Tamerlane

You're totally right man; what the hell are those companies thinking? Clearly what they're doing is not working, and they should design characters the way you and Elerond want so they can finally stop working for pennies and make some real money. I mean, those artists are so terrible that no one could possibly like that stuff, right? But... See, you've put me in an awkward position. Because I hate the whole "it's popular, therefore it sucks; I like something that's not popular and therefore it's awesome" position. But that's... that's kind-of sort-of inherent to Project Eternity. That's a big part of the reason Project Eternity exists. If the goal of PE was to implement things that are popular to "make some real money", it wouldn't be an IE-style RPG, and none of us would be here. And seriously, comic books are generally not a good example of sexualized characters done well. Google "land pornface tracing" some time.

Kerrigan's appearance has been roundly mocked by many Starcraft fans, yes. Many comic book artists are also ****ing terrible.

Party size limits, be they the 3 of KotOR or 4 of Dragon Age or 6 of the IE games, are all totally arbitrary as far as the game world is concerned. They exist for balance and ease-of-use purposes. With an inherently unrealistic system, I'm really not bothered by how unrealistic it is if I've got people waiting back in camp (possibly earning EXP).

I absolutely disagree. The entire reason you don't just take every one of your characters is because of artificial party limits. If the game is going to impose that nonsense on you it should make up for it somehow. This guy is correct. God damn you, Breath of Fire 3's Peco. God damn you to onion-person hell.

This... doesn't even remotely make sense. The concept of magic - a broad god damn concept to begin with - existed first as a crude way of making sense of the universe for our understandably ignorant ancestors.

I liked how they were designed; boob plates and skimpy outfits (which is what you're referring to I'm guessing) are ubiquitous for a reason. All the delicious sexism we can eat, hooray! Skimpy dresses, heels, and pushup bras exist in the real world too; not all women want to look butch for equality's sake. You realize we're talking about armour, yes? Also, the following is loosely related to the topic at hand... Rope Kid should totally hire me to repeat things he says across the internet.

Well, just as long as I haven't had the time to get to be a Demi-God until that point (the shopkeeper should realize faster, after 2-3 times) because then I'd just be "Fool, take a blast of magic to your face. One-Hit-Kill!" or intimidate him. What about Ciphers? "You will forget we were ever here while we steal all your stuff.. bye!". Unless he's the shopkeeper from Link's Awakening. Ain't nobody ****ed with the shopkeeper from Link's Awakening.

I want more javelins in games, dammit.

I think matchlock rifles might exist in the same mystical area as "person on horseback" and "guy who helps you put your armour on before the fight".

How about spells that give Wizards really good melee fighting capabilities for a short time, like "Tenser's Transformation" in BG2? You have to be careful in that regard. Wizards get pretty ****ing lame when they start getting spells like "be a fighter" and "be a rogue".

Well, no, of course not. But neither should we see every damn creature with the same movement rate. And I still want to see knockdowns and speed debuffs aplenty.

Flaming swords were in BG1? And if the ugliness of that art is an opinion, so is the degree of realism. I sure as hell don't know how you could call the armour in the top row in that picture "more realistic" than the stuff below it.

And we all know Project Eternity's trying to appeal to the mainstream masses. True, to an extent, but the minority that it's designed to appeal to is "fans of Infinity Engine games," and not "fans of medieval life simulators." IWD, PST, and BG were hardly realistic in their depictions of armor, and the closest they came to realism included big pauldrons, boob plates, and skin tight everything. In fact, when BG2 made the armor look a little more realistic the community responded by making mods to restore the old BG1 look and 1pp is now one of the most popular mods out there for the game. You can't say that P:E is made to appeal to the minority like there is only one minority. The reality is fans of the IE games don't care that much for realism as evidenced by the fact that the IE games are not all that realistic. Not once on any forum (even here where realism is some sacred thing) have I heard anyone say "Well I really liked BG/IWD/PS:T, but I just couldn't get into them because the armor designs ripped me right out of the experience." Sorry to say it but you're the (very vocal) minority of a minority and the majority of us just like cool **** and don't really care if it's practical or not. Two of those pictures are from PST, by far the most "fantastical" of the bunch, and one of them is from a mod. PST had a really good aesthetic but their 3D art was pretty damn ugly. BG's paperdolls weren't terribly attractive either, especially the more elaborate helmets.

... What the Christ?

You psychic or something?

The only problem being that plate armor was being abandoned at that point because firearms made it worthless. A plate-armored knight has to close to melee range to inflict damage, leaving a musketeer a very good chance of shooting that steel-plated knight successfully. The only continued use of plate armor was in the colonization of the New World where there were no enemies brandishing firearms to worry about, only arrows, spears, rocks, clubs and so on. Except... that's not really true? Those are all examples 16th century armour used in Europe...

"Lightning fast" doesn't really enter in to it. With two characters of equal speed, one catching the other is a ****ing nightmare. Especially if attack animations require standing still and there's no way to knockdown (though knockdowns are A Thing in PE, at least) or apply a speed debuff.

This is the most wrong thing that was ever wrongly wrong.

I think you missed my point with the RTS stuff. I play RTS' sometimes. I'm better at making in-game decisions than the AI is. So are all the people I play against .We do assess the situation and we do make decisions based on what we can determine about the enemy. And sometimes, my units - and/or the units of my enemies - get kited into ****ing oblivion. Because that's how the units are designed. Units that go after "the weakest, most opportune target" are nice and all, but take BG2. How many enemies there can actually catch up to any of your characters? And if they do manage to catch up, can they actually pin them down for more than just a single attack (which forces them to stand still, falling behind again)? These are failings not of the AI - I mean, the AI was pretty limited, but that's not the issue - these are failings of the basic design of the enemy. What I'm saying is that smart AI applied to incapable NPCs doesn't really help them at all. If it's not faster than you or doesn't have a greater range than you or some other extenuating circumstance, all the AI in the world will not help it.

Yeah, this kinda seems like Adventurer's Hall territory. As much as I love renaming Xcom soldiers after my coworkers (and then running out of coworkers and having to use the names of their pets), it's just not a thing that needs to be for the regular companions.

Kiting is as much a matter of unit design as it is of AI. Kiting is huge in RTS'. It's not a matter of AI ineffectiveness - I'm talking about player-vs-player here - but instead is because some units have more micromanagement potential than others. Vultures (grenade-launching hoverbikes) kite zealots (dudes with swords) into oblivion because zealots have shorter range and can neither catch the vultures nor run away from them. It's ****ing painful if you're the victim because there's usually **** all you can do about it, and taxing for the person doing the kiting because every click going towards the kiting micro is a click not going towards macromanagement or whatever else you need to get done. One of the absolute best games of Brood War I ever saw was based entirely on a player micromanaging a single dragoon against wave upon wave of slightly-shorter-range enemies pouring in to his base. A slow moving melee enemy is inherently kiteable, and no amount of improvements to its AI can change that.

Well, I'm kind of against kiting in general. I mean, basic dance micro to get a vulnerable character to safety is cool and all, but **** kiting-based fights. Aside from attacks of opportunity and better pathfinding and AI, different movement speeds for different creature types can really help (or hurt) there. No reason every giant or bear or whatever the **** has to run at the speed of PC.

We can always count on you to decry political correctness for some reason and make up ridiculous portmanteaus, Monte.

You have no idea how much I want food-based magic now.

Holy ****, this is... good? Holy ****, this is good.