling their units". This is a very predatory debate tactic that you need to set aside. You do not get to decide the -only- reason people may enjoy a mechanic and choose a point that is insultingly simplistic. I prefer automation when it comes to close range melee engagement because it better captures the reactivity of a trained warrior as opposed to relying on excess unit movement to represent a mechanic that can be better abstracted with numerical means. Stating other things are demonstrated perfectly without citing those examples is pointless. I don't have a valid argument? Do you often dismiss other people's points of view based on your own evaluation without actually considering what they're saying? Ideologue indeed. What you said in the past doesn't excuse your attitude/behavior now. It's not that you're complaining about it's inclusion that is the issue. It's your vehmence and the reasoning behind your disagrement that makes no sense. As I repeated: You aren't conducting critical analysis of how to improve the feature you're simply arguing that since the feature doesn't replicate a specific combat system in full that it is not sufficient. There's a suggestion in the game mechanics forum about making a 'time-delayed' engagement system that I find FAR more intelligently thought out than your ideas. That's how you take something that isn't working and innovate/brain-storm tweaks to get the results you want without trying to -revert- back to something that ALSO didn't work. (EDIT: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68761-the-problem-with-binary-melee-engagement-in-a-real-time-game-its-not-just-about-the-visual-feedback/) Instead you are arguing that because people liked the game at the time based on what it could do that no other games could that we should simply utilize that system. You are arguing a system that is hackneyed and manipulative (kiting your characters in front of enemies to change their AI targeting) is somehow a -good- solution because it creates a 1 for 1 mirror of what existed before. This is the message of an ideologue. Someone that wants things to remain the same without an honest evaluation as to whether that thing was even good in the first place. To escape this you need to evaluate what the goals of the combat system are. Replicating an old system isn't the goal...it's replicating the -goals- of the original system. That is to abstract a party based combat system so that multiple actions take place simultaneously based on the length of the action while allowing for the human operator to pause and redirect actors and change course as combat situations change. Fundamentally the ability to move people around in circles to create sticky aggro wasn't a goal...it just happened to work. Replicating that doesn't serve the best interests of the game...only your interests in creating an identical gameplay experience. I didn't say I disliked the combat. It was enjoyable but certainly not as memorable as striking characterization and the finest immersive fantasy world building in a virtual environment that was available (Although Menzoberranzan, Stone Prophet, and Birthright did pull this off in different ways). You had designers who were clearly into the forgotten realms lore (A world which had a decade+ of iteration and has stood the test of time as the most popular D&D campaign world ever). I'm not sure why you would consider the writing to be PG-13 either...it's certainly more mature than the teenaged power fantasy Bioware/The Witcher games are selling these days. Recognizing gaping flaws in a combat system that was attempting to transition a strictly PNP game into a set of rigid computer rules is being realistic. I don't believe anyone who operates from a position of ideology and arrogance should be listened to. They are arguing from bad faith and therefore their position is poisoned. You have a preset idea of what you want to accomplish and instead of trying to push for the 'best abstracted third person rpg combat' you are pushing for a particular vision. Outcome oriented thinking is the most biased thought process you can have. Objectivity requires that you set aside your intended outcome and to consider details in isolation.
  2. So lets discuss both your ideas and you as a person. (I chose this post because it encapsulates both your passion and your extraordinary arrogance in one clean package). As an individual that firmly believes more in observation rather than the necessity for obsessive rehashing of ideas on hte internet I was spurred into action by your repeated attempts in this thread to drive a particularly complex issue towards a direction you view as 'the only correct solution'. To understand why your point of view is selfish you first need to acknowledge that the 'ideas' you have are only encapsulating -your- vision for the game. You have repeatedly used the mantra 'this is closer to how IE did it' as the punctuation dialogue for your posts; it's obvious that from an argument standpoint this is the shield you're standing behind in order to justify the aggresiveness with which you're pushing this particular design adjustment. It's important if you want to be pushing an idea in good faith to separate yourself from ideology and evaluate the idea strictly based on the qualties that make up that idea. When you utilize an ideological statement to justify your idea you are in effect depriving others of a reasonable way to counteract your discussion; you are arguing in bad faith. So let us evaluate the -actual- reasons that you want the game to necessitate heavy micromanagement of unit control with frequent shifts in character positioning in order to maintain AI engagement. It's obvious from your repeated comparisons to RTS style unit management that you enjoy and have some level of mastery over the heavy micro of character switch with hotkey + click to new position gameplay that is necessitated by these games. It may come as a surprise to you but many MANY people do not play games like that particularly well and can find that high mechanical skillcap of this style of gameplay to be daunting and frustrating. By pushing the game to a point where mechanical skillcap becomes more important you are in effect decreasing the 'role-playing' aspects of the game. How you might ask? Because the purpose of an RPG is to create what we call an -abstraction- of a combat scenario. This abstraction layer can be complex or simple depending on the type of action that is attempted to be simplified into a numerical format. The reason we want there to be an abstraction rather than a mechanical skill component is that it is the characters -within- the game that are supposed to be the possesors of the abilities. Lets tackle the issue at hand: the frontline fighter. Melee engagement is an abstraction of the idea that when a frontline warrior approaches a target if he doesn't want him to get by he will mirror that opponents actions and prevent him from moving by him. Similarly AOO's have traditionally represented the idea that if someone DOES move past a combatant that does not -want- you moving past them they are opening themselves up to an attack. It is necessary to make these mechanics less focused on player skill because it is the -warrior- that is doing the mirroring/quick reflexes/pure muscle of holding back the threat from approaching his more vulnerable comrades. In removing a binary system of engagement and reverting to the IE style you repeatedly cite the -value- of this RTS style 'blocking' mechanism to force engagements. This however is an introduction of personal player skill and does not reflect anything the character does themselves. Now certainly there are issues within the combat related to the fluidity of the melee engagement system and the way it forces the AI to react. There are concerns with the speed of combat resolution overall that can likely diminish some of these issues as the engagement becomes more meaningful. It also isn't the -only- way to force an abstraction layer to this type of frontline action (But it is an interesting idea...particularly with the ability to later have feats/talents for characters to 'engage' multiple enemies at some point). I certainly find it to be a more representative system than either mmo-style aggro mechanics OR the kiting behavior you are pushing for. Now lets discuss the -way- you're pushing your agenda in here. While it's plain as day you care very deeply about this specific issue (You even made a mod to remove the mechanic!) you have shown a very aggressive and single minded point of view repeatedly throughout the thread. Your inflexibility and single minded intent to mold the game into -your- vision worries me as a backer; I did not pay money for the kid with the most time on his hands to repeatedly push for his one goal to end up in the game. So I must say from my point of view and contribution to the game I hope your ideas are not utilized. If nothing else it would be a shame to indulge someone simply because they're the most zealous proponent of a particular idea and shouting other ideas down with zealotry and singleminded fervor. I'd appreciate that you remember other points of view and dial down your ideology. Just because -your- real inspiration is the IE games does not imply that this game system was meant to be a 1 for 1 reimagining of those games. Quite frankly the combat in the IE games was the least memorable part and highly exploitable using many of the tactics you're trying to shoehorn in. Why so much obsession with a bad, ancient combat system? Ideology is the enemy of critical thinking.
  3. First: I'm in for $100 on any sort of an old school RPG. What makes an old-school RPG for me are mechanics and systems throughout the game that make you stop and think. Make me agonize over every single decision. Make every decision have consequences (Some small, some huge, some subtle...but consequences). This is what PS:Torment has done better than any other game: Choices in the -role- playing aspect had a huge impact on the way your character unfolded in the -roll- playing parts of the game, and visa-versa. For my money the best system to do this is an isometric tactical gameplay system. Pre-rendered high quality art is timeless particularly at modern resolutions and should ease the burden of asset creation. Scalable difficulty with a wide variety of detailed character customization while avoiding stereotypical cliches as the basis for that customization. Companion characters should have unique abilities/classes/types to give them all distinctive combat personalities to define them along with their dialogue. An emphasis on text based dialogue with little voice (Mostly small voice bits to define each major character and add vibrancy but allow for more meaty conversations). Setting is something that should develop from a natural creative process but my personal preference would be something highly surrealist with an emphasis on pushing the bounds of a specific genre like fantasy/sci-fi. No pigeonholes, please. An awesome thought would be something in the vein of Deadlands which did a great job of mixing several genres and showed how you can define an entire world with art alone; this is coming from someone that absolutely despises Western themes. Hope to see something come from this.
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